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halcyone-of-the-sea · 1 year ago

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Choke On The Sun

PAIRING: John Price x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: You'd known John ever since the Academy, and even after losing touch, the love you had for one another was never gone. Like a snake, it had stayed hidden in unseen places. But it was always there.

WORDCOUNT: 13.8k

WARNINGS: Blood, intense gore, torture, detailed descriptions of torture i.e. electrocution, loss of a finger, gunshot wounds, knife wounds, discussion of torture, canon-typical violence, death, near-death experiences, guns, weapons, abductions, betrayals, intended for mature audiences, happy ending, etc.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

You remember a story you’d been told when you were a rookie—fresh off the cut and eager-eyed with far fewer scars. A more of a glass-half-full type of outlook on life, unknowing of what you’d experience during your years with the SAS: what choices you would have to make.

It went something like this.

There was a herd of deer that had jumped over the side of a bridge. On either end of that bridge, there were two trucks with their high beams on—not moving but sitting there; the deer got pressured. Spooked. One by one they just…hopped over and died on the rocks below—no noise above the breaking of bone and the clatter of antlers shattering to pieces.

You have to wonder if it was the fault of the first one who had jumped over for leading the rest to a quick end, or the drivers of the cars just trying to get where they needed to go; ignorant of the way they’d been ogling to see the panic in wide, black eyes. Either way, a whole herd of ten met their fate and left their bodies to feed the larvae and the birds.

The story had been told over drinks at a pub, at the time you’d taken an interest in it with no more than a slow comment of ‘poor things’ before you’d brought your glass to your lips. You don't know why you’re thinking about it now.

The timing could have been more opportune.

You send a bullet into the man’s kneecap, hearing the bone disintegrate and the flesh open like a flower. His scream follows, loud and hoarse—sobbing trapped behind a bitten tongue that drips blood down his chin.

Hand snapping up, you grasp the lower half of his face with a grunt, head shoving itself forward until you lock onto fluttering eyes and get consumed by a whining sob.

“I asked you a question,” you lick your lips, tasting sweat as it slithers down your skin. Your voice is slow and even, grip tight. With a shove, you push back the man’s face, wrist limp with the Basilisk as you wipe at your nose with it, unblinking, when you get to your full height.

The room wasn’t anything different from a million other black sites you’d been to. A single chair where your mark sits tied up, a desk that had been pushed to the wall, and a single door placed into the cracking foundations of a concrete wall. No windows. No vents.

Hotter than hell, too, and that place was something you were acutely in tune with.

“Anthony,” you say, waving your free hand as the scent of blood gets stronger, pools of it already on the hard floor. “I’m gonna call you Tony, alright?”

Tony yells, wrenching his arms against the zip-ties and screaming until his voice is hoarse.

“Damn you! I told you I don’t know anything!” He sobs. “My leg—I can’t feel my leg, oh, God it hurts.”

You frown, glancing at the door.

“Stop lying to me,” you look back, eyes unblinking in the low light. “You still have one left—tell me where your buyer is and I let you keep the ability to walk upright with a cane.”

“I don’t know his name—!”

“I don’t need a name, Tony,” you growl, irritated. “I need a location.”

“Copenhagen!” He wails, body spasming and hair dancing atop his head. “The warehouse is in Copenhagen, please, that’s all I know!”

You blink.

“Denmark?” You mutter, brows furrowing.

“Fuck!” Tony screams long, his skull tilting forward as he releases his guts to the floor through quick gasps. Backing up a step to stay out of the spray, you watch him silently; thinking. The flood of the man’s crimson fluids ripples. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Denmark,” grumbling to yourself once more, you shake your head and sigh aggressively. “Of course.”

Without another glance, you turn and exit the room, pushing your Basilisk into its holster as the gear on your chest clinks lightly like the sound of rain hitting a metal roof. The door closes behind you, voice calling to one of the guards as he looks up quickly. His face is pale. Tony’s wails still echo out; water filling a bucket.

“Get a medic,” is what you settle with—slipping past on a fleet foot and new intel to pass on to Laswell. She’ll be intrigued, no doubt.

One step closer, your mind hisses to you. Just a little bit longer.

It’s too late to gain a conscious now.

Emmett Kinsman had been dodging you for years—dodging the Task Force—but with one of his suppliers giving away a location you’d been unable to pin, there was hope for a swift resolution to this mess.

The radio on your chest sizzles to life.

“Hart, sit-rep. How’s it lookin’ on the black site.” Kate’s American accent leaks into the earpiece attached to you, the cord looping the back of your neck and inserted into the shell; a device of black metal and plastic.

“I have a location for Kinsman. Copenhagen,” you ease out, moving a finger to the earpiece and pressing. Glancing at the rows and rows of doors in this endless hallway of dark smoke and obsidian mirrors—you’re eager to get your boots to the ground. Your other hand snatches at the rag swinging from your belt, taking it out and rubbing at your face with it until the stain of oil and flecks of blood smear like frosting on a cake. “Where are the boys? I need to be wheels-up to meet them ASAP.”

“Coming to you.”

“They’re here?” Your face twists as the words settle in, confused. “Why? Thought they were tracking another lead in Romania.”

Kate’s voice is smooth in your ear, moving like water as you turn a corner, stuffing your rag back into your belt.

“Are you surprised?” The woman jokes in a monotone; you’d only taken it as such because you knew her dry state of humor. “Really, Hart, you know he can’t stop until you’re back at his side. I was going to tell you sooner, but you were…occupied.”

Your feet pause for a moment at the beginning of her sentence, instinctual heat moving the length of your neck until you clench your jaw and continue onward at a slightly slower pace—eyes narrowed on the floor ahead of you.

“It isn’t like that, Kate,” you mutter. A low hum echoes the line and you fight a scowl as a group of soldiers walk past. Itching at your forearm, you shake your head. “John just likes having everyone together on missions like these. If it had been different, I’m sure he would have told me to fly back to them regardless of the intel. We’re tight on time.”

“I’ve known you both for more years than I can remember,” Laswell sighs. “Don’t try that with me, Captain.” You frown, clicking your tongue. “They’ll be arriving on the tarmac—get ready for a quick exit. We need Kinsman by month’s end.”

“Copy,” you utter, removing your hand from the earpiece and glaring ahead of you. A still-air silence envelopes the hallway, the only sound of your boots to the concrete and the reverberation that booms after.

It was so quiet here.

John Price—Captain Price—and yourself had a… complicated history. You’d joined up together; gotten through SAS selection neck-and-neck until time and its grubby fingers had forced your lives in different directions. Like two vines of reaching ivy, it had only been three years ago that you’d seen the other again, though you’d heard stories as you’re sure he had about you.

Hart: not the kind that beats but the kind that bleats, you had to explain to most—you weren’t unknown to the darker side of the job and the people that specialized in it. Your file was stretched with so much black ink that when you’d gotten the call on your phone, an unknown number, you’d recognized the gruff voice behind it and the first question you’d asked was how the hell he’d gotten clearance to track you down.

“No hello, then, Hart?”

“Not one for pleasantries, John. Explain. Quickly.”

“Business as always.” He’s wasted no time, voice going to a low grumble over the line that day. “Laswell took in a favor. You’ve been busy, Love…Room for one more joint-Op?”

It hadn’t panned out to only ‘one more joint-Op’.

After the mission was over, it had been raining on base. The sky had shed tears from clouds deeper than the gray shades of your gear, splattering packed dirt and concrete. Above your head, the thin overhang off of the armory door had spared you some of it, but when the wind had shifted your clothes absorbed specks of water like spots on a fawn. Your eyes had been looking out—expression open.

When the man exited the building and came up beside you, you both didn’t speak for a long time. You had been aware of his form, devoid of vest and gear, while yours was still layered with it to the utmost degree. You’d expected to leave that night—a good old-fashioned Irish Goodbye with a C-17 already waiting for you to board. To carry you off to another hellish deed done with ravaging cruelty for the sake of people who would never even know you existed.

The storm had stopped you…or, maybe something else had.

“Good to see you again, Hart,” John had stated, still not looking over at you as his arms had crossed, feet situating themselves. “Been too long.”

You had stayed silent—watching. The drain across the street was flooded. Sticks and leaves stuck at the drain as a whirlpool formed; only dangerous to bugs and the bits of garbage blown in by the wind.

Only after the wind shifts again did you speak.

“And what has John Price been up to in that time?” Your eyes had slid to stare, piercing in the low illumination of the armory’s outside light.

A huff of a chuckle, the one you’d remembered in the days of selection—coated in mud from crawling through man-made trenches and a sharp smirk of a snap when the barbed wire had grazed his back.

There were too many stories here. Too many. So many it became impossible to wonder what could have been and what couldn’t—all that existed were the little moments of fondness.

The two of you were nothing else but souls long past redemption; stuck on that knife’s edge and waiting for the hand to shake and send you through it.

You are made of memories.

“That’s a story told over bourbon,” John’s lips had flickered, and you’d blinked slowly, head tilting. “Not anything worth reliving, yeah?”

“Everything is relivable, Captain. You just need to find a reason as to why.”

The man had nodded his head your way, conceding with his blank eyes ahead to the rain. A rumble of distant thunder had flown out, making your ears twitch. You couldn’t stop watching him now that you had the chance—the brunette strands; the fatigues, and that accent. The muscle you don’t remember him having in that specific place all those years ago. The wrinkles on his forehead from age and stress are shown in yours as a mirror.

Tall; formidable.

There was a tension in the air that you chose not to dwell on—the same that had been brewing for as long as you’d known him.

“I want you to join up with me,” the sudden comment had made your body tense, eyes snapping away. In your pockets, your fingers twitch with surprise.

“Join?”

“Thought I’d catch you before you disappeared again, yeah?” A sheen of slight embarrassment is over your skin. John chuckles again. “Extend a formal offer—Laswell was the one who suggested it.”

“Well,” you’d huffed, licking your lips. “Now I’m surely not accepting.”

“Let me fuckin’ finish, Love,” John’s lips were pulled in a slight smirk—beard shifting. A pause as the wind whips again, shaking the trees before he grunts. “One-Four-One. My Task Force. Been thinking I’d need someone like you, but I knew you’d never agree to it.”

“Oh?” Your brow raises.

“Not bloody stupid.” He sighs. “Thought I’d ask anyway. Give you a proper goodbye if you weren’t so keen on handing it out.”

“I don’t like goodbyes,” you mutter, hearing John’s feet shift—his boots scraping.

“I know.” It’s low and even—not a prod or a dig. An observation.

A hand is moved out to you, hovering.

There isn’t any need for words when you glance down at it, and then up at him; staring into those blue eyes that so perfectly illustrate the hues of a roaring river, hidden away in the confines of a verdant forest.

A slow smile pulls at your lips, and you see the corner of the man’s eyes soften.

“Knew I’d get one out of you again,” he mutters as you slip your hand into his, a firm and all-encompassing heat of flesh and care.

“Don’t get used to it, John.” Shaking his hand, you smirk, legs shifting.

“Never,” he chuffs, squeezing your limb.

You don’t know why you stayed under that overhang with him that night. You don’t think you’ll ever be able to explain it as you had looked up and seen the C-17 fly off without you in its cargo hold, hands resting on your vest collar and blue eyes watching you, slightly narrowed.

You never even verbally told him you were sticking around…it had happened like a stray cat under the porch of your childhood home; taken in and cared for. Just the same, John never mentioned it beyond paperwork.

Shaking your head, you blink back to the black site, turning that last corner and making it to one of the exits. Pushing the metal-reinforced door open, you shift outside and move a hand to cover the glare of the setting sun from your eyes, grunting.

Laswell’s voice peaks back in as you jog toward the far-off body of a whirling plane, three figures just managing to walk down the ramp.

“Hart? It’s Laswell.”

“Copy,” you say, knees taking the brunt of the heavy items you carry in pouches and have strapped to your form. “What is it?”

“The Task Force is a go for Denmark—when you get there, I need everyone searching; we can’t lose him again.”

“Affirm. I’m on it, Kate.” You breathe. “John and I’ll get him. It’s personal for us, you know that.”

“That I do. Make sure to keep your heads on with this, Hart. Out.”

You lick your lips, nodding even if she can’t see you.

Slowing as you near the plane, friendly smiles spark up from the two Sergeants. Gaz comes over, grasping at your shoulder and speaking above the engine behind him.

“Ma’am! Good to have you back.” Soap chuckles, tilting his head your way as you grasp Kyle’s forearm—squeezing in greeting with a twinkle in your eye.

“Surprised to see us?” The Scot calls.

You scoff. “Laswell gave you up.”

“Damn,” Kyle moves back, fixing the cap atop his head and glancing back at his fellow Sergeant. Simon nods from behind the two to which you respond in like. “She bloody betrayed us.”

“Not as much as Kinsman,” the mood sours; lips thinning as you speak firmly. “Where’s John?”

“Right here,” the man in question comes down the ramp, blue eyes meet yours. A second of inspection passes, eyes from both parties flickering up and down forms for any mistreatment—any ailments. “Kate already told me. We’re leaving now that we have you.”

Bumping Simon’s fist with yours as you pass him, you ascend the ramp, Soap muttering under his breath about the flight time from behind.

Standing beside John, you pause like a bird, eyes half narrowed. “You didn’t have to pick me up, you know? I could have gotten another plane.”

The man the same rank as you hums, making sure the men are all inside and taking one last look out to the black site, eyes missing nothing down to the concrete structure to the lights that will soon illuminate the pure nothingness of the fields of this area.

“Wait time would have put us back.” Tiny eyes blink, a hand coming up to rest on his collar as his face shifts to you. “You good?”

“Always,” you mutter without hesitation. “Nothing from Romania, then?”

He grumbles, clenching his jaw and taking in your words. “Negative.”

A silence settles in which you quirk your brow—a small flicker of a smirk makes him turn away and stalk back into the hull, grunting in annoyance. You follow on silent feet.

“That’s it? It must have been horrible, then. Care to explain?”

“Get in your seat, Captain.”

You hold back a low chuckle, walking beside him until you both come to the back of the plane—easing back into the hard plastic, you huff as you clip in your seatbelt.

It’s all relative silence until the large metal beast is in the air; everyone's bodies shifting as the floor evens out. John and you take long breaths and, feeling the occasional jostle of the plane, you occupy yourself by picking at the dried blood all over your hands as the flight begins—Tony’s blood.

Blue eyes blink down at you, watching from the side.

“He know anything important?” You stifle a yawn on your lips, one hand coming up to cover the open-jawed expression of tiredness.

Glancing, you shrug with a slow response of, “Only a location. Even then I don’t know if it’ll pan out like we want it to, John.”

Everyone had been hoping for more, but they also knew that you were the best at interrogations and information retrieval. If you had called it that the man only knew a city and nothing else, John wasn’t one to question you. He knew better.

A large hand shifts to grasp your right bloody one, picking it up and bringing it to his lap. You let him do it without protest, shoulders loosening at the roughness of his calluses moving across yours until the familiar ritual begins to take part like a black mass.

Fingers twitching, you hear a hum as John takes out a rag from his pocket, opening it with a flick of his wrist. Moments later, the water bottle on the seat next to him is taken and the droplets that are left are scattered like rain over the fabric until they absorb.

“All dirty, Love,” he grumbles as your eyes soften, watching him trace the lines of your palm with the wet rag—dabbing away the beads of red. Watching, you listen as he continues. “We’ll figure it out, eh?”

Blue locks with you, holding your gaze until the permanent set of his brows slowly loosens. “We will,” he reaffirms firmly.

“...I should have shot him when I had the chance,” you whisper to John, words low and tone nothing more than a mouse’s murmur; a small pebble hitting the ground. “Don’t lie and say it wasn’t my fault.”

“You’re going to fucking ruin yourself with that, Hart.” He advises, his cleaning of blood coming to a slow halt. “You did what you thought was best,” John leans in closer, not blinking as you try to move your head away with a half-hidden scoff. A damp hand grabs lightly at your chin, shifting it back as you blink in mild shock into John’s face. He doesn’t falter. “It’s all any of us can do, yeah?”

As if it were nothing, he lets you go and shifts his focus back to cleaning your hand. You watch for a long moment, oblivious to the elbows hitting sides from farther down the hull, quick glances tossed between Sergeants and a Lieutenant who quirks a brow under his mask, huffing a sound in his throat.

“If I had,” you force back the stutter in your voice. “More people would still be alive.”

“Maybe,” John tilts his head, the rag brushing the length of your fingers. “Maybe not. We don’t know that, do we? No use wasting our breath talking about it then. What matters, Hart, is how we fix this.”

You sigh, repressing a shiver as his thumb brushes scars and blemishes, moving like moss over stone.

“And we don’t leave our bloody problems for the next poor bastard, do we?” You puff air from your nose, shaking your head at the smirked comment. You watch John’s beard move with it—taking in the crinkling of his eyes and the way his knee hits yours.

“Wonderful pep-talk, Captain.” You lean your head back against the netted sides of the aircraft, letting your eyes flutter shut; oblivious to the way he watches you. “The service is lost on you—therapist is right up your alley.”

“Fuck’s sake,” John scoffs. “I’d sooner go back to the academy than that.”

“The food was utter shite, wasn’t it?” You agree.

“No need to bring it up,” John comments lowly, amusement thick in his words.

You don’t know when you fell asleep, but you do know that the pressure around your limb stayed there for a long while—the rag moving over every sliver of skin until only the base was left behind; like a painter creating an ocean scene, shrouded in mist, every bit of red was gone.

Your dreams are plagued by Emmett Kinsman. His sharp face; his sly eyes and his knack for being undetected.

He’d been a part of your and John’s class in the Royal Military Academy—when all was done, he’d graduated and begun to serve in the 22nd SAS Regiment just as the both of you had. There was never much interaction there, beyond shared drinks and a few good words, a single operation, but the bonds of brotherhood run deep. If given the chance over any deployment or service, John or yourself would have given your lives for him—for the boy you’d bled and persevered with to a point of utter loyalty akin to beasts; unrestrained by any threat of violence, sharp attitude, or past faults.

And in the end, he’d thrown that all away to get into bed with terrorists.

Location: London, England

Time: 1718

Operation: ‘Purple Cloth’

Your eyes rest behind the glass of the bookstore, gazing out over the street from the second floor with a level of new-found skill and a surety in yourself. Fresh off the cut, you aren’t overly eager for this, but you’re assured in your abilities.

There can be no failure.

Emmett is down below, sitting at a café and sipping tea as John is stationed at a building farther down the street; waiting. Another man, directly relaying information to Emmett, is at the café as well, sitting in the corner reading a newspaper and facing the individual you’re supposed to follow. Only the four of you for this, and you’re not overly familiar with half of them. John was your only shining grace.

“Target’s getting the bill,” you shift your head into the collar of your shirt, muttering. “He’ll move soon.”

“He carrying?” John’s voice slithers in, a soft murmur.

You stare, expression lax at the large body that shifts and stands with a tight shirt on, waving off the barista when she tells him to have a good day. “If I had to guess? Negative. Nothing big—no bulge at his spine. At the very opposite end, I’d say an X13 could be concealed and accessed via a slit in the pant’s pocket and in a holster at his thigh. They’re baggy enough for it, but the draw time’ll be longer. Drug runners are sloppy.”

John grunts, and you address Emmett. “How are we doing, Mate?”

A smooth, suave, tone moves into your ear. “Not too bad, Sweet Thing. Else, I'd be better if you were sharing a drink with me before I disappear.”

“Only in your imagination, Kinsman,” John interrupts, unimpressed drawl taking your attention. “Keep on it.”

“I swear I rank the same as you, Price. Where do you get off ordering me around like your dog?” The comment is so easily dismissed as a joke between comrades that there’s no hostility there.

“Since I was given oversight,” the amusement is easily taken in John’s voice. “I’m the one keeping your arse alive, eh?”

The other addition to your team speaks up, a voice that in the future you’ve already long forgotten. He says to cut the chatter, and you have to agree.

Emmett and the target are nearing an alley.

“I’m heading down,” you utter, already turning and heading to the stairs, swiftly moving down them and exiting the building.

“Copy,” John’s voice fizzles the line. “I’ll head them off.”

“Emmett,” you move to link up with the fourth member of the team as he joins at your side, both of you sharking a glance and a jerk of your heads. “Keep him away from civilians. We can’t deal with casualties in this populated of an area.”

“He won’t have a chance to shoot them,” the comment makes your brows furrow, the tone not a cocky gloat but rather...quiet. A moment of silence wafts out. “What in the bloody hell is that supposed to mean, Kinsman?” You frown tightly, your gut swirling with something unidentifiable. The X12 in the back of your baggy sweatshirt is heavy—suddenly ten times more so.

In the corner of your eye, you see John far across the way shift, leaning before on a trash can, now standing upright. You swear you lock eyes with him, both gifted in all sense when it comes to war. Perhaps it was ingrained into both of your DNA—a knowledge of all things deadly; of threats unseen. Some primal and horrible understanding spanning back to when man had first raised a fist to another.

“Oi,” your voice pushes. “What does that mean?” Feet pivoting, you move closer to the alley where the light shade of hair disappears.

The line is silent.

Silent before a loud gunshot rings.

Birds scatter, and you instinctively duck down, hand snapping to your service weapon as your eyes go wide. Head snapping about, you dash to the alley opening above the screaming; pushing past fleeing people.

“Hart!”

“He’s in the alley!”

“Do not engage until I get there, do you hear me?!” You’re already at the entrance, X12 ahead of you, and the safety flicked off with a heavy finger. “Hart!”

The body of your mark is on the ground—a bullet in the back of his skull.

“Fuck!” You shout, feet slapping the concrete as you zoom past. “Price—target’s down, Emmett shot him in the damn head, on his tail now.”

“Fucking hell.” The man is growling out at you, voice heated.

Your eyes snap this way and that, weapon at the ready as you take a sharp turn. At the very end of the opening, you see him.

Kinsman slips his service weapon back into the base of his spine, pulling at his shirt to cover the grip as a mass of the crowd is just behind him. He rushes quickly on long legs.

“Emmett!” Your voice makes him freeze. There’s a long pause before anything is spoken; you have your sights trained—a perfect line-up to the roundness of his skull.

“I had hoped to be fast enough,” the man tells you, head tilting to the side, “but I should have known you’d move head-long into danger without backup.”

“Hart,” John’s voice nearly startles you from the line. “Sitrep, now!”

“Why would you do that, Emmett?”

“There’s more to this than being pawns, Hart,” Kinsman growls at you. “I play my game right, I always come on top. I needed to earn their trust; our target had a price on his head and no one else could get as close as me. Well,” he pauses, “us.”

“I’m taking you in,” you grit your teeth, hands tight on the gun. You don’t even want to think about what he means by ‘their’ or his ‘game’. It was always word puzzles with this man—one second you had the right piece, and the next the entire picture had changed like sand in the waves of a tide.

“Are you really that torn up about a drug runner?” A scoff makes you hold back a snarl, but your resolve is shaking. This was a man you had trusted—now fast can something that was forged with steel break?

“He was just some filthy nobody, Hart.” Emmett starts walking into the crowd ahead of him, and in your mind you know if you take that shot you run the risk of shooting an innocent civilian. “I’ll be more than a nobody. Or a grunt soldier. People are going to know me.”

Bodies flee quickly—screams. Mothers, children, husbands.

Kinsman smirks, and as your finger tightens on the trigger, he’s already swallowed by the hoard.

“I’ll be seeing you.”

John and you sit in the safehouse, for a moment, surrounded by quiet and the smell of hot tea. One week in Denmark, and you have no leads. The other three are away, sleeping in the rooms down the hallway.

“You’re still thinking about him,” John speaks up, eyes on you. It’s blunt, but that was just how he was.

You peek your eyes open slowly, your body slouching in the chair and feet outstretched under the table. Your boot lightly touches John’s own. A long sigh exits your nose, grumbling on your tired lips.

“John,” you level, drawing the name out like the years of your life. A thin warning.

The man clenches his jaw slightly, bringing up his cup and taking a slow slip. You see the flesh of his throat bob with the liquid as it goes down, the overhead light of the kitchen only a single bulb of warm glow.

