#Taakitz is inevitable

[noodyl-blasstal]

Astrology for Horse Jugglers

Sometimes your friend has a birthday so you have to do something ridiculous about it. Say happy birthday to @ceilingfan5 (for yesterday) and enjoy some mildly(?) unhinged Taakitz shenanigans!

-

“Yeah, fish magnetism research is incredibly important right now my guy, we’re revolutionising the industry. Doesn’t harm the seabed at all and you can just schlorp the fish you want straight out of the water as long as you set the master fish magnet to the right frequency.” Taako nodded sagely and took another swig of his secon… vth free glass of fizz, but truly who was counting? Not Taako, that’s for sure. Weddings were all about love baby, love, free tiny fancy drinks, and getting to say absolute bullshit to strangers because anyone that would actually try and stop him was too busy being gross somewhere else.

“That’s fascinating, Greg, how do you get the magnets in the fish?” Hurley’s third cousin twice removed was eating this up and Taako was thriving. He loved to perform, was the thing, and an hours long secret audience participation improv show? That was tap shoes, baby, and Taako was dancing.

“Well, that’s a great question, Max, not everyone would think to ask it. We actually use laser darts!”

“Laser darts?” Max leaned forward, enthralled. Of course he was, Taako was at his loom weaving laser magnet fish blankets for everyone.

“They’re really small magnets, you see, tiny, but they’re super powerful. Have you heard of keyhole surgery?” Taako waited for Max to nod his affirmation. “Well, we’ve got this robot submarine with a laser powered blowgun…” Taako was rudely interrupted by the announcement that the dining room was finally ready. He promised Max that he’d definitely finish explaining later and was gathered up as the hungry mass of guests descended and swept them along through the doors.

–

Taako folded himself into his chair and tried not to look as sullen as he felt. He knew that they wouldn’t be able to sit the whole family together, but Taako on his own in a sea of distant relatives? Rude! Lup was allowed to sit with Barry, and Magnus and Julia were together, he checked, just so he knew how spiteful to be about it. Lucretia, Dav, and Merle were together too and Taako was fine missing out on that, but surely they could have swapped a family friend for him and allowed him some twin time? But no, apparently he was capable of handling himself, happy to be on his own, that’s Taako. Single Taako who was completely and utterly fine about it.

The scutch of strangers he’d be making awkward small talk with filtered in slowly and nodded politely to Taako as they continued their conversations. He definitely didn’t make a note of the fact they all seemed to know each other. What did he do to piss off the seating plan gods? Or, more specifically, Sloane.

The pondering ended pretty quickly when the seat next to him was pulled out and Taako turned to be greeted by a particularly delicious pair of thick, suit-challenging thighs. Taako didn’t really want to look higher, the view was great, A+ +, 10/10 no notes, but he forced himself to anyway. Gotta be polite. He didn’t regret it. Mr Next Seat Over was ‘pair of disposable gloves come with your chicken wings because we can’t trust you not to touch your face afterwards, idiot’ hot. Taako reversed the curses he may or may not have placed on Sloane and Hurley (to start from after their honeymoon, he was considerate like that). Hot boy sat in the seat elegantly and Taako resisted the impulse to engage immediately.

He resisted the impulse badly. Taako’s impulse control wasn’t great, it turned out. C- - -, in fact, but the guy sat down and didn’t introduce himself so what else could Taako do? There was a thing called manners and Taako had them. Sometimes. Probably. As long as you didn’t ask for references.

“Hail and well met…” Taako peered at the little wooden name plate Magnus had painstakingly etched everyone’s names into, oh no, that meant he had to lean in and press himself right into the man’s personal space. What a shame.“... Kravitz. What-ho!”

Kravitz, thankfully, didn’t look angry. In fact, he turned in his seat and grinned. “Ahoy-hoy.” Kravitz pretended to answer what Taako could only assume was an imaginary telephone. “To whom am I speaking?” Kravitz kept hold of the imaginary receiver and quirked an eyebrow at Taako. Oh, oh hot boy wanted to play, did he? Taako could play.

“Avast ye, matey! ‘Tis ol’ Taako from the depths of the sea, I’ve got you on my line now.”

“Sorry mate, wrong number.” Kravitz, inexplicably cockney now, hung up. “Sorry,” he grimaced to Taako, “I think that was a s-clam call, and my Mums always told me I had to hang up on those. Mind you, they also told me not to answer the phone at the table, so maybe I should have tried to counter-seduce the pirate.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, then continues. “Anyway, I’m Kravitz, pleased to meet you.” He held out a hand to shake. Taako fist bumped it, Kravitz was the best amount of hinged (un), and he didn't know it yet but they were friends now. Well, at least for the duration of the wedding. Surprise, Taako's your problem now...

Read the rest on A03!

[cryptocorvid]

the amount that this just looks like archer. i can never draw podcast characters without making them look like rip offs of my ocs.

[barry-j-blupjeans]

Shake things up, 5, taakitz

5. this marriage was supposed to be a scam but, but listen,

--

Kravitz's door wasn't locked when Taako tried to open it, which he took as an obvious sign to come in. He had been in this room a few times before, though they mostly just chilled in the living room or one of the various offices around the house. Mansion? Taako felt shitty calling it a mansion, so it was just a really big and luxurious house. Kravitz's room was dark and there were various things piled up on his desk. The closet was open and Taako could see the crisp white suit they had picked out a few weeks ago hanging as he stepped further inside.

This whole situation was... weird. And wacky. Two words that Taako had previously been content with describing his life but bow it was all the wrong kinds of weird and wacky.

His show had been- not failing, per se, but not thriving either a few months ago. They had needed something to up their sales and views and for some godforsaken reason, Taako had suggested marriage. A fake marriage, of course, of course. Really, if anyone was to be blamed, it was Barry and Lup for putting the idea of marriage into his head in the first place with their beautiful ceremony last year.

But, as with any stupid plan, there were problems.

