#THEY JUST... LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH... THEY WOULD FIGHT LITERAL MONSTERS FROM OTHER HELLISH DIMENSIONS FOR EACH OTHER

[bylertruther]

guys... idk if u knew this i think i'm the first person to ever notice but like... mike and will... love each other? and they have since before they even knew what love was? like whoa 😳

[kanene-yaaay]

Go to Sleep

Kanene’s note: Gosh, having a schedule is weird. I just wanna post everything I already wrote and ramble non stop about it asdfgtyujkigfdo. XD

Well, this was suppose to be a drabble, but it’s very long so sdftyujikgfred. I hope you like it!

Warnings, fun facts, random things and stuff:

* This characters don’t belongs to me! They all belong to Thomas Sanders from the serie Sanders Sides.

* This is a SFW tickle fanfic. If you don’t appreciate this kind of content, please, look for another blog. There are a plenty of fabulous arts in this site!! ^w^)b

* This is Lee!Virgil with Ler!Roman. Around 1.500 words.

* Sorry for any spelling, pontuation and grammar mistakes! Any and every advice is very very welcome! \(-w-)/

* Listen a bit to the birds today. Changing the way you think is not a bad thing. Drink water, sleep, eat and love!

[~*~]

Roman growled, missing by a few inches the button of his thunderous, infuriating alarm before finally hitting it. Staring and blinking lazily at the numbers his brain struggled to discern and recognize, only to confirm it was really time to wake up and start the day. He grabbed his pillow and squeezed it with all the strength he could muster, rolling from one side to other on the mattress, trying to wake up his body as quick as his mind and almost falling from the bed a reasonable number of times during the process.

 He got up, yawing, stretching and humming as the first lyrics of the day stuck on his head, hand rubbing at his eyes as he followed the kitchen’s direction with slow steps and tired sways on the beat of the song.

 Two dark, wide eyes stared right back at him, their owner completely frozen on the spot with his hand inside the cabinet, probably already holding some sort of a snack. Roman also stopped mid-step, gears running inside his mind, gaze locked on the other, his brow progressively furrowing.

“Virgil,” he began, voice slightly hoarse “What the heckty heck are you doing up? It’s barely seven in the morning!” Virgil only stared back, slowly closing the cabinet’s door, as if afraid the movement would startle the other. Roman proceeded to get some eggs and other cold ingredients from the refrigerator for the breakfast, his words growing more awake and vivid as they spilled with no filter or whatsoever from his lips. “You got an early shift again or something? Those are absolutely hellish. A bunch of people exhausted, tired and glaring at you as if you are the holder of all their problems and their solutions can only be achieved by being insufferable pieces of- Urg. I can’t believe they would give you one right after you got the night one. Damn, I didn’t even see you arriving here yesterday!”

 He turned his attention back at the other, looking for a kind of frustration in the place of the still startled, wide gaze which continued to be directed at him. Virgil nodded slowly, stepping away and putting some physical distance between him and the confusion on Roman’s features.

 Then, between the strings of sleepiness that clouded his brain, it clicked.

 Suddenly more details on the other’s behavior started to become clearer: the way Virgil’s hair was messier than his usual ““style”” (Roman scoffed mentally, thinking that if he rolled his eyes any harder they would never come back to his normal place again), his wary, yes, but way too much slow movements, the way he seemed to be unable to stop blinking at every millisecond and, above it all, the final piece of the puzzle.

 Virgil wasn’t wearing his pajamas.

 “YOU DIDN’T!” Roman gasped, as if Virgil’s life choices were a personal attack. “YOU DIDN’T GET ANY SLEEP LAST NIGHT!!” A turn of heels and he was again fixating his glare on the other, his free hand accusingly pointing in his direction, receiving an annoyed hiss as immediate answer.

 “Shut up!” Virgil snarled, practically growling back at him. “It’s fucking seven am don’t be so freaking loud.”

 “Don’t change the subject! Why didn’t you go to sleep?”

 The one being questioned just snorted, half amused. “Bold of you to assume I’d ever sleep in my whole life.”

 “That is it.” Virgil didn’t even have the time to wonder the meaning of his friend’s sentence before the aforementioned picked him up, resulting to a not very contained shriek escaping from his lips and his hands not much gracefully – or gently, although since they were keen on just jumping on each other out of nowhere to play fight Princey would be fine - meeting his friend’s face.

 “Roman! What the he-”

 “Did you just SLAP me? My beautiful face?! Before my own beautiful eyes??” Virgil Storm always got, even if he would never admit this out loud, surprised with Roman’s capacity of doing a series of offended incoherent noises which evolved to words before being carefully metamorphosed in weird noises all over again, and in the end still managing to form comprehensible sentences. His surprise did nothing to quell the grumpy snark immediately flying from lips, though.

 “And I’m going to do it again if you don’t let me go in this exact instant.”

 “You go and try to help and that is the acknowledgement you get,” The one wearing pajamas with little crows printed on it huffed, mumbling in a lower tone as he noticed the sharp gaze being thrown in his direction. “fucking unbelievable.”

 “I still can hear you, Princey. You’re literally carrying me.”

 “I sTiLL cAn HeAr yOu-OW! Ow! Ow!” The sentence was interrupted when the sleep deprived one punched Roman’s shoulder. “You’re insufferable, you know that?”

 “Let me fucking gAAH!” In a way his wish was granted, one could say as they watched his protest being cut as Storm was impolitely tossed on his bed, Roman quickly following his friend on the mattress, arms hugging him from behind, and physically preventing him from escaping his current soft predicament. “Prince, you’re dead.”

 “Shhh, no talking. We’re sleeping.”

 “We are not. You are being a pain in ass and I am about to defenestrate you.” Despite his fervent protests, his sharp, flaming glare began to lose its heat, his body not doing any actual effort to free himself from the other’s – strong, good - grip, muscles starting to relax against the great warmth involving him in a comfortable and secure blanket.

 “Sure, sure, mister Grumpy Pants, you can do that when you wake up.” He tightened a bit his hold around Virgil, yet being the most careful as possible, actively ignoring the annoyed hiss his friend gave him. His hoodie was really fluffy at the touch, slightly remembering his stuffed animals he frequently hugged to sleep.

 For a moment, everything was pleasantly quiet. The one with smudged makeup, since he hadn’t time to get it off before being trapped by his roommate and best friend, felt the tiredness becoming sleepiness as the seconds went by.

 …That was until an electric sensation shot across his spine, leading him to almost jump in the same place 

 “S-stop nuzzling me!”

 “Hm? Oh sorry.” Virgil pressed his lips tightly closed, preventing the wobbly giggles to escape as Roman speaks, not realizing how close his mouth was from the base of his neck, every breath sending tickly shocks across every nerve. “You’re just too much sooooft.”

 Roman opened an eye when realized that no snark remark from the other followed his words, the figure in his arms shaking too much to be asleep. A frown painted his feature as he readjusted the position of his hands, trying to get a bit more of balance to look at Virgil’s face when suddenly a high-pitched yelp escaped, cutting the air and immediately catching their attention.

 “Did you just squeal?” He questioned as his glare assumed a playful shine seeing a blush spread on his now frozen friend.

 “It was NOT a squeal! It was a yelp.” Virgil’s words came so fast that they almost tripped on themselves. Roman snorted, a smile taking over his face. “Get off me!” and, in the moment the one wearing a hoodie tried to pry his hand from the spot on his right side where it was resting, the pieces finally clicked in the right place and his smile quickly submerged, giving space to a smirk.

 ‘No WAY Doctor Doom and Gloom is ticklish!’

 However, the red lover only blinked as the true personification of innocence and naiveness, his hand firm in its place, fingers starting to slowly move, light pokes being delivered on the sensitive skin. “But why that, Knight Mare? It’s cold and all I could ever want is just to hug my bestest friend!”

 “You already hugged me, now go aWAY!” His voice trembled in the last second, the exact moment his thumb experimentally scratched the spot right under the lowest ribs, leading a surprised squeak to leave Virgil’s mouth.

 They both stared at each other, gleaming, filling their wide eyes.

 “No.” Virgil said, trying to squirm away but finding himself stuck between Prince and the wall. Roman didn’t even attempt to hide his smug grin, anymore. This was going to be so much fun

 “Don’t you dare! Don’t you freaking dare!!” His friend only laid down again, now carefully, yet firmly, pulling him one more time against his chest, growling playfully. Years and years fighting for the Tickle Monster title on his family, battles and battles against Remus only sharpening his skills, which showed by the way his fingers seemed to find every single weak spot on Virgil’s skin, wiggles, scribbles, pokes and scratching exploring everywhere. “No! Nononono! You fucker, you moron, you bitch, you-” A few chuckles cut his curses as he one wearing pajamas squeezed his side a couple of times, the tip of his fingers also teasing his ticklish stomach. “Roman!!”

 “No, no, my so dear, so ticklish, friend. Roman is no longer here, this is…” He paused for a dramatic effect, basically beaming at the giggly giggles and wiggly wiggles from the other. He shoved his face on his neck, the next words vibrating almost as bad as the spidering on his ribs. “The Tickle Monster!!”

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

more thoughts about the homecoming au, the au where maedhros and maglor get brought back to tirion after the war of wrath to be prettied-up trinkets on finarfin’s shelf, with painted-over scars and muffled screams. it is dark, it’s full of all kinds of emotional and caretaker abuse, and the brothers weren’t exactly in a good state of mind before any of this happened. @sunflowersupremes wrote the initial au that wasn’t even meant as horror, @outofangband - this au is as much theirs as mine, several of the concepts here were originally theirs, and a lot of this originally came out in dms with them. part 1 is here. this part contains gaslighting, loss of autonomy right at the end, more suicide mentions (thanks mae) and just general abuse from people who care more about their own comfort than the people they’re supposed to be caring for. it’s worse than the first part, honestly

most of the stuff the fëanorians had on them when they surrendered got taken away pretty fast. which is honestly understandable; some of it was cursed, a lot of it was weaponry, all of it stank to the high vault of the stars

but they both managed to hold onto some personal effects, or get them back before they went in the incinerator. a broken locket, a torn-up book, nothing fancy, nothing large, but things that still mean a lot to them

the valinoreans aren’t entirely comfortable with this. they find a lot of the brothers’ comfort items mildly disturbing, stained with darkness and (occasionally literal) blood as they are. maedhros had this dessicated finger he refuses to explain anything about that got disposed of very quickly

maglor has a few strands of brightly coloured thread, spun around each other somewhat inexpertly. he tends to pull it out when he’s feeling depressed, working it between his fingers until he feels like he can face the world again

one day, one of his minders who gets along better with him asks where he got it. from the twins, maglor admits. it’s part of some embroidery elrond abandoned when they left -

and it’s snatched out of his hands. his minder looks down at him compassionately. ‘i know you miss them, but you caused those boys a lot of pain, you know? you shouldn’t romanticise your relationship with them’

which - maglor’s relationship with the twins was complicated, and while it wasn’t nearly as hellish as elwing fears, it wasn’t entirely healthy. maglor was dependent emotionally on the kids a lot more than any adult should be to children, and vice versa

because the twins were the last people he had left. when maedhros executed celegorm’s servants with no warning at all, this rift began to grow between the sons of fëanor and their followers. they’d always been terrifying, but they’d also been comradely and inspiring, the white-hot stars around which their people orbited. but when they turned their fangs on their own host, all that started to fall away, leaving only the fear behind

it got worse after sirion. by the time vingilot rose in the sky, maglor’s only real remaining relationships were with maedhros, who he hated as much as he loved, and the twins. watching over them, talking to them, not hurting them - it kept him grounded in reality, kept him sane

he knows, he knows, he knows, they’re better off without him. but his time with them is the only happiness in his memories that still feels real

but the valinoreans can’t accept that. the exile was an awful time with nothing in it worth keeping, and the sooner he can recognise that the faster he’ll be back to his old self

besides. their caretakers don’t like being reminded of their more... unpleasant deeds

(elwing sidebar: elwing and eärendil are having an easier time, because the teleri have experience dealing with trauma and are also just more accepting of the right to have your own take on your own experiences. still, though, elwing occasionally hears that a proper telerin mother would have stayed with her children, even if she had to give up the treasure her people died for to the monsters of her childhood nightmares)

(elwing was a young adult in a horrendous situation with no obvious way out, elwing is dealing with her own damage as best she can, elwing is valid, we stan elwing. she’s also one of the few direct-ish sources the noldor have for beleriand and what the fëanorians did there, and her (perfectly reasonable!) perspective colours a lot of their treatment)

in general the valinorean noldor are quite sure they know what beleriand was like and how it felt to be there, and aren’t particularly interested in being proven wrong

it was miserable, it was harrowing, it was nothing anyone should want to think about. it was a long nightmare maedhros and maglor are so fortunate to have finally woken up from

and you can kind of see why they think like that? the ones who have seen the hither shores saw them when ash rained from a void-black sky and almost everything was dead, and the survivors told stories of a long hopeless defeat and cruelties beyond imagining

but that deep black image blots out the genuine joy they felt in those five hundred years, the chance to prove their own greatness, the knowledge they were doing something good, nights when music echoed across the gap, warm hands in a cold fortress. there were things in beleriand worth remembering, aspects of the people they became there legitimately worth keeping

and even if there wasn’t - five hundred years. the scars on their bodies make it plain to see, every little piece of who they are was shaped by beleriand, for worse and for better. they just can’t leave it behind

their valinorean caretakers find this horrifying

maedhros likes to exercise. it keeps him calm, gives him something to do. it’s not something nelyafinwë was super into - he was more the peripatetic type - but it’s a feasible hobby for a noldorin prince to have, so he’s allowed to do it

sometimes, though, he’ll unconsciously shift into the old combat forms, precisely timed drills ingrained into his bodies. the first few times he does this, his minders are bemused more than anything, but then one day he happens to have a stick in hand to use as a mock-sword

then every time he starts to slip away into that meditative trance, hands reach out to stop him and hold him in place. ‘there’s no need to fight here, maitimo,’ an elf he knew before the unchaining tells him ever so gently. ‘you’re safe now’

... they say that, but maedhros’ nightmares keep getting worse

it’s like that with everything that makes the valinoreans uncomfortable. whenever they try to speak of their time in beleriand, no matter what they say, they’re told that oh, they know it was hard, but it’s all over now and they don’t have to dwell on it

but even after they’ve spent years in paradise, maedhros and maglor still won’t let go and allow themselves to heal

they just can’t come to terms with the truth of their ordeal

the narrative the valinoreans have constructed erases all of the bright spots, but it also bleaches out the true darkness

certainly they did horrible things, but did they really have a choice? in such a harsh world, they always had to be on guard, lest they themselves be killed. these poor boys never meant to harm anyone, but their father’s cruel madness and the painful chains of their oath and the vileness of beleriand forced them into atrocities they never wanted to commit

(surely the monsters the sindar spoke of wouldn’t cry. they wouldn’t lose themselves in waking nightmares or curl up shivering in well-hidden closets, they wouldn’t jump away from a casual touch or watch every new person like they might be a threat. they wouldn’t convince themselves the children they stole were happy, or talk to the shade of a dead kinsman they abandoned. surely they wouldn’t. surely)

(because if they are, and they’ve let a couple of orcs loose into the royal palace...)

(maglor and maedhros’ movements are pretty restricted. this is mostly for their own protection, but it’s partially - well, just in case. just in case)

this rankles at maedhros, though he tries not to show it. terrible they might have been, but his choices were his own

he was a warlord, he was a king. he expected to be hated for the things he had done. he didn’t expect to be pitied. he didn’t expect to be dismissed

sometimes, when he’s surrounded by people earnestly telling him that he’s not a bad person, he never was, it was all pressure from his father and the oath, he wants to scream that he chose to attack sirion because he was so, so tired of diplomatically dancing around problems he knew he could solve with his blade

but he stops himself, always. he knows how much what little freedom they do have is based on them not being a threat

and he will not wash this peaceful, innocent land in blood. he’ll kill himself first

maglor has lost all such scruples

it’s not often, but when they’re behaving themselves and no one who’s likely to take offense is in town, the brothers get taken out to court events

they paint makeup over their scars (which still won’t heal, everyone is concerned by the implications of this) dress them up in finery, string them with jewels, and show off how well they’re doing

(even if maedhros rarely says anything, and they never leave each other’s side)

tonight, it’s a feast. a minor celebration, nothing too crowded, nothing too loud. there’s revels and merrymaking and all kinds of fun

and after the food has been cleared away, there’s music

would his nephew like to play something, finarfin asks. it’s hard to tell if it’s a request or a politely phrased order

maglor decides he doesn’t have the patience to be taken aside and tell how much everyone wanted to hear his music, and accepts

finarfin smiles kindly. he’s thinking about how maglor’s minders have been talking about how he’s finally stopped trying to sing depressing or horrifying songs and how his voice grows more melodious by the day

maglor is thinking about how they won’t even let him sing about his wife. he wrote no odes to her beauty or her skill in the forge, but he sang ballads about the swiftness of her spear and her laughter after a battle

none of which the valinoreans want to hear. they want to pretend that love never existed, that there could be any joy found in darkness, that she’s at all worth remembering -

he gets up to play, and launches into the most vicious, most hopeless, most painful part of the noldolantë

they try to stop him, but he’s the greatest warsinger the world has ever seen, he’s sung with blood in his lungs over the roaring of dragons, there’s little they can do to block out everything they’re trying to ignore. he wails defeat and death and grief and death and despair and death

when they finally manage to knock him out, their whole petty festival in tatters, shock on their faces, tears streaming from their eyes, all he can think is that if they understand now, even a little, it’ll have been worth it

for the first time, but not the last, he wakes up in a cell

finarfin comes to visit, and starts giving a very disappointed lecture maglor is in no mood to hear. instead he just snarls that nothing they’ve been doing is helping him at all, and he’s so sick of false sympathy and no one listening to what his actual problems are

finarfin shuts his eyes, says ‘i’m sorry to hear you feel that way’ and leaves

a few days later he wakes up with a collar around his neck

it’s demeaning, but he gets released that morning, so he rolls with it. he gets told to never do that ever again, first by his minders and then by maedhros

his minders he nods at until they leave him alone. maedhros he snarks back at that it’s not like he’s doing anything to improve their condition

only he can’t

the words don’t just freeze in his throat, they can’t even form in his mind. what’s happening, he can’t say. what did you do to me, he can’t say. he can’t even scream

as maglor is clutching at his neck (he can’t get it off he can’t get it off) and all the colour is draining out of maedhros’ face, the minder in the room smiles

‘see? this way you’ll stop making yourself and everyone around you miserable. you can still talk about happy things -’

‘they did this in angband!’ maedhros roars, a statement that provokes his first actual fight with their minders. he’s harder to pin down than maglor. bigger

but their caretakers are becoming annoyed with the brothers’ obstinate refusal to let themselves get better. they may be content to wallow in the misery of their past, but inflicting it on others is a step too far

they clearly aren’t going to move any further down the road to recovery on their own volition, so it’s become clear they need a gentle push. is it a little distasteful? yes, but such things are sometimes necessary in medicine

the bright cheerful princes they will be again will thank them for it

oh god how did this end up so long. the last one should be shorter, it’s mostly clearing up some loose ends. why did i write this

[willadisastercry]

Space godzilla meets Keith and Pidge bonding moment

tw: depiction of paralyzation of the body and of throat/mouth

Of the list of terrifyingly dangerous alien monsters they’d come across, this one is near the top. After crash landing on an unfamiliar planet, the pair find themselves getting well acquainted with the local wildlife on their unexpected sojourn. They also get better acquainted with each other as they struggle against this beast and with the injuries from the battle that just keep getting more terrifying.