“Been chasing him for years, Hart,” he says when the item is back to the woodgrain. Voice a deep murmur—a scrape of vocal chords. “We both have.”

“He knows too much,” you reply. “I can’t let him get away again. Strategies, operators, everything.” Your eyes shift as your head raises, blinking away the sleep in your glinting orbs. “For years he’s been under our nose, getting away with who knows what—”

“Hart,” your rant is interrupted, and you stop with a snap of your teeth. Blue eyes lock a concerned sheen to them. “Breathe.”

Your face moves away, arms loosely crossed over your chest tensing.

John’s body shifts to you, leaning forward until his elbows are resting on his knees. He stares, brows a line on his flesh. You send a swift glance, lips pulling.

“...Stop that,” your voice murmurs, echoing off the walls of the kitchen. John blinks, not speaking as you move in your seat. The man tilts his head, a slow something making his lips go back slightly. Gradually, your face goes hotter, blinking at him a few times; sucked in like a fox to a trap. “John, quit it.”

“M’not doing anything, Love.”

“Bullshit,” you try and glare at the looseness of his expression, his smirk that makes your gut tighten. Goosebumps move up your arms. “You’re a horror.”

A low chuckle wafts out, John shrugging casually before he leans back.

He takes up his cup again and takes down the last of the remnants. “Go to sleep,” hits your ears as your pounding heart takes a breather. It’s a grumble on the air—not as much an order as it is a suggestion. “It’s late.”

You decide to sip at your own drink as well, eyes drooping at the steam that wafts around your face, nose twitching to the scents.

“You?” John hums, looking you up and down; seeing the fatigue you carry. You’d been relentless for the week you’d all been here, holding the few strings of the lead you had to your chest—five-fingered grasping with a desperate prayer to all things unholy.

“I’ll be here.” You tilt your head his way, eyes still half-closed in your seat. Your answer is easy, pushed out in a slow sentence.

“Then so will I.”

John sighs under his breath. It’s a moment before an exasperated chuckle moves through your earbuds. You smile, eyes slipping closed fully.

Yet, they startle back open as the cup is taken from your hands, your chair moved back firmly.

“Up you get, then,” John grunts, and his arms snake around you. Blinking quickly, your jaw is slack as you get taken up into a tight carry; John’s chest firm and your nose brushing the side of his chin.

Air getting sucked into your lungs, you stifle a hitch in your breath.

It’s only after he starts walking forward, hiking you farther up into him, and his fingers gliding over your clothes, that you start to relax. His heat seeps like a warm fire.

Head sagging to the side, you grumble into his neck as you miss his eyes looking down at you, eyes soft in a way only you would have been able to see. “Can walk, y’know.”

He hums, head shifting back to the hallway as he carries you to the last door on the right, bumping into the wood with his shoulder and shifting to walk in sideways so you don’t let your legs on the frame.

“Remember Preu? 05’?” John asks you, moving over to the bed and setting you down slowly, a tiny huff exiting his mouth. Your body sinks into the mattress, head to the pillow as your hand comes up to rub at your eyes. The man moves to grab the blanket at the end of the bed—knowing your trained habit of sleeping atop the comforter on operations; not tangled up in sheets just in case. He slips off your boots. “Carried you two miles.”

“I recall it,” you grunt, a tired flicker coming to your lips. “Bleeding out and all.”

“Well,” John hums, quirking a brow. “Wasn’t about to let my Hart die on me. Blood was the least of my worries.”

Your pulse flutters at the title, even if it’s just your codename and not the beating muscular organ inside of your breast.

My Heart.

But it’s never that simple.

A hand moves up your cheek, a kiss pressed to your forehead.

The both of you already know you love each other. It wasn’t a secret. You were smart; eyes sharper than a blade—you caught the way he watched you, saw the softness of his expression, and felt the drag of his hand. Just as he caught the way you stayed beside him, an ever-present pair of eyes watching his six. The content nature that only you showed him.

With feet so eager to leave at any moment, it said much that you chose to exist near him simply because you wanted to.

You loved each other.

Boil it down, and you’d both known even back in the Academy that it would be the two of you at the end of all things. The rivers said your name. The valleys rustled with the breeze of your breath. You saw John in the bits of water that sloshed the rocks and in the earth beneath your palms.

Over the years you’d been apart, the yearning hadn’t been any less sharp—any less potent. In every birdsong, the echoes of the other's voice flew and disappeared on wingbeats. In everything that existed, there was a fraction of what should be.

What should be.

“John,” your voice is a whisper, nothing more than a rustle of a cloth. He keeps his lips to your forehead, resting there for a moment against all sense and responsibility. John’s eyes droop down, lashes resting on the swell of his cheeks. “You know I love you.”

He takes a breath. Rain is in the air—the movement of a storm’s wind. A leaving C-17.

It’s a low mutter into your flesh.

“I know.”

You grasp at his wrist, pulling lightly. Without a noise, John slips in beside you, kicking off his boots with a single clop of the soles to the wood and the movement of your blanket. He grunts, pushing his nose into your scalp, arms going around your middle. Your head slots under his chin, lips to his Adam’s apple.

The house is silent beyond the murmur of the pipes—the buzz of awaiting electricity.

So many memories. So many lost dreams. It was akin to two skeletons lying in a grave of their own making, forever holding the bones of the other. Duty and honor are etched into the fractures.

But he still holds you, he still murmurs into your ear, “Sleep, Love.”

“And you?” You ask, mirroring the conversation in the kitchen.

John’s lips move along your flesh, moving into a soft smile as he glances down at you. His beard scrapes you delicately.

“I’ll be here.”

Then it is here you’ll stay, dreaming of deer and the way nothing could compare to how he held you in his arms.

—

“I have eyes on,” your head snaps up, blankly staring ahead as your fingers hover over the hanging beads of a wind chime. You stand outside of a restaurant in the heart of Copenhagen.

Laswell had sent in more eyes for the Task Force to use—local soldiers that knew the layout of the city better and where would be a good place to look. For days you’d been moving through the streets; far-off storage units and hidden buildings providing fruitless harvests. Anthony had said a warehouse, but that was panning out as nothing as well.

False information? Possibly, but unlikely. The man had been genuine in his pain and pleading, and it only served to confuse you more.

You had Gaz with you and five others, taking over as the leader of this fireteam while John headed the other with Johnny and Ghost. They were on the opposite side of the city, and you can’t help but compare this to the moment Emmett had become an enemy.

But divide and conquer was the only option in times like these.

Emmett had become someone, just as he said he would. The man was in charge of supplying arms to terrorist organizations all over the world, and with his knowledge of how the SAS operates as well as any number of special forces, he’d utterly disappeared off the radar.

A wraith of lies and murder.

He had locations all over the globe with his goods, shipped out for money and power.

And now you have a positive ID.

“Where are you,” your voice is hard and stiff, the body already moving back from the chime and leaving its little bits and bobs swinging.

“Café down the street,” feet nearly locking together, you continue down the street to where you know Gaz’s last position was. “He’s just…sitting there.” A pause. “You want to know what it’s called in English, Ma’am?”

“The café?” your brows furrow, jogging across the street.

“‘The Warehouse.’” Growling under your breath, you shake your head and send a curse into the air after a pause.

“I think the man thought he was clever,” Kyle’s voice is smooth and teasing.

“Should have shot his other leg,” you grunt. “You told Laswell? John?”

“Negative, I’ll get on it—”

“I’ll do it,” you interrupt. “Tell the others to group up at your position and spread out to create a choke point; we can’t let him get away.”

“Rog. Will do.”

You patch into John’s frequency.

“We have him,” you instantly breathe out. “Down Holbergsgade—café called ‘The Warehouse’.”

It’s swiftly that an answer hits you. “Get him surrounded, we’re coming.”

Your heart is moving rapidly, fast in your chest as you pass people and business quickly. You didn’t like this—didn’t like the similarities, the…nostalgic dread that builds. A café of all places? Sitting down? Waiting?

It was so ironic it made alarm bells go off.

“John,” you lick your lips, glancing at faces as they pass. “I think he knows we’re here.”

“Explain.”

“A café?” John’s low grunt lets you know he understands. “Just sitting there? He knows—he’s not dumb enough to throw away all of his secrecy just as we so happen to get here and begin looking for him.”

“How sure are you?” The man takes your words into account, and you hear his breath puffing as he runs to your location.

“Ninety,” you breathe.

“Then I’m callin’ it off.” Your eyes widen, feet skidding as you come to a stop.

You have no clue as to how far John will go to keep you safe—even if it means potentially letting one of the SAS’s highest HVTs go. There wasn’t anything that could compare to the thought of you getting in harm's way. Not you.

John had spent his whole life watching soldiers die in the worst ways possible; they haunted his dreams and he knew they’d follow him to his grave—men he’d led down paths that they never should have been on.

Not you.

Losing you would break what little was left of him, the remnants held on by tape and sheer stubbornness. One of the last old faces he could still look at anymore; could draw comfort from in the thin hours. To hold and to love.

You both knew you wouldn’t stand for it.

“No,” your voice cuts across, monotone. “I’m not allowing that.”

“Bloody hell, Hart, listen to me—do not,” John growls, making your spine tingle, “go after him. If he knows we’re fuckin’ here, we need to pull back and close off the area.”

You’re walking forward, that same pressure of a gun at the back of your spine. It was almost poetic.

A thought sparks. Years of knowledge and understanding lighting up.

Emmett was a snake.

A snake that liked to play games and prove points; greed stuck into his brain for reasons you can’t quite say for certain. Even if you did catch him, he would never tell the locations of his goods or the buyers.

But there was one way to find out. One way this might turn.

“There’s a tracker in my arm,” you speak, growing more sure of your actions with every fast movement of your body. The café is just up the street, and a head of blonde hair is a knife to your vision. “I asked Laswell to insert and monitor it years back when I had to infiltrate a cell before I joined up with you again. Cautionary procedure since I had to forgo my rig and gear.”

A sharp bark. He knew what you were insinuating. “Hart!” You were going to get yourself taken hostage.

“Get Kate to watch it, John.” You move off his frequency before he can comment again, half of a roaring refusal cut off. Speaking to Gaz with a restricted throat, you say, “Kyle?”

“Right here, Ma’am.”

“Good. Don’t engage—I’m moving in.”

A stiff breath is taken in. “W…what was that?”

You don’t reply, only saying, “Whatever happens, I order you and the others to stay back, yeah?”

Your hand pulls the earpiece out and shoves it into your pocket right as you slip into the chair directly across from Emmett Kinsman.

“Emmett,” you say in greeting, moving up a few fingers to a barista with a low call of your order. The individual nods and moves off before you lock on green eyes; they nearly make you flinch.

You can only imagine what Gaz is telling John right now.

Kinsman blinks at you, but he isn’t surprised. You were right.

“Hart,” the man smiles. His voice is still the same, though he looks older. “Pleasure seeing you again. Enjoying the sights of the city?”

“Not particularly,” you stare at him.

He chuckles, tilting his head before he brings his drink to his lips. He swallows and continues.

“You always were serious. No fun.” You take the insult without any emotion, blinking at him slowly. What was his play?

“Why?”

“You already know why,” he shrugs, dressed in a nice suit. “I’ve made a name for myself—my name will be remembered for ages.” A twinkle in his eye. “SAS soldier turned weapon supplier; isn’t it exciting.”

“It’s a disgrace,” you lean forward, only stopping your voice from rising as a cup is placed down in front of you by the barista.

Your face plasters a fake smile and you nod, moving it in front of you. Emmett watches with a smirk.

“I call it a change of heart.” He sighs, smirk simmering to a casual smile. “But I am glad to see you, you’ve been creating a big mess of things and I took it upon myself to have a meeting between us as old friends.”

“I’m not your friend,” you growl. “You’ve killed innocent people for no more than a fucking paycheck.”

“Well,” he snorts. “I don’t kill anyone. I’m the middle man—there’s a difference.”

Rage makes your eyes go to slits.

“And innocents, Sweet Thing?” Emmett leans in closer, face so smug and open you want to pull your weapon on him and worry about the consequences later. “What do I call what you do then?”

“A necessary evil,” you huff. “One I carry on my shoulders just like every other soldier does. One that was far better than supplying terrorists.”

Kinsman shrugs, moving back and picking up his drink, swirling it. “If you say so.” He hums. “You have to try the pastries here, you know. They’re very good.”

“I know you’re here because you expected us to find you, what I can’t figure out is why you broke your cover in the open instead of turning yourself in.” You look around at the faces in the outdoor seating, studying them trying to pinpoint if they’re civilians or in league with Kinsman. “Tell me before I decide to shoot you right here and now and end this regardless of hidden goods.”

“You already tried that, Hart,” Emmett laughs. “Pointing a gun at me didn’t work last time.”

“I’m not going to use a gun,” you ease out. “I’m going to take the butter knife on the table and slit your throat.”

“Uncivilized,” Emmet grumbles, frowning at the silver object near your hands. “It isn’t even sharp.”

“Good.” Green eyes narrow, unimpressed. He sighs, fingers moving in an outward gesture of exasperation.

“If you must know before the main finale, I wanted to bring you here to say that I’m thoroughly impressed with your drive.” You try to stave off the shock in your stomach at the words coming out like a charmer’s flute. Raising a slow brow, you’re caught off guard. Emmett chuckles. “You nearly caught me at several instances throughout our game of cat and mouse. Many times I forget who the assigned roles were even given to; I’m telling you that I had fun.”

You stare, face tight.

Emmett hums and his eyes go to slits.

“But every game has to come to an end. I’m growing tired of it.”

The building across the street erupts into a great ball of fire.

—

John hears the explosion in the air, the shockwave that leaves his body halting to look into the sky in time to see black smoke.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath. “Fuck!”

He rushes into the panicked crowd, memories stuck in his head and a bone-deep fear he’d been feeling since you cut the connection in your earpiece. Gaz had been relaying to him what was going on action for action—a football game, only the difference was that your life was on the line.

“Kate,” John shouts. “Get the authorities down here now! We have an explosion on Holbergsgade.”

“Explosion?” The woman’s voice is sharp and disbelieving. “What’s going on—”

“Hart’s in the bloody crossfire, there’s no time!” John’s face is tight, wind whipping past his ears as screams fly on the wind; crying. “The fool is trying to get herself taken fucking hostage for intel!”

Whatever else was said was lost to the wind—Gaz comes over the line, calling to him in a panic as Johnny and Simon join in.

“The entire building just went up in—”

“Fucking Christ—”

“Price, what is this?”

“All of you get down here!” John sprints past people on the ground, ripping his gun out of the back of his waistband. There’s no arguing.

When the Captain turns the last corner, carnage greets him.

The building across from the café was reduced to nothing but rubble and a still-burning flame. Eyes wide, John only looks at it for a few moments, too preoccupied with you.

Where were you?

His jaw clenches, eyes burning with rage. Such a perfect soldier yet such a flawed sense of teamwork, he had a feeling you’d try something like this—had left Gaz with you for that very reason. Fuck he should have been at your side. He should have known.

A low grumble moves through his lips, head snapping all around. There are bodies on the ground. Blood pooling under thick building material—fabric in the breeze.

“Hart!” John yells, running to the café and seeing the remnants of a fast fight.

The Captain’s heart drops to his feet, face burning with hellfire so much that a sheen comes to his cheek. His hand moves out to touch the handle of a butter knife that had been slammed into the table now half-fallen over, eyes stuck on only one thing on the ground under it.

Through the wails and the call of sirens, the man stares at the two long fingers sitting in the dust.

Never in his life had he felt a fear like this.

—

“I wanted to be kind about this,” Emmett fiddles with the wrappings of his bandaged left hand, only three fingers remaining. “I was going to make it quick.”

You’re locked in a cell-like room, head to the side and blood leaking out of a cut face. Burns travel up your arm, the sticky puss leaking out only serving to make you shiver. You don’t know where you are—don’t know what happened after you severed Kinsman’s fingers with that knife.

But you know the pain isn’t something that you haven’t already gone through before.

Your voice is hoarse but firm as it leaks out of you, vision spotty. You’d been thrown in here after a ride in the trunk of a car. The ground is concrete.

“...Don’t make me laugh.”

Emmett growls, eyes wide with hatred.

“Pathetic!” He barks eyes looking you over with disgust. “Look at what you did to my hand!”

His other hand connects with the bars of the cage, producing a metal ringing sound as you push yourself up with one arm, eyelids flinching in pain. Sitting up, your body falls back to the wall behind it, and you grunt when the air in your lungs is expelled. You lick at your dust-coated lips, your head ringing and your focus failing. Concussion.

“Least of your worries,” you roll your jaw, a wave of pain making your body seize up and your hands tense with quivering shakes. Your mouth opens with sharp pants. Bile pools in the base of your throat.

It’s nothing.

John will come soon. The tracker. If Laswell can get it working again, you’d be out of here and you would have whatever this location turns out to be and the intel that it can offer you—computer databases would be a one-and-done game. You would get names, coordinates, and buyers. It could all be over.

Your clothes are melted into your skin, and when you move, they peel away with the remnant of your epidermis. The flesh of your left thigh and arm had taken the worst of it—and the cut from flying debris over your left cheek hasn’t stopped bleeding.

Blood drips from it, and a loud ache makes your head pound all the worse.

You’ve gone through worse.

“I don’t know why I bother,” Emmett snarls, the crimson bandages thick over his hand. “But it isn’t a problem,” he says, moving his other hand to slick back his hair. “It isn’t a problem,” the man utters again. “You’re going to help me. Yes…I’ve made up my mind. I need you to understand why I do the things I do.”

Your brows furrow, but above this burning in your head, it’s hard to understand what’s being said to you. Shadows move and Emmett orders one of his men to open the cell door.

You fight the black dots at the sides of your vision, leaking until you’ve accepted the reality of yourself going unconscious. As your body slouches to the side, hands ruthlessly grasp under your arms and drag you to your feet.

“Everyone has a breaking point.”

—

“What do you mean,” John glares at Laswell, his arms crossed over his chest; hands tightly grasping at his biceps. “You can’t find her?”

“The tracker was old, John,” the woman tries to explain, furiously typing at her computer that rests on the table in front of her—her spine bent over as the rest of the One-Four-One stay in a limbo of anxious looks. “To get it working again, it would need something to restart it. I don’t know if you can see,” Kate’s eyes are hard as they lock with his, “but I can’t do anything if she’s not here first.”

“Well of course she’d not bloody here Laswell, fucking Kinsman has her!” He shouts, hands moving out in a display of aggression.

“Captain,” Kate rises to the challenge, hand moving flat to the table and glaring with the heat of a thousand missiles. “Do not take that tone with me.”

John snarls and jerks his head away, feet on the ground trading weight.

The man was borderline feral—all snapping teeth and sharp glances. Gaz had seen him like this only a handful of times, MacTavish even fewer. Ghost, of course, knew, but even his brown eyes wouldn’t leave his Captain, absorbed in the way he was unable to stay still for even a moment. He was in full gear, too. Had put it on directly after returning to a local base.

John was ready to go to war, down to the rifle that swung from a strap at his side, the ammunition stuffed to his chest—sidearm at his thigh. A rabid dog with intelligence and the knowledge of where teeth needed to be applied to a neck for a clean kill. Simon doubted he wanted it to be clean.

John was ready to rip people to pieces.

“Give me something,” the Captain says in a low growl, beard shifting. “Give me what I need.”

Kate splays her hands. “All we have is surveillance of a car leaving the area—the smoke covers all chances of the drone we had flying picking up a clear picture. John,” Laswell eases, standing up, “there’s only so much we can do. We need to wait—”

“We can’t bloody wait,” Gaz speaks up, “What’ll he do to her in the meantime?”

“Garrick’s right, we need to be on the ground with this.” Johnny nods, mohawk bobbing. “That’s one of our own—we’re not sitting around with our thumbs up our arses, Laswell. Not with Hart.”

Simon blinks, humming. Laswell’s eyes shift to him, near pleading for one to be on her side with this and see sense. Ghost shrugs. “I’m with them. Hart’s one of our own; we’ll do what needs to be done.”

John’s chest swells with pride while his eyes get stuck on your file on the table, your printed picture, and your black ink—he’d never loved an image more, but nothing could beat the real thing. He needed you back. He’d gone through hell with you for his entire life; you’d suffered with him and only locked your hands together and held on tighter.

That was love—that was duty.

John Price wasn’t against skewing his morals for the sake of your safety. You would always be his most important mission. The man didn’t want to think about what might happen if he found you too late.

“Give me the video of the vehicle,” he grunts, jaw tight and his eyes beady. His body slightly leans forward to Kate, love going lower. “Or I’m going out there myself.”

Laswell frowns tightly at him.

“I just sent it into forensics—they’re trying to get a match. Go out if you want, but I won’t be able to stop the firestorm that comes out of it.”

She closes her laptop and moves past him, sending one last comment into the stone man as he towers ever taller.

“She’s strong, John. If you’re smart, you’ll keep yourself out of the crossfire until we have a definitive hit.”

Her voice echoes from behind him as his hands slowly move to clench into knuckle-whitening fists.

“If Kinsman gets a tip we’re still onto him—you’ll never see Hart again.”

—

Day Three:

Your days start blending. One moment you hear the snapping of your bones, and then the next you’re wasting away in this cell—ears ringing and eyes buggy. So much blood. Blood on the walls—blood on the chair they strap you into in the other room; even stuck in the groves of your flesh.

You don’t think you can stop closing your eyes and seeing a deer at the bottom of a bridge drop-off. It’s stuck in your head like a virus; those car lights in the back of your mind just waiting for you.

There’s no sense as to what they do to you—all its purpose is, is to prove a point to Emmett. A sort of broken retribution for your interference and his fingers.

Vain man, really. You’d told him as much when he was watching you get your own finger torn off my pliers; spit it at him as the blood from your bitten tongue stayed his suit. You remember the feeling of the knuckle popping first, and then the burning heat of the flesh being twisted to the side. Two firm yanks and the flesh had sprung like elastic, fissuring, the tendon snapping.

You think you blacked out after that, but you can’t be sure. All you remember doing is screaming.

You woke up with your left pinkie finger completely gone, resting outside in the hallway to mock you from past the bars. Your eyes could see the bone sticking out of it, and all that was left on you was a badly cauterized stump.

When Emmett had come to gloat, you started slurring out laughter.

“I’m going to rip you apart.” Your broken body had jerked back and forth like a marionette doll, only succeeding in spreading more red over the floors as green eyes widened and went dumbfounded.

It sounded like a choking fish.

All he’d done was left, quickly passing the pinkie left limp on the ground.

Day five:

You can’t move your body as they dump you back into the chair—the drain below you flooded over with crimson and bits of hair; vomit and torn-off fingernails. You’re unable to open your eyelids fully.

A hand grasps at your face, yanking it up into the overhead light until a bucket of water is dumped directly over your head. Your body jerks, coughing and darting forward until you’re shoved to the back of the chair and the rope is tied around the front of your shoulders, the second at your wrists.

Trying to suck down air, you shiver with the strength of an earthquake. Whoever said that they would never be afraid while being tortured was a liar; whoever thinks that they would be able to push through it—a fraud. Emmett was right, everyone had a breaking point.

But you admitted yours would only come after your death.

Your legs are seized, bent up as you hiss as well as you’re able, teeth snapping.

They’re dumped back down into a bucket of ice-cold water as droplets drip from your nose—wet skin for the moment only holding streaks of gore. Even with your scattered mind, you know what this means.

Heart tight and eyes widening, you try to push back in the chair; try to fight the rope and the way your body won’t respond.

A battery is rolled up beside you on a metal cart. Jumper cables.

There’s a low chuckle at the way your face goes fearful.

��

John shoves open the door to Laswell’s temporary office, already talking before it hits the far wall.

“Do we have her?” His hands move beside him, brushing the grip of his sidearm. He hadn’t been out of his full gear for more than five minutes in days. Waiting day and night for any word; sleeping in it, eating in it. The forensics team had been stumped, unable to get more than a model out of the picture.

But this might finally give him something to act on.

Kate is moving, grabbing documents and her laptop, speeding past him and out of the door.

“Kate!” John shouts, following after. “Hey,” he calls, grabbing at her arm to stop her.