First, Taako didn't have anyone to marry. There were suitors lined up for miles, of course, but he didn't wanna marry someone who only wanted him to be famous. So when he met Kravitz- hot, downright handsome, peak "starving artist" Kravitz- it had been perfect. Kravitz could act and Taako would at least have some eye candy to get through the ceremony before the inevitable divorce two months afterward.

Then, the unpredictable happened.

He fell in love with Kravitz. Like, genuinely in love, not "I will smile at you on camera but otherwise please leave me alone" love. And, if Lup was telling the truth at all, which she claimed she was but Taako was gonna thrash her if she wasn't, then Kravitz loved him too. The plan was to wait until after the ceremony to tell him, but Taako can't really sleep with that sword dangling over him.

And, apparently, neither could Kravitz.

He wasn't in the bed. Taako shifted through some of the covers like Kravitz could somehow be hiding under them, but no, he wasn't there. As Taako turned back around, sorely regretting this idea, Kravitz cleared his throat. He stood by the door, looking awkward. Taako tried to pretend like this was a normal situation he had been caught in.

"Hail and well met," Taako said. Normal went right out the window.

But Kravitz smiled. Granted, awkward and embarrassed, but he was smiling.

"I- I was looking for you," Kravitz said. "But you weren't in your room."

"Well, uh," Taako said, bouncing on the heels of his feet. "Same hat."

"I... I have something I wanna say?" Kravitz said. He shook his head and seemed to try to give himself more confidence. He repeated, "I have something I wanna say."

"Go for it," Taako said because the "me too" died somewhere halfway up his throat.

Kravitz took a deep breath, stepping further into the room. He shut the door behind him.

"This is gonna sound... weird," he said. "And a little wacky, maybe?"

"Here," Taako said, hoisting himself up onto the bed. He patted the space next to him. "I'm down for weird and wacky, bones."

Kravitz nodded, coming forward to sit on the bed too. He looked at Taako and opened his mouth, but only made a little choking sound before looking away. A few locs fell from where he had them up in a bun. He steeled himself with another deep breath and tried again,

"I know the marriage was supposed to be a scam but I think I'm actually in love with you," Kravitz said.

"Oh," Taako said. Kravitz tucked a loc behind his ear.

"It's just that- like I knew you were a decent person," Kravitz said. "Everyone- everyone in the world is in love with you Taako, and while you might be afraid they aren't, I don't really think anything is gonna change that. But I didn't really realize why, because I didn't know who you were 'til a few months ago."

Kravitz looked up and Taako remembered the first meeting they had, in the garden a few floors below. Taako's manager and assistant had been there but talking to Kravitz that day had given him a terrible case of tunnel vision. He went over his assistants' notes yesterday and realized the only thing he remembered if Kravitz telling him he lived off instant ramen for most of his college career.

"People think you're kind of an asshole, but that you're still charming," Kravitz said. "Which is true! In the best way possible. But nothing ever mentioned how kind you were. Or that you'd make me soup when I was sick or that you were this funny, like oh my god-" Taako cracked a grin. "I just- I realized a few weeks ago that I was gonna get to marry you, like you, Taako, not famous TV star Taako. And I realized that I- I didn't wanna end that with divorce, even if it didn't mean anything. And I didn't wanna get married to you without telling you this because I don't think I could live with myself."

Kravitz let out a breathless, nervous chuckle, and Taako...

"Same hat," Taako blurted out, again. "Fuck. I mean, uhm- yes. Same. Yes, you- I get that."

Kravitz opened his mouth to speak again, but Taako beat him to the punch.

"You're a really shitty cook," Taako said. "But I don't mind because that means that everything I make you appreciate. And you're really supportive and just- hilarious. You're the third funniest person I know-"

"Who-?"

"Me and Lup in that order," Taako said and Kravitz grinned. "And- and yeah, babe, I- I wanna marry you. For realsies. I was gonna wait 'til after to tell you, but then I was like, I don't think I can say "I do" without you knowing I mean it, and I just-" Taako cut himself off, making a frustrated noise. Words were hard sometimes, goddamn. How did people do feelings all the time?

"Can I kiss you?" he asked, instead of finishing whatever shitty speech he had started.

Kravitz nodded, looking a little teary and already leaning in. Taako met him halfway, bringing a hand up to cup his cheek. Kravitz wrapped his arms around Taako's shoulders, drawing him closer, and they definitely weren't sitting right before this but-

"Hot damn," Taako said when he finally, finally pulled back. Kravitz was halfway in his lap, flushed but looking so happy. Kravitz laughed, leaning in again. This one was shorter, but only because Taako needed to draw back and continue with, "we better do this every day or I'm actually divorcing you in two months."

"Just once a day?" Kravitz asked, looking as offended as Taako felt about that idea.

"Literally all the time," Taako said, kissing him again, and again. "I'm gonna start screaming if you leave the room for more than five minutes."

"I don't think I'd even last that long," Kravitz said, starting another kiss. Taako's back hit the bed, but they didn't break apart. He was going to be exhausted tomorrow. But between this and sleeping, Taako would much rather be here.

[holdmecloser-gandydancer]

prompt list! “You’re scaring me.” / taakitz?

from this prompt list!

--

“Babe.”

“Mmm.” A hand gently shakes Kravitz’s shoulder.

“Come on, we gotta get a move on.”

“But the bed is so comfy. ‘N warm and nice.” The hand shakes his shoulder again. Hair tickles his face and he’s certain Taako’s face is hovering close to his own.

“Kravitz, light of my life, this is not a test of wills you’re going to win.”

Kravitz lets out a sleep-laden groan as he wraps the comforter tighter around himself, dead-set on entering a blanket cocoon and not emerging until he’s a beautiful, sleepy moth.

“I’m gonna take drastic measures, you know,” Taako says, sounding all too happy to deliver on such a threat.

Kravitz says nothing, hoping to somehow slide under Taako’s radar. Suddenly, he feels Taako’s full weight on top of him, his boyfriend’s chin resting on his chest, index finger rapidly tapping the bridge of his nose with the kind of fervor only seen by children trying to play brain-rotting apps on their tablets.