(((Keith and Pidge sharing emotional intimacy while one of them is hurt or both are is an ELITE trope and you cannot tell me otherwise)))

“GAH!”

“Are you sure you don’t need assistance?! I can probably get a hold of it’s tale with my bayard...”

“I’m good, just... this thing is relentless. It doesn’t have a single weakness except I don’t think it can hear well, that’s the only reason it hasn’t tried to eat you again.”

“Good to know? But let me help, Keith, you’re hurt too.”

“I’m still standing, am I not?”

“Your back is like shredded bud, it’s called adrenaline, ever heard of it?”

He opened his mouth as if to respond but didn’t get the chance to before he was launching himself over the swooping arc of the stinging tale that threatened to take his legs out from under him. His body stretched as he jumped and contracted almost as quickly to send himself tumbling forward, a stiff gasp escaping his lips when the stingers already at home in his back shifted and reduced him to a crouch while he rode the waves of agony that followed.

“That’s it...”

Pidge activated her bayard and sent it forward just as the tale of the oversized killer iguana was going back for seconds while Keith was still down, its struggle only aided the momentum of the grappling hook as it wrapped around the deadly appendage.

That bit was pretty seamless. What wasn’t seamless was when the creature started fighting her hold, a counter measure she hadn’t really planned for and wasn’t at all equipped to combat given she was very much reduced to sitting on her butt.

“Uh, Keith?” Pidge asked in a shriller voice than she intended as she dug one heel into the rocky soil beneath her.

“I know you’re like not doing great at the moment, but right about now would be a good time to, I don’t know, do the thing... that you do, ya know?”

The creature reared around as best it could with its tale entrapped and began yanking. Digging both heels into the ground was now all Pidge could do to keep from going flying. She couldn’t even hold back her screech when her torn muscles and slashed tendons protested that, the gash in her thigh squishing and swelling with another spurt of blood, whatever clotting that had been achieved entirely lost.

She almost cried out with relief she when heard Keith grunting and saw as he pulled himself up to his feet despite the burning twinge across the entire expanse of his back as well as his arms and shoulders, because Pidge was right, he did need to do the thing he does and end this.

“That’s a start, now I’m pretty sure what happens next is it gets more mad and seeing as i’m attached to my bayard still—“

But he didn’t need her to explain her predicament, he saw the danger immediately and lunged at the beast while it was still focused on attempting to wriggle free.

He knew aiming at its exposed underbelly was useless, the skin was too tough, but he also knew he couldn’t get close enough to go for a limb without risking getting sliced to ribbons by its claws. They had both found that one out the hard way.

So, with the beast temporarily distracted by Pidge he resolved to make a break for the underbelly anyway, the thing was huge but it’s limbs were short and set so far apart that if he could just slide under it and—

The next few moments happened in a blur. He did the thing without so much as a second thought, like he quite literally acted in whatever fashion his brain first thought of, too sluggish and dazed to afford waiting for something other than his instincts to come through.

The creature let out a horrible screech and bucked against Pidge’s grasp on its tale, she let out a strangled yelp as she was pulled forward and off the ground for a moment before landing back down hard. She heard Keith gagging as bright yellow acid oozed nearly onto his face from where his sword had pierced the only place he could think would be soft enough to bypass, clutching his nose at the acrid sizzling as it spluttered onto the dirt next to him.

“Pidge! On three retract your bayard, okay? One, two—“

“What? No, I can’t. It’ll—“

“Three!”

Keith picked his feet up as he hung on the sword stuck in what he assumed was the creatures gullet. It came away with even more acid blood as he dropped to his knees and tried to get out from under the stream, the top of his forearms being spared only by his armor as it disintegrated in a sickening hiss before his eyes. He managed to be vaguely concerned about wether it would stop at his armor before all of his worry went to avoiding being crushed to death as the beast took off.

Keith opened his eyes only when the thumping of the creatures claws began to notably shrink in the distance. He was curled up protectively on his side and too exhausted to move just yet.

“Huh, if only we had listened to Pidge earlier...” she mused teasingly as she pulled herself into a more comfortable sitting position.

“Shut up, are you alright? How’s the leg?”

“The leg is relatively the same, slightly more numb, started bleeding again, but still attached so that’s all that matters.”

She glanced back at the concerningly large puddle she’d left behind and the newly forming one underneath her. The blood loss wasn’t yet dangerous but she knew that could change rapidly if they didn’t get to Green soon. And for that she would need a functional Keith because she was fairly certain she couldn’t walk.

“Don’t think you can just deflect onto me, how’s your back you idiot?”

He thought deeply for a second, forcing himself to push past the impending haze as the steady stream of adrenaline coursing through his body began to taper off.

“Feels weird... the tingling and burning is starting to travel. Probably safe to say that the stingers have some sort of poison or irritant I guess... and it’s—oh my god it’s blood is—wait, crap!”

He wasn’t really mindful that he was rambling but grateful that it reminded him of the acid eating away at his armor and scrambled to detach what was left of it, scrubbing away what had just started making its way through his undersuit.

“It’s blood is WHAT?! Did it get on you?!”

“Yeah. Well no, I’m good,” he sighed and rolled around to sit up as painlessly as he could manage to.

“It ate my armor and I think my the hair on my forearm is gone, but my skin is in tact, well most of it. Sit tight though, I’m coming over there.”

“Kay, not going anywhere...”

Keith made his way slowly. His legs were leaden with excertion and whatever lovely substances the overgrown demon lizard stung and scratched him with seemed to only make it worse.

“Well you look awful.”

“Thanks, you too,” he said as he sat down heavily, his muscles screaming at the effort walking even a couple feet took and his head swimming for a moment.

“Rude, but turn around and let me see,” Pidge’s order was final but Keith’s body was slow, not really listening to what he wanted that well.

“Keith, I will slap you, stop trying to be a tough guy.”

He only managed to swivel sideways and lean the rest of the way to expose enough of his battered back to quell her chastisements.

“Hmm, the space-godzilla got you good,” she muttered as she pulled him closer to examine the bleeding gashes from the creatue’s claws and swollen welts from the barbs of its hellish tail.

Various bits of their armor had been knocked off by its claws and tail during the attack. For Keith, his chest plate had cracked after several blows and fallen off, which is why he was so bad off now.

There were three slashes starting from his left shoulder blade that made their way down to the middle of his back, all wide and jagged with blood leaking steadily from them, the skin around the wounds just as irritated as the welts from the stingers that trailed along in several lines up and down his back.

The skin around the gash on Pidge’s thigh fared the same though her symptoms had progressed more, the majority of her thigh swollen and blotchy with a tingling sensation that spread from her toes to her hips.

“Some of the stinger things are still lodged in your back... I think I should pull them out so ya know, no more of the toxin is released, that good with you?”

“Yeah whatever, just be qui—Oooh, okay—OH, ouch!”

Keith’s entire body tensed as she yanked the remaining stingers out, summoning another surge of blood from his scratch wounds.

“All done, sorry! I didn’t realize they were serated.”

“S’ okay,” he breathed through gritted teeth as blood began to trickle from the welts Pidge had just de-stingered.

“We’ve gotta get to our lions and contact the rest of the team before we start feeling the full affects of the toxin, do you think you can walk if I help you?” Keith asked as he was getting to his knees.

“My leg is pretty much entirely numb... I don’t know if it’s from the damage of the wound itself or what was coating the claw, but I can try.”

Keith got his feet under him and reached down to hook his arms under her armpits.

“Ready?”

Pidge nodded and he lifted her to her feet. She fought to stifle her groan when the skin around the wound was pulled and then tried to put her weight on it but it immediately buckled.

“Shit, okay. We can work something else out.”

“Sorry, I can probably hobble...”

“No hobbling when I have a spot just for you on my one remaining shoulder.”

“Huh? Wait, no!”

Pidge protested but Keith had no energy for it as he hoisted her up and over his good shoulder, her own mind not as hazy as his apparently because he now had a sense of humor. Keith never made jokes, but now he couldn’t stop. And it was freaking weird.

“Ugh, put me down!”

“Nope, sorry. Friendly reminder for passengers: please keep all hands and feet within the—“

“Oh my god, you’re delirious.”

“...maybe slightly, but you’re bleeding out so checkmate.”

Pidge wanted to slap him because that’s not how chess works, but grumbled instead and went to nudge him in the stomach with her knee but the movement jostled her thigh causing her keen at the way it burned, the torn everything that lay beneath pulling visciously.

She felt Keith’s hesitant hand hover over the back of her injured thigh before making his mind up and pressing it down against his stomach. She wailed because she couldn’t help it but was somehow able to rationalize his decision and be thankful.

Pressure, that was smart of him. Even in a state of literal delirium he had the presence of mind to do that because he was right, she was bleeding out. It hadn’t severed an artery but it likely nicked one with the way it had gushed initially.

“Th-thanks, hurts like a bitch, but thanks.”

“Anything for you, Pidge.”

She could almost laugh at how soft Keith was being, how open and lighthearted he was. The posion was admittedly closer to his heart and his brain which was probably why Pidge was more coherent though partially paralyzed.

Both injuries weren’t any better or worse than the other though. Pidge was very much in danger of losing too much blood and Keith was very much in danger of succumbing to adverse affects of the posion.

But she could hardly feel Green which meant they had a way to go still, it was less than ideal but of all people that would be able to get them there under such unfortunate circumstances, she was glad it was Keith with her. He was just as impossibly stubborn as she was and Pidge had no doubt that he’d do whatever he could to make it there in time.

“You know where you’re going right?”

“Yeah,” he huffed, already winded “crashed on the other side of this ridge... ha, course it’s up a hill, of course...”

“Stop as much as you need to if you need a break—“

“Nah, if I stop I don’t know if I’ll be able to start again.”

Pidge worried at her bottom lip, the skin already raw.

“Just let me know how you’re doing every now and then... since you’re so dead set on being my personal transport.”

He grunted at that and Pidge accepted it was as much of an answer as she was going to get. He walked for a while, the bounce of his gait and unrelenting pressure on her leg sufficiently shorting her dulled nerves for their tolerance for pain.

She could still feel the wound and how mangled the inside workings of her leg were, not even the numbing of the poison could take it away, but the tingling had traveled to her hip now and slowly made its way up her side. The feeling of Keith’s hand on the back of her thigh diminishing by the minute.

Pidge could only imagine how Keith was fairing with the numbness of the poison, she wondered if he could even feel her weight on his shoulder with how many pricks he’d received from the monster.

“Almost halfway up... this goddamned hill... can-can you feel Green yet?”

“Yeah, stronger than before at least. We’re getting closer. How do you feel?”

“Feel fine... i’m good,” he answered quickly, but his words were sloshing together somewhat, his pronunciation becoming lazier.

“Well, I can’t feel anything on my right side anymore except for my arm, so that’s lovely.”

“Hm, yeah... my back’s numb... scratches don’t hurt much anymore.”

“That’s probably for the best right now.”

“Yeah...”

The next few minutes passed slowly. Keith’s breathing getting heavier with the continued effort but no matter how much Pidge urged him he refused to even slow down for a minute let alone stop altogether to catch his breath.

So freaking stubborn, but she couldn’t blame him. She was the same way.

As they made their journey she found it more and more difficult to tear her mind away from worrying about the poison, what it could do to their bodies, if it was even curable. It could be lethal to humans and their efforts could very well be for nothing and they’d have no idea.

“Hey... you okay?” Keith asked, his voice gentle.

“Huh?”

“You’re breathing funny... wait, are you—don’t cry... we’re-we’re going to be fine, Pidge. Stop thinking about it...”

“I’m just scared,” her voice was meek, her chest shuddering as more tears slid silently down her face.

“I know... me too... but we’ll be okay... won’t let anything happen to you...”

“Okay...” she breathed shakily, her mind still working over her worries but also over the fact that she was so emotional, paranoid even, finally resolving it was probably another side affect of the poison.

She hoped that Keith didn’t get anxious like her, he’d gotten a stronger dose of the toxin and so she feared what paranoia would look like on him since he was already pretty delirious.

“Hey, Keith?”

He hummed, talking wasted too much energy and he didn’t much left to waste.

“I can feel Green a lot now, can almost hear what she’s trying to say. She’s stronger than when we left her, scared for me I think.”

“S’good... s’really good.”

They were nearing the top of the hill. Pidge could feel the elevation changing as the steep incline lessened and Keith straightened up with her, his breathing leveling and the muscles under her relaxing slightly, no longer straining to balance her while leaned forward.

“See her... see Green,” he spat with some effort. Words came a lot harder now, his mouth as dry as if it was full of cotton.

“She’s really worried... I can feel how scared she is...”

“Tell her... s’okay...”

“I will—hey slow down, we’re here, don’t waste more energy.”

“Can’ sl-slow...” he slurred like his tongue had stopped working. The dryness in his mouth extended down his throat and when he inhaled too sharply trying to articulate himself and choked, ragged coughs shaking his tiring frame.

“Oh, okay, don’t talk then. Just keep walking, you can rest soon.”

He only grunted this time, his breaths becoming as strained as they were when they were coming up the hill. He surged forward dazedly, his vision blurring slightly but he ignored it. They were so close, just a couple more yards and they’d be safe. Just a little further and—

“-eith, Keith! Do you hear that? Godzilla’s back and he brought friends!”

Keith hadn’t realized he’d zoned out in his intense concentration to get to Green before he succumbed to the numbness that seemed to cover every square inch of his body, weighing on his chest like a heavy cloud.

He heard it now though, the rumble of taloned appendages and the whipping of barbed tails.

Shit.

“How far are we from Green? Because our buddy from before and his friends are about a mile out, but they seem to be moving a tad faster than we are...?”

He didn’t answer, his legs moving faster than he knew he could manage with how nonexistent they felt, carrying them forward with reckless abandon as black dots danced across the quickly shrinking space between him and Green’s open jaws.

He couldn’t feel his feet hitting the ground, he didn’t even know he was running, he just felt the burn in his chest and the twinge on the skin of his back as he moved.

Pidge was saying something but he couldn’t hear her, he couldn’t hear much of anything anymore aside from the splitting ringing in his ears and pulse of his own heart as it pounded in his chest.

The alien beasts descended on them quickly, he was later told, and Pidge screamed her throat raw the entire time urging him to get them inside Green before they became dinner.

He wasn’t sure when he’d made it over the threshold of the lion or when he’d dropped to his knees to let Pidge down softly before falling forward in a heap.

“Damnit Keith, Green go! C’mon girl, I can’t fly-I can’t even move and Keith needs help...”

Once the pain in her leg died down from him abruptly releasing the pressure that was keeping the wound stabilized, she turned to her struggling friend, pushing away the fear that spiked as her own numbness encroached further.

He’d collapsed onto his front bonelessly and was wheezing like he’d just run a marathon with a punctured lung. It didn’t sound good and he didn’t look much better. The wounds on his back were angry, the skin puffy with hives and bleeding still.

If she didn’t know better she’d have thought he was having an allergic reaction and going into anaphylactic shock, but her wound looked the same.

“Keith?”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t even look like he’d heard her.

Pidge grunted in frustration when she couldn’t get her legs to bring her much closer to him, relying on her arms to physically move them as she awkwardly scooted.

She vaguely wondered how long it would be until she couldn’t sit up on her own as she lowered herself down to eye level and moved the damp locks that had fallen in front of his face away so she could see his eyes. They were bloodshot and unfocused as they darted about rapidly, his pupils blown entirely.

“I need you to breathe steadier for me okay? We’re in Green and we’re on our way back to the castle... you just need to hold on a little longer...”

Keith could see Pidge’s mouth moving and her hand on his head, but her words were lost on him and so was her touch. It felt like she was shouting across a void, like he was underwater and everything was garbled. He didn’t know why he couldn’t hear her, why he couldn’t feel anything.

He just knew he couldn’t breathe and that his head was going to explode.

“Catch your breath and calm down, we’re gonna be okay...”

Taking in air was a chore, like he was trying to fill up a balloon that had already popped. He couldn’t really feel his body beneath him as he struggled, he thought he could feel his throat closing though with how tight it grew.

“We’re gonna be fine... just keep breathing, Keith... even if it hurts... we’ll be okay...”

Pidge was saying these things mostly for herself now, Keith hadn’t answered her once since they’d made it to Green and she couldn’t even be sure he was conscious now. The numbness had spread to her middle, the muscles in her back and hips failing, reducing her to laying on her back.

For a while it had felt like it had stopped there until she tried to check on Keith and found her neck was immobile now too.

“No, no, no—fuck!”

That was when she’d started crying again. She was paralyzed. Her muscles were entirely lax, completely unresponsive to anything she tried to tell them to do. But her ears were unaffected. She would be able to hear when Keith stopped breathing next to her.

The poison had likely attacked his pulmonary system with the proximity of the wounds to his lungs, the claws maybe even knicked one. For Pidge it attacked her nervous system from the extensive damage to about a dozen crucial nerves in her leg.

She tried to curse pitifully again but the muscles in her face were tingling, managing nothing more than a nose wrinkle before she lost all control. The tears fell freely now. All she hoped for was a crackle over the coms from her friends when they got close enough to the castle to receive one.

Keith continued to wheeze, soon falling into an almost dream state as he struggled against the increasing paralysis in his mouth and throat, the decreased oxygen to his brain likely playing a hand in it.

He saw his home in the dessert except his father was there. He saw flashes of red and orange like fire and sand. They swirled around him threateningly, like they were taunting them. His father looked like he was saying something to him, but the sand whirred deafeningly.

“What?!” he thought he heard himself calling out through the wall of flames that seperated them. The blaze was tantalizingly close and gaining ground each second.

“Dad, what are you saying?”

The fire raged stronger now, the heat and lack of oxygen in the air around them as the flames licked it up bringing his father to his knees.

“No, no—Dad!”

Keith started toward the flames that were now receding, drawing toward his father who was still trying to tell him something.

But it was too late.

The flames circled him, closing in and swallowing him up.

Keith felt like he was the one burning as he saw his father taken away from him once more before darkness enveloped him.

“Dad...” he whispered in defeat.

The static that sounded from the coms device brought another surge of tears down Pidge’s face once Keith had stopped calling out and finally relaxed, his breaths choppy and sporadic but less erratic.

He was calling for his father, it was the first intelligent word she’d gathered from him once he’d started up. He sounded like he was crying too.

“-dge...-th...in...-idge-Keith...come in...guys? Please report.”

It was Shiro. He sounded scared.

“Pidge? Keith? Please tell us you’re okay...”

Hunk. Gosh, hearing him so worried hurt.

“Green has the other lions flipping their shit,”Lance remarked, trying to infuse some levity into his voice.

“Red is like actually wailing—wait, Coran sees you guys on the radar...”

She wanted to sob so badly, but her body refused. They were so close to being safe, to not feeling so wrong. She wanted to tell Keith it was going to be okay, that his father was gone but that he would be proud of him. That it’d be okay because he had his friends. And that she needed a hug as soon as he could breathe and as soon as she could stand.

But she just let her eyes flutter closed while Green landed them with a shudder that she didn’t feel. Everyone was on them in a second, worried voices pulling her from the darkness as equally worried faces hovered over her, poking at her leg.

“Pidge?! Pidge can you hear me?” Shiro was waving his hand in front of her but her face was entirely numb, her eyelids heavy and uncooperative but still functioning for now.