The woman only halts to say, quickly, “We have a hit. Follow me.”

John’s heart is rampaging, pulse wild under his skin as his gloved hands twitch. Finally. He can only smoke so many cigars—only think of so many scenarios until he feels he needs to vomit. You’d been gone for too long. Every moment had been like trying to walk with a cloth over his head; lost.

He’d grown stiff. Stiffer than normal. Everyone had seen it.

“Where is it, then?” John asks as Laswell pushes open the door to the meeting room, the other three already inside.

“A property outside of Copenhagen—bought through a proxy on a fund that was linked to blood money in South America; it all went directly back to Kinsman. It was found only ten minutes ago.” A pause. Electricity in the air. “But that’s not how we found it.”

“How,” Simon asks, moving closer.

John gives the woman his full undivided attention, hands moving to rest at his collar in a soothing gesture.

“Her tracker came back on.” Eyes go wide, all sharing rapid glances as Kate opens her laptop and opens a man, turning the device for them to see. “Same location.”

Johnny blinks, his eyes narrowing. “And what does that mean?”

“That can’t have just done that by itself,” Gaz mutters, brown eyes sliding over to John who’s stiller than a wolf. The Sergeant pauses.

His eyes are dead set on that screen. His thighs were so tense it was nearly like the Captain was about to sprint out of the room. Kyle’s face goes blank at that, never quite seeing the extent that your disappearance had on the man. His superior had bags under his eyes; far more pale than usual. His apparel was ruffled, too. Even in the more serious of situations, the Sergeant had never seen John so…out of it. He was always the one with the even head, even if he had a short fuse with certain things. Nothing was ever done without thought, he should say.

But this is something else.

“Torture,” Simon gives his two cents and John’s cheek twitches at the word. “Electrocution. They jump-started it and didn’t even know.”

“Bloody Jesus,” John breathes. Everyone had already had a hunch, but no one had wanted to name it.

It’s a low rumble that makes the rest of them freeze, though. It was so dead in tone that it even made Kyle’s spine lock up; Johnny’s eyes went a smidgen upward. Simon, although his face was covered, felt his lips twitch.

John looks at nothing but that dot on the computer screen.

“Am I green, Laswell?”

Kate looks at John. It’s like setting a hellhound loose.

“You’re green, Captain.”

—

You’re tossed into the cell and your body rolls along the floor, bouncing and flinching until your back slams into the wall. Air is forced from your lungs, coming out in a loud grunt before you land on your stomach in a heap. Staying there, your nerves are fried.

Every moment you think the twitching of your fingers will stop—the dance of your muscles responding to the aftereffects of electrocution, it only starts back up again. Your eyes blink rapidly; your clothes have the scent of smoke to them.

Gasping for breath, you feel like you’re drowning and being set on fire all at once.

Yet the question in your head was a simple one, one you’d been asking for days.

Where was John?

Emmett enters the cell, clicking his tongue as the metal hinges squeak.

“I’m not surprised it’s taking this long,” he explains. “But I am surprised you’re still alive, admittingly.”

A boot comes out and places itself atop your shoulder, pressing down slowly until its full weight is on top of you. Your mouth opens in a shuddering sound of a dying animal, blood dripping from your ears and nose.

“I know you’ve taken torture before—even taken a part of it,” Kinsman sighs. “But, shit Hart, you really do scare me when I know you’re strong enough to get through th—”

Your body jolts up, grappling Emmet’s leg and twisting it to the side. Regardless of pain—of agony—there’s such primal rage inside of you that what little adrenaline you can bring forth is all that more addictive.

The man collapses in a heap, gasping, but you’re already on top of him, wrestling your hand to his neck, missing finger and all. Blood moves, staining his precious suit and dripping from your mouth into his hairline. You bare down your weight on him, teeth clenched and eyes wild—one orb holding nothing but red from burst veins and the other full of a vicious gleam of ferality.

Hands snap up to your wrists, mouth opening in flapping panic.

But Emmett has grown weak; he’s out of practice. All of those years out of the SAS, giving up on the training of the body to match the mind. The idiot wasn’t even carrying a gun when he walked into the cell of a charging stag, its antlers dripping gore, sharper than any knife.

When the flaps of his eyes fall there’s no gloating speech—there’s no snort of a tall and proper victor. All you do is take the front of his face, grasp it, and start sending his skull back into the concrete floors.

Crack.

…Crack.

….Crack.

Only when the sound of his head breaking open meets your ringing ears, do you force your wheezing lungs to take a large breath.

Emmet Kinsman died as he lived.

A fucking piece of shit.

“Fuck you,” you spit on his corpse, saliva bloody; his jaw is loose as you release the man’s face, eyes bulging. Falling to the side, you groan in pain, your body curling into itself until you resemble a sleeping fawn. You’re shaking more and more with every second, coughing with the force of an earthquake until your shredded vocal chores force you to stop.

But the brain is a funny thing.

In times of danger, survival is the only thing that takes priority. It was why, in a long shove of your hand to the floor, with your bones creaking and your vomit meeting the ground, you’re able to stand. It isn’t enough to help you heal the snapped bone of your right leg, however, and in a steadily failing stupor, you drag it behind you. In this state, nothing else matters to you besides a simple command: get out.

Your shoulder slaps the metal of the cell as you stumble out of it, careening into the far wall and letting out a loud shout.

Eyes fluttering, you connect your temple to the cool concrete, trying to breathe.

It hurts too much, your mind says. God, I can’t feel my limbs.

A long trail of blood follows you down the hallway as you slide along the wall, using it as a brace.

You want to see John, you whisper inside of your head. You want to be held by him—be taken into his chest; cared for away from all of this fighting.

A trip back to Herefordshire with him, to go deep into the country together; rest in the green grass where no one can find you for just a few good hours. It didn’t have to be forever, you would say. Just a few hours. A few hours of sky and earth wrapped in a time loop of just your own.

You want to kiss him there. In the open, out in the wild. You want to stay by his side, your mind thinks as you stumble over the three dead bodies in the left corridor, bullet wounds in their heads. You want to be by his side forever, no more gaps in years, not more longing. It’s so close you can nearly reach out and grasp it—

Your name is yelled on a heavy breath, and hands capture your shoulders as you fall straight into them with no more strength.

Blue eyes lock with yours as you’re hurriedly settled to the ground, body limp and eyes trying to stay open.

Blue eyes on a grassy hill.

“Hart, fucking hell.” Hands move your body, pressing and sliding—finding every opening and spreading blood like water. “Fucking hell! Hey!”

You’re yelled at, and the ripping of pouches and the familiar sound of bandages being wrapped come to the back of your brain. A hand shakes your head, locked under your chin as you take slow, broken, breaths.

“Please, fuck sake, please,” it’s a desperate growl, so familiar and yet a world away. Your body is moved and manipulated as every leaking wound is packed with so much gauze it hangs out of you like you’re a mummy. The burns along your flesh are crust and infected, open skin peeling back.

But the pain is lesser now. Easier to manage.

There’s such a ruckus that it’s hard to focus on John—the man on the hill. In the grass and the wind. Brown hair moves in the breeze as white clouds roll past. On the air, there’s the scent of rain, and in the far distance, you can see a group of ten deer grazing, ears twitching.

Maybe you’ll ask them if they blame their leader, or the two trucks on the end of a bridge.

“Keep your eyes on me!” You blink into John’s tiny blues, that mist rolling back. You stare for a moment as he frantically screams into his radio; night vision rig on his head and all-black gear covering him from you. His face is pale, his eyes glossy. “Look at me, hey,” he blinks as he notices you watching, surging forward. “Hey, keep 'em open, yeah? You keep them fucking open, Love.”

Your chest is heavy.

“John,” you push out a flicker coming to your lips as your vision slightly unblurs itself to the sight of a flood of blood on the man’s body—an unimaginable amount.

“I’m ‘ere,” his accent grows deeper with emotion, one hand holding your cheek and the other at your shoulder, keeping you still to stop any additional damage. “I’ve got you, you understand me? I’m not letting you go, so don’t you think that I will.”

It’s a double-edged sword.

A smile peels back your chapped lips, red running from the corner of your mouth. You glance at his stained gear again. The abyss swirls at the corners of your eyes.

“Is that your blood, or mine, John Price?”

You hear him scream for a medic, and then it all goes numb.

—

You dream of deer on a hill, but every time you search for John, he isn’t there. You go past rivers—

“She’s dropping!”

“Get me the defibrillator!”

—past copses. Your voice goes high and low, but all the while you look, there’s nothing but a nagging feeling in the back of your head that you shouldn’t be here.

“Again!”

It’s a strange nagging, truly. Like falling asleep in the middle of the day and waking up in the night without any remembrance of what had happened prior. A displacement of the mind.

“We’ve got a pulse, Doctor, do we stop and—”

“No, I need to finish off the internal bleeding or else she won’t make it another day. Get me the cauterizer, now.”

You blink and grip your chest, a sudden pain sharp in your heart as the grass moves about your ankles. Coughing, you bend over, your eyes fluttering rapidly. In the deepest part of your eardrum, you hear a murmur of a voice you can’t place.

“The man came back, again. He’s been out there for days. He just…sits there, waiting until someone tells him something. He can’t come in, and I’m sorry about that. I’m sure hearing his voice would help more than mine, but you’re in too much of an unstable condition for that. If you get another infection, you won’t…hm, I shouldn’t talk about that. Everyone in school said only to talk positively to patients when they’re like this. I…I’m sure he’ll be able to come in soon. I think everyone calls him John if that rings a bell?”

“John?” Your eyes flutter open, sharp light above you making you snap them back closed. No one answers.

It’s a long moment before you find the strength to breathe in the oxygen from the mask over your face, taking a long and deep inhale before a slight cough makes your abdomen tight. You flinch at the pull of stitches, all coming from so many places, that it’s unwise to move too much.

Gradually, you open back up your eyes, pushing past the sting. Inside of your throat, the skin is so dried out you can feel it cracking at every articulation of your words.

“Where's…John?” When you shift your head to the side, no one’s there. No one’s even in the room, either.

Blinking through the haze, your lips twitch on your face, skin tight. With a slap of your weak hand, you grasp the oxygen mask and pull it down to your neck, grunting in mild annoyance at the medicated numbness of your form.

Your leg is in a cast—and your left side is tightly bound by wrappings to hide away the burns where skin grafts most likely live. With a glance, you see the missing pinky and the bandages that cover the strange remnants.

The facial wound will scar, you know, but right now it’s patched over and healing. That’s all you can ask for.

Sighing long, you blink slowly at the ceiling, licking your lips. You need water.

Outside, the murmurs are missed to you as your unmarred hand reaches for the nightstand table, where a half-drunk bottle of water sits next to a tray of food. Even if your stomach rumbles, water takes precedence. Your throat was like the Sahara desert.

“Forget something, John?”

“Bloody fork. The bastard gave me the slip. Dropped mine, needed to go back and grab another.”

“Oh, that’s alright—you could have asked one of us to get one for you. We’d hate for you to miss any time for visiting hours.”

“It’s fine; gets me moving, eh?”

“Just grab us if you need anything else!”

A low grunt is accented by the opening of the door; immediately you tense and pause, neck fighting itself to shift forward once more.

Wide blues lock with your own, and it’s like every pain fades away.

John’s jaw is slack hidden under the layers of his beard bristles, brows going atop his head in an instant. The sound of a dropping metal utensil echoes through the room.

You both stare at one another for a long time, and the murmur of nurses accumulates to some peaking through the crack; their expressions also going to shock. A few scurry off, probably to get a doctor.

“What?” Your hoarse voice asks, unnerved by this.

At the sound of your voice, John flinches forward on his boots. The nurses get shut out with beaming faces as the barrier closes with a small click of metal.

Walking to the side of your bed, John clears his throat, eyes looking you up and down in two glances. A million things are hidden in them. After an opening and closing of his mouth, which you watch closely while squinting, he speaks.

“How are we feeling, then?” You breathe slowly and in tiny puffs. John looks at the oxygen mask as if telling you to put it back on, but you refuse for a moment.

“Like shit,” you utter, voice cracking.

With a huff, John pushes away your reaching hand and gets the water himself, unscrewing it. Bringing it to your lips, you take it down as he speaks.

“Easy, Love.”

When you’d had your fill and the ache settled, you brought a hand to your head and rubbed at your injured cheek before John sighed and grabbed at it, intertwining his fingers with yours and lowering the limb back to your chest.

You stare at him, and he stares at you.

“I don’t know what to ask,” you confess.

“You don’t have to ask anything,” John mutters, and his face is tight with worry. “You’ve been in a coma for three weeks, all you need to do is ease back into it.”

Your eyes snap back.

“Tell me if it hurts,” He speaks slowly, moving on one word at a time so the realization doesn’t dwell in your brain. “I can get someone to come in, yeah?”

Your hand in his burns, and John pulls at the chair by the nightstand until he’s able to sit down in it fully with a tiny grunt.

“No,” you say, “no, it’s…I’m fine.”

Better now that you’re here, but your body is tense. Three weeks?

“Just need to take it easy,” the man states, thumb running up and down your knuckles. “You’ll be better soon.”

A dry look is sent his way, and he hides a soft quirk on his lips. “You’ll be better, Love.”

You hum, head moving back more heavily into the pillow.

“When do I get to go back?”

“When you’re healed,” he grunts. “Not a fuckin’ moment sooner.”

“We get anything on the other locations of the—”

“Hart,” you’re interrupted. Blue eyes stare at you heavily, digging past every shield you’d put up and every fear. What happened was still heavy in your mind; it pained you to imagine it, even the way John had found you—even if it was all glimpses. “Slow down. That’s not an order coming from a soldier, it’s a caution from an old friend.” John says, squeezing your flesh. His other hand comes to your shoulder, sitting there heavily.

“Breathe,” he orders, face gruff. “We always figure it out.”

You close your eyes and sigh, frowning.

A low chuckle moves along the air a second later.

“Never sit down, do you?” A flicker dances over your lips like a butterfly. “Impossible, you are.”

“You’re one to talk,” you huff, eyes shifting back to him.

He’s smiling at you, and you can’t help but mirror it right back at the sight. Your facial injury pulls and tightens, but you would welcome an ache like that for as long as it stayed. A scar born of the stretch of lips is one well-earned. Only John could ever make it a reality.

The man stares at your lips, his wide build eager to stay over you in this state. He can’t stop himself from caressing your skin; to feel you alive and breathing. Talking.

“Scared me,” John admits under his breath.

You blink, your smile fading slowly until it was like it was never there. Your body builds with guilt; also something only he could bring. “I’m sorry, John.”

A small thinning of his lips is what you get, accented by a hum.

“Hart,” he grunts. “I…”

John’s eyes closed for a moment before opening back up—spearing you with their gaze. Your tired eyes crinkle in confusion.

“What is it?” Over the tingle of your flesh from where he touches you, it isn’t hard to forget the world is around you when he’s here like this. You’re nearly trapped by his eyes, yet you welcome it eagerly. His voice moves out, accent and natural gravel, all.

“I love you.”

Your nose lets a chuff exit. Was that all?

“I love you, too, John—”

“No, Hart,” he pushes slightly harder, moving closer and licking his lips as he glances away. “No,” John looks you dead in the eye as you lay here battered and broken within an inch of your life—a risk that you took willingly as if it had meant nothing. The both of you weren’t new to this; you both knew that on any day you or he would do it over and over again until it resulted in death. That was the way of this game; this trial.

You had both always been content with that, but when had it changed?

Why was the thought of losing you more fear-invoking than anything else he’d ever encountered?

You watch him as his lips utter the words, lips close to yours and your eyes locked.

“I love you.”

Your voice is caught in your throat, stuck in the throws of a quick gasp. Not blinking, the man waits for you—waits for an answer to the earth-shattering confession. But it all came far easier than you would ever admit to anybody besides him. It was already known, after all.

All that remained was the pesky words.

“I love you, too.” You beam, words low with intimacy. “I think I always have.”

John chuckles, a large smile pushing at his reddening cheeks. “Good,” he nods, clearing his throat. “Good,” he says again. “Well, I—”

You softly connect your lips with his, and you feel him pause, breathing you down for a moment as hearts beat at the same tempo. He sighs, one hand coming up to capture your cheek, holding it there for you as you sag into it and live in this everlasting moment.

It’s there you had a revelation.

It was never Hart to him. John had never been calling you that.

He’d always just been saying Heart.

You breathe out a laugh, when you separate, beaming in a happiness you thought was long gone from you—stolen in the dark nights and sold through even darker deeds. Neither of you was worthy of this, of the love that breeds in broken things. Yet, here it is regardless. Here, among blood and the blue eyes of a man you’d known since knowing anything became important. You had always known it was John. And finally, finally, finally.

“I would marry you in an instant, John Price,” you breathe when you separate, not weak enough to stop the words from exiting from the deepest part of your soul.

His crinkled eyes watch, reverently gazing at every blemish and mark; everything he could learn new again. John’s eyes are as soft as you ever imagined them to be, and he gives them over freely to you.

He kisses you again and leaves the taste of his heavy, happy, chuckle tingling across your lips.

“Seems I’d better get on that, then.”

A/N: This fic is strangely nostalgic for me even if I just wrote it - I remember the first ever fic I posted on here was a rescue fic, as well as a John Price fic; it's amazing to see how far I've come in regards to overall content/story building and how my understanding of the character has evolved. This might not be the best work I've posted on my blog, but I'm glad to say I'm proud of myself and how far I've come. It's so wonderful that I can have this feeling for such a big moment and still feel so drawn back to the past at the same time. Totally not tearing up at the thought rn.

Thank you all very much for your support.

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whatdoeseverybodywant · 3 months ago

Text

Rebuild & Restore - Chapter 13

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site, even if you give me credit. DO NOT REPOST MY FICS

❤ Reblogs, comments, likes, and feedback ALWAYS appreciated ❤

All OC Characters belong to me

All Falls Down (Prequel)

Series Masterlist

ONCE AGAIN: A BIG ASS SHOUT OUT TO @paigereeder. When I say this chapter would not have gotten done w/o her!!!!

*The gif is what I picture Josh wearing w/ a pair of black Nike shorts and some slides* (in the first part)

~ Friday Night ~

“I’m gonna take ’em upstairs,” Josh whispered to Kiyana just as the credit to COCO started rolling. Kiyana stretched and looked over to her left, where both of her boys were knocked out, leaning on Josh. Kairo thankfully went down at his usual bedtime. Kaiden and Kamari, on the other hand, put up the biggest fight to stay up later with their dad.

They had almost made it through both movies when their eyes started to droop. Kamari doesn’t play about his sleep. The second he feels Mr. Sandman knocking at his door, he welcomes him with open arms. Kaiden, on the other hand, didn’t want to miss a moment with his dad. He had fallen asleep 15 minutes into the first movie, but when Josh tried to carry him up the steps, Kaiden woke up, protesting that he wasn’t sleeping and he wanted to stay with his dad.

Kiyana let out a deep sigh when Josh disappeared up the steps with both of their sons—this whole day had been extremely awkward for her. It had only been about four weeks since they signed the papers, and here they were, about to go out on a date tomorrow night. She loved Josh, and nothing would ever change that, but Josh had hurt her badly, and she was terrified of letting him back into her heart.

Standing up, she started cleaning up the living room, gathering the trash from the snacks the boys and Josh had devoured and taking it into the kitchen. While she was in the kitchen, she decided to pour herself a glass of wine. She went to grab Josh a Diet Coke from the fridge, popped it open, got him a cup of ice, and brought it into the living room for him, placing it on a coaster on the coffee table.

She continued to tidy up, and by the time Josh came back downstairs, she was done lounging on the couch and catching up on the newest episode of Love Island. Josh plopped down next to Kiyana. He glanced at her, her features illuminated by the TV’s light. Just being this close to her again made him realize how badly he fucked up. She would always be his Key. But, before she was that, she was THEE Kiyana Jackson. Before she had become this powerhouse of a woman, the best mother to his kids, an excellent cook, and a bomb-ass nurse, she was the girl that scared the fuck outta him. He couldn’t even hold a full conversation with her back then because his brain would short circuit; knees weak, arms heavy, butterflies in an all-out war games match in his stomach. The girl that his classmates convinced him he’d never have a chance with because she was leaps and bounds above his league, and he had fucked it up being a dumbass, proving them right.

“You good?” Kiyana asked him with a slight laugh, and he nodded, feeling his cheeks heat up at being caught staring.

“Yeah,” he cleared his throat. Kiyana grabbed the remote, paused the TV, and turned her attention to him.

“Josh.”

“C’mere,” he whispered, opening his arms for her. “Please,” he added in a hushed tone when Kiyana didn’t move. She bit her lip and looked at him, contemplating whether she should move closer to him. Sighing, she nodded and scooted closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder as he closed his arms around her. The second she scooted into his arms, it was like two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together.

Josh fully relaxed on the couch and closed his eyes. This is what he was missing. The arguing, fighting, and cheating were not what he and Kiyana were about. Their being at odds felt so foreign, and it was mostly his fault.

“What the hell is this show even about?” Josh asked after a couple of minutes had passed. Kiyana laughed and turned her head so she could look at him.

“It’s about finding love.” She whispered as her eyes dropped down to his lips. Josh leaned in slowly, his heart pounding as he closed the distance between them. Josh deepened the kiss, letting out a low moan as Kiyana shifted her position and was now straddling him, with her legs on either side of his hips. Josh’s hands roamed down Kiyana’s back before finally resting on her ass, firmly squeezing it while pulling her closer to him.

Josh’s phone started to go off, making the both of them groan in displeasure. “Fuck..” Josh groaned, throwing his back against the couch. He grabbed his phone out of his pocket, breathing heavily as he read the text message he just received. Kiyana arched her eyebrow as he ran his hand through his hair.

“What?”

Josh bit his lip as he looked at her. “Don’t be mad.” He whispered. “But I’ll be right back.” Josh saw the look of disappointment and doubt in her eyes, and he immediately cupped her face and tried to ease her worries. “Don’t do that. I promise it ain’t about no bitch. I’m forever about you. I just got something I gotta handle.” Kiyana rolled her eyes and removed herself from his lap, settling back on the couch and crossing her arms over her chest. “Key,” Josh called out softly, cupping her chin and turning her face so she could look at him. “Trust me, I’ll be right back.” Kiyana narrowed her eyes but eventually nodded her head.

“Fine. I guess I’ll see you when you come back.” Josh smiled and pecked her lips.

“30 minutes tops.”

“Mmhm,” Kiyana hummed, and Josh couldn’t blame her for her suspicion. He had been disloyal and ruined their relationship. But this was something he couldn’t tell her because she would definitely try to keep him in the house. Josh sighed and stood from the couch. He bent down and placed a kiss on her forehead.

“Be right back, Key.” She nodded and pressed play on the remote, continuing her show while he walked over to the key hook and grabbed his car keys. Kiyana let him keep his truck in the garage while he was on the road because someone broke into it the last time he left it at his apartment.

As Josh walked into the garage, he knew that no matter how much he reassured Kiyana, there was a lingering doubt in her mind—a scar from past betrayals. Settling into the driver’s seat, he pulled out his phone and re-read the text message he had received.

Ms Deb(key’s co-worker): Dr. Daniels gets off in 10 min. Do what you want with that information… oh and he drives a black infinity w/ blacked out windows. Plate: DRDAN. Ms Deb(key’s co-worker): delete this thread… and treat my girl right!

Josh smiled at the later message and started his car before backing out of the garage and driving towards the hospital.

Elijah smiled as he made his way out of the hospital. He had a pretty good day: three successful surgeries, and his wife came and surprised him with lunch with his children. That smile was quickly wiped off his face the closer he got to his car.

“What the fuck do you want?” Elijah seethed, eyeing Josh up and down.

Josh smirked and pushed himself off of Elijah’s car. “I told ya’ bitch ass I was gonna catch you again, didn’t I?” Josh sneered as he walked into Eli’s personal space. Elijah gulped as he looked around. Josh had a good 20 pounds of muscle on Eli, and to be completely honest, Eli didn’t want to walk around with another black eye.