“Kravitz Kravitz Kravitz Kravitz Kravitz Kravitz Kravitz—I can do this all day, don’t think I won’t—Kravitz Kravitz Kravitz Kravitz Krav-“

“Okay, you got me,” Kravitz wrenches his eyes open and begins idly twirling a lock of Taako’s hair around his fingers. “Remind me what’s so urgent that you’re up before noon on a Saturday?”

Taako shakes his head, tickling Kravitz’s chest in the process. “Only the most important event of the season.”

Kravitz stares blankly, wracking his brain in an effort to see if he forgot anything. He shakes the sleep off his mind as he runs down the list of important events that Taako cares about. Their anniversary isn’t for another three months, nobody’s birthday is coming around, no holidays are looming. He’s at a loss.

Taako grins, looking just left of deranged. “The fair’s in town.”

“Sorry?”

Taako rolls off Kravitz and drapes an arm across his chest. “The fair! Lup and I have a whole itinerary planned out. The perfect ride to game to food ratio, how to maximize our time before Barold inevitably gets a stomachache and we have to take a pause to get him some ginger ale, it’s gonna be so much fun! We gotta get a move on though, it’s a bit of a drive to get there and if we get in the gate before three, all access wristbands are half price.”

Kravitz looks over at Taako, a bemused look on his face. “Been doing a lot of prep for this, then?”

“Kravitz. This is the fair. This is like my Toyotathon. My fifty-cent corndog day. My fucking Old Navy one dollar flip flop sale. I do not fuck around with this,” Taako deadpans before kissing Kravitz quickly.

“Taako, darling, you’re scaring me.”

“Then that means I’m doing something right! Let’s get a move on, the day is fleeting!”

--

“I’m just saying, we didn’t die the last time we went on that one Superman style ride, we could go again this year!” Lup rips the plastic cover off the adhesive of her obnoxious green wristband and awkwardly tries to fasten it on herself.

“Are you forgetting the fact that the only thing keeping us in the ride was a weird latch bar that didn’t touch any of us? And a handrail?” Barry reaches out and helps Lup adjust her wristband. She holds her hand out for his and fastens it on his wrist.

“Not to mention the overwhelming gasoline smell. Nah, Taako’s good out here. Now the Himalaya, on the other hand—”

“I’m not getting back on that eternal hell loop, no way,” Barry interrupts.

“What’s so bad about the Himalaya?” Kravitz holds his wrist out to Taako for help with his own wristband. Taako quickly and precisely attaches Kravitz’s wristband.

“Other than the fact that it felt like we would literally never be allowed to get off it last time?” Lup flips her hair down, wrangling her curls into a loose ponytail. “Basically you’re on this ride and it goes in a non-stop loop for like ten minutes and it does actually bruise you! I love shady fair rides as much as the next person—”

“I’d wager more than the next person,” Taako interjects, itching at where a bit of adhesive sticks to his wrist, courtesy of Kravitz.

“—But it’s a terrible and completely unfun ride,” Lup says decisively, throwing an arm around Barry before giving him a quick kiss.

“You’re allowed to have your wrong opinions, I guess,” Taako rolls his eyes and grabs Kravitz’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

“How about the swings?” Barry proposes. “Nice and easy and the line’s still short.”

“Perfect!” Lup begins leading the group towards the ride, slipping through the crowd like smoke.

--

“Shit, this food is so bad,” Taako remarks, ripping a chicken tender in half with his plastic fork.

“Absolutely terrible,” Lup agrees, dipping a corndog in a generous pile of mustard.

The group sits at a picnic table under an awning. A few of the rides had jostled them all around pretty rough so a break is well overdue. Barry’s finally stopped looking like he’s going to hurl, a massive improvement from where he was twenty minutes ago.

“Do you want something else?” Kravitz pops a few fries in his mouth.

“No!” Taako and Lup exclaim at once, pulling their grease-laden paper trays closer to themselves.

“See, Krav, part of the charm of the fair is, in fact, the shitty fair food,” Barry informs him, ripping a piece of his pretzel off before commandeering Lup’s mustard pile.

“Barry gets it,” Lup says solemnly, ripping off a bit of Barry’s pretzel. “Mustard toll, babe.”

“I mean, I did see a truck earlier advertising deep fried candy bars.” Kravitz suggests.

“Have I told you today how much I love you?” Taako reaches over and swipes a fry from Kravitz’s own tray.”

--

“So the milk jug tower thing is a waste of time.”

“Obviously. The free throw booth is also not happening.”

“I feel pretty confident on the one where you gotta pop balloons with darts.”

“Okay perfect. I think the ring toss one is what I’m feeling today.”

Kravitz glances at Lup while Taako and Barry weigh the merits of each and every single terribly rigged game at the fair. “They’re serious about their games, huh?”

Lup nods and smiles warmly. “Yeah, they really are.”

“Just you wait, babe, I’m gonna win you something awesome!” Taako calls over to Kravitz, the last lazy rays of the sun painting him a soft gold. Kravitz laughs a little; it’s completely unnecessary but the thought of Taako taking the time and energy to win him some terrible prize does make his heart flutter more than a little bit.

“You boys have fun, Krav and I are gonna go see what’s in the mysterious tent by the Ferris wheel!” Lup waves to Taako and Barry before pulling Kravitz along with her.

--

“It’s terrible.”

“It’s huge.”

“I gotta win it for him, he’s gonna hate it so much.”

“Have fun with that, I’m winning Lup a big Pikachu.”

--

“Shut up.”

“Barry.”

“Taako, I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Like, how did you fuck up this bad?”

“The giant Pikachu evidently wasn’t the grand prize. I was too good at the game.”

“A modern-day Icarus.”

“See, how is that bigger and worse close up?”

Taako smiles smugly. “I don’t know but I’m obsessed with it.”

“Kravitz is gonna hate it.”

“I know!” The glee in Taako’s voice is palpable.

--

Kravitz glances from the stuffed monstrosity in Taako’s arms to Taako and back to the affront to every single god Taako clutches with glee.

“D’ya like it?” Taako asks, holding the stuffed toy out to Kravitz.