“That’s a lot of blood and—oh my god is that bone, aw god...” Hunk deadpanned before excusing himself to go hurl.

“What the heck? Her eyes are open and responsive but she’s not talking,” Lance noted as his mind worked over the strange scene.

Keith was still out of it, mumbling incoherently and breathing hoarsely. Coran was examining his back and figuring out a way to transport him without angering the wounds.

“I think I have an idea of what happened...” he offered once he’d inspected the swollen dots from the barbs and relayed his hypothesis to the rest of the team.

“Oh my god, so she’s like... paralyzed?” Lance questioned in horror.

Hot tears spilled down her face once more at their realization, Hunk appearing next to them and Allura coming into view as well.

“Pidge?” she asked softly, “er, blink twice if you can hear me?”

Blinking was difficult but possible, snapping her eyes back quickly each time just in case.

“Oh, Pidge...” she gushed sadly, taking her face in the palm of her hand.

“That must’ve been hell—I-I’m so sorry,” Hunk choked as he fought back a sob.

“We should’ve gone with you guys, I should’ve gone with you guys...” Lance griped defeatedly.

“No, I never should’ve sent you... it was too dangerous—“

“Er, Shiro? Could I get some assistance with Keith? Holding him like this seems to aggravate his breathing...” Coran interrupted as he sat with Keith against his chest after trying to carry him over his shoulder like he’d done with Pidge.

“Of course.”

“Rest now, Pidge. You’ve done more than enough,” Allura soothed, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

That was all the command she needed as she let the heaviness close her eyes for good. She felt herself become weightless before the tingling subsided into a pleasant nothingness.

The next thing she knew she was tumbling forward into warm arms, a familiar voice sounding not nearly as wrecked as it once had. She blinked back the haze from cryosleep only to realize that she just couldn’t see.

“These might help.”

She blinked with clarity once someone had put her glasses on for her, making her feel less disoriented now that she could actually see.

Keith stared down at her warmly.

“Hey there.”

“UGH!” she grumbled as she scrambled up and threw her arms around him, squeezing like she wanted to shatter his bones.

It wasn’t long before she was fighting the hysteria in her voice.

“Don’t scare me like that ever again! It was horrible! You-you were getting worse and I couldn’t m-move, I th-thought I’d have to hear... hear you...”

“Hey,” he said as softly as he spoke to her on that stupid planet, rubbing her back in an effort to quell the stuttering of her chest.

“I didn’t. We’re okay, just like you said we’d be...”

“O-okay,” she managed through sobs now that she could actually cry.

They stayed like that for a while which was surprising when she thought about it but she didn’t care to consider it in depth, that he was letting her hug him so long, that he was comforting her.

“How long were we out?” she asked after some time. It was probably night judging by the dim lights and lack of swarming that occurred. Keith was stubborn so she could imagine him refusing to let her wake up without greeting her first or some noble shit like that.

“Well I was out for like a day, not much to fix I guess. The slashes weren’t deep, not heavy duty work or anything. The poison paralyzing my throat however... was a slight issue. The pod stopped it before I like stopped breathing or whatever, but Coran said he had a plan for if that happened.”

Keith readjusted so that he held most of her weight more comfortably as she calmed down.

“You on the other hand, were in for three days, almost four.”

Pidge sat back from her home against his chest and underneath his arms to look at him with an amusingly bewildered face, needing to know every detail now temporarily overriding her sadness.

“Three days?! Why?”

“Well you did almost bleed out... and then there were the several muscles sliced clean in half as well as a few snapped tendons from said severed muscles... oh and the full body paralysis from a toxin that had to be flushed out... so yeah, took a hot second. And you’re not allowed to say I scared you because you scared me pretty well too.”

“Oh... sorry for scaring you.”

He pulled her back into his arms and she closed her eyes against the steady rise and fall of his chest, a much welcomed change.

“Your... your dad would be proud of you, ya know?”

She felt Keith stiffen against her for a moment at the mention of her father.

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s just—you were calling out for him... and I couldn’t comfort you, tell you that it’d be okay or that... well he’s not here, but we are...”

Pidge took a shaky breath ans Keith tightened his arms around her, his body no longer tense as she struggled to articulate her words through the hitches in her breath.

“It just hurt hearing you call for him like that and not be able to do anything... made me want my dad... I-I miss him too...”

She thought she heard his breathing pick up, felt him moving his hands to his face as he continued to rub her back. She didn’t care, just hugged tighter.

“Thanks... for that,” he said finally.

“Thanks for not dying before you saved us.”

“Ha, checkmate I guess.”

She laughed because that’s just once again not how that works and nestled herself somehow further against the warmth of Keith’s chest because... they were okay.

[zacc-attacc]

Firstly - I really love good puns, so your username made my day xD

Then, for your request thing - would you maybe write a Sprace OneShot that plays in the canon era? Maybe some sort of friends-to-lovers thing?

Thanks :)

First of all, thank you for the request! And for the compliment, of course.

ANYWAYS, HISTORICAL SPRACE, HERE WE GO BABS.

Sweet-Talker- A Historical Sprace Fic

Word Count: 2k

I wasn’t supposed to fall in love. Period. Especially with a boy. I was Spot Conlon, the King of Brooklyn. Not some blithering idiot who brings flowers to some idiot boy halfway across New York. I had made a pledge, not only to myself but to the others. I was responsible for them. 

So why was I falling for a stupid blond Manhattan boy with an addiction to soggy cigars?

I still remember the first time I saw him-- on a pape I was selling to a regular buyer. It was just a black and white picture, which hardly did any justice to how handsome he was in color. But even among 20 or so other newsboys, I felt a flutter in my stomach when I looked into his eyes. 

Disgusting, I thought as I sold the paper. Is this what the boys were talking about? Sparks flying and all that sappy shit?

If I had been smart, I would’ve sold all my papes and kept my distance from the strike. From Cigar Boy. 

Brooklyn don’t get caught up in things that ain’t our deal, I reminded myself. 

But Race, as I learned later, tends to bring out the worst in me. So I did the dumb thing. I sold all but one of my papes (I couldn’t bring myself to just… Give him away like that. For what? A penny?) and ran to Manhattan. 

Where it was a full-blown war. Pulitzer had called in dozens of goons (but, of course, couldn’t be bothered to show up himself), an army of policemen, and the only cop the newsboys truly feared-- Snyder. The only man who had succeeded in locking up the two most resilient Newsies of New York- Jack Kelly, and yours truly. 

I watched in horror as bottles were thrown, teenage boys were hit by adults, even a smaller boy who needed a crutch to walk was beaten with his own crutch. And I knew I couldn’t do the smart thing, the Brooklyn thing ever again. Not for this.

I ran to join my brethren, letting myself give in to the adrenaline of a battle. Luckily for me, most people were too lost in the chaos to notice me. 

All except for one. 

As cops ran, chasing boys as if they were prey that they would likely never catch, who other than Cigar Boy walked over to me, spitting blood out of his mouth and extending his hand for a handshake. 

“Well, well, well, to whats do we owe the pleasure of Spot Conlon of Brooklyn?” He said, giving me a tired grin. He didn’t have a cigar between his lips, but he did have one sticking out of his pocket. I shook his hand, noticing that even after he had literally been beaten up for an hour plus, his handshake was firm. 

“Okay there, Sluggo, we’ll talk when you ain’t bleeding from the head,” I said gruffly, turning and starting to walk back towards Brooklyn. If I could convince the boys, we could come back later and tell Manhattan we were joining the strike. 

“The lodge is this was,” the boy pointed to the opposite direction of where I was heading. I gave a light laugh. 

“No, no. I’s best get goin’ so you’s can patch up.” 

“There ain’t no way I’s letting you walk halfway across New York after getting beaten up,” the boy protested, grabbing my arm and pulling me towards the lodge. 

“I’ve been through worse,” I protested, attempting to dislodge my arm from his grasp. 

“Well, ya’int goin’ through that again. Now c’mon. We has some bandages back at the lodge for that cut of yours,” he said, gesturing to the deep cut in my upper arm. I sighed in defeat and started walking. 

“Just so you know… This is just to make sure yous don’t pass out in the streets on the way there,” I clarified. The boy just rolled his eyes and chuckled. 

“For New York’s most feared Newsie, you sure is worried about someone you just met today.”

“I’m feared, but I an’t heartless, sweet-talker. I don’t want another life on my conscience.” Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. What kind of monster did he think I was? Race stopped walking. I looked up and saw a complex setup of fire escapes, rails, and a rooftop where a newsboy who could only be Jack Kelly was pacing.

“Fair enough. Well, we’s here… So I’s just gonna swing up, grab my stuff, I can meet you down here,” the boy said, grabbing onto some rungs of a fire escape and climbing up with surprising nimbleness. It was as if the battle had barely affected him. That, or he was still riding the adrenaline rush. 

“No, no. Take care of your boys. I won’t die,” I said, hearing the panic in my tone. If Jack saw me with no reinforcements, he’d start to think we were fully on board. And if Brooklyn wasn’t, and word got around that I had already fought… It wouldn’t be good. They would accuse me of being a traitor. I couldn’t risk that.

“Ey, no, that wasn’t part of our agreement!” he yelled as I walked away. I could hear the smile in his voice.

“Next time, have me shake on it, sweet-talker!” I shouted back, turning around to see his impish grin. My muscles were screaming in protest from overuse, but I had to get home before dark. 

“The name’s Racetrack Higgins!” was the last I heard before breaking into a sprint. 

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

And here we are now. Strike over, prices back, nobody dead, everyone happy.

Except for me. 

Because I wasn’t supposed to fall in love, but here it came. Striding down the hill with a cigar in its mouth.

I could feel the unease in the boys beside me. We weren’t used to soloing Newsboys in our area, barely after selling hours, no less. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it,” I muttered to them, walking towards Race. 

“What. Are. You. Doing. Here,” I hissed, grabbing his shoulders and fake-shoving him to look like I was giving him a serious talking-to. He couldn’t know we knew each other. It had to look like we were fighting.

“Well, Conlon, I thought we’d had a moment there,” Race whisper-shouted back, shoving me as well. I lowered my voice to an even quieter tone. 

“Meet me in your alleyway after sundown.”

He looked at me, confusion on his face, but nodded numbly and ran away. 

I heaved a sigh and turned to go spin some fake tale about why he was there.

That boy is going to be the death of me.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

“Why’d you chase me out like that, Conlon?” Race asked, leaning against the brick wall of the Newsboy lodge. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. 

I hated it. 

“Because, Higgins, the boys don’t like strange Manhattan Newsies on our turf,” I half-spat. How stupid could he get? Didn’t he understand what was at stake here?

“You’re mad at me,” he said, his eyes flashing with realization. 

“Yeah, no shit,” I muttered, starting to pace. This was a bad idea. Why did I keep letting myself come back to him? Why was I constantly subjecting myself to the one thing I couldn’t have?

“Why? I just wanted to see you again,” he protested, walking towards me. I turned around to face him, my nose practically touching his chin.

“‘Cause we ain’t supposed to be friends. The boys see you hangin’ around Brooklyn, they’ll think yous tryin’ to prove something. And you know what they do to boys that ain’t ours? They beat ‘em up. Then, they bring them to me. And I decide if they’s gets a real pounding. But do I have a choice? No! Once they’s decides yous getting beat, my say hardly matters. If I randomly tell them to let someone go, I’m considered soft. Then we both get beat. Do you see what they’ve done to some boys? I ain’t letting that happen to you, Race! I’m not patching up your wounds because I couldn’t control-”

“Spot.,” Race cut me off. I froze. It was the first time he had used my full name. 

“What?” I asked bitterly. I noticed my eyes were burning. Why were they burning? What was this hellish sensation?

I felt something warm trickle down my face. 

Oh. My. God. I was crying. Crying! I hadn’t cried in four years! All about some idiot boy who had lovely eyes and blond hair and was empathetic and made me genuinely laugh and feel safe for the first time in years-

Race stepped forward, crushing the distance between us in one stride (damn tall people), and then… Hugged me. 

I hadn’t been really hugged in seven years, since I had made it to Brooklyn. Well, I had received bro hugs. Light ‘ey, whaddup’ hugs. But this… This was the type of hug that I hadn’t received since my parents had died. The type of hug that shields you from the outside world, that makes you feel like an atomic bomb could go off and they could protect you from it. 

It was so strange, so human. I hadn’t been treated like a real person for so long.

“It’s really like that, huh,” Race whispered, stroking my back. I felt goosebumps appear on my skin. How much feeling had I forced myself to miss out on? 

“It’s just… A lot. I mean… I’ve always known I would give my life for those boys, they’re my everything. But… I don’t know if they would for me. I don’t even know how much they truly respect me. I can’t even say if they’d respect this new rule I’ve been thinking of putting in place,” I said, not moving from my place in Race’s grasp. 

“And what would that be?” Race muttered, rocking back and forth. It was… nice. 

“No beating up on Racetrack Higgins ‘cause he deserves the world,” I said, my voice still muffled in his shirt. He chuckled. 

“I hardly deserve the world… But… Could I have you?” there was this caution in his voice, so different from the constant suave tone he took on while talking with me. But, then again, I of all people was sobbing into a boy’s chest, so this night turned out to be the night of all the unthinkable. 

“I don’t know if that’s what you really want, but… You can have me, sweet-talker,” I said, tipping up my head and meeting his lips in a kiss. 

It wasn’t sudden, or brash like most would’ve thought our first kiss would be like. No, it was slow and sweet. Because even if our relationship was loud and chaotic, we could take pieces of it as slow as we wanted. 

And now, I can say that my sweet-talkers lips are just as sweet as his words.

A/N: Thank y’all so much for reading! if you have any sort of prompts, pop on over to my asks! Love y’all! <3 

[buffyversefanfiction]

Slayer of Slayers

Warnings: I do not own, nor do I claim to own any of the copyright or characters within the Buffyverse which includes but is not limited to the television shows Buffy and Angel, as well as the Darkhorse comics series’ continuation. 15+ Strong to moderate violence, Graphic to mild descriptions of gore, and torture, sexually charged scenes, sexual innuendos, mild to strong language, and practices of witchcraft. M/M, F/F, M/F, GEN, OTHER +

Part One: City of No Angel

After being away from Los Angeles for several years the brooding vampire Angel had been convinced to return to his former city under the advice of vampire slayer Faith Lehane who herself had been sent back to L.A. due to the witch Willow Rosenberg’s concern about a growing number of vampire slayers going missing within the troubled city that once had the evil law firm, Wolfram and Hart, pulling its strings. Angel, Faith, and old one Illyria arranged to meet at Angel’s old, haunted grounds The Hyperion Hotel which had once again become abandoned like it was when he first set up home in there with his friends who became like family, most of which were long gone now. After the unlikely trio consisting of a vampire with a soul, a former goddess in a human’s body, and a redeemed former rogue slayer, met up they soon discussed the facts of the mission which had brought them all together. “So, Willow’s big plan is for me to play the role I play best, the rogue slayer, thinking that whoever’s killing slayers is probably going to like the idea of teaming up with a slayer who kills humans or used to, obviously hoping they do not know any stories of all the things I’ve done while seeking some kind of redemption.” Faith informed Angel and Illyria. “I did the covert rogue slayer thing a while back for Giles and shit got pretty messy hence why I was not doing this one solo.” “If slayers are killing out other slayers, then maybe we should not interfere I mean after all there was only ever supposed to be one at a time whereas now you throw a rock and you have yourself some superpowered woman thinking themselves as something like a god insulting actual gods like myself,” Illyria complained while making it clear she was far from happy about the rise in the quantity over slayers over recent years. Both Angel and Faith did not bother to reply to Illyria’s choice of words having both got used to the way she speaks by now and how she viewed the world and despite her literal tough outer shell, the old one was always on their side without question having somehow become her friends. The three of them were determined to get to the bottom of the mysterious case of the slayer of slayers not realizing that this mission would change everything forever…

Elsewhere, in the city of Los Angeles, the slayer of slayers was eying their next target a Knight-haired vampire slayer looking something like Faith herself, as the girl believed she had the upper hand as she ran down a dark alleyway with a male vampire running after her, believing she was luring this monster into a trap not realizing that this vampire was luring her into one as part of his master’s own devious plan, to eradicate all slayers. “Unluckily for you, you seem to have no idea that I am not your average girl!” The young vampire slayer bravely stated as the male vampire closed in towards her with his full vampire face on display. The slayer wasted no time in charging towards her undead opponent as she pulled a wooden stake out of her black leather jacket during mid-run as she launched herself into the air, throwing her body into the night sky before launching her right clenched fist down towards the vampire, punching him with force across the face as her feet fell back onto the cold hard ground. The slayer continued to fight with the vampire each of them getting several good hits on the other before the young slayer eventually got the better of the vampire, kicking his body so hard the vampire fell to the ground as the slayer launched the wooden stake into the vampire’s chest causing the vampire to explode into nothing more than a big pile of dust. “They just keep bringing slayers to my city it’s like the big man no longer cares about his chosen daughters.” An unbelievably handsome man with short jet black said to the slayer as he too appeared from out of the shadows wearing a black fishnet t-shirt flaunting his chiseled abs with skin-tight black leather jeans that clung perfectly to his impressive body making this stranger look as sinister as he did sexily. The young slayer knew instantly whoever this stranger was, he was most definitely an enemy working alongside the forces of evil and so the Knight haired woman ran towards her next opponent not realizing that this opponent would be her last as it did not take long for the handsome stranger to quickly get the better of the slayer, punching her several times across the face before kicking her in the stomach with such force the slayer fell into some nearby bins amusing the man before her as she quickly began rustling through the rubbish as she pulled herself back up onto her feet defiantly. “You do not scare me, vampire!” She lied before charging towards this mysterious man once again, as she refused to allow her growing fear to get the better of her. “Not a vampire.” The man replied as he punched her once again before grabbing the slayer by her throat and lifting her up into the air into a chokehold. “You may know me as the slayer of slayers.” Before the slayer could muster any words while under the surprisingly strong stranger’s stronghold on her neck, he threw her across the street, her head hitting off a nearby wall before her body crashed onto the ground knocking the slayer unconscious in the process. “I swear you get sexier with every slayer you slaughter!” A short dirty blonde haired male vampire said as he appeared from out of the shadows eagerly making it clear to the two men knew each other very well. “Who would think little Theo will grow up to be the ruthless slayer of slayers?” “If only mummy dearest could see me now,” Theo replied as he walked over to the vampire with a seductive smirk on his face. “Killing slayers and sleeping with vampires.” The vampire, otherwise known as Tobias, pulled the slayer of slayers, otherwise known as Theo, in towards him until the two men’s bodies were grinding against each other’s as they began kissing passionately getting off on the carnage that Theo had just created.