Eli held his hand up and took a step back from Josh. “I don’t have time for this,” Elijah said, trying to steady his voice despite the nerves tightening in his chest. “You need to leave.”

“I ain’t going nowhere.”

“Look—” Tired of hearing Elijah’s voice, Josh lunged at him, landing a right hook on Eli’s jaw and knocking him to the ground.

“Yeahhh,” Josh cackled, clapping his hands together. “Getcho’ ass up. You wanna put your hands on women? Come put ya hands on me!” Elijah staggered to his feet, his fists clenched in anger as he lunged at Josh, who quickly ducked it and tackled him to the ground. There was nobody here to stop Josh this time. Josh threw punch after punch, getting all his anger out on this low life.

“Alright, Alright. Enough..” Josh felt someone grab the back of his shirt, trying to stop him from punching Elijah. “You got him, relax.”

Josh stopped swinging, his chest heaving with the adrenaline and fury, and looked down at Elijah, who looked like he was one punch away from a permanent coma. Elijah’s face was a swollen mess, eyes barely open, and he lay motionless, save for the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

Josh felt his shirt being tugged again, and he let the person move him off Elijah.

“Damn,” Josh looked, and it was the security guard who broke up their fight last time. “He’s lucky you beat his ass in front of the hospital.” The security guy joked, cracking a smile while holding his hand out for Josh to shake. “Main Event Jey Uso, nice to meet you man.”

Josh’s eyes widened. “Hey Uce-”

“I already paused the cameras; as soon as I get back to my desk, I’ll delete the footage. I hate women beaters. I lost my mom that way.” Josh’s expression softened, and he shook the guy’s hand. “I’m happy your ex has someone who sticks up for her. If only my mom had someone.”

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that—” Josh paused, as he didn’t know this guy’s name.

“Adrian, and hey, it’s cool. You did what you had to do. But uh. You might wanna get outta here. I gotta call this in.” Adrian finished off, holding the walkie-talkie up, and Josh nodded. He glanced down at Elijah, who was starting to move, before giving Adrian a nod, jogging back over to his truck, and leaving.

Kiyana sat up and looked towards the entryway to the living room when she heard the front door open and close. She knew it was way past thirty minutes because she had watched two more episodes of Love Island. She heard him set the house alarm before he started walking towards the living room.

“You said thirty minutes.” She muttered before her eyes widened as he walked closer to her and she saw how red and bruised his knuckles were. “Dude, what the fuck?! What did you do?”

“What I had to.”

“Josh -”

“He put his hand on you! He could not get away with that shit Key. I did what I had to do.” Kiyana sighed and gently grabbed his hand, leading him up the stairs and to her bedroom.

“Sit,” She said, pointing to the bed and Josh quickly obliged. Kiyana then walked into the ensuite bathroom and grabbed the first aid kit before walking back over to Josh and grabbing his hands.

“You mad huh?” Josh asked, biting the inside of his cheek as he watched Kiyana clean off his knuckles. Kiyana didn’t respond immediately, her gaze focused on cleaning his knuckles.

“I’m not mad. Just wish you would have told me. Would have loved to get a couple kicks in.” She looked up meeting Josh's eyes and chuckled at the shocked look on his face. “What? I was in shock when he actually grabbed me and he walked away before I could actually T off on his ass.” She said as she stood up and climbed into bed. Josh stood up as well. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Shoot, next time I’ll let you know then.” He said as he started walking towards the door.

“Woah! Where are you going?” She asked and he stopped.

“Was going to the guest room.” He said as more of a question and Kiyana started shaking her head and patted the spot next to her. “Fo’real?” Josh asked, a big ass smile coming onto his face as Kiyana nodded her head. He practically rips his shirt over his head before he throws himself onto the bed next to her, his heart swelling in his chest as he hears her giggle. It has been forever since he’s been the one to make her giggle.

~ Saturday Afternoon ~

“So you really thinking about giving him another chance?” Kiyana sighed and set down her make-up brush before meeting her mother's eyes in her vanity mirror.

“Yes,” Kiyana replied softly, her fingers absentmindedly adjusting the brushes in front of her. “Mom -” Kiyana started but Imani held her hand up, stopping her.

“No, You’re gonna listen to what I have to say, Kiyana Marie.” Kiyana shut her mouth and turned her body so her side was leaning against the back of the vanity chair. “That man” her mother continued, her voice dripping with disdain, “Has done so much damage to you. Cheating on you while you were carrying this little angel.” Kiyana rolled her eyes at her mom’s dramatics. “I was here Key, I seen what his infidelity did to your confidence. I saw the way you frowned at your body when you walked past the mirror and now he gets a second chance for what? To do it all over again.”

Kiyana felt her shoulders sag as he mother’s words sunk in. “So you think I’m being stupid?”

“No baby girl. I don’t think you’re being stupid. I just want you to not rush back into this with Josh. I know y’all still love each other and you had to stay in contact with the kids but still remember to put yourself first. Don’t just get back with him because you know Kaiden and Kamari are going to be happy.”

“I am putting myself first Mom. It’s not just about my sons being happy it’s about me being happy as well. Yes, Josh fu- messed up but everyone deserves a second chance. Isn’t that what you told me? After Dad cheated on you, you stayed. You told me that everyone deserves a second chance.” Imani’s eyes lowered to the floor as Kiyana continued. “Dad has two kids on you and you still stayed. Josh cheated and had no kids. And I tried to move on, but I love Josh and can’t change that.”

“I just want the best for you Kiyana. And you’re right, I did forgive your father but I don’t want you to be like me. But I understand that you are a grown woman and you need to make these decisions for yourself.”

“Why are you making it seem like I’m making a mistake?” Kiyana asked, getting irritated with her mother.

“I’m just saying. You need to learn for yourself. I’m not the only one who thinks this either. Kenyatta feels the same.” Kiyana snorted and turned back around so she could face her vanity again.

“You mean the serial cheater? He cheated on every girl he was ever with Mom - you know what.” Kiyana paused and took a deep breath. “I’m gonna get dressed now you can go.”

Imani scoffed “Kiyana” she called out, as Kiyana stood and walked into her walk-in closet. Kiyana rolled her eyes as she came back out with her dress in her hand, hanging off the hanger. “I just don’t want to see you hurt again,” Imani said, to which Kiyana ignored. Imani sighed, picked Kairo up off the bed, and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

As the door clicked shut, Kiyana took a deep breath and tried to steady her racing thoughts. The sound of her mother’s voice still echoed in her mind, a mix of concern and frustration. She slipped her dress on, trying to focus on the soft fabric against her skin rather than the knot in her stomach.

~ Saturday Night ~

“You can do this,” Kiyana whispered to herself. Her mom had just yelled up the steps, telling her Josh was there. Kiyana could hear her kids going crazy after not seeing him all day. “It’s just Josh. You been on plenty of dates with Josh before.” Taking a deep breath, Kiyana smoothed down her hair and checked her reflection in the mirror one last time before walking out of her bedroom and walking down the steps to meet Josh.

She felt herself blush as he let out a low “Damn.” before clearing his throat and walking over to meet her at the bottom of the stairs. “You look beautiful, Key. Doesn’t she look beautiful?” He then asked his sons and they nodded their heads.

“You look very pretty Mama,” Kaiden said and Kiyana smiled and him, bending down to press a kiss on his head,

“Thank you, Bean” She then turned to Josh. “You look nice too.” Josh’s cheeks heated up at her compliment.

“You ready to go?” He asked and she nodded.

“Be good for grandma.” She said to her kids, giving them a quick hug before stepping out the door with Josh. The short walk to his truck was silent. Josh opened the passenger door for her and grabbed her hand, helping her into the truck.

“You ready to go?” He asked and she nodded.

Kiyana stole glances at Josh as he drove, admiring the way the streetlights illuminated his profile, casting shadows across his chiseled features. At a red light, Josh reached across the console and gently grabbed her hand lacing their fingers together. Kiyana’s heart skipped a beat as Josh’s fingers intertwined with hers. The warmth of his touch sent a thrill up her arm. She glanced at him, catching a glimpse of the soft smile playing on his lips.

“I’m happy you agreed to this date,” Josh muttered, breaking the silence in the car. Kiyana bit the inside of her lip and she looked over at him.

"I'm glad too," she replied, her voice barely above a whisper. Josh smiled and started driving again as the light turned green, the butterflies in his belly intensifying as he felt her squeeze his hand.

“Thank you,” Kiyana smiled at Josh as he pulled out her chair for her. The restaurant he picked was nice and cozy. It was one that neither of them had been at before. He wanted to choose a new restaurant so they could make new memories and weren’t plagued by old ones.

As Josh settled in his seat across from her, he felt like the luckiest SOB in that restaurant. The second he and Kiyana had walked in, all eyes turned toward her. She had turned so many heads, he couldn’t stop himself from laughing at one couple, when the woman reached over and plucked her boyfriend or husband on his forehead when he wouldn’t stop staring at Key.

“Can I get you guys anything to drink?” The waiter came over and set the free bread down on their table. Kiyana ordered a white while while Josh decided to order a water with a lemon. He wanted to stay sober for the conversation he knew they were going to have.

As the waiter left, Kiyana took a deep breath and looked directly into Josh’s eyes. The dim candlelight cast a soft glow on her face. “I um- I know we agreed to try to move on, but I think we need to talk about everything first.” She said and Josh nodded. She closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “What happened? What made you.” She paused as if she couldn’t bear to say it. “What made you cheat on me?”

The waitress quickly set their drink down and left as she heard Kiyana’s question. The waitress figured they could wait to eat.

“Oh god,” Josh whispered, sitting up straighter in his chair. “I don’t know if she told you, but I talked to Samara about this already,” Josh stated to which Kiyana nodded.

“She told me a little. She also told me to just hear you out.”

“I- I honestly never meant for anything to go that far. Before this conversation continues, I need you to know that. I need you to know that I will forever beat myself up for doing that to you.” When Kiyana nodded he continued. “I just wanted to vent Key. I just wanted someone to talk to about what I was going through without being told to think about your feelings. And yes it was selfish of me but nobody cared about how I felt. God, it’s so fucking selfish but I just wanted someone to talk to and it went too far.” He finished, not breaking eye contact so she knew how serious he was being.

“But four months Joshua? You were going on the road fucking her then coming back and fucking me.”

Joshua looked down, his hands trembling slightly. He knew he had hurt Kiyana deeply, and the guilt weighed heavily on him. “I fucked up Key, I fucked up so damn bad.” He looked back up at her. “But I’m willing to do anything and everything to prove my love and loyalty to you again. I already talked to my boss and a couple of the higher-ups. She been harassing me n’shit and I filed some paperwork against her. She can’t come near me or she’ll be fired.”

Kiyana felt her face scrunch up at what he said. “So y’all were still messing around?”

Josh started shaking his head ‘no’ immediately. “Hell no. I stopped messing with her around the time I told you about the affair.”

Kiyana narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, trying to see how sincere he was being with his words. After knowing him for almost twenty-four years, she knew when he was lying and right now he wasn’t. He was telling her the truth.

“So what about you telling her that you were gonna divorce me for her.”

“I never said that.” He answered immediately. “I told you back then that I never said that. That was some dumbshit she said and Joe must’ve overheard her.”

Kiyana went to ask her next question but was interrupted by the waitress. “Sorry, but um- would y’all like to order now?” Josh and Kiyana broke eye contact to look at the waitress. Josh let out a deep sigh a nodded before ordering a steak meal for himself while Kiyana ordered a pasta dish. The waitress hurried up and scurried away. Kiyana looked back at Josh and asked her next question.

“Do you regret it?”

“Of course I do.” Josh's voice was filled with regret as he met Kiyana's gaze, his eyes reflecting the pain he had caused her. “Do you regret sleeping with Joe?” He asked, just as she took a sip of her wine. Kiyana’s eyes widened as she heard his question. Did she regret sleeping with Joe?

“I don’t regret it.” She finally said, swallowing a lump in her throat as Josh’s jaw clenched. “You hurt me badly Joshua. Like, I was hurt and confused and he was there. It wasn’t about getting back at you because he’s your cousin. It was,” She paused as she tried to find the right words. “It was you had your fun, so why couldn’t I.”

Taking a moment to compose himself, Josh locked eyes with Kiyana, his gaze intense yet vulnerable. “I understand” He whispered. He reached across the table grasping her hand in his. “I want us to move past all of this. Do you want there to be an us? Do you want to move past this?”

Kiyana squeezed Josh's hand tightly, feeling a mix of emotions swirling inside her. After everything they had been through, the hurt and betrayal, she knew that a decision needed to be made. She took a deep breath and met Josh's gaze. “Yes, I want there to be an us again. I want us to be able to move on from this.”

Josh's eyes softened, relief washing over his face as he heard Kiyana's words. “Deadass?”

Kiyana chuckled, nodding her head. “I’m being so deadass right now.”

“I swear on my life, you won’t regret this Key. Imma do everything I can to prove that I love you and I want you.”

As they sat there holding hands, a wave of relief washed over both Kiyana and Josh. The weight of their past mistakes and the pain they had caused each other seemed to lighten ever so slightly. They both knew that rebuilding their relationship would not be easy, but they were willing to try.

“Are you staying here tonight?” Kiyana whispered as she and Josh walked to the front door of her house.

“If you want me to,” Josh replied and Kiyana nodded, grabbing his hand and leading him into the house. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of her ass. Loving the way it swayed as she walked. She kept a firm grasp on his hand as she set the house alarm and walked up the steps. Both of them peeked into their kids' rooms to make sure they were tucking in and sleeping.

Josh’s heart was beating extremely fast as Kiyana led him into her room. Kiyana turned to face Josh, her eyes almost black with lust. She closed the distance between them, her body pressing flush against his, and Without a word, she reached up and tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling his face down to hers and kissing him. Kiyana moaned softly into the kiss, her body trembling with need. She broke away, panting lightly, her eyes locked on Josh's.

“You sure?” He asked and instead of giving him an answer, Kiyana undid the back of her dress and let it fall down her body. Josh watched as the dress fell to her feet, leaving her in just her white lace thong.

“I’m sure” She whispered before capturing his lips again in a searing kiss.

KiyanaJackson_

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user: she is 2 fine!

trinity_fatu: girl! 🔥

user: WHO TF WOULD CHEAT ON HER? A DUMBASS THATS WHO!

marrraaa_ : fuckable 🤤

Sorry for any grammar and/ or spelling mistakes. I am dead tired and I wanted to get this chapter out.

Sooo how was this chapter? Give me y'all honest thoughts!...

❤ Reblogs, comments, likes, and feedback ALWAYS appreciated ❤

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#wwe #jey uso x black reader #jey uso fanfiction #jey uso x reader #jey uso x oc #jey uso x you #jey uso x y/n #jey uso x black oc #jey uso x fem reader #jey uso fanfic #wwe fanfiction #wwe x fem reader #wwe x black reader #wwe x black oc #wwe x reader #wwe x oc

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 1 month ago

Text

Damage Control 1

Warnings: non/dubcon, violence, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

Character: Jonathan Pine, Lloyd Hansen

Summary: you're sent to work intel on a mission with two very combative men.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging ❤️

You sit in the airport. One piece of luggage. Simple. Easy. You travel light but not alone. Your company has yet to arrive.

Fellow travelers rush back and forth while others wait in queue for the coffee kiosk behind you or meander in hopes of an empty seat. The dark brew isn’t very good. It’s burnt and hollow. You push the cup away and mourn the five dollars for eight ounces of tripe.

You recognise the man, not only because you’ve seen his photo, but because he stands out despite his attempt at insignificance. Tall, blond, lithe but not too slender. He approaches and you stand. He looks around, right over your head. You likely don’t look how he would expect.

“Pine,” you call to him. His blue eyes narrow at you and he redirects. He rolls his bag with him and approaches with his hand extended, “Pine like the tree. Tall as one.”

He tilts his head curiously, “you’re Magenta?”

“I didn’t choose it,” you say.

“Angela?”

“Can’t leave the wee one,” you explain as you hike yourself back up on the tall chair. You bring the cup close again and turn it as you scowl at the brew. “Don’t recommend the coffee. Don’t know about the tea.”

“Hm,” he sits across from you. “Pity. Was hoping for a good cuppa before we head over the pond.”

You look at him and your cheek twitches. You put your hand to it to still it. His blue eyes twinkle.

“You like to hike? With a name like Pine, it’d be ironic, wouldn’t it?” You suggest.

A line forms above his brow, “suppose that would be. I enjoy a run now and then, prefer the coast.”

“I hear they’ve got bears over there. Never saw one. Only rats in New York,” you remark. “I lost a slice of pizza to one. Grimy git.”

“Hm, yes, a city one would hate to be lost in,” he muses.

“You’ve been?”

“A time or two. Not my favourite place.”

“I went to Canada a couple times. I saw a moose. Actually, saw a few. Meese? Have you seen their geese? They’re bloody vicious.” Your cheek keeps twitching. You give up. Nerves.

“Ah, I’ve flown over, not been,” he says. “You nervous of flying?”

“Little. It’s only the take-off that gets me. Went parachuting once and the instructor tricked me. Said the strap on my chute broke. Threw a dummy cord out. Right mad one. Should’ve known better than do a jump for twenty quid.” You chuckle and shake your head. “Haven’t been right since.”

“Sounds especially cruel,” he comments.

“I’ve known crueler,” you grin.

“Mm, yes, as have I,” his brows lift slightly. “So, what do you know about this Hansen character?”

“I know we should keep the chatter to a minimum about him. Not here,” you glance around, catching site of the man who’s not so subtle in his staring.

“You’ve done this before?” He asks.

“I work alone more often. First for having company,” you say quietly. “Your sister, she’s going to be so happy to see you."

He hesitates but smiles anyway, "oh, she will. It's been some time, hasn't it?"

You keep your eyes on him. He doesn't flinch. You're both overtly aware of the man who's oh so convieniently moved closer to grab sugar and napkins.

You lift your arm and check your watch, "look at that, boarding soon."

"Ah, yes, darling, wouldn't want to miss it," he stands and comes around to pull out your chair. You step down and reach for your bag. He has it first. "Allow new."

You take your coffee and dump it in a bin. He rolls both bags with him as you walk in stride.

"Grab my arm. Be natural," he girds.

You obey, putting your hands on his as he clings to your suitcase. You walk with him, a dulcet expression to hide your paranoia. You get to the gate and show your passes.

He lets go of the bags and turns to yawn into his elbow. As he does, he scans the area. You join the queue for the ramp and he leans in.

"He's been rerouted by security," Pine intones.

You nod and stay facing forward. Another twitch.

"You're good," he praises.

You give a soft smile. It's a true compliment. You're not a field agent. This isn't your typical assignment but you owe Angela the favour.

“Eh, sometimes they turn out to just be creeps,” you snort. “Never know with people.”

“No, you never do,” he agrees.

“They say it's cold. November and such,” you sway as the airport attendants mill around near the doors waiting to call for boarding. “Thanksgiving soon, or whathaveyou. Pity we never got in on the fun.”

He laughs again, “never much thought of it.”

“I wouldn't mind turkey. You can get fish at any chippy, but what about nice bird.”

“Oh, I don't recommend picking up birds at a chippy,” he hurls back.

You guffaw, “clever.”

“I like to think so.”

“Mm, yes, most agents I've met tend to have that idea about themselves,” you stretch your arms behind you and scope out the line. You let out a breath. “You seem the football type, eh?”

He seems stricken by the question, “might be.”

“Eh, don't you worry, I won't judge. Not out loud.”

“Right. I'll admit, not many of Angela's friends are so chatty,” he says.

“They wouldn't be but we've ten hours ahead of us. May as well jump right in,” you say.

“May as well,” he agrees. “If you must know, I root for Chelsea.”

“Ach,” you decry. “Well, perhaps we should find a more amiable topic.”

“I see. Spoken like a true Arsenal fan.”

“I'm warning you,” you retort. “I'm much nicer about the weather. Lovely day, isn't it?”

He laughs, “oh, fine day for flying.”

#jonathan pine #lloyd hansen #dark jonathan pine #dark!jonathan pine #dark lloyd hansen #dark!lloyd hansen #jonathan pine x reader #lloyd hansen x reader #the gray man #damage control #the night manager

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ineffable-endearments · 1 year ago

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Hello, everyone!

In light of Neil Gaiman's comment that Amazon is close to officially renewing Good Omens but hasn't done so yet, I think those of us who can should start sending physical postcards to Amazon Studios!

The TL;DR of this post is that you can easily send a postcard from MyPostcard.com for about $3 (USD, I'm sure other currencies can vary). The Web site will print and mail it for you, so you don't have to do any printing or mailing yourself. The postage is included in the $3.

If you don't already have an image or card you want to use, you can just use one of mine above. Some of them are small because of small source images, but the site seems to resize them appropriately for the card. There are bigger versions in a Google Drive folder that you shouldn't have to be logged in to see.

You can send the postcards asking for a third season of Good Omens addressed to Jennifer Salke and Vernon Sanders, co-heads of Amazon Studios, at:

AMAZON STUDIOS 1620 26TH STREET, SUITE 4000N SANTA MONICA, CA 90404 USA

@fuckyeahgoodomens was the first to post this contact information for Amazon, so thank you, Ixi.

If it's something you don't mind, I would very deeply appreciate reblogs on this, since it works better if lots of people see it! No pressure if you don't want to, though.

And if you have Questions, click through below for my reasoning on all this.

Why should we send postcards to Amazon Studios?

We've made lots of noise online about renewal, and we've done a lot of streaming Good Omens. But I haven't seen much discussion of sending physical mail or, specifically, postcards.

Mail takes up space in the real world. It's slightly harder to ignore than email. It's way more attention-grabbing than posts on X or Tumblr or any other social media site. Because postage is required, physical mail can also appear more "committed."

Postcards specifically are great because of their convenience for the recipient. No one has to open them to read them. All it takes is a quick glance to see what we're asking for, and realistically, a quick glance is the best we can ask for in a corporate office. That's why I'm emphasizing postcards over regular letters (although really, anything helps).

Is sending postcards really going to motivate Amazon to make more Good Omens?

Postcard and letter-writing campaigns have helped get shows renewed in the past. Star Trek: The Original Series is a good example of a series that got another season after a letter-writing campaign. This article has more examples.

We don't actually know what's going on in Good Omens's case. Maybe postcards would make a difference; maybe they wouldn't. We can only make our most determined effort at making sure we're heard, and sending mail is part of that.

The cost of sending a postcard is too much for me.

I understand that sending a postcard will not be an option for many of us. This post isn't intended to try to push you into spending money you don't have. If you still want to find a way to participate, you can also send an email to [email protected] with your comments about wanting Good Omens 3. It's not physical mail, but it is still a personal message from a customer.

In fact, people who are sending postcards might want to follow up with an email, too.

Do we have to use your postcard designs?

No! Not necessarily! You can use anything.

As long as the message you write includes how much you want Good Omens 3, your postcard's image doesn't necessarily have to relate. You could send a souvenir postcard that says "Greetings from Los Angeles, CA / Tadfield, England / etc" from your local post office and just write your message on the back.

Technically, even a plain index card should be thick enough to mail as a postcard, at least by USPS standards. Just write your desire for Good Omens 3 on it, put a stamp and Amazon's address on it, and make sure it's at least 90mm x 127mm (3.5in x 5in).

Isn't Amazon Studios going to notice a bunch of postcards being mailed from the same Web site?

I'm sure they will. But the messages will each be unique, and again, they'll know each card represents a person who had to order the card and postage themselves.

Speaking of unique messages, what should I write?

One sentence is enough. Definitely indicate that you want Season 3 of Good Omens. If you want to add more, you could also write a sentence or two about how much you love the series so far.

Above all, be polite and straightforward! Remember that sarcasm and jokes often do not come across well in print, so it may be best to stick with simple statements that can be taken at face value.

What address should the cards go to?

The co-heads of Amazon Studios appear to be Vernon Sanders and Jennifer Salke; you can address them by name, although I'm guessing it will be someone else who does the reading/glancing.

Amazon Studios's address is:

AMAZON STUDIOS 1620 26TH STREET, SUITE 4000N SANTA MONICA, CA 90404 USA

Where did you get these images?