“It’s uh…It’s big.”

“It’s really yellow, too,” Taako says proudly, still holding the stuffed toy in front of him.

“Like I didn’t think they made minion stuffed animals this big.”

“Well they do! And now it’s yours because the love of your life won it for you.”

The pride on Taako’s face is really what loosens Kravitz’s resolve. He reaches for the ugliest stuffed animal on the face of the planet and holds it close to himself. He knows he’s gotta look ridiculous, it’s the size of his torso. But Taako’s smile is burning brighter than the buzzing lights from the attractions and Kravitz decides he would actually get in a minion costume if it meant keeping that smile there.

“It’s my new favorite thing, actually.”

--

“Barry.”

“So listen, funny story.”

“Barry, this is a rabbit.”

“Yes.”

“Like, like a real-life rabbit.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen his little nose twitch firsthand.”

“Why do you have a rabbit?”

“I was trying to win you the big Pikachu.”

“I love that thing.”

“I know you do. Evidently this—” Barry holds the admittedly very cute rabbit out in front of him. The rabbit twitches its nose. “—was the grand prize.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Barry, I really don’t want this.”

“Wanna see if they’ll be reasonable and work with us?”

Lup nods vigorously. “This little dude is cute but I’m not quite ready for parenthood. I’m sure he understands.”

--

“The deep-fried Snickers is quite honestly the closest thing I’ve had to a religious experience, I think,” Taako wipes at his mouth in an effort to clean up some of the chocolate no doubt smeared around his face.

“I don’t think you can get better fair food than funnel cake, man.” Barry dusts a small blizzard of powdered sugar off his shirt.

“I need all of you to try this cheesecake though. It’s frozen, on a stick, and dipped in chocolate. Like, what else do you need?” Lup pushes the half-eaten slice towards the middle of the table.

Kravitz spears a bite of Lup’s dessert with his fork. “Shit, that’s genius. Want some of this Beavertail?”

“Wait, sorry some what?” Taako stares at Kravitz incredulously.

“A Beavertail! It’s a flatbread but with like, a ton of chocolate candies and spreads and sprinkles on it,” Kravitz slides his dessert towards the center of the table.

“Well shit, Krav, I dunno how to tell you you’re not getting this back,” Taako scoots the dessert closer to himself.

“Keep it, I’m stuffed!”

“You know who else is stuffed?” Lup pulls her giant stuffed Pikachu onto her lap without waiting for an answer. “This funky little dude.”

Barry lets out a snort and takes a peak around. “If we hurry, we could probably make it on the last Ferris wheel ride before we go!”

“Yes, I love the way you think, let’s go!” Lup takes a large bite of her cheesecake before tucking her Pikachu under her arm. The rest of the group scarfs down the remains of their desserts before hustling to the line.

“It’s gonna be a tight fit with this fella but I think we’ll manage alright,” Kravitz slips his free hand into Taako’s.

“We will. I’m not riding by myself, so we kinda have to,” Taako winks before pressing a quick kiss to Kravitz’s lips.

Taako wasn’t exaggerating when he called the fair the event of the season.

[ceilingfan5]

“Why are you whispering?” taakitz???

“Taako, I really don’t know about this,” Kraviz whispers for the fifteenth time. “If we get arrested for trespassing-”

“Why are you whispering? Are you afraid they’ve got security around here still?” Taako laughs. They thread their way through the twisting back halls from the secret entrance Taako found and burst into the mall proper. It’s been closed for ten years and slated for demolition for at least four, and it’s eerily quiet except for the steady drip of water that seems to come from deep within the walls around them. Taako shouts in delight, and it echoes from far away, and Kravitz has a sinking feeling about how all this will end.

Here’s the thing. Kravitz is not into urban exploration the way Taako is. Kravitz is only into Taako, and unfortunately for his dumb gay ass, this is the only time they ever get to hang out alone anymore. It’s nice to have a lot of friends when you don’t have a crush, but having to avoid gazing at Taako longingly when his sister and the others are around is like reading a book upside down while doing jumping jacks, and it’s getting hard to thread that particular needle.

Thing is, Kravitz has been in love with Taako for a long time, but he only just realized it this summer, and that’s made everything weird and strange and tense. But he can’t let Taako know. If he loses this friendship, he loses everything, and he doesn’t know how he can go back to college in the fall with a heart that broken.

So he’s doing dumb shit with Taako even though he knows it’s a bad idea. He can’t say no to Taako. Taako could even ask him to murder a guy and he’d consider it.

They move from the squishy carpeted area, and they crunch over broken glass and chunks of ceiling tiles, Taako recording with his phone and whooping with delight. There’s a weird sound in the air Kravitz doesn’t recognize at first--it almost reminds him of an alarm, or maybe a celestial hum of some avenging retail ghost that never got laid to rest, but the closer they get to the center of the enormous mall, the louder the sound gets.

“Frogs!” Taako crows in delight. “There are frogs in the old fountain!!”

There are also frogs in the defunct elevator, reedy weeds growing strong, a large hole in the ceiling shining sunlight down on them.

“Fuck, this is so cool, Krav. This is so fucking cool.”

“Yeah, cool,” Kravitz mumbles, kind of unnerved. The frogs quiet as they get close, but there’s still that sound ringing in his ears, and he wonders how the little guys got this far into the mall. Did they come in through the hole in the roof? Did they hop down the back halls like they did? Did someone bring them here? Did they spawn, fully formed, to symbolize the takeover of capitalism and the inevitable death of a society obsessed with appearances?

He wishes it wouldn’t be weird to hold Taako’s hand like they used to when they were kids.

Taako explores and Kravitz follows, noting what used to be a Hot Topic or an Auntie Anne’s or a Bath and Bodyworks, and even some older shops Kravitz has only ever heard of because of Taako’s obsession with all this. It is honestly kind of cool to listen to him going off about something he loves, but he wishes he didn’t have to be in this creepy ass video game level of an environment to experience it. He wishes Taako would sleep over at his house anymore. He wishes they could talk and talk and talk into the evening like they used to.