After a rather successful night of Tobias hunting humans and Theo capturing a vampire slayer, the dangerous duo had retreated to a demonic dive bar that they owned together and often used as their headquarters for all their hellish operations, while their demonic and monstrous clients continued to drink and often join in when they were asked of by Theo and Tobias, fearing the two too much to even consider saying no to them. “I heard you’ve got yourself another slayer, is she on the menu tonight?” Asked one of the vampires that stood at the counter breaking up Theo’s kiss with his vampire lover as the two put their focus back on their customers. “This one’s going through a little processing right now before she gets served to our public no point drinking her blood while it's still poisoned now is there?” Theo replied with a sense of casualism that could only occur from doing what he did far too often. “Pretty messed up the things you do to your own kind Theo.” A demon with snake-like skin-colored red and a lizard-like tongue said to his bartender, laughing away in respect for the monster within the man in front of him. “I’m no vampire slayer, I am a slayer of slayers it's my destiny to eradicate them all and plunge this pathetic excuse of a world into pure and utter darkness it is just a bonus I get so much pleasure in killing each and every one of them,” Theo replied to the demon. “Besides slayer’s blood sells very well and who does not love money?” “My beloved Theo is unlike any before him, he not only lives in the darkness he thrives in it, and with him, on our side, the slayers will soon be nothing more than unfond memories.” Tobias chimed in while showing genuine affection for his lover. “My only fear of course is the one slayer who always defies the odds that perky blonde one who changed everything for her kind.” “Buffy Summers is more myth than truth Tobias, I have told you that before,” Theo said to the vampire, trying to reassure him that Buffy was nowhere near as much of a threat as she was in stories they had been told. “I would not underestimate the girl who killed Angelus and The Master not to mention that goddess who almost ended the world one time.” Another vampire at the counter said, adding to the conversation within the bar. “I have the upper hand when it comes to Buffy whether she is as fearful as they say she is still a woman, a woman who had seen love and loss in her time and will no doubt be thrown back to meet her only son.” Theo declared, revealing his identity as Buffy’s son to the shocked crowd within the bar, everyone except Tobias being stunned by the slayer of slayers’ admission.

The very next day Faith found herself riding on her motorbike down a somewhat quiet road on the outskirts of Los Angeles before pulling up on the middle of the road, climbing off her motorbike, and beginning to walk further and further into the hot desert, as she pulled out her phone from her jean pocket and dialed Willow’s number before putting her on loudspeaker while continuing to walk through the desert. “I know when you think dead bodies you reckon, I am the expert, but I was better at deserting them not looking for them in a bloody desert.” Faith said with her signature sense of sarcasm after hearing Willow answer her call. “This slayer got into L.A. not long before you did Faith, we’re not sure why any slayer would be rushing to Los Angeles these days but if we failed to safe her at the very least, we should try to find answers from her death to stop it happening again,” Willow replied to her. “I get it Willow, and I’m all for helping with the bigger picture but searching for a fellow slayer’s dead body before having breakfast is not all it’s cracked up to be.” Faith complained to the red-headed witch. “I will make you all the eggs on toast if you sort out the L.A. problem. You know you’re the main girl in action with Buffy being all M.I.A. since the incident.” Willow told her while trying to butter her up, only for Faith to be left silenced by finding the body of the young slayer who looked a little too much like her for Faith’s liking. “Looks like your right once again Will.” Faith admitted as she stood over the young slayer’s lifeless body all bloodied and wounded with injuries that told a tragic tale of torture. “Whatever’s killing us slayers seem to be taking real pleasure in it…I cannot wait to kill those bastards.” “Oh, goddess, this is far from good thank the heavens you’re not going solo on this one Faith,” Willow told the former rogue slayer. “I’ll call this in to the local authorities once you have got yourself a good distance from the crime scene, you should probably report back to Angel before going in undercover on this one… the last slayer we need showing up dead next is you.” “Thanks for the sentiment Will but this is even more reason for me to get my spy mode rolling!” Faith replied to the witch before hanging up the call to her. “Rather not wait around to examine the next dead slayer who happens to look far too much like me!”

Tobias walked into the bedroom of the apartment above the dive bar which he shared with Theo, shirtless and wearing a tight boxer brief as he willingly flaunted his tanned skin, muscular frame, and handsome body while walking over to Theo who was sat on the edge of their shared bed. “You know you anger me when you question my strength in front of the customers.” Theo, who was wearing just a pair of tight white boxer briefs himself, with the rest of his own impressive body fully on show, complained to his lover. “I am mainly looking out for you, fearing for you, worrying about you, like anyone who truly loved you would,” Tobias replied as he began softly kissing Theo’s neck. “I know you are capable of anything, but I cannot help but fear that we may lose everything we have worked so hard for.” “I love you too Tobias, but you have got to have more faith in the grand plan the last thing we want is for Drusilla to learn of your doubts,” Theo said through panted breath as Tobias began working his way down Theo’s chest, kissing lower and lower, slower, and slower, as he pushed Theo back onto the bed. “I would challenge the devil himself if his plans risked your safety!” Tobias promised the man he loved before he pulled Theo’s boxers down to his ankles, proceeding to take off his own boxers and climbing onto Theo’s naked body, their two bodies crashing against each other’s, kissing passionately, as they made love to each other.

The very next night Theo had taken himself just outside of the demonic dive bar he ran with his undead partner, to enjoy a quick smoke break as he stood in the dark alleyways smoking a cigarette only to be left stunned to find a Knight haired beauty appear from around the corner, clearly walking towards him, as Theo began to wonder if he had met this woman before, noting the similarity she had to the slayer he had recently murdered. “Don’t suppose I can steal a smoke from you?” Faith asked him, knowing damn fine that this man was the man she was looking for, determined to find out more about him so she could shut down his entire operation. “Here’s the thing love, humans do not normally come around this neighborhood unless they got a death wish that is,” Theo replied to her as he suspected this woman to be another slayer, another potential victim. “I’m not fully human, I’m a vampire slayer and even then, I’m much more than just any slayer I mean I do not mean to brag but I’m probably the most famous rogue slayer to ever live the original good girl gone bad although I was never that good.” Faith revealed herself, knowing no good girls made it out of this alleyway alive. “The name’s Faith, in case you did not already work that one out.” “Rumour has it you went back to the good side even helped Buffy herself destroy a Hellmouth along with her hometown,” Theo responded, clearly knowing a little something about the vampire slayer before him. “I hate rumors I’d like to get the guy spreading that lie and cut his tongue out!” Faith lied, ready to convince this man she was as evil now as she was back when she was evil. “Heard your part of this mission about killing all slayers and I’ve been trying that one long before you, in fact, I got pretty close to killing B until the bitch gutted me that is. However, a team-up could be just what I need to take her down once and for all.” “Well then Faith,” Theo answered with a smile on his face as he threw his cigarette to the ground eagerly. “How about a drink to discuss this potential partnership?” Faith had Theo exactly where she wanted him and he had her too, Faith being determined to take down his entire operation, and Theo wanted to test the theory of whether or not Faith was really the ruthless slayer she was claiming to be, neither of them liking the answers that would follow.

[babiedeku]

hallo! can i request a swan lake au with tanjirou? particularly at the part where the swan tries to stop the prince making a vow to the wrong girl, but fails, and now tanjirou must defeat the wizard muzan in order to save the reader. he then defeats the wizard and angst happens which is turned into a happy ending in which the swan curse is lifted and they live happily ever after and what not (*´ω｀*)

hi omg its finally here! after so long! im really sorry it took me forever but i hope you like it somehow! :”( thank you again for the request anon, this one was fun to write! - marianne

One thing’s for sure, Tanjirou wouldn’t be in this situation if he had just listened the Swan Queen’s, (Y/N)’s, warning. He had just brushed it off, thinking it was just some absurd lore that was passed down through word of mouth to warn people from being too trusting of strangers and that not everything is what they seem at first glance.

Who - ? Tanjirou just saw you flee into the woods, wearing nothing but a white silk night dress.

“What’s wrong, Your Highness?”

Bringing back his attention to the person in front of him, (Y/N), or at least a very convincing clone of the said queen. “Drop the guise,” Tanjirou’s voice was even despite the anger that was bubbling deep within him, and his hand was itching to reach for the hilt of his sword, but he remained still in front of the imposter. “Muzan.”

A low sounding laughter echoed throughout the room, the sickly smell of burning skin hit Tanjirou’s nostrils - it was the foulest and most evil smell he has by far encountered, how had he not noticed it before? - your beautiful and ethereal features sloughing off to slowly reveal the demon sorcerer himself, red eyes keenly looking Tanjirou over. “I’m impressed,” He said, voice soft but as cold as the winter breeze. “you’re the first to have caught on this early,” The pool of melted skin sitting at his feet.

The first?  There have been a number of nobles and royals that have been killed, their kingdoms left to rot with no one ruling over them. The said kingdoms commoners would later on be found massacred, their blood soaking the lands, bodies mangled from only the gods know what. The stench arising from the dead was horrendous to Tanjirou and his keen sense of smell, and the scene of all those corpses were ingrained into his brain, the subject of his recurring nightmares.

To think that this man, Muzan, was the one who was responsible for all those innocent people’s deaths. This monster, as he continues to breathe and roam the lands, is an insult to their deaths.

“Oh, Tanjirou, my love,” Muzan mocked the young prince, his mouth was moving but your sweet and gentle voice was all that Tanjirou could hear, he could also almost see you vaguely.

Tanjirou’s breath hitched. Don’t, he thought, steering himself from trying to run up to you and wrap you in his arms. This madman was trying to get a rise out of him.

“I haven’t told you how absolutely delicious your family was, and how lovely they looked in their own blood.”

Something snapped inside of Tanjirou, it was as if there was a dam within him that was holding back all his anger and frustration, and his pent up anger was washing over him in waves. To massacre entire kingdoms to be able to gain power and impersonate the woman he’s in love with to be able to do the same with him and the kingdom he reigns over was one thing, but to also bring up his family in such a way and in your voice was something else - that’s where he fucking draws the line.

Drawing his sword, he pressed the tip to Muzan’s throat, with just enough force to draw a little blood. “You are a being that should not be allowed to exist.” Tanjirou said, face devoid of any emotion, but his words were dripping with venom.

“I am this close to being the perfect creature, and once I am able to feed on you and your pathetic subjects, I’ll be able to move on to other regions in Japan.”

The way he referred to himself was odd, ‘creature’? Tanjirou was confused, but he tabled that for a later thought, right now he had more pressing matters than think what Muzan is. “All this for wanting to take over the country?”

Muzan laughed, a cold breeze accompanying the humorless laughter. “You belittle me, prince?”

Darkness suddenly enveloped the room, even the late afternoon rays of the sun was obscured, leaving Tanjirou blind and surrounded in pitch black darkness.

“The last person who crossed me got turned into a swan.” The sorcerer’s voice echoed all throughout the room. “give me your kingdom, and i promise your death will be quick and painless.”

A swan? Could it be - ?

You had mentioned in passing, one night when he snuck out of castle grounds to come spend some time with you by your lake, about being turned into a swan as a punishment for defying the orders of a sorcerer who threatened to take over your kingdom.

His anger would be handled later, and perhaps an apology for being too dismissive of what had happened to you.

Tanjirou was calm despite being engulfed in darkness and having a sorcerer flitting around the throne room. His oddly keen sense of smell can easily pinpoint where Muzan was, if he could just -

A pained gasp left his lips, a searing pain on his left side suddenly bombarded his senses, as his hand slowly met the warm liquid on his side.

Taking a deep breathe to calm his nerves and steel himself, he tightened his grasp on the hilt of his sword.

Breathe.

Calm your mind.

His nostrils felt like they were burning with the horrid stench of burning flesh enveloping him. But, this was one of the many reasons why he treasure his keen sense of smell, because despite being literally kept in the dark and blindsided by his enemy, there would be moments that the smell of a silver lining would make itself known to Tanjirou, a thread of sorts that helps him pinpoint where his enemy’s location and weaknesses are.

And right now, it was right behind him.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Tanjirou turned around and brought his blade down onto Muzan as swiftly as he could, hoping he at least caused some sort of damage to the sorcerer.

The darkness slowly dissipated, revealing Muzan with a deep gash on his right eye and cheek, his blood gushing out as his veins stood out against his pale skin with a black shade.

“Pest,” The sorcerer spat, but gave the young prince a bloody smile. “you never seem to vanish, don’t you?”

Tanjirou nodded, his world was blurry and his head was heavy due to the blood that he was losing, but he would be damned if he can’t somehow defeat this monstrosity that stood before him and save the girl that has set his heart aflame. “Takes more than blood lust and thirst for power to rid me from this world.”

Muzan cackled, somehow truly bemused with the humans standing before him. “It is truly annoying how you pathetic human’s just don’t stop fighting -”

He stopped mid sentence, a sickening sound was heard along with a pained groan from Muzan, and then right before Tanjirou’s eyes, he fell to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

“I think a thank you is in order right about now,” You spoke, a small smile on your lips.

Tanjirou was rooted to his place, eyes wide and mind going blank as he stared at you standing in front of the crumpled sorcerer with a sword that probably belonged to one of the armors that lined the hallways. You were still in your white silk night gown, that was a little too sheer to his liking and left little to the imagination, making a blush erupt on the poor prince’s handsome features, and you were soaked in sweat and had some blood here and there - but god, you were still the most beautiful woman he has ever had the pleasure of meeting.

He wanted to weep at your feet, take you in his arms, apologize for not listening to you, and even give you a robe to cover yourself up, but he would save those for a time where the both of you were not involved with a madman sorcerer.

“But,” Your voice breaking him out of his trance, you grabbed his hand and ran  through the winding hallways of his castle. “we have to run, that was just something to buy us some time,”

“Right,” Was all Tanjirou’s mind could think of to say, his mind was going hazy with the blood loss, but he was sure that he would run to the ends of the earth with you.

Finally outside of the castle walls, both of you ran toward your small lake where you would, even if by a fraction, have the upper hand when it comes to confronting Muzan.

“Leaving so soon?” The voice sent chills down both of your spines, the night sky was slowly getting darker as each second passed. “Disrespectful to just leave a guest lying in their own pool of blood, Queen (Y/N).”

You glared at the man, hovering just behind you, dark cloudy wisps surrounding him. “You were no guest, you were unwelcomed in the first place.”

Muzan was unhappy with his spiel being rebutted, he growled and lunged at the pair.

Looking to the young prince beside you, all you could give him was an apologetic look because you knew that jumping into a lake from the tears of another person is not something that everyone would want to do. With no further explanation to jumped into the lake with Tanjirou in tow.

Tanjirou was not expecting this, he was not prepared for the plunge and his lungs were ready to get oxygen in them, but he knew any other movements would be futile underwater.

You grasped his hand a little tighter, hoping that he would somehow be reassured that he is not alone in the hellish nightmare unfolding before their eyes.

After a few more painful seconds a distant bellow was heard, along with the sudden flash of bright light.

Tanjirou was the first so break to the surface, gasping for air as he tried to survey his surroundings, looking for any signs of Muzan that could still be lurking in the very woods.

“Gone,” You gasped beside him, finally going up for some much needed air. “H-he’s finally gone,”

Tanjirou was relieved to finally have Muzan banished from the world, he hoped that the souls of all those innocent people, and his family, are at peace knowing that Muzan no longer walks the earth.

You were also beside him, hands still intertwined as the both of you stood in the lake.

He could feel the tears from the pent up anger, fear, exhaustion, and relief finally forming in the corner of his eyes - he was just so glad to finally have you with you him where he could make sure that the both of you live a happy, prosperous, and safe life together.

The two of you were silent for a few moments before Tanjirou finally threw himself onto you for a hug - it lasted for a few seconds before he pulled away, because he doesn’t want to over step your boundaries. “I’m sorry, I-I should have-” His profuse and heartfelt apologies went on for a full minute before you decided to stop his rambling with a quick kiss to the lips.

“Stop apologizing, my prince,” You smiled at the blushing boy. “I’m just glad I finally get to be with you,”

[valkyrieofsmut]

Captive Love Prologue

UnderFell Sans x Reader (or Frisk if you wanna)

Summary: Monsters have made it to the surface and made a place for themselves. A place that’s still dangerous for humans. Feeling ill and heading to her apartment at the edge of the Monsters’ part of town, (Y/n) runs into a wall, helped there by Sans, who she’d run into first. When she wakes up, she’s a human in the middle of the Monster territory, with no way out and a couple of edgy skeletons for hosts. Sans doesn’t particularly want to hurt just anyone, but he has to keep his tough guy image up. What he wants, is to find out why this strange, beautiful human woman kissed him, especially after he’d thrown her against a brick wall, but she faints too quickly to ask. To keep her safe, he decides to take her home until she wakes up. …and then maybe he decides she should stay there a little longer…

A/N: um… Hello! This is my first Under story… Not sure how long it’s going to be, yet. The chapters may be short sometimes, or long, sometimes. Anyway, I’m going to post this and the first chapter now, let me know what you think!

Masterlist      Series Masterlist

Story

Prologue: Long ago… and NOT so long ago…

Long ago, two races ruled over Earth: humans and monsters. One day a war broke out… the monsters were sealed away, these things we all already know.

It was a harsh world; kill or be killed. In order to survive, you had to be tough, or have someone to protect you. The best of them, protected those they loved.

 Growing up in the sometimes hellish landscape twisted some’s minds, and things that shouldn’t have happened did, to those who didn’t deserve it. These are also things that we all already know.

Not so long ago, something, that has never been truly confirmed and only a few know, happened. Whatever it was, broke the barrier.

The monsters had succeeded in escaping the mountain, climbing their way up from the Underground, holding a grudge, wanting vengeance. There was only one thing that they hadn’t counted on; how prolific humans were.

While monsters were extremely powerful compared to humans, they were outnumbered, at least a million to one.

And that was just in the continent that they’d come up in!

As soon as they realized that they were against such odds, they changed tactics, dropping plans to annihilate, and instead slowly take them out, becoming another culture adding to the world, and as always when regarding to humans and new people with cultural differences, they had been shunned and hated, oppressed and ostracized, and so, like every other “new” culture before them, they built up their community close together, in one of the poorer neighborhoods, expanding from there.

It had been a year after they’d come up that the first monster neighborhood had been fully established; anyone non monster who could leave doing so until it was just the monsters populating the area.

A year after that, almost all of the monsters had moved to the surface, starting to build their own “protection”, becoming a sort of community gang, though it was as volatile as ever and they often turned fighting on each other, they would always drop any spats they had to stand up for another monster against a human.

A year after that, and they’d developed the reputation for humans disappearing if they dared venture into the monsters’ territory. Law enforcement wouldn’t go to the area, and another barrier was built, this time a figurative one instead of a literal one.

The monsters policed themselves, which didn’t lead to much order, but certainly led to any disappearances being marked unsolvable by the human forces.

In the last few months, the monster neighborhood had been slowly spreading out, making the edges mix with the human neighborhood, and making it become a dangerous place for humans, restarting the cycle of them moving out and the monsters taking over.

The humans that were left, unable to move out, were the poorest, and the stories of monsters kidnapping humans for various reasons spread. They warned not to go out at night, they warned not to talk to strangers, lest you become the meal of a monster, and they warned that there were other unsavory things the monsters did to humans, like torture.

The older humans at the edge of the turf would try to convince the younger ones to get out, but a lot of them couldn’t do it, either because of a lack in ability, usually due to some sort of addiction, a lack in support, usually due to abusive relationships or situations, or lack of finances.

In these areas, monsters roaming the street was becoming more and more common, a few shops taken over by monsters after the human owners were run out, and humans that found themselves in situations where a monster felt they had slighted them were in danger.

This is where we start our story.

[aion-rsa]

The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity

https://ift.tt/2GXXppR

This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 2.

Most male monsters in fiction are made by women. Or, at least, it’s women who tend to get the disproportionate share of the blame when their creations turn out to be significantly less than civilized (perhaps because, historically, most of them were written by men). The most famous examples of murderer-moulding mothers are probably Norma Bates, Cersei Lannister, Olivia Soprano and, of course, Mrs. McAllister (momma raised a real little trap-setting psycho there). In real life, too, serial killers like Ed Kemper, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Dennis Nilsen were all brutalized or disappointed by their mothers to such an extent that to some people the link between their formative maternal experiences and their misdeeds seems as tight and as strong as a steel cable.