The images for the nightingale postcard and the Crowley postcard are screencaps from directedbypiper.

The Please Do Not Lick the Walls and Fell the Marvelous posters were downloads from the Amazon X-Ray feature.

The Nice and Accurate Prophecies postcard was adapted from cover art I did for A Nice and Interpretive Fanzine. Most of it is my own, although the mottled background is an extremely blurred version of a free stock texture from Pixabay, users chrisfiedler and/or humusak.

The bookshop postcard is a promotional image from Amazon used in a Den of Geek article.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens 3 #renew good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 8 months ago

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AITA for wanting to trade an OC as soon as I got it?

I (24M) occasionally participate in the world of OC adopts. for those who don't know, an adopt is a character design that you can buy from another person, in doing so it becomes your oc and the person who put up the adopt rescinds their right to use the design in the future. traditionally adopts are bought with real money, but it's also common to trade one OC for another. for adopts I use toyhou.se, a platform for oc sharing which has built in adoption tools, like the ability to add a TOS or list an OC as up for adoption

I put up an adopt on the about a year ago where it sat unadopted for around 6 months. one day I get a comment on the OC profile from D (20F). D says that the OC looks like her and that she loves the design, and offers to trade for an OC in her adopts folder.

I look through the folder and I don't find any OCs that I like, but I decide that since D likes my adopt so much that I would trade with her anyway. so I pick my favorite out of the characters she offered (Lottie) and we trade.

when I get Lottie I list her for adoption and put her in my adopts folder. a few months later D comments on Lotties profile asking "why do [I] want to trade her away so quickly...?" I explain to D that I always put unused characters up for adoption until I use them and that it's nothing personal. D says "I guess that makes sense...? 😅" and I assumed the matter was done.

the way that toyhouse works is that when you are the original creator of an OC you can set permissions on their profile, specifically you can say whether or not the OC can be resold (traded for money), retraded (traded for another oc), or regifted (given away for free). if any of the above are allowed for a character you can post an adoption listing. if none of them are allowed then you can't.

before D commented on Lotties profile, Lottie was set to allow retrades and regifts. after D commented, she disabled all of them meaning I was now stuck* with Lottie. on top of that, part of D's TOS was that you couldn't change her OCs designs so redesigning Lottie more to my taste wasn't an option either.**

AITA for trying to trade Lottie away so quickly after I got her?

* I could of course trade her off-site or delete her outright, but i think D's intention was to keep me saddled with Lottie.

** I think this is stupid and usually wouldn't listen to a rule banning me from redesigning an OC that I have exclusive ownership over. but toyhouse is somewhat toxic and D had already proven that she was checking in on her designs to make sure her rules were being followed (or to make new ones). D also has a blacklist which on toyhouse is essentially a public call-out post that lists everyone that a user has problems with. these blacklists often lead to harassment of people that are on it. all of this is to say, redesigning Lottie wasn't worth the trouble

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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aphrodisiac-siren · 8 months ago

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Home~ Neteyam x Metkayina!reader

Summary: Leaving behind everything he knew was hard for Neteyam and then adapting to the ways of the new clan was even harder. He'd push himself, overwork and exhaust himself even, to live upto his family's expectations; never really giving his own wants a second thought. That's why Y/N was the prefect companion for him, someone who kept things in his life balanced, who made sure to let him know that what he wanted was just as important, perhaps even more so, than what everyone else wanted of him.

//slow burn, Neteyam just denying his own feelings//

masterlist, Part 5

Part 4

🫧

It had been a good amount of time since eclipse.

The fishermen and hunters had retired for the day and the homemakers had only just put their food above the fires to prepare a nice warm dinner. The younger children were done with their lessons and were headed home, eagerly looking forward to a delicious meal followed by some much needed sleep.

But then they saw the warriors hurriedly mount their banshees and head out with panicked urgency. Not a moment later and Tonowari’s own children joined them to patrol the waters around the reef. The sudden and rare search party caused an eruption of speculative whispers amidst the villagers, each one trying their best to decipher what was going on.

Betwixt all the chaos, Y/N exhaled a sigh of relief when she spotted Lo'ak swimming toward her, calling out her name in response to her calling out his.

“I’m here Y/N” he waived his arm at her as she closed the distance between them whilst siting atop her ilu.

“I got you” she held out her arm for him to take, pulling the heavier boy to sit behind her before she turned around, yelling out to the other Na’vi who were just as eagerly looking for him “I’ve found him, he’s okay!”

A stream of yips and relieved sighs were passed around as everyone headed back, thankful to Ewya that the kid was returned to them unharmed.

“I’m sorry about my brother” Y/N immediately said once Lo’ak was well seated behind her, legs dangling lazily in the water as they followed the other people back to the village.

“I’m sorry about mine too” Lo’ak responded, referring to the exchange his brother had with her earlier that day “he’s not usually like this”

“Don’t worry about-“

“No really,” he continued nonetheless, still not done with his apology on behalf of his brother. Lo’ak never imagined in all his years that he’d one day find himself apologising for how his perfect older brother acted “he was rude and what he said, it-it was not okay. I’m sure he didn’t mean any of it. Don’t take it to heart and hold anything against him, or at least against me because of it”

Y/N held back a giggle. As sweet as it was that he was trying to be an adult and say sorry for the comments Neteyam made, it was almost adorable how he couldn’t conceal his child-like desire for her to keep her animosity toward his brother on one side and away from him. In simpler words, he was trying to get her to continue being friends with him.

“I’m not mad anymore Lo’ak” she assured the boy with a genuine smile, patting his knee in a friendly way “not at Neteyam, and definitely not at you”

“Friends again?” He sheepishly asked and Y/N found it almost too difficult not to turn around and adoringly pinch his cheeks with an ‘aww’ but she kept her cool. Just like Aonung, she could tell that Lo’ak definitely did not like to be fawned over.

“Friends again” she warmly told the boy before clicked her tongue at the ilu, prompting him to stop.

Both her father and mother awaited them, standing at the front of the crowed gathered to have a look at the lost and found forest boy.

Y/N’s eyes found Aonung’s and she could tell he was relieved that Lo’ak was fine. She knew he’d messed up by doing something as stupid as going beyond the reef by himself and then made things even worse by taking the new boy out there too and leaving him.

As if they shared some sibling-telepathic connection, she could also sense how horrible he felt. It was true that he’d managed to publicly embarrass himself, knowing well that the gossip regarding how the chie’s son caused such mayhem would last for a good amount of time before it was forgotten; but what really stuck out in that moment was the extremely evident remorse in his eyes.

Aonung was born into an almost royal-like environment, being treated like an image of utmost importance from a very young age. He was well know and well respected in his clan and he liked the power and authority he held. But after days and days of bullying the Sullys, it would seem like he all of a sudden didn’t like this higher rank. His first major screw up drew all this attention to him, the negative kind. He was well aware that he’d used his prestigious title of being the next Olo'eyktan in the most irresponsible way, by throwing his weight around and this time he’d feared it cost Lo’ak his life. Aonung would admit, he didn’t like the new kids but that certainly didn’t mean he wanted them to die, much less because of him.

“He’s fine, yeah?” He whispered to his sister once she’d stood next to him, standing his ground even when he saw Lo’ak angrily advancing toward him with balled fists. This time if he’d get punched, he wouldn’t have the nerve to hit him back.

But Jake saved him from further humiliation, pulling his son toward him to inspect him for any injuries and then announced that he was alright, giving Aonung another wave of relief.

“Excuse me, sorry I just- Hi”

Neteyam pushed past the others, swimming through the crowd to get a look at his brother. He only stopped when his eyes landed on Lo’ak, who was currently being scolded by his mother. He’d only realised until a few moments later that he halted right next to where Y/N was standing.

“Found him” the girl simply said, looking up at Neteyam. She saw him visibly relax his shoulders and slow his breathing, also at relief just like the rest of them.

“Yes, I can see” he smiled, nudging her arm gently with his “thank-you”

He wanted all of his attention to be focused on his brother, considering how tensed he was during the search but now that he’d seen him in person, fully assured that he was fine, his mind only kept wandering to the Na’vi girl beside him.

She thinks I’m pretty?

Neteyam didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, especially not to one as major as her finding him attractive, even though he was fully aware that he wasn’t so bad to look at. He was never really the type to seek any validation regarding his looks from girls, nor was he the type to overthink it if any girl did flirt with him. Though calling Y/N’s previously mentioned endearment ‘flirting’ would be a stretch.

She couldn’t have been, obviously not.

She was mad at him, furious even just hours ago. He highly doubted that a simple ride on his ikran would all of a sudden magically make everything okay. Yes, she was no longer upset but the wound was fresh and things wouldn’t go back to normal overnight. Which is why it just sounded absurd that she would indirectly attempt to tell him that she was into him.

Which then led to another foreign thought that crossed his mind. If she didn’t particularly mean to tell him that he’s pretty, he at the very least hoped that she thought of him as such. He felt like a little boy, hoping to impress his dad with how efficiently he caught fish.

It’s not a crush, he thought to himself. There was absolutely no way that Neteyam would ever succumb to such silly things. Getting giddy after tender touches, heart skipping beats, anxious around the other person- it sounded more like a health hazard rather than something cute.

So then why did he all of a sudden care if she found him pretty?

His thoughts began to fade away just like how the crowd did after being dismissed, no longer too keen on sticking around anyway now that Lo’ak was found. And he too, just like them, didn’t feel the need to stay there any longer.

He weaved through the crowed, eyes never losing sight of Y/N as he patiently made his way toward her. Their previous time together had been cut short and now that everything was okay, he wanted to continue with their walk around the beach.

His plan to do so was immediately soiled when he heard his father’s strict voice call out his name. Ever-obedient as he was, he immediately stopped in his tracks, wincing softly in annoyance but headed toward his dad nevertheless.

“Where were you?” Jake scolded him in a hushed tone but his displeasure was evident “what happened to ‘keep an eye on your brother’ hm?”

“I’m sorry sir” Neteyam pressed his lips into a thin line. If there was something the boy hated more than failure, it was disappointing his parents. He’d grown up around the desire to seek praise and approval from his parents, pushing himself to be without flaw at everything just so that his parents would be proud.

He looked around, discreetly searching for Y/N once again but he’d lost her in the crowd. Neteyam was well aware he was on most occasions referred to as the warm, friendly person in the family but he too, just like most males had a slight ego. He wasn’t going to go after Y/N just to talk; he wasn’t smitten with her to do that. So instead he just silently followed his family back to their pod, feet dragging through the cool and course sand.

It was awkwardly silent at first, everyone just quietly doing their own thing. Lo’ak, out of everyone, was sat by himself in the farthest corner of the room. He’d already done enough that day, he did not want to add to the list by ruining dinner.

“Um, hello” a familiar voice meekly greeted from the doorway “I just came to return this”

Everyone turned toward the source of the sound, eyes landing on Y/N as she stood awkwardly at the entrance, holding a bow and a few arrows. It was evident that she too could feel the tension in the room, judging by how she awkwardly kept switching her weight from one leg to the other.

“Hey” Lo’ak was the first one to reach her, helping her with the things she was struggling to carry without dropping them “Is that.. my bow?”

“Uh yea” she nervously chuckled, feeling as though the boy did not appreciate her having it in her possession “I was using earlier to practice, sorry-“

“Nah nah don’t worry’bout it” Lo’ak gave her a toothy grin “you can borrow it anytime you want”

“Maybe you can make one for her” Neytiri joined the conversation as she cut up some dried meat to add to the dish she was making “I’m teaching her how to shoot arrows, she’ll need a bow of her own for hunts”

Lo’ak nodded in agreement.

“Must’ve been a long day today huh” Jake smiled at the younger girl, referring to practically everything that took place from the fight his son’s got into with her brother and her training with Neytiri to Lo’ak getting lost and then found after hours of searching “stay for dinner”

“Oh no no, It’s alright” Y/N politely tried to decline, still standing by the door “thank you though-“

“Nah don’t be shy, it’s okay come on in” Jake wasn’t really taking no for an answer, trying in his own way to amend things not really knowing that his son had already done it by charming her with his ikran.

“My mom cooks really yummy food” Tuk tried to lure her in too, her comment putting a smile on their stoic mother’s face.

“Okay then” Y/N smiled, walking in and sitting in between Tuk and Lo’ak, right across Neteyam- who couldn’t tell why he was really hoping she would agree to stay and eat with them. The short fleeting feeling of something fluttering in his chest was unexplainable when she sat down across from him, her pretty eyes locking with his for a moment or two before she got engrossed in a conversation with Kiri.

Dinner with the Sullys was a lot more lively in comparison to her own family. They joked around, told eachother about their day and laughed boisterously, something that her mother would scoff at if done at their own dinner circle.

Neteyam, for most of the dinner, only observed Y/N. she seemed to get along with his family rather well. She could keep up with Tuk’s endless chattering, make easy conversation with his moody sister Kiri, patiently listen to his younger brother’s exaggerated stories, laugh at his father’s broken humour and make his stone cold mother smile. He could tell that she liked them just as much as they liked her and for the sake of his family, he would do better at being a good friend to her.

Not because he just wanted her to like him, no.

Once dinner was done with, Y/N took her leave, politely letting them know that it was too late for her to wait any longer. Jake asked for his older son to walk her home, despite the protests from Y/N.

“Your family is really sweet” she told him on their walk back, idly kicking her heels at the sand “I don’t remember the last time I actually had this much fun at dinner”

“Ah you’re too kind” he rubbed the back of his neck, unsure of how to respond to such praise.

“No really, dinner with my family feels like a war meeting. Minimal conversation and no laughing” she rolled her eyes.

“You’d love our bonfires then” he begun with a smile, thinking fondly about his home “at the end of the day, almost the entire Omatikaya clan gathered around the large fire for a meal. There’d be music, people exchanging stories. It was like one big family”

Y/N listened to him talk about the forest, a sad smile etching its way to her face. It was a bit heartbreaking, hearing him talk about his home with such eagerness as his face lit up just thinking about his past life that he had to give up and leave behind.

“You miss the forest a lot, don’t you?” She asked, still looking up at him with the same expression as before. Neteyam only chuckled, running his fingers through his braids as he nodded a ‘yes’

“A lot” he grinned, masking his feelings like how he always did “but I like it here, it’s-“

“It’s okay to be sad you know” she cut him off, seeing right through his facade. She knew what it was like, having to deal with the pressure of being the golden child in the family. It was almost draining sometimes to live up to the standards set, often resulting in no space nor time to deal with your own emotions “I can tell you’d rather be at the forest than out here in the reef”

“It’ll take some getting used to” the boy shrugged, still refusing to fully allow himself to wallow in his longing to return back to his clan “I loved the forest but I’m willing to give this place a chance”

“Hm” she simply hummed, proceeding to think of something to say that might lighten the mood “maybe you can show me around your village when you go back”

“If I go back” Neteyam chuckled, reminding her of the harsh reality that there wasn’t much of a chance of them returning.

“When you go back, maybe you can take me to this bonfire you told me about” she emphasised on the certainty that they would all see their precious forest soon, attempting to give him a sense of hope.

“Okay Y/N” he gave up, agreeing to whatever it was she was saying with an amused laugh “I’ll take you wherever you’d want to go, maybe even teach you to ride a direhorse”

“Really?” She almost yelled, causing Neteyam’s ears and tail to shoot up with surprise. She immediately composed herself, blushing at her own over-excited reaction “you mean it?”

“Y-yea” he adoringly gazed at her, lopsided smirk dancing on his lips. She was a curious little thing, very similar to his brother except for the whole ‘doing things without thinking’ bit.

“This is me” she stopped when they were a few feet away from a grand-looking pod that he could only assume was her place of residence “thanks for walking me home, a-and for earlier”

Neteyam only responded with a smile, waiting patiently until she’d walked inside before he turned around to head to his own little abode.

——

“I’m telling you guys, it was a tulkun”

Lo’ak was surrounded by his siblings, Aonung, Tsireya, Rotxo and Y/N; all of them immersed in Lo’ak’s story in which he claimed to have been rescued by a lone tulkun.

Y/N was firstly surprised to see her brother actually being nice to the Sullys, especially Lo’ak. She was present of course when Lo’ak shouldered the blame for what had happened at three brothers rocks, but she didn’t really think Aonung would be this touched by the gesture.

Clearly, she was wrong but she didn’t mind it in this case. It was a nice change honestly to see them all getting along.

“No tulkun is ever alone” Aonung told him, still finding it a bit hard to believe.

“This one was” Lo’ak was adamant and stuck to his story “it had a missing fin”

“Payakan” Tsireya immediately said, exchanging nervous glances with her siblings “you are lucky to be alive Lo’ak”

The boy seemed confused by that statement, so Y/N took the liberty to further explain their reaction.

“He’s a killer” she told him, finger drawing random shapes in the sand as she spoke “he’s killed other tulkun and na’vi”

“Not here” Aonung added “but a little far from this village”

“He’s been outcast since” Rotxo chimed in, contributing with his share of knowledge “he hasn’t been seen much since”

“He’s no killer” Lo’ak blew a raspberry, clearly not buying into what the other had to say about his new friend “he saved my life”

“My baby brother, the mighty warrior” Neteyam tried to lighten the mood by simply just giving his brother some credit for surviving whatever took place out these in open waters “who took on the killer tulkun and lived to tell about it”

That clearly didn’t sit well with said ‘baby brother’. He huffed in annoyance as he arose to his feet, not happy about being treated like a child by his older brother.

“You guys aren’t listening” he pouted, walking away from them.

“Lo’ak I’m listening” Tuk tried to get him to come back. She was always so eager to be around him, doing whatever she could to be in her older brother’s good books.

Still, it didn’t seem to work because he walked away nonetheless.

Y/N and Tsireya were up on their feet, ready to talk Lo’ak into coming back but Neteyam held Y/N’s hand, giving her an expression that clearly read ‘it’s okay, leave him’. She stayed put, but gave her sister a nod to go after him, knowing that if anyone could calm the boy down, it was her.

“I’m bored now” Tuk crossed her arms. She was obviously enjoying the story time with her brother and now with him gone, she needed something else to keep herself busy. She tugged Aonung by the hand, forcing him to get to his feet “I want to go look for shells, help me find them”

“I know a good place” Rotxo offered, looking at Kiri in hopes that she’d join too “it’s that way”

Y/N watched as Tuk rounded them up and followed after Rotxo, happily skipping along to pass the time by looking for shells by the beach.

“You aren’t coming?” Neteyam asked, sweetly waiting for Y/N while the others headed out to wherever Rotxo was leading them.

“You go ahead pretty boy, I’ll just stay here for a bit” she looked up at him, too lazy to get up and walk around the beach.

Ah, there it is again, she called me pretty.

Neteyam involuntarily simpered at the nickname she’d given him, finding it stupid that a big boy like him was inwardly kicking and giggling at a pet name given by a girl. Especially one like this which actually made him wonder if she actually meant it or if she was just saying it.

“What?” She scrunched her brows as she fondly examined his expression shift from neutral to borderline abashed.

“What?” He asked back.

“What’s with that smile?”

“I always smile like this” he sat down next to her, silently wondering what had changed about his smile. He was smiling like how he normally did, right?

“No, you’re trying fight that smile” she was teasing, poking her finger playfully at his cheek which only elicited an adorable chuckle from Neteyam “was it because I called you a pretty boy?”

“You can call me anything you like, I assure you it doesn’t make me blush” he held her by the wrist to keep her from poking at his cheek, beaming down at the girl who was poking fun at him, quite literally.

“I didn’t say you were” she grinned “aw, are you actually blushing Netetyam?”

“Oh fuck off” he chuckled before his eyes went wide upon realising he swore in English around her. One more thing Y/N had in common with Lo’ak apart from their heightened curiosity was their childish fascination for swearing in English “do not repeat that”

“Don’t repeat what?” Y/N raised a brow, a mischievous smirk dancing on her lips “fuck off, is that what I’m not supposed to repeat?”

“Your dad is going to kill me one day” he facepalmed, groaning at the fact that he’d unintentionally added another profanity to her dictionary.

Y/N laughed at this, her forehead coming to rest on his shoulder as she continued to giggle. Neteyam only looked down at her fondly, feeling something warm zap through his chest like lightning. He liked the sound of her laugh and more so, liked the fact that he made her laugh.

Another thing he seemed to like, was how she hadn’t pulled away her hand that was still in his. Why did he like it? He didn’t know, he just did.

While the both of them enjoyed each other’s company, Lo’ak and Tsireya observed them from a distance. Like Y/N had suspected, her sister did manage to calm him down and convince him to return to the group. What they saw on their way back was their entire gang amis from the spot except for Neteyam and Y/N who were laughing while seemingly holding hands.

“Look at the fool” Lo’ak pointed at his brother, looking at him with an expression that was nothing less than disappointment “he’s clearly into her, he’s giving her ‘the look’, see”

“The look?” Tsireya asked, head tilting in confusion. She didn’t know what it meant but she couldn’t deny that they would look cute together.

“Yea it’s like.. he dying to kiss her” he told her and watched as Tsireya’s eyes went wide “but he’s too much of a wuss to do it”

“Does your brother like my sister?” She asked, once again looking at the two.

“If I ask him he’ll say no” he answered with a shrug “but it’s so clear that he has a thing for her. I mean look at him, he’s holding her hand and everything”

“Mhm, they’re leaning into each other a lot too while talking” Tsireya noticed, observing their body language more closely “do you really think they’ll end up together?”

“If we’re waiting for my brother to make a move, it’ll be a while before that happens” Lo’ak honestly told her with a roll of his eyes “he’s never been the type to run after girls”

Lo’ak found it to be a different but pleasant change to for once see his brother actually allowing himself to just be a boy and have fun rather than being busy with training. It was a bit unusual to see him enjoy the company of a girl though but it did give Lo’ak a chance to tease him about something. And he liked Y/N so if his brother did end up tripping over his own tail for someone, he’d be quite glad it was her over anyone else.

All he did wish for was for his brother to not antagonise him by playing oblivious to his own feelings and to keep all the mushy stuff away from his poor eyes.