He wishes things weren’t so weird between them. But ever since Kravitz went away to college, nothing seemed to be the same.

Especially when Taako started dating.

The escalator rises before them, divine and damned in its disrepair, all the glass shattered and thickly layered on the extinct stairs. Taako’s eyes widen, and Kravitz’s heart sinks.

“We really shouldn’t...”

“But won’t you regret not going up there and seeing it??” Taako grabs his hand and pulls him in that direction, and Kravitz is too distracted by choking on the heart that leapt into his throat to continue protesting. They carefully crunch up to the heavens, and the frogs restart their chorus beneath them. Light streams down from the fragmented ceiling, and Taako’s face is glowing in his excitement. Kravitz could kiss him. He won’t.

The stairs feel unsteady beneath them, but they hold, and they walk carefully on the sturdiest part of the floor as they continue exploring the upstairs. Kravitz expects to see specters, expects them to fall through the floor, expects the worst and then some, but Taako doesn’t let go of his hand, so he doesn’t say a word. He hopes the chill humidity of the rotting mall excuses how fucking clammy his hands are.

They come to the middle and behold the whole mall and its bizarre sculptures from above, a haunting rendition of the symphony of commerce it used to be, and still they’re holding hands, and Kravitz squeezes Taako’s, not because he wants to draw attention to it, but because he kind of gets it, now.

“It is sort of beautiful, in a freaky way.”

“Yeah,” Taako says softly, smiling.

After a long moment, they move on, Taako moving a bit ahead and testing out the more delicate parts of the floor and laughing.

“You should be more-”

Part of the floor gives way, gravity grabbing Taako’s ankle and sucking him down, and he helps and yanks on Kravitz’s hand. Kravitz gasps and pulls, and Taako staggers back, nearly tipping over the edge, no longer barred by glass. Kravitz pulls him again, terrified, and Taako falls into his arms, eyes wide and heart pounding so loud Kravitz can feel it.

“Holy fuck, are you okay?”

“You saved me??” Taako breathes, and in more heart-pounding news, kisses Kravitz right on the lips.

It’s a wonder Kravitz doesn’t pass out. He kisses back instead.

“Taako-” he doesn't know what to do with his hands, what to say. “Taako, are you okay??”

“I think-” Taako stares at him. “I think maybe we should go home.”

“For sure, but- Taako-”

“Yeah?” Taako looks shaken and pale and excited and terrified. Like he’s afraid Kravitz didn’t want the kiss. Like he’s afraid he’s ruined everything. Kravitz seriously feels lightheaded, realizing, understanding.

“Can we do that again?”

[terezis]

Taakitz twilight au but the ipre are the vampires

kravitz moves to forks washington with his mother after she accepts a job offer at the local hospital. she is their new coroner 

kravitz loves his mama dearly but man, between her chosen profession and the fact that kravitz is an awkward goth who grew up befriending ravens and listening to mcr, he was basically born to get courted by a vampo!!! death omens abound!!!

also i just googled what coroners actually do (they investigate violent, sudden, or suspicious deaths) and i think it would throw be REALLY SPICY if later kravitz was constantly having a panic attack because every single one of the “mysterious deaths” his mother is looking into are ALL CAUSED BY VAMPOS. she’s not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but also??? she is VERY SUSPICIOUS about all these puncture wounds!!! 

raven says, kravitz would you humor your darling mother and start carrying around this canteen of holy water please???

kravitz, actively sweating, thinking about his real life vampire boyfriend chilling upstairs in his bedroom and also the very conspicuous hickies on his neck, says, bbbbut there’s…… nnnnnnnno such, thing? ha ha mmmmmmyyyes mother of course,

I DON’T WANT TO DO A WHOLE OUTLINE FOR A TWILIGHT AU ACTUALLY BUT I DO WANT TO TOUCH ON THE GOOD BITS:

i think it would be really funny if taako and lup were like six hundred years old and grew up as impoverished peasants during the middle ages, and yet they still know more about modern pop culture than actual mortal teen kravitz

kravitz says, taako have you seen this……. “mee-mee?” and shows his boyfriend a picture of an lolcat and taako straight-up double dies

also b/c they perished well before the advent of fast food, or like, refrigeration, the twins are constantly buying and cooking meals for kravitz and demanding to know how it tastes. they are living vicariously through him. tell them about big macs, kravitz!!! describe the UMAMI

i said it before but it bears repeating, merle is the hot doctor that everyone in town is in love with. merle is taako’s hot dad. merle introduces himself to kravitz as taako’s hot dad. taako hates this

other bits that are not about taakitz

taako has a complex because a few decades ago he lost control of himself, murdered like forty people because he was so dang bloodthirsty, and he and his family had to flee the town of glamour springs

(little does he know that it was a set-up: local teenage douchebag sazed had grown suspicious of taako and wanted to “out” his vampirism so that he could then use the story to make it big as the guy who “discovered” vampos for realsies.

he waited until taako’s eyes were dark with hunger, nicked himself with a knife in home ec, drew blood, and - well, the rest is history. 

fortunately, so is sazed!!!

sazed thought he had done his research. alas. he did not. thirty cloves of garlic got nothin’ on twilight’s nigh-indestructible brand of vampirism

no jacob-equivalent in MY twilight au but julia is a werewolf, so we can have a little enemies to lovers romance, as a treat

WAIT ONE MORE

instead of a terrible pregnancy arc:

after kravitz gets turned, he has to lie low for a while his bloodlust cools. during this time angus mcdonald (boy detective) decides to start investigating kravitz’s  “disappearance” - and much to taako’s dismay, he is angus’s main suspect, oh my

taako would like this small child to stop stalking him please

but also he misses cooking for kravitz so whenever angus decides to stake out his house, taako makes him dinner

eventually when angus inevitably discovers the vampo secret, taako panics and kidnaps (adopts???) him, by which i mean, he holds angus hostage in the house and demands that he try these cupcakes

when the hunger comes to make a routine checkup on kravitz (because he’s a newborn), they discover angus’s existence, decide he knows too much, and everyone has to band together to DEFEND THEIR BOY!!!

the hunger is a really on the nose name for a group of bloodthirsty vampires whose sole concern is consumption and the destruction of the mortals’ way of life… and yet

[desiree-harding-fic]

A TAZ Cinderella AU

You guessed it, folks, this is the full arc of what my Cinderella!au would have been for the Adventure Zone, if I had the time/inspiration to write the whole thing. Just imagine that all of this is paced out over a bunch of chapters of very pretty words, ok? ;)

That said, enjoy! I’m actually very proud of the thing I concocted in my my head for this!