This isn’t the case with Amazon’s The Boys, where it’s bad or inadequate fathers who provide male characters with the bulk of their nefarious neuroses and murderous motivations. Wee Hughie (Jack Quaid) inherited and internalized his father’s cowed outlook on the world to the point where he almost didn’t fight back when Vought tried to brush his girlfriend’s death in an A-Train wreck under the carpet. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) was raised under the fast fists and hot temper of his old-school, tough-guy dad, whose mantra seems to have been kick first and don’t ask questions later, unless the question is: “Do you want me to fucking kick you some more?” “John” a.k.a Homelander (Antony Starr) doesn’t have a father in the conventional sense – as far as we know – but he was treated coldly, cruelly and dispassionately by his scientist ‘dad’, Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman). So to what extent have failed father figures forged the monsters who sit upon the show’s chessboard? What else is missing from their lives? And what could prove the key to their salvations?

The previously mentioned The Sopranos is a ripe comparison, being that it also deals with familial legacies, internecine struggles, and toxic masculinity. The hallmark HBO show took the bold step of sending its proto-typical alpha-male mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) to a shrink to deal with his panic attacks and baseline depression. His sessions with his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Braco), teased out the revelation that the root of his anguish and anxieties was his own mother, the irascible and melodramatic Livia (Nancy Marchand), who in the first season shifted her life-long modus operandi from trying to kill his spirit to literally trying to kill him. It’s not hard to trace a direct line from that callous maternal influence to Tony’s behavior, and its internal and external consequences (especially when you’re dealing with Melfi’s favoured Freudian approach, for which parental trauma is its raison d’etre). But as the series – and Tony’s therapy – progressed it became clear not only that Tony’s life was richer and darker than his mother’s input allowed for, but also that Livia herself wasn’t the two-dimensional, havoc-wreaking demigod of Tony’s fears and imagination. 

She, too, had been a victim of sorts; a slave to poverty and discrimination (on grounds of both race and gender); in thrall to a violent, charismatic criminal, a man who thought nothing of throwing men a beating, chopping off their pinkies or shooting them dead; a man who was out with one of his many mistresses on the night that she miscarried a baby and needed him by her side. Tony, his son, takes these revelations and buries them, as deep as they’ll go, partly because Tony’s world is a man’s world and men get a pass, but mainly to avoid the bright bulb of introspection from falling upon his own, very similar behavior. His mother gets the blame, but who really made Tony? 

The world of The Boys is, to an extent, a man’s one, too, except that the boys here don’t get a pass. Given its title, it’s a surprisingly feminist show for one that is also, on the surface at least, a testosterone-fuelled superhero show (albeit one that takes an anti-superhero stance). The female characters are strong, but not inhumanly, infallibly strong like some of the Marvel heroes they parody. They’re flawed, human, and fascinating. They kick ass, they fuck up, but they’re never one-note or scapegoats. Of course there are bad women and mothers out there in the real world, and we shouldn’t shy away from imagining or creating those kinds of stories, but what we’ve seen on TV and film over the last decade or so is the steady opening up of a multiplicity of perspectives that’s been busy enriching our cultural currency. We should roll with that for a while. There’s a lot of lost ground to catch up on. 

Read more

TV

The Boys Season 2 Succeeds By Allowing Its Female Characters to Shine

By Lacy Baugher

TV

The Boys Season 3: What to Expect

By Lacy Baugher

Perhaps much of the appeal of stories about bad mothers relies on our preconceptions of motherhood and the expectations that have always been laid upon women to be not just good mothers, but perfect ones. A bad mother stands out more than a bad father because for much of human history it’s been almost impossible to be classed as a bad father.        

Let’s take Butcher. Without his own father’s brutality he mightn’t have been capable of becoming the effective, remorseless killing-machine we know and love, but, on the other hand, without his father’s brutality, he mightn’t felt the urge to pursue his vendetta in the first place. He might have been more like an immediately post-A-Train Hughie. But here’s the rub, because, arguably, a world with Homelanders needs Butchers, and plenty of them. There’s a weird and tragic duality at play here. Homelander is who he is largely because of his own failed father, so really the two men are destroying each other, and the world around them, because of their daddy issues.  

Butcher himself is a flawed father figure. He uses a grief-wracked Hughie as a pawn to pursue his own vendetta against The Seven, showing the same sort of callous disregard Homelander might show an underling. But through Butcher’s influence Hughie learns to be (or is forced to become) bold, assertive, even brutal; the sort of son his own father could never have let him be; wouldn’t have known how to kindle. In time, almost despite himself, Butcher comes to care about Hughie, albeit not always in a conventionally paternal way. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) tells Butcher early on this season that Hughie is his ‘pit canary’; if something bad happens to Hughie, then Butcher will know he’s gone too far. So if Butcher can be said to be the kind of father that Hughie never had, then Hughie, in turn, can be said to be the conscience that Butcher long forsook in favor of bloodshed.  

For better and worse the men in The Boys are made by their fathers, but that only tells half the story. Their fathers, and they themselves, are aided in their osmotic, Franken-Freudian fuck-ups by the sometimes literal, sometimes figurative absence of a mother figure. Hughie’s mother? – MIA; Butcher’s mother? – passive; Homelander’s mother? – accidentally hugged to death by a young Homelander (she was a scientist Homelander had thought of as a mother, not his biological mother). 

The lack of a maternal presence bleeds most noticeably into Hughie’s and Homelander’s lives. Hughie is insecure and desperate for attachment. His romance with Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is sweet, but carries a mild undercurrent of mommy issues. What Hughie really seems to want from Starlight is words of encouragement, validation, co-dependency and a tuck-in at bedtime. Even though their relationship is sexual, there’s something charmingly chaste about it at the same time. 

It would be impossible, though, to trump Homelander’s mommy issues, manifested as they are by a fierce predilection for suckling, and a fondness for warm titty milk. Homelander may be peerlessly physically strong, but of all the show’s characters – and this is perhaps something of an understatement – he’s the most psychologically fragile.

Dr. Vogelbaum laments that the lack of a mother in Homelander’s life made him aggressive and full of hate. Putting aside for a moment this rather idealized notion of women and motherhood, if we assume that in Homelander’s case the observation is correct – and that Homelander is also on some level aware of how he’s been warped by this absence (the roots of his fetish surely can’t have escaped him) – then it’s interesting that he would choose to rob his own son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), of the loving maternal influence of which he himself was deprived. 

By stealing Ryan away from his mother near the end of season two – by fracturing their bond and their reality – he risks making Ryan as miserable as he was as a child; worse, in truth, because Homelander never had a loving mother to miss. While The Boys deals very well with its female characters, it hasn’t yet explored motherhood in any great depth, except to show the consequences to fatherhood when it’s absent. Season 3 may very well add some texture by exploring in flashback form Stormfront’s (Aya Cash) relationship with her now-departed daughter, or by bringing Hughie’s mother into the fold, now that we know she isn’t dead.

While Homelander’s actions vis a vis Ryan are fuelled by his malignant, myopic selfishness, and his screaming God complex, the evolution of his feelings towards the boy hinted at a capacity for redemption. As hellish as the family unit Stormfront manipulates Homelander into creating – Nazi eugenicist mother, psychopathic father, and kidnapped child – the experience of being in that family seems to soften something in him, at least for a short while. He appears receptive to and empathetic towards Ryan’s fears, and even appears not to relish the idea of Stormfront filling his head with racist propaganda. Just for a moment, salvation seems possible.

Ultimately, though, no one can allow Homelander to guide Ryan’s destiny, potential for change notwithstanding. Ryan is too powerful and volatile to risk Homelander stamping his skewed outlook upon his soul. Ironically, the act of saving his mother from Stormfront propels Ryan along the same trajectory as his father – both have now killed their mothers. I wonder if Ryan, like Dexter before him, will be born in blood, the splatter pattern arranging itself into the shape of Homelander’s cape. 

Butcher isn’t Ryan’s father, but his fealty to his dead wife and her cast-iron concept of family helps raise him from the swamp of his primal urges, resulting in him doing the right thing by both her and the boy who is the son of his greatest enemy. Clearly Butcher isn’t his own father either, his selflessness here indicating an encouraging break from the poor way he was parented. 

Perhaps The Boys isn’t trying to communicate anything about solely fatherhood or solely motherhood but rather family itself; its power to make someone belong; its power to save. The family Homelander experienced was predicated on a falsehood, but he liked the feel of it nonetheless, and it threatened to humanise him. Butcher has a family now, too – his friends, The Boys, the people around him who would die for him, and vice versa – and a surrogate son in Hughie. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie (Tomer Capon), whatever faint promise of romance swirls around them, have found for now a joyous familial bond, like brother and sister. And Mother’s Milk is now back in the bosom of his estranged family, a moment that must rank among the series most touching. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

All Happy families, then? For now. But Homelander might have something to say about that in season three.  

The post The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[charmingturkeysandwich]

I Could Use a Love Song (2/22): where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases

Pairing: Emma Swan/Killian Jones (AU) Words: 3k(ish) Rating: T for this chapter, I’d say. (M overall) Chapter Summary: The band’s first day with their new roadie gets off to a shaky start.

Read on AO3.

---

Having grown used to shitty sleeping situations through foster homes, homelessness, couch surfing, and now touring, Emma awoke the next morning refreshed and ready to fight.

Yep, fight. Because the prior evening she’d been exhausted and hovering in that weird stage of drunk where you’re basically pre-hungover, and life had thrown a hot roadie at her. Except it wasn’t life that had done that. It was David. David who in the year of our lord 2019 most fucking certainly had a cell phone and could have shot her a text that a stranger was going to crash her quiet night alone.

Not that Killian crashed in any sense beyond sleep. They were seemingly both out before even the first song had finished playing through her speakers and he was still eyes-closed and breathing steady now that Emma was crawling over the seat and out the door, dead set on properly raging about the ridiculousness of this decision in addition to the lack of communication that shouldn’t exist among people who literally write words for a fucking living.

Seriously. How hard is it to send a text? Don’t wanna do your dirty work yourself, you can just tell Siri to piss of your bandmate on your behalf.

A little warning might have been nice. But she got none. So they weren’t getting any either.

“Rise and shine, motherfuckers!” Emma squawked as she flung open the door to David and Mary Margaret’s bedroom (they knew she had a copy of it, so really they should have thought twice before giving her no warning that she was going to have to deal with some weird ass alternate universe, very fuckable Captain Hook every single day for the foreseeable future. And pay him.

“Emma!” Mary Margaret gasped, yanking the comforter over what was probably her bare chest, but Emma didn’t bother to even glance at her. Accomplice in lack-of-communication, probably… but David was her object of fury.

Speaking of… “What the hell are you doing?!” he shouted, more confused than angry at her intrusion.

“I have a leather-jacket-wearing bone to pick with you, sir.”

“Aw, shit. You met Liam’s brother then?”

“Met him, slept with him, you know, the basic first steps in an employer-employee relationship.”

“Emma! You had sex with Killian?!” Mary Margaret sounded positively scandalized, which made sense for her own personality in addition to the fact that Emma hadn’t slept with anyone in … well it would probably be measured in years and not months, so. It would have been a shock if it were true.

“No, mom, but he slept in the van with me, which is my happy place. Not a place for strays.”

David stood up from the bed, raking his fingers through his hair in what looked like frustration or perhaps the pain of a hangover headache (good).

“We’re all strays, Emma. Can’t you be a little more accepting?”

“Can’t you be a little more with the warning?! You’re lucking I didn’t punch him when he approached me in a dark fucking alley, David.” Which was true. After much of the shit she suffered in her younger years, she didn’t take a chance or give anyone the benefit of the doubt if they seemed to have ill intentions.

He paused, daring blankly at her before taking a swig of the water next to their little bed. Light was just barely filtering through their curtains, so it was still early. No rush to hit the road quite yet, still time to get breakfast and drink their weights in coffee.

Usually the mornings were more pleasant than this.

Usually it was just the five of them in a diner, and usually she was listening to their post-gig stories, not sharing much of her own.

“Where did you leave him, then? Or did you already fire him?”

“Now, David, how could I fire someone I never even hired?! You remember we voted that we didn’t have the money to add staff.”

At that, Mary Margaret perked up, her back straightening as her mascara-smudged face scrunched in guilt. “That one is actually on me. We were on FaceTime with Killian and he’s just so… he’s in a bad place, Emma, and he needs money and people and we couldn’t just let him… “

“Go to the pound with the other strays? Fine. I get it. He doesn’t seem like the worst person in the world. But, like, give a girl a heads-up? And to answer your question, David, I left him soundly asleep in the van. I’m not a goddamn monster.”

Emma stormed out with no real destination in mind, just a deep craving for coffee and a bear claw and space from any other living human who might attempt to converse with her when she needed a minute to wallow in her semi-justified rage.

-

Of all the people to find her, of fucking course it was Killian.

Known him 12 hours or less and he was already the biggest pain in her ass.

“Swan, fancy seeing you here!” His voice was bright despite the wrinkles in this clothes and the hair that was no longer ‘artfully mussed,’ but more… hurricane-ravaged.

“Why are you so chipper?” is all she croaked back in response.

“Well I’ve already had an unpleasant encounter with Brother Dave and figured I would try to make this one a little less fraught with tension and don’t get any ideas about Emma you wanker.” Killian plopped down across from her, already clutching a coffee from somewhere that definitely was not the diner she’d wandered into and been sulking at for at least 2 hours.

“Why would he yell at you? And why are you calling him brother? And… just why?”

“Apologies, Swan, I assumed you’d had enough coffee and sugar to cope with me by now. I was warned of that. You see, apparently I was supposed to just go ‘sleep on a bench in a park’ or something to that effect and then not introduce myself to you or the rest of the crew until morning. Silly me. So David, who appears to think of himself as your father but who was best friends with my brother, proceeded to lecture me about how I’m not allowed to get in your pants. As if you didn’t have a say in the matter. Don’t worry, darling, I clarified that you will without a doubt never care for me beyond tolerance and he seemed to unbunch his knickers.”

“You know, Jones, if I’m not your love I’m probably not your darling, either.”

“Goodness sakes, woman, can you perhaps glean the important information from my babbling and not focus the filler?”

“Fine. Fuck your filler. We’re probably late for leaving by now, though,” Emma said, glancing at the clock on the wall and then at her message-filled phone. She rose from the table slowly, downing the rest of her lukewarm coffee and shoving a doughnut toward Killian in the process. “Shall we?”

He did some type of bow/curtsey nonsenense and flourished his arm toward the door as if to say ladies first and Emma stomped right past him, already 110% fed up with his weird country boy/Jane Austen hero attempt at chivalry when she knew he was no gentleman and she was no goddamn lady.

-

It appeared that the new guy had already met the rest of the team, Ruby fist bumping him and Graham giving him a hungover nod to acknowledge his return. David and Mary Margaret were blessedly silent about any of the morning’s arguments and simply hopped in the driver and passenger seats so they could meander over to the next tiny ass New York town full of Their People.

Some days were harder than others when it came to the places they played. None of them were the hellish ‘hometown’ she’d steadfastly refused to ever revisit, but each seemed to capture some kind of echo of her past. It was really a shame that scent was so tied to memory, because dive bars were smelly places. The right combination of Marlboro Menthol Lights, Miller, and whatever was in that black bottle from Avon and suddenly Emma was back at the Buckhorn, drinking to forget the hurt she hadn’t quite sustained yet, but was inevitably coming.

She always got past it. Rage was good like that, strong enough to overcome the heartbreak of individual memories. Whiskey helped, too.

Graham and Ruby were sprawled on either side of the middle row in the shabby van, both passed out (clearly they hadn’t done enough sleeping wherever it is either of them had gone the night before). David and Mary Margaret, meanwhile, were quietly singing to each other from the front, songs too cheesy for the other three bandmates to ever agree to allow to be performed on stage.

So that left her and Killian, the only two life forms currently active in actual reality.

“So what’s your story, Jones?

He rolled his head on his shoulders, sliding his line of sight from the video to meet her (probably too-harsh) stare. “What makes you think I have a story?”

“You’re on the road with a country band. In my experience you don’t get to that point without some stuff preceding it. Come on, Jones. Someone stole your truck, shot your dog, or screwed your wife. Which one?”

“Where are your manners, young lady, you definitely take a bloke to dinner before you ask for his Tragic Backstory. That’s got to be written somewhere. For shame!” he whisper-shouted, quite overdramatically.

Maybe he’d gotten his heart broken at drama camp.

“What else am I supposed to ask you? I don’t have much information to go on here.”

“Why don’t you start with, ‘Killian, it’s so nice to meet you. How about you tell me a little about yourself?’”

Her answering eye roll reminded her she hadn’t properly removed her makeup from the night before, not having taken her usual five minutes in the lovers’ hotel room bathroom to allow for proper skin care. Fuck, her pores were going to be pissed.

“I’m not quite that polite, but fine. We’ll have it your way. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”

That “little about himself” went on for about an hour, covering everything from his love of football to how underrated asiago cheese was on casual dining menus. They disagreed on silly subjects like the best fast food and what to take on a deserted island. They pretty much only agreed that David and Mary Margaret were insufferable and that love was for losers.

(And yes, that was the closest she got to unlocking even one small detail about his Tragic Backstory.)

They talked all the way to the next hole-in-the-wall bar, which did, in fact, like it might have some holes in it in the light of day.

“Thank the fucking lord we’re finally here. Will you two shut up now?” Ruby moaned into the seat cushion, apparently not as knocked out as Emma had assumed from her unmoving silence the entire ride.

“’s not our fault you two oafs don’t use the nighttime for sleeping,” Killian snarked back at her.

Hmm. Maybe they’d gotten more acquainted than Emma had realized.

Add that to the pile of Killian Jones-related mysteries.

-

Graham had been so exhausted, he didn’t even awake when the van emptied out, still snoozing even as they hauled all their shit into the bar. Just to be a jerk, Emma even tossed a drum stick at him. But he just grumbled and turned, unfazed by her minor assault.

“Hope he lost sleep for the good reason, if you know what I mean,” Killian said, as he bumped his shoulder into hers. He was carrying a guitar case in his right hand and had his left forearm wrapped around one of the boxes carrying electrical equipment.

“Yes, in that tone, I’m pretty sure people up in Vermont know what you mean?”

“I’m not sure about that one. Have you been to Vermont? I don’t think I’ve ever met a fuckable person from that whole state.”

“Don’t say that around David. I’m 99% sure he’d fuck Bernie Sanders.”

The two of them laughed so hard they almost dropped their very expensive equipment, especially when David, as if on cue, turned back toward them: “what’s in Vermont? There’s this ski place I’ve wanted to go to…”

Their laughter turned to near howling as poor, out-of-the-loop David rambled on about Mt. Snow being a great place to take a date and how exactly that could be so funny that two people who’d met last night had already been reduced to giggling middle schoolers.

-

Mary Margaret and Killian quickly started setting up for their set, even though they had a few hours until people would actually show (she was a worrier, and it was technically his first day on the job). So that gave the other slackers some time to rest and eat greasy food and hopefully get properly buzzed before the show so Emma didn’t have a random panic attack at some dude wearing a blue plaid shirt with pink Vans like Neal used to, once upon a time.

Catching up on the night before was usually their breakfast routine, but having avoided that, Emma assumed she’d just end up not knowing how Graham and Ruby had spent their time. Thankfully, both were perfectly happy to provide a secondary replay of their evenings.