#avatar #avatarimagine #avatar way of water #neteyam x reader #writing #fanfiction #neteyam imagine #avatar imagine #avatar fanfiction #lo'ak imagine #lo'ak x reader #lo'ak fanfiction #neteyam fanfiction #jamie flatters

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 3 months ago

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tuesday again 8/6/2024

people mad at a video game for being woke, i'm mad at it for not being woke enough. so it goes.

also i wrote a yeehawgust fic

listening

another addition to the "SOMEBODY COME FUCK THIS (GAY)" playlist, thank u charli xcx and billie eilish

reading

im still really annoyed with Retraction Watch for platforming a terf last year and then not doing any sort of sockpuppet damage control in the comments. since they got acquired by crossref they've done way less guest editorials. not to be all "stick to sports!" but stick to sports, retraction watch.

they did introduce me to this substack series i will be following with great interest about the rise and fall of hindawi. wiley acquired a paper mill a few years back, bc they seemingly did zero diligence, and then blithely ignored the problem for two years before being forced to do the single largest retraction of papers in scientific publishing history, somewhere above ten thousand articles because it is STILL ONGOING.

i do love following various retractions bc i like seeing what finally made someone go "wait a minute", and, as i have just written in a cover letter, "I studied astronomy and have held several data jobs because I’m fascinated with how and why systems work and fail..."

watching

my best friend has decided while i'm at her home in the evenings eating her food and bothering her children (for my mental health, it is very important i am fed tiny bits of mushed up banana by hand by her one-year-old), our new project is watching all the xmen movies. i have no particular desire to do this or special affinity for the xmen, and i would like to keep eating very good texmex and bothering her children (for my mental health, it is very important i play hot wheels with the five-year-old). this sounds so super bitchy of me but it's hard to convey that these are essentially on for background noise.

saw the first two. the two things i know about them are that hugh jackman is in them and they're at the statue of liberty in one

playing

an ideologically baffling little environmental game free in the epic store this week, LumberJack. this is on PC and Switch for $13, which is far more money than the playtime anyone can get out of this game. tiny tiny tiny little Spain-headquartered studio without an active website, it looks like one guy hired out to make this and two more games and then went back to single-dev projects. i can respect that!

steam reviewers are mad at this game for being woke, and i'm mad at it for being woke in a very strange way. your one mechanic, as a bear, is swinging a big axe to remove cars and trailer offices and portapotties and various garbage from the landscape.

i wish the movement and look controls are inverted, and i wish they weren't, or at least had an option to make them normal. i know Why this isn't a mobile game (can't monetize something with twoish hours of gameplay and twenty levels) but it's a very straightforward and simple game that would translate very well to mobile. much like donut county.

now for being picky about the political mindset of the developers: as much fun as it is to be a bear swinging an axe around, lumberjacks are not the people i associate with wild preservation movements.

saving the land and turning it back into pristine and perfect land for wild animals in this game looks like erasing every hint of human activity from a site and turning it into sheer recreational use. many levels are heavily polluted, but some can definitely be read as recycling centers. im confused by the erasing every hint of humans in early levels, and then this level where you break down a radio station, slap the host with your axe, and she turns into a park ranger who starts gardening and taking care of chickens?

i don't think that removing all the traces of people from the landscape will magically fix everything, nor do i think simply being in unspoiled wilderness will magically fix me.

there's a golfing level where you whack bombs into various small buildings. i think golfing to save the environment is a strange choice to make for designing a game.

i also briefly thought this bird in every level was an extinct ivory-billed woodpecker, which was a little alarming bc there are some real nutjobs out there with very strong beliefs about this bird and government overreach and how much the government is lying to you about the extinctness of various animals.

i stopped playing about halfway through bc i was not having fun and found the underlying environmental message a little confused. they've managed to sell at least 10k units which is...not very good. i am not surprised this is free on epic, and i wonder what their payout for that was. would not be surprised if they negotiated a payment to their nonprofit partner ecologi as part of that.

making

yeehawgust fill! i have another bitchy blond babygirl!

what the fuck is the prisoner? cult 60s british spy tv. with all the surreality and anxieties about the cold war and midcentury psychological horror you could possibly want

He’d been drugged enough times to recognize the splitting migraine rapidly galloping down his neurons. “Where am I?” He fought down the taste of bile (ketamine? xylazine, by the aftertaste) and the rising panic. Oddly enough, the migraine was always worse with veterinary sedatives. One would think a mind would adapt to nearly three hundred years of irregular drugging and constant experiments. One’s body had adapted and ghoulified, but in equally unhelpful ways. The tycoon flickered, approximating an appraising blink. “This meeting has been a long time coming, hasn't it? You've come a long ways, literally and, I suspect, figuratively as well. You’re in the Free Economic Zone of New Vegas.” They’d pretended the prisons were so many different places: across the Continent, in various parts of London, up and down and all around the East Coast of these wretched States. Rarely this far west, aside from the awful escapade in the faux pre-War Western town. “What do you want?” He managed to swing his ankles off the saddle (also pre-War? Heavily used. It certainly wasn’t his, the equestrian event had always been his worst event in the pentathalon) and jolted what felt like every half-dead nerve in his half-dead body.

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

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hooked-on-elvis · 10 months ago

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[Trigger Warning] ELVIS MEETING HIS FANS, WITH A GUN BEHIND HIS BACK: TRUE OR FALSE? (July, 1972)

July, 1972 on Elvis' Beverly Hills home, 1174 Hillcrest Drive.

INTRODUCTION: Some things need to be clear beforehand. Elvis was threatened quite a few times over the years, specially since he began performing live on stage again, in 1969. Death threats were sent his way occasionally. Whether the threats were intentional or just a way of messing up with a famous person, some of those sounded pretty serious, thus not only Presley's personal security men or the local police department, even the FBI worked in investigating some of those incidents. Things got to a point when there were moments the threats warned about bombs being placed at his concert sites at the same day a show about to take place. Nothing came out of any of those threats, fortunately but, once those things happened, naturally Elvis was concerned for his life, therefore he was absolutely entitled to carry a gun, out of precaution, safety, "just in case" situation. It's fair to mention the Manson murders had only taken place a few years earlier (August, 1969) and, as we all know, actress Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered inside her home, tragically, which happened to be at Elvis' Beverly Hills neighborhood, so, yes, Elvis Presley was usually carrying a gun throughout the 70s, often, if not all times.

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

Now, where this story on that one specific picture came from? Elvis' stepbrother, Billy Stanley. Billy is standing behind Elvis on the picture above.

Fans discuss Elvis' personal life over and over - and almost nothing can possibly come to conclusion because we weren't there to witness anything and some of the sources the stories come from are not so reliable as they seem to be, but still it's fun to collect different accounts on things that happened in the King' life. On January 10th, 2024, a fan shared the first picture (on top of this post, Elvis walking alone towards his gate with the left hand behind his back) on a Facebook fanpage. The fans passionately discussed the "gun" rumor. Pamela Freiberg, owner and administrator for "Elvis in the 70s" Facebook group, directly asked Billy about this "rumor" that was published in books and articles over the years, and he confirmed the story to her.

Pamela's comment on the group was: "Billy wrote to me ... here are the words .... 'There's actually a series of photos from this day. I was outside and saw a guy that was trying to look like Elvis. When I saw him, I thought Elvis would get a kick out of this. So, I went inside and told him about the guy. Elvis picked up his pistol and we walked to the gate. He didn't want anyone to see the gun, so he put it behind his back. As we were walking toward the gate, he motioned for me to take the gun, which I did and tucked it behind me in my jeans.'"

Some believe him, some not. One can wonder 'why Elvis would have his left hand on the gun, when he was right handed?', for instance.

Sandi Miller, one of the most recognized Elvis fans, who met Elvis in the 60s and today calls herself a "gate girl", — those passionate fans who met Elvis by standing at the gates of his homes, waiting for him to come outside, whenever he was there, to talk to them, something he would do frequently — who even was (to a certain extent) very close to Elvis, a friend even, since she dated Charlie Hodge for a time, was there that day on July, 1972. She commented on the thread in that one Facebook group too, trying to defend Elvis. She said, "He did not have a gun in his hand!! He often carried guns but not always and not usually when he would come out to visit with fans...more likely that he'd have his little derringer In his boot."

Elvis, July, 1972. Sandi Miller: "Same day but after he visited with everyone…then he and the brothers got in the car and left - he stopped again when he came back also."

— Sandi Miller's accounts on this July, 1972, moment. Those pages comes from the book "Elvis - Behind the Image" by Bud Glass. I do not know if it's the Vol. 1 or Vol. 2, tho. Excerpts from Sandi Miller's journals, where she wrote down details of the meetings with Elvis in the 60s and 70s, were used to both volumes of "Behind the Image" publications. Many candid pictures in those books are also hers. By the way, many of the candid pictures of Elvis in his gates we see around the internet were actually taken by Sandi.

Arrived around noon and there was already quite a crowd at the house. In the crowd of fans was a guy that resembled Elvis somewhat in you just glanced at him. He had heard that Elvis sometime came out to visit and had hoped to meet Elvis. One of the girls (fans) pushed the speaker and mentioned that there was an Elvis look-alike standing out there.... whoever answered the speaker apparently knew already because the answer was "We know". Just then a door opens up and there comes Elvis walking up the drive with his stepbrothers right behind him. It was fun watching Elvis' face as he talked to this guy, and add to see them side by side. After visiting for a while, Elvis said he had to get back inside because they had to leave for an appointment shortly. They shook hands and Elvis went back into the house - he drove out not too long after and once again stopped for photos before leaving. The man at the gate commented that Elvis had "made his day".

Personally, I don't see the fuss about this. I believe Billy. I believe Elvis was carrying a gun indeed, but he obviously didn't intend on using it unless he felt threatened, and we know stories about passionate fans who lashed out their idols, some even murdered them in fact (John Lennon was one of the icons, assassinated by a passionate fan). There's plenty of those stories. Let's just imagine ourselves as famous people. We hear there's someone trying to look like you, standing outside your house. Wouldn't you felt at least a little bit uneasy? I know I would never walk out there by myself. Elvis was curious if the guy indeed looked like him or not, maybe even because he had a twin brother who died at birth, Jesse Presley, so if I was him I would've been dying to see this look-alike person, but I would've been careful about meeting him too. You never know.

Elvis and his look-alike fan, Larry Blong. July, 1972, Beverly Hills, CA.

Fortunately, things went smoothly. Elvis saw the guy, shook hands, and the fan had the time of his life meeting his idol. That is all we need to care about. ♥

#elvis presley #elvis #elvis the king #elvis fans #elvis fandom #elvis history #70s elvis #1972 #1972 Elvis #elvis story #true or false

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surgepricing · 6 months ago

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RWBY Final Thoughts: Legacy

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. ... [Basically,] they behave like a cult.

This is a repost of a post I made February 1st, 2024 on another site. At the time, it was the final post of a deep-dive recap of RWBY and the history of the show, its fandom, and its direction under Rooster Teeth.

I felt this out with some of my peers and the feedback I got in relation to posting in on Tumblr was that, well, why not? It was my main haunt to begin with, and I may as well, since Rooster Teeth is closing its doors. I'm posting this mainly as a shot in the dark just to see how it gets received. Only minor edits have been made; I'm sure there's some stuff in here that would make people mad, but that applies to pretty much anything someone could say about RWBY. Click the read more to get a glance at how my time with RWBY ultimately wrapped up.

Nine years ago today, Monty Oum died of an allergic reaction. Today is a day of mourning for fans of his work, including RWBY. There’s no sense in waiting. Let’s finish this and heal.

The Showrunners

Miles and Kerry often received the brunt of the attention when it came to RWBY. As the writers of the show, they bore responsibility for the largest chunk of why it eventually went into the shitter, and fan anger against them was almost certainly not helped by the damn near idolization heaped on them by fervent stans. They are, undoubtedly, the focal point of RWBY fans’ parasocial relationship with the show.

Of course, despite sharing about the same credits space as his partner in crime, Kerry tended to fly under the radar a lot, with it being Miles who received the brunt of the fandom’s fury with each successive volume. It’s not hard to see why; the character Miles voices has been consistently over-exposed and is in many ways an obvious creator’s pet, with denials as to this fact falling on deaf ears as Jaune’s screentime continued to balloon past its merits, whereas the character Kerry voices could just about wrangle an average of ten seconds of screentime every three years. Certainly Miles has been in trouble with fans more often than Kerry for the shit he’s said and done. The Ruby body pillow and the Tifa Lockhart ‘prostitute’ comments come to mind. Oh, and the slurs, that one too.

But perhaps the reason Miles gets so much more flak than Kerry is that Miles just...acts like an asshole a lot of the time. Even aside from above examples, Miles’ flaws come out in his writing: he’s petty, holds grudges, can’t take criticism, and just overall has way more power over the story than someone of his caliber should. He’s very poor at disguising his real feelings and often lets them bleed through, and when he actually decides to voice them on purpose, things get ugly—refer to that Cameo about Ironwood.

But as tempting as it is to treat Miles as an out-of-control cockwaffle on the rampage and Kerry as his sympathetic ineffectual shadow, the reality is that they’re co-writers, have been for ten years, and anything Miles gets away with doing is as much Kerry’s fault as his. If the Gray Haddock situation has taught us anything, it’s that more people tend to harbor blame than the one individual that makes an easy scapegoat.

Since aside from aforementioned n-word business, Miles and Kerry are almost never connected to moral outrage, this makes it easy for the stans to uphold them, since all they really have to defend them from is accusations that they didn’t honor Monty’s “vision” for the series. This is only easy because the stans are fucking insane, but that’s for later on down the page.

“Vision” is in quotes because that’s how fans treat it, we all know they don’t really care. Miles and Kerry’s vision matters, and we know that much because of Calixyn’s interview where she all but begged to be told that RWBY Volume 5 was as bad as it was because the “good bois” had control of the show ripped from them. Nope, turns out all that racism, homophobia, and plain shitty writing is all on them. But at least they’re nice!

(Miles was 26 when he said the n-word. I’m 26 now when writing this. I think it’s pretty fair to call him an asshole.)

But the truth is that it’s objectively stupid to think that the direction of RWBY hasn’t changed since Monty’s passing, it’s impossible for it not to have. There are more writers on board than before, and it’s been a long time since he was alive to contribute his thoughts. The real question is whether they at least tried, and I don’t think they did.

I mean, Shane Newville never names Miles and Kerry in his letter, but he does state several times that the choices made for the show were not only not what Monty wanted, but “straight up just shitting all over what Monty made”. I find it very difficult to believe that that insinuation, and all of the people caught up in the net it casts, wouldn’t include those two. And like it or not, but the person who is able to compile tons of clips and interviews over the years as some sort of seeming immutable proof that “CRWBY” are good-hearted people determined to preserve Monty’s vision, isn’t really looking at any more evidence than the person who’s come to the conclusion, based on what they’ve seen, that that the opposite is true. And they’re certainly looking at less evidence than the people who actually did work there around Monty, Miles, and Kerry. The facts sometimes boil down to ‘if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and is implicated in the walls of text like a duck, it’s probably a duck’, guys.

Even in the best case scenario in which the work of Monty Oum turns out to have been treated with dignity and respect (and was just really shittily written from the beginning), the fact remains that Miles and Kerry did not put a quality product into the world. I will be very surprised if either of them manages to get a lead writing position ever again, because once the popularity of RWBY fades, so too will the goodwill they’ve somehow amassed among its fans. RWBY, much like Twilight, is inevitably going to taint the people who were in charge of writing it.

But Miles and Kerry are just two dudes. What exactly is going to happen to those fervent fans who hung on their every word and insisted they were the embodiment of everything pure and innocent? What, exactly, is going to happen to the RWBY fandom that once seemed to be unavoidably populous on the internet?

F, N, D, M

We already went over “constructive criticism” and “worldbuilding”, so let’s add another eternally-misused word to our roster. You know, something I’ve occasionally thought about in terms of online spaces is that no one knows what a “comfort show” is. It’s one of those terms that became too popular almost as soon as it was introduced, to the point that it became meaningless, much like “hyperfixation” and “anxiety”. I see people refer to RWBY as their comfort show and I’m just like...how? A comfort show is supposed to be the show that always puts you in a good headspace, a show you rest easy with because you’ve always connected with it because the love was always there. A comfort show is a show that you watch in your down moments to feel better, not a show you think is just the greatest thing ever, the bees’ knees if you will.

A comfort show is not a show you force yourself to like, it is not a show you defend at all costs, and it is not a show you only still cling to because enjoying it once coincided with a time when you felt popular and among friends. Which, increasingly, seems to have been the case for RWBY fans.

RWBY’s Fandom

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. But I’m doing it now because the RWBY fandom, though now it’s a shadow of its former self, is still a sizable chunk of people and took a lot longer to die than most other fandoms.

The RWBY fandom itself was an especially big and very online fandom, and the show produced an abnormally large amount of big name fans who continued to use their own influence to push its success and keep its momentum going. As I’ve said before, the RWBY fandom is something that Rooster Teeth were able to extract an excessive amount of praise out of for minimal effort; it simply seems to be in RWBY fans’ nature to speculate and theorize and over-analyze and fill in blanks, and to perceive good writing and animation where there is none. But you know how fandom operates—the bigger its size, the more infamous it becomes.

Long since famed for being especially toxic, those who are in the know consider RWBY fans a different breed, really. They create and move narratives at high speed and act quickly to correct any perceived dissent in the ranks, casting out anyone that feels disillusionment with the product and insisting everything is peachy even as their world crumbles around them. To RWBY fans, the “CRWBY” are always separate from the “problematic” aspects of Rooster Teeth (which is basically the whole company) and it doesn’t matter how many of its flaws get highlighted; RWBY and the people that make it are always great, innocent of any harm done and fantastic, and anyone that dislikes them is a villain—even if those people were at one point part of the “CRWBY” themselves. Loyalty is everything. In other words, they behave like a cult.Those acronyms themselves have always bothered me, and I’ve grown a strong distaste for them. Originally they were just a quirk of the show; a format for team names that spawned the name of the show and eventually stopped being relevant altogether. But RWBY fans are simply unable to not use them. It’s not “the fandom” it’s “the FNDM”. They’re not “the RWBY team” or “the RWBY crew”, they’re “CRWBY”. Even people that the fans are actively trying to shame, shun, and harass don’t get to simply be people—they’re “RWDE” and, when that became an actual community of sorts unto itself, was switched to “HTDM”, short for “hatedom”. They remind me distinctly of code words that get formed and passed around in cult movements, identifying terms that quickly provide boxes to put people in and make it easier to sort loyals from disloyals. “Hatedom” itself is another one of those terms that spread and got so prolific it really doesn’t carry any meaning anymore. Real hatedoms are surprisingly rare, guys. Every fandom that becomes big enough for its respective product to become criticized eventually comes to believe it has a ‘hatedom’ because how could someone dislike something I like so much? But a hatedom on its own arises out of very specific circumstances and environments, and causes the spread of hate for a product based on broad foundations that are often unfair to the product and which creates perceptions that spread faster than the work, so that the work is often talked about in mocking reference rather than true dissatisfaction.

RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom guys, it never did. The Last of Us doesn’t have a hatedom. Fairy Tail didn’t have a hatedom. Blackpink doesn’t have a hatedom. Even Marvel doesn’t have a hatedom.

Paris Hilton had a hatedom. Nickelback had a hatedom. Hell, the website Tumblr itself had a hatedom. These were examples of people or products whose reputations spread too quickly and eventually swallowed rational perception of them, with people who have never experienced them or their work dismissing them and the fans who enjoy it wholesale.

Using the term “hatedom” is understandably common because (and in spite of the fact that) it allows for easy miscategorization. A hatedom is not composed of people that were actually exposed to the work, found it lacking, and expressed that. A hatedom does not occur in the wake of a product that was so bad it pissed off its fans and caused them to walk. People don’t hate Metroid: Other M because they can’t stand the sight of a woman being vulnerable and don’t understand challenging drama, they hate it because it was poorly written, badly designed, and tarnished a long-running and highly cherished gaming heroine’s reputation. People didn’t hate Fifty Shades of Grey because of some bias against women expressing their sexual freedom, they hated it because it was a wildly misogynistic and badly-written piece of dreck. People didn’t hate The Last of Us Part II because of homophobia and transphobia, they hated it because it was a misery fest with a tired moral theme that posited itself far more deep and compelling than it really was. And just because people with the above disingenuous views also hated these things does not discount the fact that the works got the reputations they did because they were getting back the exact amount of love and respect that was put into them.

Similarly, RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom. It does, in fact, have an ex-fandom. Those are also things you don’t see very often, but when you do, they almost always follow the same pattern, don’t they? A work which got wildly popular very quickly, took really deep nosedives afterward, and became disowned by the people that had formerly propped it up.

But that’s a discussion for later. What exactly makes RWBY’s fandom so toxic and cult-like, and why and how did it get that way? I think it’s a combination of several key factors that were baked in and collided badly.

The first was ease of access. RWBY was sold extremely well early on, and shared enough similarities with both anime and video games that it attracted many curious people from those communities. Combine that with vibrant colors, an attractive visual aesthetic, an air of badassery, and good music, and it gained a lot of loyal fans quickly—fans of anime and video games, specifically, being fans that tend to get more attached than to other mediums and are known for spending a lot on merchandise. These, in turn, morphed into nostalgic elements ripe for misremembering—people often have difficulty acknowledging that something they once liked isn’t good anymore even on its own, and I think RWBY fans in particular put way too much energy into the show to be able to admit that all the time they spent defending it (and harassing people who criticized it) was for nothing.

That skyhigh rocket to fame early on, of course, was attached to the reputation of Monty Oum, and once he died, he quickly became a martyr, which galvanized the loyalty of the show’s most toxic fans even further. To this day, talking about Monty at all, even for the right reasons, is seen as disrespectful or distasteful unless you’re trying to use him to prop up Rooster Teeth, a double standard I’ve unfortunately run into even in seeming safe spaces. I think if we’re comparing RWBY fandom to a cult, then Monty Oum and his memory can be compared to a central mythologized figure, the center around which are formed all of the pretty lies the members of the cult will tell you. Monty’s name is irreplaceably tied to RWBY, and as such, in order to defend Monty, its fans have to defend RWBY...and you can see where this leads. Attempting to talk about the mistreatment Monty and his family went through at Rooster Teeth is seen as using his name as a weapon—nevermind the fact that Rooster Teeth and their fans regularly use his name as a shield.

Of course, what this really reveals is that many such people don’t care about Monty, who he was, or who he went through, but rather his name alone. In fact, I’ve straight up seen RWBY stans say that people shouldn’t “take Monty’s name in vain”, as if Monty were in fact some sacred religious figure. It’s both bizarre and harmful.

A third factor was popularity. For a lot of the same reasons as, say, Supernatural, the perception of RWBY skews much more broadly between fan and ex-fan than that of the typical over-hyped show. The truth of the matter is that when a show gets popular, or really any work gets popular, enjoying it becomes a cliquey sort of thing. People that enjoyed being into something well-respected and widely known and basically the hottest trend are far more prone to become overly attached, put too much of themselves into it, and remain unequipped to deal with the fact of that trend’s eventual passing, especially if it’s a fall into disgrace rather than a quiet entrance into history. You can still find certain especially toxic big names from the RWBY fandom active and posting, pretending not to notice that their audience has become smaller and smaller over the years. Let’s face facts here, a lot of people that enjoy being part of the “in” crowd never manage to figure out how to accept losses and will do anything to try and regain lost popularity, or fool themselves into thinking they’re still on top of the world.

But we can reason and explain all day. Another truth of the matter is that it shouldn’t be other people’s problem that fans can’t accept reality and adjust, and that the RWBY fandom quite honestly deserves its reputation as abysmally toxic. The way terminal fans of the show have treated anyone who dissents, most prominently Shane Newville and other ex-employees, let alone other ex-fans of the show, is quite frankly disgusting. RWBY stans are difficult to look at in all of their bewildering, teeth-gnashing toxicity and forgive...so I’m not going to. People that still insist there’s nothing wrong with this show or the company making it are, as far as I’m concerned, beyond help, and are part of the problem. Many an ex-employee certainly thinks so.

In a lot of ways, you could call the fandom one of the driving forces of the show’s failure, mostly because they had an abnormally large amount of influence over the show. Pleasing the fans has always been a major goal of the RWBY team (unless you like characters Miles Luna doesn’t, I guess), but it’s almost disturbing how the Rooster Teeth strategy has been to lead them along and bat their eyelashes at every turn and how the fandom laps it up.

Of course, Rooster Teeth feeds the parasocial engine by engaging with the fans as equals, and I was given a disturbing reminder of how many of the people who worked on the show—the ones who aren’t pissed and digging themselves out of trauma ditches—behave exactly as the fans do, tweeting twenty times a day about their favorite ships and memes. By creating the perception that RWBY’s team is just like the RWBY fanbase and wants the same things they want, they tap that line of excess energy that’s kept this fandom going so long despite how far it’s fallen. It’s that “hey! my friend said my ship is going to be canon and he works on the show” feeling.

Of course, a probable reason as to why so many employees who worked on RWBY behave the way RWBY fans do is because a lot of them started out that way. As in, student hires. This has long been an open secret of Rooster Teeth’s M.O. for a while now, hiring people who look up to them and engage heavily with their content. Many an ex-animator has lambasted this tactic because it’s insidious, and purposely designed to make the incoming staff feel honored and indebted and excited so they won’t notice how they’re being fucked over. Arryn Troche, who made the ‘gays greenlighting volume 10’ tweet, rings up as a particularly eerie example considering they have the same rather-uncommon and unconventionally-spelled name as the voice actor for a ship they’re obviously very attached to. A quick search reveals them to have been a longtime fan and cosplayer for the show before being signed on as a junior animator.

And it is the fandom who ultimately makes the legacy for any given work or body of work. So what is RWBY ultimately going to be remembered for?

Legacy

I thought about it for a little while and found five things that are most likely to be associated with RWBY in the public’s memory after its death. The first should come as no surprise to anyone.