To begin, a quick run-down of the situation as it stands at the beginning of the fic: Mostly Taakitz-centric, Blupjeans as a side plot. Kravitz is the Crown Prince of Faerun, his mother the Raven Queen current ruler of the kingdom, and him as her only son. Taako and Lup’s parents are both dead, and they live with their mother’s father: their grandfather Tostaada, along with the many aunts and uncles and cousins from Tostaada’s other children. 

Tostaada has a house, several days travel (at least) from Neverwinter, a typical country home for the well-to-do. He’s somewhere between gentry and nobility, but his wealth has been in decline, as is often the case in these stories. His mistreatment of Taako and Lup comes from a disdain for their father. And it provides a convenient excuse not to pay servants.

Summary of the arc proper under the cut:

So we begin with a prologue (posted here) in which we see Kravitz and Taako, around the early teenage years (14-ish) and just get a little taste of how different their lives are. 

Chapter one (also here) kicks off with Kravitz sneaking out of the castle in the early morning for a ride, musing at how busy he is and how stressful his life is trying to be in charge of a whole kingdom, etc. Upon his return, Barry, the royal head arcanist, and Kravitz’s friend, is waiting for him, and informs him that he has a meeting scheduled this morning with the Royal Council.

The Royal Council was originally meant to be a B plot in the story, something to help drive the thing forward, in part because I couldn’t think of a reason as to why the Raven Queen, who adores her son, would force him into marriage. There had to be an outside pressure. So the council was born.

The council was created during the reign of Kravitz’s grandfather, as a way of giving the people a say and lessening the power of absolute monarchy in Faerun, which was falling out of fashion. That was the intent, but, as we find out in the first chapter, the council is now filled with noblemen who haven’t really got the people’s best interests in mind, at least in Kravitz’s humble opinion, and get a good deal of say over what he does. There was never anything enacted that would allow Kravitz to either disband the council or enact term limits, and now, if he were to put such a thing to a vote, it would never go through.

The original council consisted of: Lord Sterling (Artemis’s father), Jenkins, Gundren & Jack (both recently deceased at the opening of the story), Governor Kalen, and Davenport. I promise this will be relevant later.

So in our first chapter the Raven Queen pulls Kravitz aside after his meeting and tells him, over a very tense tea, that he is turning 25 in a couple of months, and the council, as well as foreign powers, are getting nervous that he has no martial prospects yet, and as the Raven Queen has no other relations to carry on the monarchy in Kravitz’s stead, they kind of need to get a move on. Having it so that the Royal line could die out any minute isn’t great for cultivating confidence in the people of your kingdom.

Kravitz is understandably upset, being the romantic that he is (I love him), and he wants nothing less than to be married as the result of some political power play. And yet, there is low probability, at least in his mind, that anyone that will be “suitable” according to his mother, the council, and the people both in Faerun and abroad, will be anyone that he will even remotely like. But what can he do? He agrees to begin the process of finding a spouse at this year’s Harvest Ball, which will coincide closely with his 25th birthday.

Barry is actually the one that gives Kravitz the idea of throwing the doors open to the whole of Faerun, and Kravitz, seeing it as an opportunity to meet men who aren’t stuffy nobles he hates, strikes a bargain with his mother: a masked ball, three nights long. Kravitz will not know (in theory) who is wealthy and powerful and who is not, and will be able to choose at his discretion someone that he would like to pursue. Shockingly, the Queen agrees.

*~*~*~*~*

SMASHCUT to Tostaada’s country home. We see Lup and Taako going about their morning routine, making breakfast for the family, lighting the fires in the hearth, generally working their asses off. Mid-breakfast, there’s a knock at the door, one that Taako goes to answer. (This is a no-no. He’s meant to be more of a behind-the-scenes servant, Lup being the one who is seen. She’s slightly more favored by Tostaada. Taako is hated. But Lup is in the middle of something, so...) It’s a letter from the Raven Queen, an invitation actually, to the family Taaco, to come to Neverwinter for the three-night Harvest Ball. 

The Queen’s intentions of finding her son a husband are not directly stated, but Tostaada is a shrewd, terrible old man, and it does not take him a moment to catch on. The family packs up, Taako and Lup and all, and heads to Neverwinter, the ball two weeks away.

While they’re packing, Lup pulls Taako aside and tells him her plan. They’ll be in Neverwinter for almost two weeks, ball included. And the whole kingdom will be swarming to the city for this, it will be more crowded than ever, and therefore will give them the perfect opportunity to run away from Tostaada. He’ll be so preoccupied he’ll never be able to track them down in the chaos of this event. Taako hesitates for just a second before he’s on board. They’ll run away mid-ball, when the family is gone, and by the time Tostaada realizes anything, it’ll be too late.

*~*~*~*~*

SMASHCUT back to Krav, chilling in the palace, it’s now two weeks before the ball (around the same time that Taako and co. get the letter, actually,) and preparations are well underway. During another busy day of overseeing some of the prep for the upcoming Massive Festival (TM), Kravitz runs across Captain Davenport, just returned from a long stint at sea.

They have a conversation about the state of affairs in the kingdom, Kravitz expressing his frustration at not only the ineptitude but corruption on the council, and his worries about this marital plan. He knows that Lord Sterling is going to throw his son Artemis at him relentlessly, but he hates the kid, and wants nothing to do with him, etc.