Well, Ruby was happy to. See, she hadn’t done anything scandalous the night before. No fucking strangers for her! Turns out, a friend of hers from college lived in that little town and she’d gone over to her place to catch up. Friends old and new were there and she mostly missed out on sleep for conversation and a few truly ridiculous board games (who played Chutes and Ladders when they were plastered?).

Graham, on the other hand, had not had as enjoyable an evening. He’d met a girl, a very pretty girl, and she’d asked him back to her place. He had enthusiastically agreed right up until he was pounding into her against her kitchen counter only to be interrupted by her boyfriend. Thankfully there was no macho how dare you touch my girlshowdown, but it did leave Graham with a bad case of blue balls and nowhere to sleep.

“Wait! Why didn’t you come to the van with me? I don’t bite,” Emma protested as Graham was describing wandering the roads with streetlights until it was appropriately light enough to be breakfast time.

“You don’t think that’s the first place I went? I peeked my head in the fan and saw his shaggy ass and thought you might actually have taken the leap and met someone. No chance in hell I was going to spook you if you finally found a guy you didn’t want to murder on first sight.”

She yelped out a very offended hey, but deep down, he wasn’t wrong. He and David were just the only two men to ever prove to her they were interested in her as a human being and not a punching bag or human fleshlight. She was thankful for finding them and realizing that the whole not all men has some merit, but not enough to take any chances on a guy.

“Well now that you know your assessment couldn’t have been further from the truth, I bet you’re feeling pretty silly for missing out on sleep.”

“No, I stand by my decision. But, yeah, tonight I’m crashing in the van with you two. Unless, I mean, if you ever want privacy with him…”

“YES!” Ruby squealed. “You two would make the cutest babies. You know, someday. With little leather jackets and horrendous attitudes. It would be legit adorable.”

From the corner of her eye she could see David’s face turning fuchsia and she was reminded of the speech he’d apparently given Killian that morning (as if she needed protecting). Not even close.

“Hah, very funny there, Rubes. You think he’s so good looking, you can go for it.”

“Oh, no you will not!” David shouted. “No casual sex within the band.”

(Hey, at least he was yelling at someone who wasn’t her.)

“But you and Mary Margaret!” she protested.

“Nothing casual about that. Marry Killian, fine. I’ll throw the bridal shower. But do not fuck him for fun. We need him and he doesn’t need another mess.”

Before Emma had a chance to ask David to elaborate on that clear Tragic Backstory Hint, Mary Margaret and Killian plopped down at the table, set-up apparently finished.

“So… what do we do now?” Killian asked, the blunt end of his left arm fiddling with the thick ring on his right thumb.

Mary Margaret, David, and Graham collectively responded, “Eat!”

Ruby and Emma were more of the let’s get drunk frame of mind and instead replied, “Shots!”

So the crew of six ordered shots for 12 and their first official day as a team had begun.

By the time they were being announced for the stage, Emma was red-faced and stumbling, Mary Margaret was giggling about the word “banana” and Killian had already told sixteen different dirty jokes, all met with a deeper scowl from Emma each time.

-

That night Graham’s drumming was just a tad out of sync and David forgot that he wasn’t actually supposed to sing the girl parts of their one duet-style song, but none of that mattered. The crowd was wild, totally tuned in and screaming their hearts out right along with them. Halfway through their set, just before Emma relinquished lead vocals to Mary Margaret for Sappy Hour, she clutched the microphone in her hand, swaying as she returned it to the stand at the edge of the stage, yelling, “I love everyone in this bar!”

This whole ‘having friends’ thing just got better and better every single day.

Especially when puking in the dumpster at 3am. You find out who your friends are, right about then, and only Ruby was mockingly taking SnapChat videos. Killian got her water and Graham held her hair and the last thing she remembered before she passed out was telling the other strays she was just so glad they all somehow found each other.

[deathbyvalentine]

WWR

Addiction

Last year, the decision was easy. Accidentally drink demon blood, detox, fight the urges for months upon months while feeling like shit. Simple enough - Ash had a fuck ton of willpower and the hatred of the supernatural to carry her through. Now though. Now it wasn’t so simple.

She pressed her head against the cool porcelain of the bath in Tammy’s bathroom. She had been throwing up for over an hour now, so violent it was almost a convulsion. Shakes wracked through her, making her spill the water on the way to her mouth. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe evenly.

There were two factors. One - was there any point trying to fight against something that was it turned out, was inherently her nature? She was made this way not just by one factor, but multiple forces all playing their hand. She was barely human, between the blood and the fates and the coin. 

Factor two - it was impossible to deny how much better she was when she was high. She was quicker, stronger, bolder. She was powerful. She could kill or exorcise demons with a touch or a luck. That Ash didn’t feel guilt, didn’t feel anxiety, didn’t spend hours scared of her own thoughts. Wasn’t it more useful? And now she was technically dead, she was pretty sure the demon blood would help out that that screaming terror she felt in her head whenever her thoughts strayed to her pale skin, her blue fingertips.

Crucially, another factor came to mind. Ash had opened her eyes and closed them again when she saw the blood soaked child standing in the bathroom, lights flickering. When she was high, she didn’t see Violet or any of the other monsters that had been following her for years. Either because the blood healed that fractured part of her mind or because it was enough to keep ghosts at bay, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The fact was there and since the revelation that had destroyed her, Ash wasn’t sure if she was strong enough to face her sister anymore. Blood would keep her and the guilt far away.

_________________________________________________

Fae games

She wasn’t sure why it mattered to her so much, but it definitely did. Maybe it was the final straw after losing an eye, having her lip split open. Maybe it was the fact it was done without any permission at all. But she was most definitely not impressed by the purple scribbles that had appeared on her face, as embedded as tattoos. 

She was a little vain. Her body was studded with scars and staples,  her clothes usually a little threadbare and stained. Her face and her hair mattered to her. It was all that got her into any beds at all, as let’s face it, her personality didn’t do any of the heavy lifting. If she wasn’t pretty, that was a major kick to her already limited charisma. Which of course, the fae and half the men in the room didn’t understand, making her feel like she was overreacting which only made her angrier. 

With a sigh, she opened her phone. Time to order a bulk pile of foundation to Izzy’s place she guessed.

_____________________________________________________-

Riding towards the apocalypse

In her dream, she was utterly alone. Fog lay heavy around her ankles and the sky above her was grey. She had never been in a forest like the one she was currently in. The trees towered above her like dead skyscrapers, the leaves ashen. The only sounds were her footsteps on the soil and dead leaves littering the forest floor. She wasn’t breathing, she didn’t hear her heartbeat in her ears. Her breath did not add to the lingering mist. She walked, though she wasn’t sure what for. Something was calling her forward, a force as strong as magnetism, as irresistible.

The clearing appeared suddenly.  One moment there was a line of trees and the next there was not. In the middle of the clearing, her horse stood. She knew it was her horse the same way she knew her own name. She stepped forward, aware she was trembling slightly.

It was huge, a thoroughbred for sure, its coat a velvet black that almost shone. Its breathing sent clouds of steam from it and it eyed her with no fear, only a curiosity. She approached carefully, catching hold of the reins where they hung down. It had no saddle, but it did have a bridle. She ran her hand down the horses snout, amazed at how warmly it nuzzled into her until both of them were resting heads against each other. It was only when she carded her fingers through its dark mane she woke up.

She knew two things for certain as she sat upright in bed, wearily rubbing at her eyes. That was her horse, the horse that Famine road. And that it existed somewhere more waking than dreams.

_____________________________________________________

Back from the dead

The jolt felt like being shot. And she knew what being shot felt like. The metal lodging deep in her chest. The shock waves coming off it in harsh ripples. The feeling of being dragged up from a deep, dark place. A place where no light reached. A place where there was nothing, nothing at all. Not even her.

Thrown from there into this room, this room where there was light and warmth and people, people peering at her, music playing from a distant room, the feel of her gloves on her hands, so much sensation, so much jostle, so much noise. It hit her hard, a wall of input.

She didn’t mean to start crying but she did, hands flying to her mouth to try and muffle the desperately broken sounds. She couldn’t articulate the two horrors she just felt. Horror one; feeling the life eek from her body as her blood fell into the earth, numbness spreading first from her fingertips up and up, cold falling into her bones, vision falling from her eyes until the black enveloped her completely. Horror two: that same black. Is this what awaited them all after death, the normal ones, the ones that didn’t make deals? No heaven, no hell, nothing but the cold dark where no light could live. If Ash knew one thing, just one thing it was this: monsters lived in the dark. And there was so, so much dark. Waiting for her, waiting for them all.

Ash had never been afraid of death. Not of heavenly reward nor hellish punishment. But now she was afraid of something far, far worse. The nothing that was just beyond this life. Ash desperately, painfully didn’t want to die. And now all that was stopping her from falling into that void was the coin beating in her chest. She clamped a hand just below her throat, feeling the cold there. She’d take this half-life over no life at all.

______________________________________________________

Family 

She watched them surround John, with calming words and touches. It was easy enough to slip into the dark of the manors gardens. She knew nobody would follow her. Loneliness was comforting in its reliability. She found a bench, curling up as small as she could, a shield against the deep night. 

She loved them but she would never be embraced like him. She was too odd, too standoffish, too bad at people. She wasn’t easy to love. She knew that and she never knew it more keenly than in this moment. It was sharp and unkind, a thought that would never go away. It would bloom like some unwanted flower.

It was John that came to find her eventually, a situation unfurling inside that could really use her intervention. She bid goodbye to the hunter next to her, Mccall. She had been rather charmed by his clumsy attempts to comfort her, honest and well meaning. It showed the good heart he had, shining through, despite everything. 

She had for a long while thought that goodness was determined mostly by species. But maybe there were no good species or bad species. Maybe it was about individuals. Some people were just born wrong and she was one of them, Born bad, born with a thorn in her side. John was good. So was Sean and Bekah and Tammy and Izzy and Cordy. She knew this as she knew her own name. She wondered, if deep down, they knew she was bad. That too, would make sense.

__________________________________________________________

Depth Perception

It was driving her nuts. She knocked glasses off sides, bumped into doors, tripped on stairs. No task was simple now and that was even without the deep revulsion she felt when she had to clean out the socket where her eye once sat. She changed the dressing daily, unable to stop looking at her reflection in the mirror. On some levels the grotesqueness suited her. The outside matched the inside. Her look was edging towards her destiny.

It gave her a good excuse to spend a lot of time in the makeshift range they had at Cordy’s. She had to learn to compensate for the lack of vision. Learn to line up her arm with the line of sight, get her accuracy back to where it once was. It was frustratingly slow going but the methodical physical action was good for her. Breathe in, breathe out. Hold your arm steady. Don’t blink. Know where your target is even if you shut your eyes. 

She went through more bullets then than she had in the literal Somme. She felt better for it though, cleaning her gun afterwards (indeed with more care than she cleaned her socket). It didn’t matter if she looked dangerous or frightening. She was dangerous and frightening. And she could still shoot better than damn near anyone.

_________________________________________________________

Police Raid

Ah.  A problem she could solve. She couldn’t quite keep the grin off her face as she grabbed Cordy’s mobile phone so she could get a better shot of the closest officer’s face. Annoyed, they tried to snatch the phone from her hands but she weaved backwards easily, oddly graceful. “No. It is perfectly legal within the UK to film an encounter with an officer as long as it isn’t impeding an arrest.” It tripped off her tongue easily, by heart.

As did the rest of her rights. She had already hidden her weapons, a place she was sure nobody would look, but that wasn’t the point. The point was creating a distraction for those that hadn’t been so quick. There was also another, slightly grander purpose that she would never admit to anyone as it was far too idealistic and starry eyed to fit her image at all. She genuinely believed that it was her duty to use these rights, to fiercely protect them and utilise them. The police hoped you didn’t remember them, it made their jobs so much easier. Ash, as always, refused to make things easy. This country needed to be careful it didn’t grimly slide into the image of America were police broke laws and rights as easily as a twig.

Their guns didn’t scare her. Their masks didn’t scare her. She had seen worse things on a biweekly basis. Her grin and her confidence made them uneasy, she could tell. They relied on being able to induce fear. With a quick blink, she began asking for their warrants. 

________________________________________________________

Paying the cost.

Snap. A collarbone breaking. Thud. Her head meeting a wall.  Bang. A bullet lodged deep into her thigh. Knifes into hands, rope around her throat, claws down her chest. There were too many breaks, slices and impacts to name. Her body was a map of bad decisions and impulsive moments. Staples littered her abdomen, glinting like teeth. Scars shone like moonlight.

Visions. Nightmares. Hallucinations. Tainted blood. Withdrawal. A severe lack of sleep, a drinking problem and commitment issues. Her mind too bore the marks of her life and they were not as easily hidden under fabric.

And now there was something else. Her eyes were darker. Her skin had a sickly pallor, circles under her eyes were now a dark purple. Her lips, once very pink, had a tinge of blue, as did her nail beds. Her hair hung lank no matter how  times she washed it. She was hungry, constantly. Sleep embraced her like an old friend but she woke up screaming from the darkness, causing Izzy to rush in, wrap her arms around her and turn on the light.

She was dead. It was an indisputable fact and she felt it deeply. Feelings were dulled. Sensations too. Everything seemed a little greyer, a little further away. She was already half a ghost, existing in a world that should have eluded her. Only a coin in her chest and a sense of duty keeping her away from the grave.

______________________________________________________

Crushes

Kara. With her gorgeous grin and her strength. When she wrapped her arms around Ash, she felt like she was anchored. Like she couldn’t just disappear. She was a hundred comforting things, flannel shirts, take out, binge watching TV. She was warm autumn nights and lazy mornings. And she was good in a way Ash would never be.

Alice. Ash could talk to her about anything, anything at all and Alice wouldn’t look at her like she was crazy. She had been hypnotising when she danced, one of the only people that seemed to understand what the music meant to Ash. She was beautiful, decorated with a halo of darkness.

Nora. Poor, poor Nora. Ash couldn’t think about her.

Reggie. Reggie who was fun incarnate, who lit up a room with nothing but a smile and a cigarette. She could be a hell of a distraction. She could be as intoxicating as the whiskey Ash so loved, a divine way of forgetting. A partner in crime, a partner in the apocalypse.

Audrey. Leather and red lipstick and not taking her shit. Someone that knew her in a way nobody else did. She alone had held her missing flyers, had seen the nightmare that was her sister’s body. She was clever and quick and no nonsense and handsome as fuck in a suit.

Laura. Cool and hot and way, way out of her league. She seemed like the type of cool that was only interested in irony and sex which Ash could happily provide. Her tone tended to have eighteen layers of meaning and she could only guess at a couple.

Bella. Her heart skipped a beat whenever she looked at her. She wanted to trace the outlines of her scars. Her blood called to some broken part of her, but her personality called to all the protective parts of Ash. She knew sister troubles, she knew demons and temptation. Ash knew from a single moment that if anyone laid a finger on the girl, she would rip them apart without a single thought. She was soft with her. Only her.

_______________________________________________________-

Jessica Jones marathon

She hadn’t exactly made an effort with her appearance. Bella had seen her soaked in blood after all, screaming. There was no coming back from that really. But she had washed until she smelt of nothing but violets and all her injuries were freshly and cleanly bandaged. It occurred to her that she didn’t know how many dates Bella had been on. She wanted to make it good. But she also didn’t want to freak her out with formality and pomp. 

She took the middle ground. A bottle of whiskey rather than wine, a backpack full of snacks. The one thing she had decided to lean into fully was bringing flowers. Dark red roses, thorns still attached. The idea of handing them over made her cheeks burn but she refused to back down. She had come this far damn it.

Jessica Jones and booze. What more could anybody want?

[osmw1]

Crowbar Nurse  Chapter 6 — What Gives an Engineer Superhuman Strength?

—Why did my body feel so nimble?

Just exactly how did my body change…?

As I ran at the group of zombies, I questioned how impossibly agile I was, considering I had just finished working overtime.

It’s almost like I’m actually Sera Harvey.

I wasn’t able to leap over buildings or anything crazy like that, but it’s not like Sera was able to do so in the game either. Plus, the controls in DMC games are typical of most horror games in that the characters walk quite sluggishly. I suppose it’s more frightening this way. Being able to run like this is more than good enough for me. I prepared myself for the worst as I headed straight at the enemies. I knew this was already an uphill battle.

There’s only one way out… we’re going to do it and do it well! First, I’ve got to get the Tank to fire…!

The Tank fired a high-explosive shell as soon as I got within range. The shell traveled many times over the speed of sound and was heading directly at me. … however, the projectile impacted and detonated quite a distance away from where I was.

Perfect… it’s just like how it works in game!

With the Tank being a zombie, its slow lumbering movement did not help it track its target. The Tank is almost guaranteed to never accurately land its first shot. And muck like a real Tank, it would be unpleasant for anything standing immediately next to the gun, to say the least. The muzzle blast went straight into the surrounding zombies and they were all destroyed… the Minotaur took a huge hit as well. Everything is going just as I planned, save for one thing.

Augh! Don’t tell me I got caught too…!

A sharp pain shot through my body. I collapsed on the spot as the pain torn through me from the inside out. Before I had collapsed, the tank zombie fired another few shots… but I wouldn’t still be here if I had been hit by it. The situation was taking a turn for the worse.

“Gah… ugh…!”

Breathing was a lot harder than I remembered. … something must have happened to my lungs. My diaphragm and other muscles were functioning as they should, but I couldn’t breathe very well. The shockwave must have punctured my lungs.

I-I can’t move… crap. I can’t fight like this!

I thought the only tactic was to get the enemies to kill themselves, and honestly, that part worked alright… but I didn’t expect to receive this much damage either.

In the game, the blast radius is about 10 meters, but I’ve heard it’s much smaller compared to real life. Maybe I had misjudged my distance. I sure hope I didn’t receive a real Tank’s gun blast…

“Sera!”

Kiryū rushed over in fear. The Tank is still alive. It was dangerous for him to come over here… but I’m sure he knew that already. Just as I realized he had tossed me some recovery items, he turned to face the Tank with his crowbar.

Oh, that’s not a good idea. You can’t take down a Tank with a crowbar…

The pain seared through me again, leaving me unable to speak. I writhed in pain as the blood-soaked Kiryū came back with his blood-stained crowbar.

“Good thing it was pretty weak already… hey, use the healing items already! What, are you feeling too weak to use it yourself? Jeez… you okay? Do you recognize me?”

I faintly nodded at his question.

“Aw, jeez… I haven’t used any healing items in this game before, so I don’t quite know how to use ‘em… how about this bottle? Should I just sprinkle it over your body?”

I shook my head. That bottle… or rather, that vial in his hand has a rubber cap over the end of it. It’s so that you can’t open it by hand. You need a syringe to utilize it. For some reason, the protagonist spawns with a syringe—I did not. There’s a hospital section afterwards, so maybe I’ve gotta get one there.

“Hmm, how about these herbs then? What do I do with them? Can I just cram it in your mouth?” “…”

…

…

… hmm?

Umm, maybe?

I’ve never seen it being used in game before. In the game, you open the menu, select Items, select Medicinal Herbs, then select Yes when it asks Do you want to use this item?. Since it’s never shown how the protagonist uses the herb… I don’t have the slightest idea what to do with it. I’m not sure what Kiryū thought when he saw my expression, but he stuffed the whole plant in my mouth.

“Mm… ugh…”

A handsome youth ramming a handful of lawn clippings into a sweet, young girl’s mouth… this must’ve looked much worse than it actually was. Would this really heal my internal trauma?! Almost as if answering the question… a miracle occurred.

“Ugh…?!”