Bumbleby

The only part of RWBY that will likely be carried on by fans who stuck with it until the end is, of course, the only part of it that mattered, to many of them. You’ll know from my earlier recaps that shipping was always a big deal in fandom, but due to key choices (or if you prefer, mistakes) made during Volumes 2 and 3, one ship grew larger and more promoted in fandom circles than any others.

This is a combination of the unique features of the RWBY fandom and their one-track mind. The fans are well-known, as I said, to fill in the blanks in a pattern that best suits their narratives, and this works out with Rooster Teeth because it means that any sudden changes in direction they make will always be excused and praised rather than critically examined. Unsurprisingly, Bumbleby’s fandom, now that their victory has been cemented, have doubled down on their narrative that this was the intended goal from the beginning, despite it being plainly obvious that early RWBY was angling for Sun Wukong as the love interest and threw the occasional bones to Blake/Yang shippers to try and play nice.

This used to be one part of the fandom, of course, but as the show continually bombed with viewers and made more and more decisions that pushed them away, all competitors were slowly filtered out as their fans left, until Bumbleby shippers were the fandom. It’s no coincidence that Blake and Yang suddenly started acting unusually touchy and sentimental in Volume Six, following on the heels of a volume of RWBY so wildly unpopular that it woke up the company execs and forced them to acknowledge that the biggest part of their fanbase was only going to remain loyal in exchange for one thing: their ship.

The sad thing is that you can tell Rooster Teeth wanted to explore other options. Volume Five features a rather sudden shift into Yang and Weiss interactions in what I remain positive to this day was an attempt to sway shippers into a potential second choice while Black Sun was still in the oven, and this really represented one of the major errors of Rooster Teeth, in that they failed to understand the audience they were trying so hard to please.

Bumbleby became what I call a “Big Red Button” ship, and it is only the second of its kind that I’ve seen. The first? Destiel.

Yes, there’s a reason I kept comparing RWBY to Supernatural whenever Blake and Yang’s relationship came up. I admit I wasn’t a part of the Supernatural craze in its heyday and have never really enjoyed the show, but I’ve watched enough of it to connect the dots from what cultural osmosis I had to the eventual downfall we saw in November of 2020.

Both Bumbleby and Destiel were held up as the gay ship that would change everything, the biggest ship in the fandom and the one that would’ve been a major push for LGBT visibility, at least during their heydays. The problem was that its fans were not really that interested in LGBT visibility and were simply obsessed with the ship itself, applying it value as a win for LGBT audiences purely to bolster its perceived importance. Fans like this were not ever going to accept any alternatives regardless of the sexual orientations or gender conventions involved. Hence, the metaphor that is “the big red button”. You have a big red button that says “canon gay ship but not the ship you want” and ask the fans you’re trying to court whether they’d press it or not. Whatever they might say out loud, you know none of them is pressing that fucking button, ever.

Both of these Big Red Button ships became what they were due to showrunners being forced into courting an audience they really didn’t care for, and how could you blame them when both were infamously very, very over-active and annoying in general. Just like with RWBY’s well-intentioned but misguided Freezerburn phase in Volume 5, Supernatural also tried to gently shut down fans who then managed to obliviously ignore any and all hints that their ship was not meant to be endgame, and I can say that because “he’s like a brother to me” in any fandom but Supernatural would’ve been a tactical nuclear strike that sent the shippers packing. Once it failed, the gay bait came out in full force. It’s well known by now that, contrary to what one would imagine, the CW was not pulling a profit off of Supernatural’s minor mainstream success pushed by a cult following, so it’s no wonder they eventually resorted to desperately baiting the one audience that was going to stick it out no matter what, provided they had the right relationship dangled in front of them. RWBY went through the same thing.

The main problem with these two ships is that for all its diehards insisted that it was all about the gay representation, their respective shows teased and baited for so long that the world outside the little bubble these shippers lived in had moved on by the time they came to fruition. Gay visibility in media these days, at least western media, is easily available, to the extent that sometimes people believe homophobia is totally over when it really, really isn’t. If you’re looking for gay representation, you can find it plenty of places, and the first place you look probably isn’t going to be Supernatural or RWBY. So the huge wave of viewers that these shippers expected upon their victories was never going to occur, which might could’ve been avoided if the writers had simply grown a pair and made moves towards canon much sooner than before the shows were on their last legs and due to be scrapped.

Or, you know, just been honest. Diversions and alternatives were never going to work. The only thing that these shippers were ever going to understand was a hard no, a “sorry, this ship isn’t going to happen”. But the execs in charge of these shows were never willing to take a hit like that, so instead they dug their own grave.

And where does that leave the shippers, those people who devoted their whole lives to these fictional characters, only to find the show that bore them into the universe dead in a ditch? Well, nowhere good. Much like Supernatural, RWBY is heavily associated with its booming period, the heavily online portion of these shippers’ lives in the early and mid-2010s when it was all the rage, and yet in modern day, it’s seen as a bad neighborhood to hang in, an abandoned mansion at the corner of the street where awful things happened. These shippers don’t have many friends except each other.

Just like RWBY, Supernatural also exists primarily as an ex-fandom now. Much of its former fanbase remember the good days fondly but make no secret that they stopped following it once the writing tanked, and this left the shippers without many allies to associate with since so many of them had been pissed off with the way their shows ultimately became the Destiel Show and the Bumbleby Show, respectively. Contrary to an unfortunately popular idea, these shows did have actual LGBT fanbases, only a lot of their LGBT fans were not on kool-aid and avoided being sucked into a trap called “if you don’t ship this, you’re homophobic”.

You will find that the Bumbleby fandom are often looked on with disdain by quite a number of viewers of RWBY who have accused them of speaking over minorities, sexual and otherwise. Many fans have noted that, aside from Blake’s bisexuality being a seemingly late addition (Arryn Zech is noted to have cast her as straight when discussing Ilia Amitola’s ill-fated crush on her as late as 2019), Blake was very swiftly removed from all faunus characters who held romantic connotations in favor of Yang, implicitly saying that Blake was better committing to a white human woman than to an ethnic faunus male. There are obvious reasons why this left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. Not to mention, other LGBT fans that invested in the show were not exactly welcomed with open arms.

Fair Game, or as I tend to call it, Qrowver? Qrow x Clover? Yeah, that was huge in Volume 7’s airing days. It very much experienced a rapid ballooning in fans and fandom love...but we all know how that ended. Many a fan who felt heartbroken and, importantly, betrayed by Clover’s sudden and rather pointless death turned on RWBY and Rooster Teeth and accused them of gaybaiting, which is of course exactly what happened. They received no sympathy from Bumbleby shippers—because of course they wouldn’t. If Rooster Teeth would gaybait with Qrow, a popular male character, that would mean they could potentially be gaybaiting with Blake and Yang, too. That was unacceptable, and so ironically the part of the fandom that had always crowed about the importance of extending a hand to LGBT viewers turned on LGBT viewers, valiantly defending Rooster Teeth as they always had.

And because Bumbleby fans had no room in their hearts for anything about RWBY except Bumbleby, and were hostile to anyone who didn’t ship it, they ended up being their own best friends and everyone else’s bad memories. When RWBY has faded from the public’s memory and is no longer a source of active income at all (so, basically right now), one of the only relics you’ll find of this show will be the two women making out in all the fanart you’ll find on the occasional Tumblr blog.

The Bigotry

You could call this section “the Racism” since that’s the biggest part of it, but we’d be remiss in neglecting the harm done to other minorities as well. We’ll get to them in a minute, but race is the thing that’s going to pop to mind when we talk about one of the other things RWBY left behind in the common memory.

One of the longest-running subplots that RWBY ever went through with was the racism subplot. Its basis is one of the things that so severely dates RWBY: creating an in-universe stand-in for people of color through the existence of people with animal traits was something you would absolutely not get away with after 2020, and even by 2016 was something liable to be seen as tacky. Nonetheless, RWBY openly used the faunus as stand-ins for black Americans and the struggles they faced in a white world.

Except that the company, based in Texas and headed largely by white staff, did not feel the importance of that. What slowly started out as a main character’s attempt to redeem an organization she felt had been driven too far and was no longer her home was slowly transformed into a means by which some incredibly racist people could spout off about what they felt were the real issues to be talked about, which were the condemnation they felt was deserved by activists that turned to violence, labeled, a little too quickly, as terrorists.

The 2010s saw a shift in social values, and much as with gay audiences and gay characters, black audiences and black characters—as well as other racial minorities—were experiencing something of a renaissance, with efforts to put the voices of these people into the public’s feeds. It wasn’t just George Floyd in 2020—the unexpected and frankly traumatic reign of Donald Trump as president of the United States galvanized the divide in America and social awareness became a bigger thing than ever, and since Trump was a flagrantly racist person with racist beliefs who enacted racist policies and was uplifted by racist Americans, people pushed back as they felt their lives and existences being threatened by a racist establishment...an establishment which Rooster Teeth came down on the side of very firmly.

No quarter is given to the fictional stand-ins. Sienna Khan’s policies are never examined in-depth, and the only close looks we get at the sorts of activism the White Fang does are at Adam, who is obviously condemned by the narrative and made into everything but a mustache-twirler, with delusional and frankly baffling beliefs of faunus superiority spelled out at length. No matter what concessions Rooster Teeth might’ve tried to make with Sienna’s beliefs before they stuck a sword in her, the fact of the matter is that their beliefs came through in the voices of Ghira and Blake, who made it very clear that the individual motives and experiences of people like Ilia, Corsac, Fennec, Yuma, and the rest simply don’t matter in the face of what they’d been driven to do by them. The whole ‘blacks can be racist’ tone of the final scenes involved in this subplot are both miles removed from the more cautious and neutral tone of early RWBY, and also just a very alarming red flag overall.

I went over this in my Volume 5 Final Thoughts: the shoddiness of the volume does not lie solely with the animation department. Miles and Kerry are known to have had generally sole control of the show up until Volume 7—but we also know that they didn’t have to, if they were writing anything company execs felt wasn’t to their tastes. The sudden twisting of Adam into a homicidal incel ex-boyfriend, along with his mutation into a faunus supremacist, when he was the face of the faunus movement as a whole, along with Sun’s blatant ill will towards the White Fang when he’d previously been willing to give them a chance on Blake’s word, all imply that Miles and Kerry endorsed the worst possible interpretations of racial activists and felt free to condemn them and place responsibility onto the faunus—and by extension, the real-life minorities they represented—to take a stand against the bad seeds within their causes, and the fact no one stopped them from airing this implies the higher-ups felt the same way.

People didn’t just leave RWBY after Volume 5 because of some really badly animated fights—they left because they’d felt too much of the authors’ racism coming through in the narrative and couldn’t comfortably continue watching. Every member of the faunus that had “bad” views was either killed (Adam, Sienna, Fennec), arrested (Corsac, Yuma), or “redeemed” by choosing to fight the first two (Ilia). All of these combined factors, with no room for charitable interpretations…not a good look.

And once Adam was defeated in Volume 5, and the White Fang reformed, that was the last anyone saw of that subplot, which had taken five years to wrap up and somehow still ended too early. Miles and Kerry had washed their hands of it, and references to Blake’s place in society were sparing from then on. This subplot’s inescapable presence throughout the show, combined with how it was dropped out of existence, left no room for redemption, either. No one was going back and saying “maybe this looks really, really bad”.

And so, that’s what a lot of people carried with them as their final and most relevant memories of RWBY: it’s astounding levels of racism. This is a bitter subject for many an ex-RWBY fan, many of whom aren’t white and, even among those that are, it’s simply inexcusable. Meet someone on social media who talks about RWBY at all, and isn’t one of the Bumbleby stans we’ve already discussed? You will find some mention or other of RWBY’s racist elements somewhere within their sphere. And so, that becomes a part of RWBY’s legacy, as a feature of the show that was simply too big to ignore and too poorly-handled to forgive. People don’t get over this shit, man.

This is of course not to mention the well deserved shitty reputation RWBY has for its other bigoted elements, as well. Bumbleby, as we’ve discussed, encompassed pretty much every RWBY stan left standing by 2020, but that left quite a few ex-fans that were fed up with the company’s obvious ploys when it came to sexuality and gender. Remember when I talked about Qrowver up above? Its ballooning and immediate fall from grace was a much-condensed version of RWBY as a whole, and pretty much featured as Rooster Teeth blowing their last remaining patience from LGBT fans to smithereens. The fact of the matter is that when you get down to it, every RWBY volume after Volume 4 was not a good time to be a minority. If you were gay, the show seemed to either ignore or despise you—between the background gays that warranted mockery, the mixed reception Ilia generated, and the outrage that finally boiled over when Clover bit it, part of RWBY’s legacy is how utterly unpleasant it has been for LGBT fans who expected and deserved better.

And so despite entering the scene in 2013 as a supposedly progressive show all for being led by four women, the show died known as a low-effort half-baked cringefest whose politics were always on display and always several years behind the trend.

The Good Days

Of course, another major part of RWBY’s legacy is the early days when everyone actually liked it. This is, again, something the show creators brought on themselves and something fans assisted with. I did mention the nostalgia for the Good Ol’ Days as a significant part of the RWBY fandom’s more cult-like elements, after all. The fact of the matter is, on some level, everyone knows that RWBY has spent several years going downhill. The ex-fans lament this fact, and the diehard stans insist that it’s all just as good as it used to be, primarily by doing what they do quite a lot, and linking completely coincidental elements back to things characters said or did in previous volumes as some sort of evidence that this has been the plan all along.

I’ve run polls on this matter before; even though I’ve recapped Volumes 1-3 thoroughly and shone lights on some pretty significant flaws, you ask anyone what they think the best volume of RWBY was and they’re gonna tell you Volume 3. Yes, even with all of the stalking incel Adam and the deaths of Penny and Pyrrha. It’s the last time RWBY felt cohesive and even though some obvious derailing was in effect, and Shane Newville has openly said that the behind-the-scenes matters were pretty ugly, it’s still the golden child. Shane’s only one person, and it’d be a while before RWBY scandals would become consistent and begin to overshadow the show as a whole.

The RWBY team themselves have certainly nurtured that very much on purpose. That tactic started with them, of course. Many elements that were either unpopular or predicted to ruffle feathers were stated to have originated in earlier volumes, even in situations where this wouldn’t have made sense or where it’s an obvious lie—such as Maria Calavera. They know full well their seasons post-Volume 3 were unpopular and receiving blowback, and tried to minimize it by linking them to more well-respected seasons. Suffice to say that this simply didn’t work. But it does make people remember those earlier volumes. Because so many ex-fans lost their energy for RWBY after its most active period, much of the hype from the hype era is all that you’ll see when you encounter one. Nostalgia wins out in the end, and at least RWBY can say that, as a show, it had enough of a headstart to leave an impression that lasted in a positive way. Although that’s only one side of the coin...

The Scandals

Let’s face facts here, the biggest part of RWBY’s legacy, period, is that it fucking died. It didn’t die instantly, but rather took hit after hit, blow after blow, and slowly had its image tarnished alongside that of the company, which failed to contain repeated scandals as ex-employee after ex-employee after ex-employee spoke out about the abysmal ways they’d been treated.

RWBY is Rooster Teeth’s biggest IP by far and, really, their only one worth talking about. Every other show was either eclipsed by it or unofficially canceled after bad reception. So when Rooster Teeth suffered the consequences of their actions, so did RWBY. It really can’t be overstated how the last few years of RWBY’s existence have been absolutely bombarded by a barrage of terrible Glassdoor reviews and bombshell exposure letters. Fans managed to stay strong through the first few rumblings of ill will, but after Volume 5 shook the fandom loose, discontent entered enough of the fandom sphere to be normalized, and once that happened, it was all downhill. Once people were actually allowed to talk about not liking Rooster Teeth’s content, they sure as hell weren’t going to be dissuaded from talking about not liking Rooster Teeth as a company or its practices.

Separating the art from the artist is a very difficult thing to do and only really appropriate in certain situations. Don’t fall for any kool-aid, guys, it doesn’t make you more mature or ‘above all the drama’ to actively ignore the damage done to real people in the process of getting fictional content out into the world.

If you’re still able to enjoy the Harry Potter books and look back on the good times they gave you in fondness, then fine. If you actually purchased and played the Hogwarts Legacy game programmed by antisemites and which puts money in the pocket of the transphobic owner of the franchise, then yeah, people will be right to give you shit for it. There’s a difference between quietly enjoying a product in a manner that doesn’t hurt anybody, and actively ignoring the people hurt to make that product while feigning concern. The gap in the fandom widened as the repeated leaks and scandals continuously ate away at the protective bubble around Rooster Teeth and it became clear that whatever fans might bleat, Rooster Teeth wasn’t going to ‘learn their lesson and do better’. The habitual cycle of using whatever recent scandal had occurred to cast disappointment and anger on a particular figure and uplift the rest of “CRWBY” (see also: the Gray Haddock issue) gave diminishing returns as the bombs kept dropping. This is part of why RWBY has such an ex-fandom, because if they aren’t enjoying the product and people were hurt to make it, why stay?

Crunching employees so hard they struggle to sleep and suffer debilitating health issues? Writing the n-word on a white board knowing a black employee will see it? Goading someone into trying to kill themselves? Calling an LGBT employee a slur and then making up a public-friendly nickname in place of that slur just to get away with continuing to call her that? Laying off people without warning or a means of letting them stay afloat until another job is found? Not paying or crediting employees and cultivating an environment where those in charge do what they want and those in the public eye reap all the benefit while those without a consistent spotlight get treated like dirt?

Just some of the things I thought up off the top of my head. There’s plenty more in the details. And you can’t blame Fullscreen, you can’t blame Warner, you can’t just write it off as something that happens at animation studios, because it isn’t. Yeah, the work environment in general for animation studios in America is lacking because, ya know, late-stage capitalism hellscape, but that’s dismissive of the point. Rooster Teeth are a bad company and hurt their employees and lie when called on it. It’s impossible to separate RWBY from Rooster Teeth (despite stubborn stans’ best attempts, which themselves have been called out by these same ex-employees) and because of that, RWBY’s legacy is one of corporate abuse and utterly vile behavior towards people that just wanted to make something cool.

People have refused to associate with the show over these things and honestly, they’re right to. RWBY’s ultimate legacy, if we’re honest, is the show that became a shadow of its former self, still trying to dazzle with reminders of its former glory and promises of gay relationships, all while trying to squeeze money out of both the employees who made it and the fans who upheld it. It’s the show that cost hundreds of people their physical and mental health and didn’t even have anything to show for it at the end of the day. It will live on in history as the most bitter of pills to swallow, that something you once liked and wanted to succeed can and will be ruthlessly twisted for profit margins and might actively hate you on the side. And speaking of…

Monty Oum

The biggest travesty of RWBY’s legacy is that Monty Oum is ultimately only the smallest part of it. He’s there, but barely—he’s a name in the credits that quite frankly is only there to keep up the facade of loyalty, when the show had stopped being Monty’s show before he even died and by now can be safely said to resemble nothing he would’ve made.

It’s a shame that for all that Monty was held up as a genius of his craft and a genuinely good man who inspired so many people, all he’s going to be remembered for is...this. A show people only attach his name to in an effort to insist it’s actually worth sticking by. Yes, Monty did other things, had other works, but none of them ever achieved even a fraction of the fame and respect that RWBY had from its first baby steps in 2013.

Maybe this could’ve been avoided if the real carriers of Monty’s legacy—Sheena, his wife, and Shane, his pupil—hadn’t been cast off as they had.

Shane seems to have found a new life and is working with Dillon Gu on animation, but I think we’ve all noticed his name hasn’t gone mainstream yet. I’ve tried to get in touch with him; from what I’ve gleaned, I frankly just advise leaving him alone. He wants to move on and I don’t think the RWBY fandom, which was so awful to him for telling the truth, is ever going to be a place he can feel welcome.

Sheena has mostly been quiet and done her own thing, cosplaying and watching anime and hopefully enjoying herself, although I notice posts on her Twitter feed from last year calling for a New Deal in the animation sector and castigating corporate abuses.

She also plays Hades, a much better product than RWBY with more love put into it and much better LGBT representation, which means her taste is excellent. She has a site now that you can go to, and the about section doesn’t mention Monty, her late husband, at all, for obvious reasons: Sheena doesn’t want to be connected to RWBY. Though, there is something there that’s noteworthy, in the last paragraph:

Still desiring a social element to her career, the animator turned professional cosplayer also has a history in the live stream world. Past broadcasts have included creating costume pieces, playing games with community members and subscribers, RPGs and more. No matter the project, peers or problem, Sheena strives to keep moving forward.

That powerful phrase we all associate with Monty.

It’s a shame that this show had to be Monty’s legacy, and that years off from now, his name isn’t going to mean anything to the public because the project he was passionate about and died making outlived him and his passion. It feels like his legacy was stolen, and his own part in the show’s legacy is held up purely as a pedestal on which the show should rightfully shine.

Every time I think about Monty, I think about how much I don’t want that to be me. For all the years I’ve spent here, with my graphics certifications being wasted since I earned them while I slave away in retail, I wonder if I’m the lucky one. If I were to enter the workforce and do what I loved, would it be worth it in the end? Would what happened to Monty and Sheena and Shane happen to me? Not sure I wanna know.

Snipped here.

#rwde #rwby

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leothil · 2 years ago

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Introduction to TV ratings

Hi! I know a lot of us in the 9-1-1 fandom have started looking more closely at episode ratings this past year, but every time I see them posted I also see a lot of comments from people being unsure what the numbers really mean. I'm someone who first got introduced to tv ratings from being involved in the pro wrestling fandom and learned a lot about them through osmosis, so I thought I could make a small informative post explaining the main concepts and why tv ratings matter!

What I'll cover below:

What are tv ratings?

What exactly are they reporting?

How do I know what the numbers mean?

Are the numbers any good?

Let's dive in!

What are tv ratings?

Tv ratings, or Nielsen ratings, is an audience measurement system operated by Nielsen Media Research that tries to figure out the audience size and composition for tv programs in the USA. The Nielsen company has been measuring this since the 1950's, and their ratings is the currency that drives business between advertisers and broadcasters. To simplify it, the higher the rating a program gets, the more the broadcaster can charge the advertisers and agencies for broadcasting their ads to the audience during that program.

The data collection methods have varied over the years, but right now they're using Portable People Meters and track data from DVR:s. Since 2017 they're also tracking data on Hulu and YoutubeTV, and select programs on Netflix. It is an approximation, since they (naturally) aren't getting the full data from every single tv in the country, but they are good enough (and trusted enough) that their reported metrics are what's considered official.

So what exactly are they reporting?

A couple of different things! The most interesting numbers are total viewers, demographic shares, and demographic ratings. According to Nielsen they also track "gender, race, ethnicity, income, education, occupation, etc." but those are usually not reported as openly as the aforementioned three numbers and are mostly used by advertisers.

Sites like Tvline, Tvseriesfinale and Showbuzzdaily often report daily ratings very quickly after Nielsen releases them. The Fast Nationals are usually what gets the most attention, since they're released the morning after, but they're time period ratings, which means it only measured what was watched during primetime. The more accurate Official Nationals are released later the day after, and are program ratings. So if a program was moved from its usual slot for some reason, the fast nationals will still count the original time slot towards its ratings, while the official nationals will count the slot it actually aired in.

There are also C3 and C7 ratings (live viewing + DVR three/seven days after the airing), but they are seen much more seldom and are largely a fighting point between networks (who want to get paid for more days) and advertisers (who only want to pay for live viewings).

How do I know what the numbers mean?

Let's dive into that! I'll use tables from Tvseriesfinale and Showbuzzdaily with ratings for Monday March 20th (the air date of 9-1-1 S6E12) as my examples.

Here's how Tvseriesfinale reports the ratings, they're using the fast nationals (or "fast affiliate ratings"). The %change is compared to last aired episode of the same show. If you're wondering how the demo change can be positive while the number of viewers change is negative, I'll get to that in a minute.

And here's Showbuzzdaily, they report Live+Same Day which include live viewership + DVR views from the same day (which should be the same as fast nationals, but sometimes varies a bit). You can see that they colour code according to how far above/below the average rating of the night a program placed in different ratings categories.