Davenport merely expresses that he has faith in Kravitz’s ability to turn it all around and make for a good king. That the recent loss of Gundren and Jack and the dragging on of the council replacing them doesn’t bode well, but that he needs to see the thing through.

He unfortunately agrees with the rest of the council, however, that Kravitz needs to be married, and soon. There’s only so long they can go dragging this out. Kravitz sees the sense in this and agrees, albeit reluctantly. At least he has the opportunity to find someone he actually likes.

Meanwhile, Taako, Lup, Tostaada and the family have arrived in Neverwinter and will be staying in a fine manor house in the upscale residential part of the city, and the family immediately sets out to find tailors and seamstresses who can get them all dressed up for the inevitable ball. The house is in shambles on the inside, the only way Tostaada could get it cheap, and Lup and Taako spend the afternoon trying to fix it up to live-able standards and clean it enough so that should the family be called upon, they’ll at least look respectable.

In the meantime, no one is home, and they begin to plan their escape.

They plan it for the third night of the ball. Tostaada will be furious if they leave sooner, being left with no servants to assist any upcoming nights. The third night, once the family leaves for the party, they’ll be in the clear. If Tostaada manages an advantageous match for any one of the cousins, he won’t bother with Taako and Lup anymore, and get better servants. It’s highly likely that in the next two weeks he’ll make several matches, so after the party is done they should be as safe as possible given their plan.

*~*~*~*~*

Everyone spends a week getting ready.

Istus, friend of the Raven Queen from a neighboring kingdom, arrives to the palace. She will be staying for the celebration, and for a while on either end. She and the Raven Queen have a conversation, in which the Raven Queen expresses her anxiety about the upcoming matchmaking process for her son. She does not want his marriage to end up like hers (loveless, purely political). She asks Istus if she will use some of her divination skills to look into the future. Istus agrees, and it is clear that she sees something very intriguing in Kravitz’s future. She does not say what it is, but she assures her Majesty not to worry.

The day of the ball arrives.

Now by some trick of fate, one of the cousins has received the wrong suit by accident, and Lup simply must go to the tailor and send it back, and retrieve the one he was supposed to receive at any cost. So Lup goes, and Taako doesn’t think much of it until she bursts back into the attic that evening, two garment bags in her hands. She says that there was a mistake, and that a noble man and woman didn’t pick up their garments for whatever reason; the week has been so chaotic anyway, and there was talk of them falling ill and being unable to attend the ball tonight, and the woman at the tailor shop felt so bad about the mistaken order she offered to alter them to fit Tostaada’s family for free, as a sort of “so sorry about the mistake” thing, and Lup said she would just take them, and isn’t it exciting Taako, we can use these and go to the ball tonight! 

Taako is reluctant to accept this plan, but Lup says they’ll only go one night, just to see the spectacle, and then they can be home for the other two and prepare to run away, and besides, they’re starting a new life and this will be a fun way to kick it off, and the outfits even come with masks, Taako, please?

Taako finally relents, and they spend the rest of the afternoon getting the cousins ready to go to the ball themselves, along with the aunts and uncles and Tostaada himself, who is in one of his moods. It’s awful, but they finally get a moment away, and they sneak up to the attic to pull out their garments...

And they get caught. Tostaada never comes upstairs, but he was calling for them, one of the cousins having forgotten a brooch or something, they weren’t answering, and when he comes upstairs and sees them, he takes the garments, drags the twins downstairs, and lets the cousins laugh at them until they’re in tears, and the family rip the dress and the suit to shreds.

The thought that they would even show themselves is so repulsive to Tostaada, and he gets angry at the presumption of it all, and he locks them downstairs in the kitchen for the duration of the evening, the door swinging shut behind him with a heavy clang.

Lup is furious, Taako more resigned, as the house quiets with the eventual departure of the family.

An hour passes with them sitting in the kitchen under the house, Lup cursing her luck. If not for her stupid idea to go, they wouldn’t be in here, locked in, and they could work on their preparations to leave two nights hence. But now they’re completely useless.

The latch on the door to the outside of the house, the small yard in the back with the meager kitchen garden, comes undone, and swings open of its own accord.

A woman is there. Or at least it looks like a woman; she is cloaked, head to toe, even her face obscured, but there’s a shimmer in the air around her that they recognize immediately as magic.

Taako and Lup have been learning magic, little by little. Taako stole a book from the village a little over a year ago, but it’s slow going, especially with Tostaada always trying to catch them doing something “indecent.”

They’ve never seen anything like this. 

The mysterious woman tells them she heard Lup’s frustrated shouting while walking by and wanted to see if they needed any help. Once they thank her for letting them out, she asks them why they haven’t decided to go to the ball; two young people like them at home on a night like this seems strange. Lup scoffs, says they thought about going for a moment, but they have nothing to wear.

Istus (for by now the reader surely knows it is Istus) cocks her head and says that that won’t do, will it? And raises her hands.

And in a moment their clothes are transformed, and Lup is dressed in a gorgeous gown in reds and golds, and feathered mask is on her face, and Taako’s in a finely made suit, his mask vaguely rodential. And the woman says that now they are well-suited for a ball. Taako and Lup are just gaping at her, but she shoos them along. Go, she says, and Taako feels a peculiar prickle up his spine when she tells them, when she tells him, it feels like, to amuse himself, to have a good time, to meet new people.

She warns them that while her magic is powerful, which is evident, it is sensitive to time. Wherever they are, at the stroke of midnight, the magic will fade, and their appearances will revert to what they were before.

Lup and Taako, wanting to go only for a few laughs and to spite Tostaada, say that this is more than enough time.

And they go.

When they arrive at the palace, it’s positively swarmed with people. They agree to meet by the front doors at a half hour before midnight, giving them plenty of time to get out without being seen.

And they go in.

They’re being jostled on all sides, and well, as much as they’d like to stick together it doesn’t really work out that way, and before he knows it, Taako is in the midst of a ballroom looking for Lup, and following the flow of the crowd - 

And suddenly he’s face-to-face (or, well, mask-to-mask) with a very handsomely dressed man with a skull for a face.