A refreshing tingling sensation rushed through my body as if I had been immersed in menthol. All the pain and breathing problems affecting me had disappeared instantaneously.

“… how does this world work…”

I spat the ball of herb out from my mouth.

“Those medicinal herbs worked as quickly as sublingual tablets…” “Let me know once you figure this world out…”

He heaved a sigh as I sat up from the ground. Kiryū, still sitting there, was dripping with blood… but none of it seemed to be his own—all of it was just splattered from the enemies.

“You took down the Minotaur and Tank without so much a scratch… that’s incredible, Kiryū.” “All I did was hit and run. You had weakened the Tank already and the Minotaur smoked itself with the gas turbine exhaust.”

He says it had gone so smoothly only because I charged in with all my courage.

“No, but still, you’re way too strong even with all things considered. … you’re probably the real one-man army here. Really, thank you so much for saving me… but I can’t help but feel like I’ve lost all my confidence.”

I forced a smile. Kiryū—a total beginner—had to save me. And I even boasted about how “I know this game like the back of my hand”.

“That was just a fluke. Don’t even get me started on how scary it was fighting enemies that could kill me in one hit…”

He urges us to hurry to a safe zone, to which I nodded with all my might. I was in absolute, 100% agreement. Since we’ve just taken down some special zombies, there shouldn’t be a mob for the next little while. Nevertheless, another Tank or Minotaur might show up if we were to take our sweet time. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

 Drastic measures.

 “… looks like we will have to grind for those levels after all.” “Hey, now. Did you forget you were at the brink of death, Sera? If we kill too many zombies and get too powerful, more of those special ones are going to spawn, right?” “I haven’t forgotten. That was… humiliating. If we were to avoid every single fight, there will be too many of them before we can react.” “I mean, I guess…” “Trust me.”

I’ve played this game so much, I can literally beat it with a plastic bottle as my only weapon. I’m a beast. Yet, I just showed Kiryū just how unreliable I was. It was absolutely shameful.

“We’ll make sure to be ready for next time. I’ll build us an unstoppable army from hell…”

I slowly stood up from the ground.

“… what’s that about an army?”

He seemed confused as he stood up with me.

“That’s right, an unstoppable army from hell. Even if I can’t level up in this game, there’s many other ways we can win. Don’t worry… I’ll turn these streets of downtown into a safe zone, like a garden that you can stroll through without a so much a care…” “I couldn’t care less about a garden. Let’s just calm down and plan our next moves.”

Kiryū, with a wry smile on his face, rolled his neck.

“That’s our destination, right?” “Ah, yes. We have almost reached the beginning of the stage. It’s my first time backtracking like this. It feels a little odd…”

As we twist and turn through the narrow alleyways, another new enemy creeped across our path.

—It was a Heart.

That wasn’t a metaphor for anything. The zombie was about four times the size of a yoga ball. Tentacles scrawl from the monster in the shape of a literal heart. I don’t remember what its actual name is. That’s how unimportant they are.

“Shit. We’ve used up all the herbs earlier…!” “We’ll be fine. That thing may look gross, but it is only ‘slightly stronger’ than the average zombie. We’ve got more than enough firepower to take it down…”

I walked in front of Kiryū. He looked anxious, but he seemed to calm down when we made eye contact.

“Could you please lend me your crowbar?” “It’s all sticky from the blood. You okay with that?” “I’ll be fine after wiping it with my skirt. This will be an easy fight… I used to kill a whole bunch of these things before my anatomy tests… so watch closely, okay?”

I took a few big swings with the crowbar.

“—Let do it. We’ve got to!”

    “Whew. That was a good workout! The heart is a complicated organ with lots of specific parts to remember. I couldn’t have passed my exams without the help of these guys!”

I listed out each artery by name as I bashed away with the crowbar before returning the crowbar to the blood-soaked Kiryū. I could imagine him thinking I’m some sort of psychopath giving a lecture on the human heart.

“Are all nurses like this…?”

I ignored his flabbergasted comment at me. Then, crossed the now navigable street and hurried to the Vital Watch.

“… let me just correct you that no, not all nurses are ‘like this’.”

“I don’t think you’ll find many female nurses who love blasting hellish monsters to giblets with a BFG.” “A BFG… don’t tell me you mean the Big Fucking Gun, the most powerful weapon from Doom…? I don’t think many people in Japan know what a BFG is… man, you’re hardcore.”

We finally reached the beginning of the game, even with us chatting. There were small two-story shops and the glass from their display windows lining the street. The alleys around here were a little wider, but many of them were blocked off by fallen utility poles and crumbled walls. Here was also where the army (though I don’t know which nation’s army, so it’s hard to make a joke here) faced off with the zombies.

“Oh, look, there are herbs over there. I’mma go grab ‘em.”

Kiryū walked from planter to planter to pluck the herbs from them.

There’s dirt falling out of his pockets…

The absolute beauty of a man contrasted his overflowing pockets like a bad joke. But those herbs saved my life earlier. I’m can’t exactly tell him to “cut it out because you look super lame” either.

Speaking of which, I’d like pockets of my own too. I’d like to have herbs readily accessible. Or at least a pocket big enough to fit my phone… too many dresses nowadays forgo pockets to focus on “showing off your perfect lines”. It’s honestly really inconvenient.

“… or maybe a drink would be nice too.”

Nothing beats a good drink after work.

“Hmm? A drink?”

Kiryū stood up as he looked at me. He must have heard my mumbling.

“Yes, I would love one. Ugh. You just need a frosty can of beer after working overtime. But instead, I was sent over here with no beer at all. Just my luck.” “That’s… unfortunate. I don’t think you’ll find any here. Once you we get back to our world, you can get your fill of booze.”

Scratching his cheek, he tepidly tried to console me, but I wasn’t about to give up so easily.

“No, I might get the chance. One of the healing items in this game is an alcoholic drink.” “Huh. If we find them, then yeah, that could happen.” “That’s exactly right. I wonder if there are any lying around… whoa, hey! Look!” “… that’s way too convenient…”

I ignored Kiryū as I filled my hands with alcohol and my heart with joy. I popped off the top and took a swig.

“Ahh, that hits the spot!” “You nurses sure love your drink… and are you sure about drinking something you picked up off the ground?”

He doubted me with a tilt of the neck, but I laughed in response.

“I’m sure. Absolutely sure. We picked up those herbs lying on the side of the street too, right? Same difference. And plus, I haven’t even finished working overtime and I was dragged into this adventure. I deserve this.” “… well, I guess so.” “Right?”

Down the gullet the liquor goes.

“There’s a real interesting part in this game too. You get a lot of health back from booze, but if you drink too much…” “What happens?” “… you puke it back out. Bleeeghhh!” “Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me.”

■The back blast of gas turbine engines

Just a quick tidbit from the author. After weapons like rocket launchers and tanks guns fire, there will be a blast of extremely hot gas. Being within 30 meters of the back blast will guarantee injury if not death. The heat will roast you to a delicious crisp. So, if you ever see one in real life, try to keep distance. Now that’s a top tip that will ensure your chance of survival. (Not that you would normally have the chance to get up close to an operating tank in Japan anyway.)

contents: /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /ch005/ /ch006/ /next/

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[mtvswatches]

Wynonna Earp 1x03 Leavin’ On Your Mind

Spoilers disclaimer (please read before sending messages or writing comments.)

Stray thoughts

1) I already ship this… Is this a thing? Please, don’t tell me!

I can’t really tell if Wynonna is truly being flirtatious or if this is her way of figuring him out because she doesn’t trust him. I mean, you can be attracted to someone who you don’t trust, so there’s that.

2) Oh, wow, don’t you just hate it when you’re fumbling with your bag and a bloody chopped off hand falls and everyone sees it? #awkward

So what do these guys need Dixon’s diary for? And why are they carrying a chopped hand around as if it was a freaking tampon?

3) So… revenants just have a thirst for murder? I haven’t seen them feeding off anyone, but they do seem to get off on killing people right?

4) Sounds like Giles…

5) Ha!

6) Oh shit indeed!

7)

DOC: “Bravery” is just a fancy word for “stupid”.

I predict I’ll see him do tons of stupid things, then.

8) Yep, Doc is definitely giving me Spike vibes…

9) The guy’s hand is being chopped off and all Wynonna can think is that he’s going to miss his bus!!

10) Okay, so these revenants need three things – the voice of a mute, the hand of an innocent murderer, and something else paradoxical – to perform a spell that will let them out of the limits of the Ghost River Triangle. Cool, cool, cool.

11) Waverly is quite clever, actually. She has figured out “Henry’s” fib, but instead of calling him out on it, she’s playing along to see what else she can get out of him. Like, why is he pretending to be someone he isn’t?

12) Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, how convenient… Wynonna decides to visit her dad’s and sister’s graves at the same time the revenant is trying to find something for the spell…

13) “Look at that body. I call dibs!” I’m guessing he’s not talking about fucking him, right? So, he’s either going to kill him or eat him. Or… Can revenants switch bodies?

14)

DOLLS: Give this to whoever's in charge. And…

WYNONNA: Never get into a vehicle, never move to a second location.

DOLLS: You've been in a hostage situation before?

WYNONNA: Sort of…

What does this mean? And why is she smirking? Was she a hostage or did she hold someone hostage? I need to know!

15) Dolls keeps giving me Giles vibes, but then again, Giles would never do this with Buffy…

16) I’m guessing Waverly is going to get super pissed at Wynonna putting herself in danger without even considering how this could affect her sister… (edit: Never mind, she didn’t get pissed because of this, she just wanted in on the action.)

17) They’re not releasing all the hostages because they need three of them… Three humans? For the spell, right?

18) Oh… so this is why Bobo is the Big Boss…

DOC: See, unlike your type, I can roam far and wide. Although from what I hear around your little enclave, some of your cronies, oh, they're itching to wander too.

BOBO: Well, they can try, but the only way out of the Triangle is with me.

19) So, this “Stone Witch” is the woman Doc was trying to find on the newspapers? And knowing her name gives you some sort of power? Is that why Bobo can walk out of the boundaries? Was she the one who put the spell that set the boundaries in the first place? So many questions! 

20) So the Stone Witch chose these three backward revenants to perform the spell… They said they needed three of them… are they going to switch bodies with humans so that they can walk outside the boundaries of Ghost River Triangle? Could that be?

21) What kind of life has Wynonna been living, though? How does she know how to open a fucking safe?

22) Waverly has figured it out, right?

Is this the name of the Stone Witch? And why is she called the Stone Witch?

23) Doc is acting all tough and trying to humiliate and scare Waverly, but I bet her words will resonate with him…

WAVERLY: I know what you're supposed to be. You're supposed to be a hero. You're supposed to be Wyatt Earp's best friend! You're supposed to be here to help us! 

I don’t want my instincts to be wrong about him. I really hope he turns out to be one of those morally ambiguous characters who eventually choose to fight the good fight.

24) So a loveless heart was the third item… Rather poetic…

25) Okay, so they needed the three hostages to use them as shields, forget all my previous speculation.

26)

REVENANT: You know Marty here's been put down three times?

WYNONNA: Third-generation revenant?

REVENANT: Three times down south, you'd go a little psychotic too.

I really like this tidbit of mythology, how the revenants get more evil with each reincarnation. It makes sense, too. Spending that much time in Hell, and then being back… I would also be hella pissed at those who sent me down there. I also wonder if we will meet revenants who’ve been put down more than three times. How evil can you get, you know?

27) Okay, so they’re only doing the spell for the Stone Witch so that she will let them out of the boundaries. I guess I suck at predicting storylines, good.

28) Well, I didn’t mention this before but I swear on my dog that I did know Wynonna would be carrying a GPS device or a microphone or something…

29) DAMN IT I WAS RIGHT!!!

REVENANT: The old man's not gonna make it. Cowboy's the only good one left.

WYNONNA: That's why you need Champ's body? For some sort of, like, possession?

CHAMP: What? In my body?! Wynonna, I don't even put gluten in this!

WYNONNA: Then you can walk across the line in human form.

(BTW, I loved Champ’s gluten line)

30) I DIED!

31) I’m sorry, Shorty, but it totally made sense for him to be the one to suck in the revenant’s “soul” or whatever. He was about to die, after all.

32) “Give me straight-up death instead of being sent to hell and back over and over.” This totally makes sense. I wonder if there are revenants who actually feel like this, who would prefer to be put down forever – even if forever means forever in hell – rather than being brought back every few years or so only to be sent back to hell again, rinse and repeat. I mean, being teased with life on earth – even if you’re an evil demon – only to have it taken away from you time and again…? It somehow seems more hellish than hell itself…

33) Dolls tried to shoot Sam but the gun didn’t work. Does that mean that Wynonna is literally the only person who can shoot it? And what made him think he could use it? 

34) I guess we’re not meeting the Stone Witch today…

35) Ouch, my feels…

36) When will Waverly dump Champ, though? It doesn’t make sense for her to be with this douche?

37) Hmmm, Dolls is sounding more and more like Giles… (and Wynonna is sounding a lot like Buffy, btw…)

WYNONNA: The hell took you so long?

DOLLS: I was always there. But I just needed to see if they could actually do it.

WYNONNA: Even if it meant Shorty had to die?

DOLLS: Collateral damage. This is a war. You want to avenge your sister and your dad, right? And this is what victories… might have to look like.

WYNONNA: And what about our failures?

Hmm, this also raises another question. Not only was he waiting to see if the revenants could pull off the spell, but he also tried to shoot Wynonna’s gun. Given his pragmatical mentality, I’m guessing he was testing out if Wynonna was actually dispensable. If he could use the gun himself, then Wynonna was expendable. If something were to happen to her, then he could carry on without a hiccup. I wonder if these different views will make them collide.

38) I’ve got to say, I’d be disappointed if this hadn’t been her response…

With all the shit I've done in my life Dolls, working with you I don't think I can look in the mirror.

This is the hero mentality, heroes need to believe wars can be won without “collateral damage”, they need to believe they can save everyone, that is what drives them. But I’m sure that this won’t be the last time this mentality is tested, and I’m guessing Wynonna will need to make other sacrifices or be forced to walk a grey moral line...

39) Ugh, fucking Doc…

DOC: The fact is, I have not properly introduced myself. You can tell your sister she is right. I am… was friends with your great-great-grandpappy. My name is John Henry, but most people just called me Doc.

WYNONNA: "Doc"? Doc Holliday?

DOC: Wynonna Earp, I am at your disposal.

WYNONNA: Well, shit.

He’s a conniving son of a bitch, isn’t he? He only came clean because Waverly had already figured out who he was, but he did it in a way that made it look like he beat Waverly to the punch (that’s why he tells Wynonna to tell her sister that “she was right.”) Besides, introducing himself as a friend of their great-great-grandfather automatically establishes a bond between them, even some trust. He is saying, “hey, you can trust me, I’m here to help you.”

However, he’s obviously doing Bobo’s bidding – this is exactly what Bobo asked him to do. I do have a feeling Doc is the type of character who would do what others tell him if it’s beneficial for him but who can also very quickly switch sides if it suits him better, you know? I think, for now, he’s playing it by ear to see what and who will benefit him more.

The thing is, for now, he’s playing Wynonna. So I feel I’ll have to hate him a little bit before he makes me love him.

Who am I kidding? I already love him, but you know what I mean, right?

40) This episode definitely felt more Monster-of-the-Week than the previous two, but I still felt enough things were introduced in order to build the season arc – the Stone Witch and Doc’s identity being revealed. Can’t wait to watch the next one!

41) Hope you enjoyed my recap, and, as usual, if you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi.Thanks!

[writeouswriter]

The OC Tag

Tagged by @kayemoriarty thank you!! (Wow, you’re right, this is really more about me than OCs)

Okay so I have like 10000 WIPs so this might be a little over the map, but here we go. This will probably be very long. I apologize in advance, but also have no shame.

If you could go to one of your OC’s bachelor/bachelorette party, which would you choose (also: who would have the wildest one?)

I write a lot of YA so most of my OCs are too young to get married and the older ones are too melancholy or busy fighting off demons and stuff to get married so I have no clue. Most of my character’s bachelor(ette) parties would probably get crashed by ghosts or monsters or ancient beasts and while that would totally be a riot, it’s not exactly how I want to go out. Um, okay, if I had to choose, Bachelorette party: Marilena (witch detective from my uf mystery series) because dark magic and liquor brewed into potions? Fortune telling and telekinesis and neon lights and snark. She knows how to throw a party! Bachelor party: Daven, (lead of one of my monster hunting agencies). His party will definitely be crashed by all the monsters, but you can’t say it won’t be a night to remember. And we get stupid antics between him and his best friends, the three guys who should not be in charge of an entire agency responsible for keeping the public safe from the paranormal. I think those are probably both some of the wildest ones.

When is your favorite time to write?

Whenever it is not convenient to write. AKA whenever inspiration strikes. AKA around 12AM to 2AM.

What’s your favorite relationship in your WIP (platonic or romantic)?

Jonah and Dezzy from my WIP Jonah and the Veil. They’ve been best friends since childhood and are in love with each other, but like not romantically. They love the way the other laughs, the way they sing, the way they dance when they think nobody is watching. They love going on adventures together, running through the woods and breathing in the crisp autumn air. They love the crease of their cheeks when they smile. They love the idea of growing old together. But their story focuses on Jonah’s fear that they’re going to drift apart after graduation, because what if she wants more, what if this is the end. Because of this, they then get tangled in this whole nightmare world where they have to work together to escape and their friendship is only strengthened and it’s really complicated to explain without backstory of the WIP, (He has the power to travel through the veil between reality), but anyway they have one of my most vivid relationships. 

How far are you into your WIP?

On average of my many, many WIPS, I am not very far. Most are around 2000-5000 words in, then I get a bit lost, a few are as much as 15000-20000. My main ones currently hover around 8000-9000. So yeah... Um, next question.

If you were stuck in a broken elevator for twelve hours, which OC would you choose to be stuck in there with you? (Note: you have to be in there for the twelve hours! No Houdini escape!)

A lot of my OCs are terrifying reality warpers and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Most of them don’t have control of their powers, so I’d say bad if our 12 hour elevator stay instead transforms into say an eternal timeless loop of some kind of hellish landscape, good if our 12 hour elevator stay instead becomes like a relaxing beach trip together. Not sure if I want to take the chance on that one though... Also this question just made me realize how many of my characters suffer from claustrophobia... also how many have uncontrollable powers I do not want going off within a 2ft radius of me... like werewolf? Haha, no thank you... If I want to hear terrifying visions of the future and quite possibly my death by plummeting elevator, Cyrus is my man. I do not want to hear that though so... God, I’m terrified to spend that long in an elevator with any of my characters. Something is literally just destined to go wrong. I’m going to go with one of my safest bets, which is Walsh, one of Daven’s friends and a medic for the agency, he’s funny, level headed and has a big imagination, but one that doesn’t horrifyingly come to life in twisted ways... plus he keeps tiny robots on him, so... that’s cool.

Favorite color?

Teal. Not blue, not green, not turquoise, teal, like goth turquoise.

Where would one of your OC’s propose to the other? (If this question isn’t up your alley, replace “propose to” with “surprise attack hug.”)

If Jonah and Dezzy were older (and not platonic), probably the top of the waterfall in the woods just less than a mile or so away from their houses where they’ve shared some of their best childhood memories, and where they had all their adventures (aka the small waterfall actually on our bush property in real life)

Which OC is most like you?