Now for what the different columns mean:

Viewers (mil) or Persons 2+ (000s): the total number of viewers, in millions, who watched the program. So here Tvseriesfinale reports that 4.3 million people watched 9-1-1, and Showbuzzdaily reports that 4.413 million people did.

18-49 demo and Sales Demo Ratings Adults 18-49: These are the numbers that everyone is really looking at! The demo rating means proportion of a certain group (in this case adults 18-49) that are watching a particular show. In other words, this is the percentage of all adults aged 18-49 in the United States that were watching the show. So a 0.6 (or 0.59) rating for 9-1-1 means that 0.6% (or 0.59%) out of all people aged 18-49 were watching 9-1-1. This is the money demo, this is the number all advertisers and networks are looking at. Persons 18-49 is considered the most lucrative demographic, so the more people in that group your show can draw, the better for the network since they then can ask for more money from the advertisers. Persons 18-49 are considered to be the group to best target advertisements towards for a variety of reasons (disposable income and interest towards buying new things being two of them).

As you can see above, Showbuzzdaily also reports the demo numbers for Adults 18-34 and Adults 25-54. Some advertisers are more interested in these demographics, but overall 18-49 is still the most popular demographic. As you can see, the audiences skew older for all programs. I believe the general consensus is that younger people (<35-year-olds) watch much less tv than older generations, and these numbers support that. This is also why total viewers and demo ratings can have different %change - the 18-49 demo rating cuts off a relatively large part of the audience.

Demographic shares: While the ratings are based on percentage of all people in a demographic, the shares are based on percentage of the number of people who were actually watching TV at that time. So a 6.0 in Women 18-49 means that of all women aged 18-49 watching TV at 8PM, 6% chose to watch 9-1-1.

So... are the numbers any good?

That depends on what you're looking at. TV ratings as a whole have been dropping steadily for many years now, so trying to compare ratings to even, say, five years ago can be hard. For example: in the late 90's, pro wrestling regularly pulled in ratings of 5.0 and higher (I'll put a few below as an example), but those same shows would now be ecstatic if they managed to get above a 1.0 rating; their regular numbers the past year (for the big shows RAW, Smackdown and Dynamite) have mostly hovered around 0.4-0.7.

The first number is the demo rating

For the best overview, it's best to compare ratings for a certain show to the ratings of other shows on air, and I believe that's what the networks are doing as well. In that context, 9-1-1 is doing very well, as it regularly ends up near the top for scripted shows, even when looking at all shows over a week. The average rating for S6 so far is 0.63, which is lower than the average rating of 0.76 for S5 (which in turn was lower than the average rating of 1.05 for S4 and so forth). The ratings consistently dropping year over year are a concern for the industry at large, and it's pretty clear streaming services have played a big role in causing this, but I find it hard to believe tv networks would consider stopping producing shows for live tv anytime soon.

And that's it! If something still feels unclear, feel free to drop me a message and I'll do my best to answer any questions! If you want to dive a bit deeper into the different metrics, I recommend this page on Showbuzzdaily, and if you want to look at ratings from previous seasons, Tvseriesfinale's 911 ratings tag is a good place to find articles summarizing both individual episode ratings and ratings for a whole season.

#tv ratings #911 ratings #911 fox

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ca-suffit · 6 months ago

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neilcfreak hasn't been seen in the fandom in a *long* time, so kind of fucking weird and obvious that nalyra gets a bait ask (which she knows is a bait ask) saying it *must* be bullying that caused it and listing every way neil was a good person. where tf has neilcfreak been much in the last year? besides a few months ago when she was trying to cover up for white fandom. nobody cares about u girl, nobody is rly sending these asks about u except ur own friends (or u lol).

anyway who wants neilcfreak's racist receipts :)

last year, ao3 was getting called out for never following up with their promises made in the wake of BLM 2020 to better protect users against racist harassment. neil and a black user commented on the same post, the black user replying to neil's comment u can see above of "if u don't like it make ur own site lol."

this white user (futureevilscientist) then random af pulled the asks out and tagged the black user at the start of the post to talk all this shit AT them fsr?

then later, neil shows up herself.

this is the part u cannot *cannot* say is not racist. neil is directly replying to a reblog of *someone else's main post* and placing full blame for a "call out post" on the *black* user.

she then pulls out her white jewish shit to speak over the main topic, which is racism / antiblackness.

playing oppression olympics can be done by any marginalized group but it usually works the best for white ppl because white ppl get the most sympathy when doing this (u want the most shining example, how often are we talking about white gay oppression in this fandom above racism / antiblackness, which is the *actual theme* of the show...or even gay oppression through a black pov, since u see louis experience that constantly. how much are we told that this show is rly about white gays and nothing else?). ppl assume whiteness is more innocent by default so will pile more on a black user for "being aggressive" towards a *white* jewish user without needing any proof. that's what neil was counting on here. she also then had a bizarre, loud breakdown on her account for extra assurance she'd be seen as "the real victim" (for making a stupidly racist comment in public). ohh yeah weaponize those white tears girl. she then "quit" tumblr for a while and when she came back, as mentioned in the linked post above, she had to again mention "drama" for good measure. "remember how I was bullied off this site u guys :("

white fandom was all over her dramatic distraction posts btw (nalyra commented on them too, so she is v aware this happened). v few people reached out to the black user or cared about the shit they were dealing with.

these white fandom ppl *never* have any receipts of bullying either, they just *say* it happens and flock to give hugs so it looks like lots of support is happening for a real "issue." but it's not real. everything they do is meant to manipulate u. this nalyra ask is still doing that.

when ur told what to think about someone or u can't find evidence of things happening beyond what anyone, even a group of ppl, *tells u* is happening then u need to rly remain suspicious of the reality of it.

these are asks that the black user got after this stuff happened. so now we've created a new issue from nothing and we're not talking about racism or how ur bullying a black user over literally nothing anymore. now it's suddenly all about poor neilcfreak and her white jewish identity and victimhood from a big, bad black fan. she's gotta make this all make her look like the real victim to cover up how embarrassed and stupid she felt for being called out on saying racist shit.

this is why white ppl need to understand these abusive techniques and get on ppl's ass when they pull this, not just leave it up to black and brown ppl to do. white fandom will cry all the white tears possible and claim ur talking over a white jewish person, being antisemitic. it's an attempt to emotionally manipulate u, keep talking (think of how often claims of antisemitism are used to shut down anyone being pro palestine, it's the same shit). this is racism. this is weaponizing an identity to cause harm to a black person cuz u were caught saying racist shit and want to deflect. if neilcfreak wasn't a huge racist she'd have *also* called this out and told ppl to stop doing this on her behalf. that would require her pulling her head out of her ass first tho and not sending these anons herself prbly.

I was looking for a different receipt to end on but found this instead, so let's talk about this too since we're here

here's neil after this shit went down, trying to make anne rice all kinds of marginalized identities so ppl can excuse her abusive shit too. she never said she was queer and she never identified as trans. u can't just label ppl shit because stuff they said sounds "close enough." she did enough harm as a cishet white woman can u all fuck off already with wanting to find more excuses for never wanting anyone to criticize this piece of shit.

good riddance, wretched bitch.

#interview with the vampire #amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire amc #iwtv amc #amc iwtv #iwtv 2022 #fandom racism #neilcfreak

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jazzthatonewriterchick · 2 years ago

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I'll Show You "Uptight" (18+ Fic)

Pairing: Adult!Bakugou x Black!Fem!Reader (Coworkers to Lovers)

Synopsis: In which a very pissed and very emotionally frustrated Bakugou decides he’s not going to let you get away with your lip that easily and pays you a visit one girls’ night to prove to you that he is, indeed, able to be “looser” after you make a drunk comment about his introverted and uptight personality to your mutual friends and Kirishima “accidentally” spills the beans.

Story Warnings: Smutty smut (MINORS DON’T READ), 18+, AgedUp!Bakugou (he’s 25 years old), Swearing, Grinding, Public Displays of Affection, Mentions of & Consumption of Alcohol, Consensual Sex w/ Verbalization, Foreplay, Public Kink, Manhandling, Mild Degradation, Praise Kink, Daddy Kink, Spit Play, 69ing, Facefucking, Safe Sex (WRAP IT BEFORE YOU TAP IT), Edge Play, Spanking, Mild Choking, MULTIPLE Positions, MULTIPLE Orgasms for Reader, Aftercare, Reader is black-coded but anyone can read this

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters mentioned in this fic. However, as this is my writing, I do not give permission for my work to be reposted on any other sites that are not from my own accounts. Thank you!

Writer’s Note: Back with another one for y’all and this one is a bit longer. It’ll probably be either 5 or 6 chapters. I came up with this after being on a dancehall/reggae craze lately & thought, “hmm…would Bakugou know how to dance to this shit??” I decided yes & got to writing since I’ve got time before winter break ends. If you wanna listen in on the playlist that inspired me to write this fic, it’s riiiight up in here. I hope y’all enjoy the first chapter! Be safe out there & thank you for reading! -Jazz

Ao3 link here!

Chapters: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

*********

Chapter One

Bakugou was pissed.

He didn’t consider himself to be someone who gave a shit about what anyone said. If someone decided to take a jab at him or comment on him in any way, he’d usually just tell them to fuck off and keep it moving. Or, if said jab or comment got back to him from someone else, he’d usually pull up to the bitch who said it and ask them to say it to his face…which they never would.

Bakugou was a hard nut to crack. Ever since he was in his teens, he was hard edges and a tough exterior, all to hide the softness that resides within him, of course. He hasn’t changed much since graduating from UA and becoming the second most popular pro hero in Japan at age 25. His mom, some mentors of his, and his closest friends are the only ones who are aware of this truth.

You, however, were not. And that shouldn’t have gotten to him the way it did now, but fuck, it did! He didn’t get what irked him about you so or why he was so hung up on you. He’d only known you for a couple of months since you started working at his agency alongside him and Bakusquad. You weren’t a pro, only working at the front desk, but you were respected as if you are one.

Maybe it was the way you always give each employee a kind smile when they walked in, brightening up the day. Or maybe it was your work ethic and how you went above and beyond. Or maybe it was the way those pencil skirts and work slacks you wore hugged your ass just right…or maybe that was just Bakugou’s dick talking. Probably.

Needless to say, you bothered him. But he knew rationally it wasn’t your fault. Whatever it was about you that had him tossing and turning at night, or so tongue-tied that he refused to speak too much to you when you said hello during work hours, or made him blush while on patrol when he so much as thought about your pretty smile or gorgeous skin, was all on him. But dammit, did he want to blame you for all of it!

But that was only part of the reason why he was so pissed. The main reason why was because you couldn’t seem to keep your pretty mouth shut, especially when you drank. He came to this conclusion one day while he and Denki were coming back from patrols. It was a warm spring day in Musustafu that day, but not enough to have him sweating buckets in his hero’s uniform.

However, when he got back to his agency and finally stripped himself of the outfit, the air conditioner felt good on his slightly-clammy skin. He sighed in relief, letting the outfit pool to the tiled floors beneath him. “Ah, man,” Denki sighed, stripping off his jacket. “I’ll tell ya, six hours of patrolling is fuckin’ wicked. My feet are killing me!”

Bakugou had chuckled at his friend’s pain as he stepped out of his outfit, only in his Calvin Klein briefs. “That’s why I chose you for patrols today,” he smirked. “Gotta do something besides flirt with Jirou on FT.”

Denki gaped at him. “Hey!” he shouted. “That ain’t true! And at least I got someone to flirt with. All you’ve got are those cute little FunkoPops you hide behind your desk.” Bakugou shot him a death glare as he grabbed the extra water bottle out of his locker, earning a shit-eating grin from Denki. “You’re a Sailor Moon fan, eh?” he hummed.

“Fuck off!” Bakugou growled, just as Kirishima and Sero walked into the room.

“Uh-uh, no killing each other right now,” Sero groaned as he sat down on the bench between the row of lockers. “I haven’t eaten yet and it’s all I can focus on.”

“We wanted to come and get you guys first,” Kiri says as he sits down closer to Bakugou, legs open in his sweats and wiping his face with a towel. They must have just come from the gym/spa downstairs that Bakugou was hellbent on getting built. “You guys up for ramen?”

“Hell yes!” Denki practically shouted, now in his undershirt and briefs. “Just let me get a shower in and I’m good. I could use some spicy miso.”

Kiri grinned happily, all sharp, white teeth. “What about you, Bakubro?” he chirped. “You comin’ with this time?”

Bakugou glanced at his friends as he took some Native deodorant out of his locker, slathering some on. He’d make sure he showered after coming back from lunch. “Sure, why not?” he grumbled, expecting some kind of cheer between his friends…but there was nothing.

At the sound of sheer silence, he glanced up at his friends to see them all gaping at him. “What?” he growled.

Denki blinked at him, alarmed. “Do my ears deceive me?” he gasped teasingly. “Is it snowing outside? Bakugou, going out with us? You never go out with us!”

“Yeah,” Bakugou agreed, irked as he puts on a pair of active Nike joggers to hide his muscled legs and thighs. “Because you guys are fuckin’ embarrassing. Plus, sometimes I just prefer to eat in my office. It’s better privacy.”

“And better company,” Denki snickered. “I bet those FunkoPops really listen to you.” Sero guffawed into his hand, but at the sight of Bakugou’s death stare, he clamped up.

“I guess that means you’d be up for going out with us tonight for drinks?” Kiri asked hopefully. “They’re having happy hour. C’mon, it’s a Friday!”

Bakugou would have asked if you’d be joining them, but he didn’t think so. From the way Kiri put it, it was a guys’ night thing. And even if you were, he still probably wouldn’t have gone. He isn’t much of a “social” person if you couldn’t tell. Instead of downing shots at a bar, he prefers to drink from his private bar at home.

And clubbing? Partying? Forget it. His kind of part is smoking a blunt, watching a good movie, and falling asleep on his big ass couch.

He could tell Kiri knew his answer before he even said it: “Nah. Besides, you know how I feel about those Friday night crowds. They’re–”

“We know, we know,” Kiri groaned, rolling his crimson eyes. “They’re too rowdy. Too sloppy. Too this, too that.” He crossed his big, tattooed arms over his broad chest, fixing Bakugou with a tight glare. “And yet, they’re havin’ fun too! C’mon, Bakugou! When’s the last time you’ve gone out with us to celebrate just because? When’s the last time you’ve had fun?”

Fun. He said it as if the word was foreign to Bakugou and that pissed him off even more. He had fun…just not in the social sense. He didn’t see the need in partying on the weekends and socializing with people at a club that you’ll never see again. Plus, to spend even one hour in a crowd of drunk bar hoppers was less than ideal for him. But he didn’t answer Kiri as he pulled on a Nike sweatshirt, then began to dig into his locker for his socks.

Kiri groaned, exasperated. “Ugh, so boring!” he dramatically whined. “Now I can see why Y/N she’d never date you.”

He let out an audible gasp at that moment, quickly clamping a hand over his mouth just as Bakugou slowly raised his head out of his locker at the mention of your name.

Slowly, he turned to stare at his friend who looked redder than his hair, then at Denki and Sero who looked like they were writing Kiri’s obituary in their heads. The locker room swelled with tense silence as Bakugou processed Kiri’s words on an empty stomach. You? Dating him?

You’d never…date him?

“What did you say?” he questioned, staring down at Kiri. His friend said nothing, eyes wide and horrified.

“You said Y/N would never date me?” he parroted, more confused than he is upset…well, upset too. Why would you say something like that? And where the fuck is the context?

“Why?” Bakugou asked, just as shocked at the question as his friends were. But it wasn’t so much at the question, but the way he said it: Confusedly. Sadly. Like he gave a shit. And goddammit, he did. And he does!

Kiri looked at Sero and Denki, silently asking whether or not he should continue. Sero shrugged while Denki gave him a silent, tight-lipped nod. Kiri turned to Bakugou and began to explain, going into great detail about the context of the conversation. It went something like this:

“Okay, okay, okay,” Mina drunkenly said, a round of tequila shots in her body. “Next question: what pro hero would you date and why? And no one is off limits.”

‘No one, shorty?” Kiri smirked down at her, earning a glossy kiss on the cheek from Mina that made you coo and melt from the cuteness. Mina sat in a booth squished between Y/N and Kiri, an arm slung over the back of his seat while Sero and Denki took the other side.

This was last week on a Friday night where the Mexican restaurant they occupied was packed with a younger crowd looking for food and fun. You were there, looking pretty in your cherry red work dress that you paired with some flats before leaving work that day.

“We’ll start with you, Sero,” Mina said, nodding at the black-haired pro. He thought for a minute, sucking on a lime absentmindedly as Denki secretly stole a chip and some guacamole of his plate. “If we weren’t friends, definitely you and Y/N,” he decided.

“Awww!” you had cooed, sipping from your margarita. From the hooded gaze you were giving them and the way you laughed a little too hard at things, it was obvious you were feeling the alcohol now. “That’s so sweet!”

“Denki?” Mina hummed, raising a brow. “You got some choices if you weren’t dating Jirou?”

Denki smirked at her from across the table. “Very dangerous question, but you,” he replied easily. “Y/N…probably Momo if she wasn’t with Todoroki. And Toru.”

“How’d that work?” Sero asked, confused. “You can’t even see her! How the fuck would you know where to kiss her?”

“Guess you’d just have to kiss her everywhere till you find out,” Mina mischievously replied, wiggling her brows at the now-blushing duo. “Y/N?” she sing-songed, nudging your arm. “Your turn. What pro would you date and why?”

“Trust and believe if it’s me, you’re leaving with me tonight.” Sero winked at you, making you laugh and Mina roll her eyes. You didn’t mind Sero’s flirting or their antics, their warm personalities making you feel so much a part of their group.

“Hmm, I guess it’d be…” You hummed to yourself, cutely tapping one manicured finger against your plump, glossed lip. “Probably you, Kiri.” You looked at the redhead who grinned in triumph and bashfully. “And maybe Hawks if he didn’t have them big ass wings. Where does he put ‘em during sex?”

At this, Denki and Sero laughed. “Interesting,” Mina hummed. “I would’ve sworn you’d say Bakugou since the guy is crazy about you.” You stopped short of sipping your margarita, the glass halfway to your lips. “Uh…what?” you asked slowly, turning to stare at Mina.

“Bakugou likes you,” she repeated, tilting her head curiously. “Didn’t ya know? Shit, we all knew even though he tries to play it off like he doesn’t. Bakugou is like that sometimes.”

The look on your face was honestly hilarious–wide eyes, mouth parted in shock at this new information. Finally, you laughed, shaking your head. “No,” you said, disbelieving. “That’s definitely not true. Bakugou don’t even speak to me!”

“Does he have to?” Kiri asked, confused. “I mean, the dude doesn’t really talk to anyone except us. But in your case, he’s just not good with talkin’ to pretty girls. Call him emotionally constipated.” The table erupted into laughter again, except for you, still reeling from Mina’s words.

“But…” you began, trying to reason, “but he’s so…serious.” You sat back in your seat, drink in your hand. “But even if he did like me, hypothetically speaking,” you continue, “I wouldn’t date him.”

Silence settled on the table, the air thick with anticipation. “How come?” Mina asked, actually sounding sad about your answer. “I think you’d be so cute together!”

“Look, he’s a nice-looking guy, don’t get me wrong,” you began to explain, “but he’s just too serious, as I said. He barely smiles, always giving me a scowl. Are you sure he doesn’t hate me?” Kiri laughed, shaking his head. “Nah, cutie. He doesn’t hate you. Like I said, the guy is emotionally constipated.”

“You’re telling me,” you scoffed before licking some sugar off the rim of your glass. “I don’t even think I’ve ever seen him show any emotion but distaste or anger. Plus, he seems way too uptight for me.”

“In what way?” Sero asked, slapping Denki’s hand when he tries to sneak another chip off his friend’s plate. You shrugged, looking down momentarily to gather your thoughts. “Well, for one, he barely goes out with us, and the one time he did, he sat down on his phone the whole time.”

The rest of the squad remembered that night: it was at Denki’s annual NYE party at Hotspot, one of the hottest clubs in downtown Musutafu. The drinks were plentiful, the music was jumping, and you looked downright delectable in the little sequin skirt that shimmered every time you swayed those hips and bent over to throw ass onto the girls and Sero (with your consent, of course).

All except Bakugou, who sat firmly in his chair on his phone despite people asking him to dance so many times throughout the night.

“He kept looking at you that night,” Mina giggled. “Mans couldn’t keep his eyes off of you.”

“Then he could’ve at least danced with me,” you replied. “But he didn’t! I can’t be with a guy like that. Sure, I love those nights in the crib and some good cuddling, but if I wanna go dancing or something, how can I take him out?” You sipped your drink with finality. “I need someone who’s looser–and I just don’t think Bakugou is that someone for me.”

When Kiri finished the story, he looked at Bakugou like the man was close to jumping someone. And he was. His mind was on you, jumping your bones and finding out why the fuck you felt that way about him.

He was holding the door to his locker so hard that his knuckles were white. “Why would she say that?” he snapped. “She doesn’t even know me!”

“Well, shit, Katsuki,” Sero spoke up, “it’s because you never gave the girl a chance to know you! You barely go out with us anymore, especially when she’s with us.”

“And it doesn’t help when you barely speak to her,” Denki added. “Of course, she’s gonna think you’re uptight!”

Bakugou was at a loss for words because they were all right. Dammit, he hated to admit it and he never would aloud, but all of them were right. But what they and you didn’t understand was that he never danced at Denki’s NYE party that night because he was so afraid of popping a hard-on in front of you. After staring you down the entire night, wondering what your ass felt like in his hands, it was difficult not to become rock-hard. Sitting down was the only way to avoid that.

To add to that, he was always afraid of saying the wrong thing to you, so he always kept your conversations short. He kept his distance to avoid embarrassing himself and yet he felt embarrassed standing in that locker room.

“She thinks you hate her, man,” Kiri added. “Seriously. I told her you don’t, but the girl is convinced.”

Katsuki felt like hitting himself with the locker door. “Fuck!” he hissed. “Now what the fuck do I do?” Was there anything he could do at this point? What if he epically fucked this up? What if he never got the chance to feel you pressed against him or feel your soft lips on his?

Denki rose from his seat and sauntered over, throwing an elbow over Katuski’s locker. “Well,” he began, “and this is just a suggestion, so hear me out: you could always just show the girl that you’re no uptight or a dickhead.”

Katsuki scowled at him. “How the fuck would I do that?”

“It’s simple!” Sero jumped in. “Next time we all go out to shoot the shit, and Mina and Y/N come along, you come with us and act like you actually wanna be around us. Including her.” He clapped once, standing up from his seat. “Problem solved! Now are we going to lunch or do I have to eat one of you?”

As the three idiots argued among themselves, Katsuki got to thinking about Denki and Sero’s advice…and then out of his mind popped the best idea ever. It was just too perfect. Of course, he could show you that he wasn’t uptight. He could shove your words right back down your pretty throat and admit how he felt about you all at the same time.

He instantly whipped around to slam his locker door shut, causing the guys to jump. “Y/N and Mina comin’ with tonight?” he asked, looking at Kiri for an answer.

The redhead shook his head. “Naw, Mina said she and Y/N are joining the girls for girls’ night. They’re goin’ to a club, apparently.”

“What club?” Bakugou asked, trying not to sound too desperate, but Kiri had laser vision for this type of shit. “Dunno,” he answered, “and even if I did, I’d tell you not to go. It’s a girls’ night, K. You really wanna crash that?”

“Shit, yeah!” Denki hollered excitedly. “Just tell me when and where. I’ll go with.”

Sero grinned, just as down. “Me too. I could use a little adventure and drama.” He looked at Katsuki who had an almost crazed look in his eye as his plan began to map itself in his brain. “Why? What’d you have in mind?”

Katsuki just smirked deviously in response, because by the end of tonight, you were gonna regret drinking those tequila shots and talking shit about him to his friends.

He was gonna make sure of it.

#i'm excited to write this!!#i haven't written a fanfic in soooo long #bakugou x black reader #bnha smut #18+ fic #MINORS STAY AWAY #smutty smut #my works #my fic shit #i’ll show you uptight #black bnha #black coded reader

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