None! They are all like Keanu Reeves! No, uh... God, I have no clue, whichever is the nerdiest, but most sarcastic. Probably one of the teens from Daven’s crew, possibly Dezzy or Jonah because their story was inspired by my very nostalgic back country memories, and high school grad fears... their entire existence is from memories of mine, and inspiration from our own property (like I said, the waterfall, also fog lit fields and woods and etc.) But that’s more like their circumstances are like me, and not really them themselves. I actually try to make characters as least like me as possible... I mean, I share some traits with some characters, but I don’t think of any as inherently “like me.” I’m not a leather jacket clad monster hunter with cool hair and leadership skills. I’m not a hotheaded half demon with a fear of enclosed spaces. I’m not a snarky, bleach blond deaf guy who’s great with children and secretly rich. I’m not a calm insomniac scientist with schizophrenia who can walk through dreams. I’m not a vintage-y take action girl obsessed with finding the truth about aliens. I am however a major nerd who mashes a bunch of characters into one. I am also Ash’s sarcastic wit. I am Cari’s snarky confidence. I am Daven’s secret nerdy side. I am Jonah’s insecurity. Also Jonah’s love for his friends. I am Jaime’s fear of monsters in the dark. I am Olivia’s curiosity. I am Lydia’s love of oddities. The list goes on.

Do you prefer writing with ambient noise, music (if so, with or without lyrics), or in silence?

Silence, sweet, sweet silence. I get way too focused on lyrics if I listen to music, that’s all I can hear in my mind then, or too distracted by sounds and beats, though I do sometimes like to listen to music before writing, never during.

If you suddenly got the power of teleportation, where in the world would you go first?

I’m a big fan of the Irish countryside, I’d love to see there... I’d also love to tour some television sets or Vancouver or Hollywood. But like right away? That’s a lot of pressure. I’d probably just teleport to see some of my friends because I can’t drive. And that’d be cool to freak them out, wouldn’t it? Idk, I’d teleport into some jerk rich people’s bank vaults and take their money and donate it. I’d teleport to college, like nearest college is hours away, but teleportation? Heck, I don’t need to pay housing now, sign me up, those rich people’s bank vaults could also be donated slightly towards my tuition, don’t you think?

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Tagging (if you’d like, of course): @adricki, @lonely-pages-of-ink, @leskychuchu, @paperspensandwords, @charlottewritesthingsxx @whoever wants to do this, you can say I tagged you because I am lost when it comes to searching through usernames on here

[theultimateegghead-blog]

Haunting Hospitals of Horror Some of gaming spookiest medical facilities!

The abandoned Hospital is one of the most iconic set pieces in horror. Some will call it cliché and in a way they are right. However, with there being so many it was a perfect way to kick off a list idea! These hospitals are spooky,  have dark histories and are most likely not quite abandoned. Now, I would like to address something. Hospitals and Mental hospitals are not bad places. These places are made to help those in need. A mental health doctor or nurse is not a cruel person who torments the mentally ill, and people that live in these wards are not all psychopaths who would kill at the drop of a dime. Granted, some of these real life hospitals may have a dark past of bad secrets which gave birth to the cliché, but we are focusing on video game hospitals! Please note that not every hospital on this list is from a horror game. With that said, grab your flashlight and get ready to explore these haunting hospitals!

Never Lose Hope Hospital – Nightmare House 2

Never Lose Hope Hospital is the main setting of Nightmare House 2. The main character is taken here against their will and forced to escape its abandoned halls. Once a simple hospital, it has been abandoned and taken over by the undead staff. Large, expansive and full of many dangers, this hospital is indeed a place that hope has left long ago.

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Raccoon City hospital – Resident Evil 3

Another Hospital with a dark secret. This hospital is one of the main factors behind the Racoon City event and was an origin for some of the zombie hoard. Guising as a normal Hospital, it was actually home to a secret lab where B.O.W (Biological Weapons) were being developed. While exploring the hospital for a vaccine, it is found to be abandoned besides the roaming undead and mutated BOWs. The Hospital was destroyed before the rest of the city as a result of a C4 bombing. The deadly Tyrant known as Nemesis is encountered soon after as well.

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Arkham Asylum – Batman Arkham Asylum

Any Batman fan that has been up to date since at least the 90s knows about Arkham Asylum. This place is where the worst of the worst go to be ‘corrected’. This process of correction usually always ends in failure. The game adaptation showcases this massive Aslyum after a major breakout. Most of the guards are either being held hostage or are dead and some of Batman’s deadliest enemies prowl the grounds. From the horrific encounters with Scarecrow to the pulse pounding confrontation against Killer Croc, this place is dreary as it is deadly. There is a massive underground section and several buildings to explore. Batman will have to fight and overcome obstacles to unravel the Joker’s most recent master plan.

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Brookhaven Hospital – Silent Hill Series

Brookhaven is one of the most famous locations of the silent hill franchise. This Hospital is suspended in another reality and is crawling with horrific manifestations of the main characters fears and inner turmoil. This three story hospital is a maze of dark hallways and locked doors. Being a hospital in silent hill, it has a lovely history of patient abuse and neglect. This Hospital is home to some puzzles that can have you scratching your head for a while.

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Ishimura's Medical Deck – Dead Space

The medical deck on the Ishimura is one of the largest and most dangerous locations in the original Dead Space. A large hospital built to assist the various traumas and risk that came with being a miner. While Isaac visits it however, it is a gory mess of halls and offices full of Necromorphs. Dark and bloody, this place is crawling with the disturbing and horrendous Necromorphs. When the place is revisited, the atmosphere has been sucked out and the place is suspended in an eerie stillness and silence. To make matters worse this is one of the places that the powerful regenerator shows up. Also this is the location that Isaac’s beloved Nicole spent her last moments…

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The Parsons State Insane Asylum – Fallout 4

One of the many locations of the commonwealth. This place stands out for its bizzare history and eerie level design. Initially the place is locked down, no way in. Its only after you start a long and weird quest involving a seemingly immortal family are you allowed to go inside. The place is crawling with enemy mercenaries and several fire fights will ensue while making your way to the basement. You will come across the cells of the patients and learn about their colorful and disturbing pass. They seem to have been left to rot after the bombs dropped. There is a large underground lab with a prison cell for one man who has been stewing in madness for literal centuries.

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Sagai Hospital – Siren Blood Curse

Sagai Hospital is one of the locations in Siren Blood curse. Once a traditional hospital, it to has succumb to otherworldly influences. While there is not much to be said here that isnt covered with entries such as Brookhaven. What makes it special is a part of the game where you play as a defenseless little girl desperately trying to escape this horrifying hospital that is crawling with violent monsters known as Shibito.

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Episode two - Ju-on: The Grudge Haunted House Simulator

The grudge game does not have a story, as it is mostly just a horror experience. One of the levels is in an abandoned hospital. This hospital is dark and abandoned. Plenty of supernatural events take place as you try to explore the halls. Hands come from under beds, phone calls from beyond, a ghostly child running around and so on. Essentially you are stuck and have a very angry ghost lady coming to get you. Also, the end is always death, you can’t win. RIP.

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Karamari Hospital – Spooky’s Jumpscare Mansion

Karamari Hospital is one of the many bizzare rooms in Spooky’s Mansion. This large medical facility is mostly abandoned, save for some horrendous creatures. What’s starts out as a normal empty hospital quickly goes south with malformed security guards, evil cow like monsters, giant faces, possessed body bags, bandaged lunatics and a ghostly woman lie in wait to ambush you. A nightmarish maze, a hellish basement and some endless hallways are found here. Luckily, a powerful artifact can be retrieved here as well…

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Asylum – Painkiller

The Asylum is one of the most horrific and memorable levels in the whole Painkiller franchise. The derelict Asylum is full of demonic creatures that represent horribly disfigured patients. The Asylum has many rooms across its four floors, with each floor getting filthier and decayed as you ascend. Ghost float around, electric enemies wander about and crawling amputees wander the halls. The surrounding area is just a dried up dead garden in the middle of nowhere. To make matters better, there is a large pentagram in the attic, fun…

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The Hospital – Afraid of Monsters

The unnamed Hospital is the opening level of the game Afraid of Monsters. The main character awakens in the bathroom of the hospital and enters the hospital’s halls. The place is dark and dreary, most of the rooms are empty as well. The only inhabitants are monsters that take the form of twitch hellish humans. The main character is forced to crawl through air vents and even go around the scaffolding outside. Many doors are locked and many dead ends make this place hard to navigate. Eventually the protagonist escapes the bizarre place.

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Auburn Memorial Hospital – F.E.A.R. 2

The hospital has made two appearances in the F.E.A.R series. The canon appearance is in FEAR 2 and will be the one prevalent on the list. This hospital is home to, what else? Human experimentation. This was in an attempt to create the ultimate psychic soldier and is in part the origin of the replica soldiers. The hospital proper is in a state of ruin. Most of the staff has been killed by enemy soldiers and supernatural phenomenon. The infamous Alma Wade makes an appearance here as well.

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Calios Mental Hospital – Shadow Hearts

A dungeon in Shadow Hearts that belongs to the Spanish Inquisition, how unexpected!  The magic has turned the inhabitants into specter like foes. The hospital is home to cells and electric chairs so its obvious that it is not the most humane facility. The area is linear and has some backtracking oriented puzzles. It belongs to the wicked Viscount Rausan, who has a love for torture. He was ultimately simply a pawn and died as one.

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Mount Massive Asylum for the Criminally Insane – Outlast

This Asylum is a nasty place. Home to some wicked and inhumane experiments on the inhabitants, many of the denizens are results of horrible treatment and misuse. Most of the Staff is dead and the inmates have effectively taken over the entire building. Some inmates will not harm you and will let you go without struggle, others will attack on sight. The worse of the bunch is a brutal man named Chris Walker, who violently stalks you through the majority of the game. He is not all though, you will also meet two delightful naked men who want to eat you, a doctor who wants your fingers and a ghostly apparition. In the DLC you also run into a man who is hellbent on getting the “perfect woman”… Its easily the most disturbing thing in the game…

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Thank you, brave souls who made it this far and came out relatively unscathed. To continue the spooktober event, next list will be on an equally cliché area, the prison. So join us next time as we go on lock down and take a look at some Perilous Prisons!

[sweetlittlehawke]

Keep Moving Forward

It’s December. Yknow what that means! Let’s reflect on the year. When I made  a post like this last year, it was a hopeful thing. I was excited about the coming year, because I was excited that I’d finally met some people I could hang out with. I love Alea and Brooke to the moon and back, but only having two friends for most of my life is not the best. As much as I denied it for years, my mum’s right. I’m very social. I have social anxiety. But I am a very social person. So, if you wanna read about all that, it’s under a read more. Cause fucking hell did this get long.

So, this year started and I was single, I was in Unity, I was in school, and I was living with my parents. By May I was not single and I was not in Unity. Shortly after that- because end of the semester and stuff and things happening- I was no longer in school or living with my parents. At this point in the year, I’m still not single, nor in Unity (as I doubt I’ll ever go back. To the troupe at least, I absolutely wanna go back to taking classes), or in school. But I have plans to go back to school. I’m halfway to being able to afford a car, and then saving for an apartment, so Sammy and I can go to Cleveland. Because I wanna be close to my friends. I don’t like most of the people I live with presently, and neither does Sam. So we’re gonna move out in July when the lease is up on our place. 

When I made this post last year, I talked about the only table top rpgs I’d played was a D&D 5e oneshot, a game of Roll for Shoes, and was just then stepping into a campaign. Needless to say, that changed. A lot. I’ve played West Marches to it’s end. I’ve been in Alex’s Pathfinder campaign for a year. I spent a semester in Andrew’s Pathfinder campaign (and met my girlfriend through that). I’ve spent two semesters in Jacob’s 5e campaign. I’ve started a campaign of my own at Breakout to get those people into D&D. I’ve gone so far with this, and I love it. I love every second of it. I also mentioned that I’d kinda started in Magic, but hadn’t put any money towards it. That didn’t last either. I’ve built my own custom deck, and that def required spending money. Once Andrew got me a starter deck it was downhill from there. I don’t play a ton, but Magic def did get my interest.

Last year I kinda just made lil shoutouts to Scott, Trevi, and Andrew. But this year I have so many more people to talk about, and to be thankful for. Because they’re not just new people that I’m kinda sorta friends with. They’re my family. So lemme go through this. Lemme take a bit, to talk about this gaggle of people I’ve found, that I love. 

It’s primarily the Pathfinder group. The original Pathfinder group. Alex, Jacob, Andrew, Thomas, Susannah, Molly, and Will. Most of these people are also the people in West Marches, but there are some West Marches people that aren’t in Pathfinder. People like Joey and Adriana, Freddie, Michael, and of course, Trevi and Scott. Now, to go into detail about the specific people, and why I love them.

Alex is just, great. I don’t always feel like I’m super close with him, but he does pay attention to everyone in the group. We recently had a session that really hit that fact home. It was a Christmas session, because it’s December what else are we gonna do? Each of our characters had gifts, and these gifts meant something to each of us. Outside of games though, he’s just as attentive. He’s always supportive, and very understanding of when people need distance or aid. He’s encouraging, and frankly I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him say something bad against anyone. Ambiguous maybe, but never bad.

Jacob- fucking hell this guy. He’s literally the sweetest man I’ve ever met. He’s always trying to help, and encourage people. If he knows he’s done something wrong he apologizes and does whatever it takes to fix it. He knows I’m short on money, so whenever I’m around he’s always offering to buy me food- or just straight up give me his food. He even bought Sammy’s Christmas present for me, because I’m just too broke to do it. I don’t understand how someone can be that selfless?? Jacob wtf?? You’re too good??

Andrew. What an asshole. I love him though. He- quite frankly- is half the reason I’m so close with the Pathfinder group. I befriended him easier than I befriended the others. He’s the one that got me into Pathfinder. At first he seems quiet, and kinda apathetic, he’s incredibly forgetful. But he cares. I got scared one time that I’d fucked up a friendship, and in his awkward Andrew way, he gave me 3 Magic cards and a hug as comfort. It may not sound like much, but giving away Magic cards is a big deal for Andrew. This nerd is also the reason I met my girlfriend, so yknow.

Admittedly, I’m not as close with Thomas as I am some of the others. His personality clashes with mine, so I don’t typically talk to him one on one. But he’s part of the group. We all poke fun at him, but we all poke fun at everyone. This family of ours wouldn’t be the same without him. It’d be too quiet.

Susannah is a darling. I haven’t seen her as much recently, because she dropped out of the Pathfinder campaign, and I haven’t been at school. But we still talk from time to time here on tumblr, or the very rare occasion we see each other on campus we always stop to give each other a hug and say hello. Because our friend group had a hellish spaghetti mess of relationships, and we had a good relationship through that. The guy I liked liked her, and it was kinda rough, but we just helped each other. Then when that spaghetti mess was over, and I was getting with Sammy, she was one of the people I’d text like “Holy shit Sam is so cute HELP”

Molly is the best. She- like Susannah- isn’t in Pathfinder this semester, so I haven’t seen her as much. But she had a similar position in the spaghetti mess but without being so tied to me. She just was right next to Susannah and was super supportive as well. She was the other person I texted about Sam. Cause group chats. I’d text her and Susannah together. But even though we don’t see each other a ton, we’re still close. Hell we’re looking at getting an apartment together next summer.

I really never think I’m that close to Will. He’s very quiet, and he’s not very affectionate, so it’s sometimes hard to tell if he actually likes being around people or he’s just dealing with us. But, after a year of being around him, I’m pretty sure he does actually like us. I think he’s just introverted. He doesn’t want to get in people’s way, so he sits to the side and is quiet. But also, his character in Pathfinder was 110% tryna get another PC laid and Will and Susannah both were willing to let me in on that. So, yeah, pretty sure Will is cool with me. We just have different ways of showing that.

Joey and Adriana I’ll talk about together, because I swear these two are inseparable. When I first met them I thought they were dating, but no they’re just very affectionate- and I can’t blame them for that. I’m the same way with Scott and Trevi. I’ve still not gotten to talk to them a ton, but the conversations I’ve had with them have been good. They seem very light hearted on the surface, just comparing ourselves to our characters, but really that says a lot about us. 

Freddie and Michael, I’ll also put together. Not because they’re together all the time, but because I have less to say about them. I don’t know either as well, but they’re both very warm people. It’s easy to become friends with these two. Freddie loves to rub my hair, cause of course half of it is shaved. Michael’s just akin to a ray of sunshine tbh. 

Trevi. Where do I even start? To just say you’re my friend isn’t enough. You’re more than that. You’re fun to be around and talk to, and dance with. You’re relatable and silly and serious and helpful and supportive. You’ve given me a place to sleep when I was too tired to go home. When you graduated I was terrified of you leaving, either going back home or going out to Cali to get a doctorate, cause I knew you’d talked about it. I didn’t wanna lose you. I’d just gotten to know you. Then you stayed here, and I’m glad. Cause you’re my friend and I love you. A couple weeks ago as you were leaving you signed “I love you”. You had your back turned but there was a window in front of you, so idk if you saw, but I signed it back. Cause I really do.

Now Scott. You sir, have literally changed my life. I would not have met most of the people I’ve talked about. I’d have met Trevi, but without D&D as a common ground, idk that we’d have ended up so close. So thank you, for introducing me to D&D. Thank you for being my DM. Because honestly, no matter how many DMs I have, no matter how great they are. You will always be my DM, because you were the first. And now, you’re graduating. You’re leaving school, and you’re going to Columbia. I’m gonna miss you. As selfish as it is, I don’t want you to leave. I’m glad you’re going to keep moving forward, as we all should. But fucking hell will I miss you. You’ve led me on adventures, fighting monsters and demons, I’ve made pacts with Eldritch gods and become War itself. So you go. You go, live your adventures. Write your stories and play your parts. Keep Moving Forward. But you better get your ass back here and visit from time to time okay? Cause I’m gonna miss you. I’m gonna miss your free hugs, and the meowing, and the hair ruffles, and hugs so tight I feel like you’re bout to crack a rib, and the games, and the stories, and just everything. I’m gonna miss you, and I love you.

This past year, and every one of the people I’ve mentioned have changed me. There’s more people I could talk about. Alea, and Brooke, and Tommy, and Sammy, and Tahli, and Sebastian, and Kenna. My actual family. My cousin and my best friend, who I don’t feel the need to write about, because duh I appreciate them. Duh I love them. Tommy and Sammy who’ve both had their own impacts. Who have both changed my life in their own ways. Then Tahli, Kenna, and Sebastian. My nieces and nephew. Tahli, who wormed her way into my heart in an instant, and got me to a place where I actually cared for the other two. Because for so long I shrugged at Kenna. She lives across the country she’s not gonna know me. But then when Sebastian came along, I was so used to Tahli and her reaction any time I walk in the door. Then Sebastian got hurt, and it wrecked me. Because no, he’s tiny, he’s fragile, this shouldn’t happen to a six month old baby. I was so scared to hold him at Thanksgiving because I didn’t want to hurt him. 

I just. I love my friends. I love that I can say that. Because two years ago I hardly had friends to love, and I certainly didn’t feel like they should love me back. Last year I had a few more friends, and I was feeling a bit better about myself. But this year I’ve realized. It’s not just that I have friends that I love. But that they love me just as much. During intermediate acting Abby called me a yankee candle, cause I apparently had a warm, homey, aura. I felt like that was weird, cause I’m so used to being Shadow. I’m used to being ignore, glanced over. But then suddenly, I have friends that won’t do that. Friends that pay attention and love me. I’m still not sure how to handle that, but I’m doing the best I can.