A skull mask, to be exact, all silver and gold filigree and done up with rubies and diamonds, and his suit is fine, dark velvet in rich blacks and deep, deep reds, and he bows and Taako does, too, because he feels as though it’s the thing to do, and when the man straightens up he and Taako trade the typical small-talk befitting a prince and his guest (because, Taako realizes, with as many people seem to be looking at them, that is surely who this must be), and Taako says something witty that makes Kravitz laugh which I will not write here, because this is a summary, which means all I have to do is say when the jokes happen; I don’t actually have to write them.

Long story short, Kravitz pulls off his mask, and he asks Taako to dance.

The anonymity Kravitz was hoping to be afforded by throwing a masked ball has not really panned out. Everyone can tell exactly which mask the prince is behind, and once the receiving line began to form, there was really nothing for it. He likes the Mongoose-masked stranger, though, and would very much like to know him better. And so what if he’s abandoning the rest of the line? He’s the prince, thank you very much, and he can do what he likes.

Taako is sold the moment the prince pulls his mask off, because the prince is hot, and Taako feels rather gorgeous himself, and maybe this is the first night in a while that he’s had any kind of serious fun and he’s feeling a bit reckless, so he pulls his mask off too and they have a dance.

Or two.

Or three, talking all the while.

After the third, the prince bows respectfully and says he must see to his other guests, but that he hopes to see Taako again, and Taako, maybe just a little flustered, wanders over to the food.

Meanwhile, Lup entered the ballroom, having gotten a bit lost on the way in, shortly after the fateful meeting itself and what does she see but her brother, unmasked, dancing with a man who is most unmistakably the prince.

Which is really just perfect, isn’t it?

She pouts for a minute because one beautiful elf will hardly draw any attention in this crowd, except Taako’s dancing with the crown prince, so every eye in the assembly is fixed upon him, and seeing an identical twin will definitely lead to some word getting around. So Lup is confined to remaining masked for the duration of the ball.

Which isn’t so bad, since she was expecting that, after all, but neither is she looking forward to it.

She skirts the edge of the ballroom, finds her way to some refreshment tables, and she’s lucky her mask leaves most of the bottom half of her face free as she nibbles on the hors d’oeuvres set out and generally enjoys the spectacle. She is propositioned to dance a few times but after the prince removes his mask a large portion of the assembly does as well, and Lup rather sticks out for keeping hers on.

She isn’t given much more attention, then, as all of the other people around seem to write off the mask as a wish to stay hidden and therefore ignored, and while they aren’t wrong, Lup isn’t enjoying the ball half as much as she thought.

And then things go from bad to worse.

Some moron completely knocks into her and sends her drink, a strong red wine, all down the front of her, granted, magical and temporary, but very nice dress.

Lup’s going to be mad, but the man is so sweet about it, stammering his apologies, and completely red in the face and, frankly, such a dork that she really can’t be mad, and he does about some ridiculous business about trying mop up the wine and it’s completely hopeless, and Lup is bored - 

So she tries casting prestidigitation on the stain.

And, somewhat to her surprise, it works.

This catches the man’s attention, who immediately straightens up and starts asking her questions about where she’s learned magic, and what other spells she knows, and what her name is. Lup, in a moment of impulse, introduces herself as Lady Lulu, which she cringes at immediately but sticks with. And the man is nice to talk to, and interesting, and apparently an expert in the arcane, which Lup is thrilled about. Out of all these people she ran into someone actually interesting.

At one point, she invites the man to dance, but he refuses, a bit awkwardly. He says he’s not very coordinated, but he wouldn’t mind taking a walk, if she wouldn’t mind either? Lup is going to say yes, but upon glancing at the clock, sees that it’s almost eleven-thirty, and tells him she has to go.

Taako, meanwhile, has danced with Kravitz twice more, and chatted a bit, and when he tries to extricate himself from his Highness’s presence Kravitz seems genuinely disappointed to see him go, and asks him if he’ll be back tomorrow night.

Taako, suddenly overcome with something that makes him want to make this man smile, says yes.

And then he goes to meet Lup at the front.

They head home, making their way through the streets which are not quite as crowded as the palace was, but are still significantly busy, as those who felt they would not be at home in the palace have taken to celebrating the harvest ball in the streets. Lup and Taako make it home unnoticed, and they chat a little bit about what they saw and what they did, and when Lup teases Taako about the prince, he’s unusually quiet. This worries Lup a bit, but she doesn’t press further.

Their clothes transform when they’re about 3/4 of the way home. When they arrive, they figure they have a few hours until the family gets home to begin making preparations for their escape. Around three, they shut themselves back up in the kitchen. Lup manages to find, from the outside, a way around the locked door that i haven’t decided on yet, because this is just a summary.

Wash, rinse, repeat. The twins are on their best behavior the next day as Tostaada and co. sleep through the morning, having been up late the night before, and while no one comes to call that afternoon, Tostaada still has high hopes for a match. Lup and Taako are locked in the kitchen, manage to get out -

And now, Taako has been nervous all day having promised the prince he would be back, and surprisingly, quite wanting to see him again. He’s pacing the floor when Istus arrives, transforms their clothes, and sends them off.

Lup is more than a little skeptical about this magic woman, but Taako wants to go, so she goes, and tries to put the bizarre-ness of it out of her mind.

Taako goes to the ball, meets up with Kravitz, and this time Kravitz doesn’t leave his side all night. Lup wanders around, still masked, until she runs into Barry again (not literally this time) and makes good on that walk in the gardens he asked her for last night. They both make it to the gates again by eleven-thirty, and make it home.

This night, however, something tips Tostaada off. Maybe it’s the way Taako moves, or maybe it’s his own paranoia, but something happens at the ball that makes him suspicious. I will not hash out what it is at this time because, again: Summary.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Istus, on the third night, gives Taako his most fabulous ensemble yet, a beautiful thing in deep blue and silver and gives him jewelry set in sapphires and, you guessed it, pink tourmaline (because I’m predictable). Including, most importantly, a pair of bracelets. As Lup is locking up the kitchen to go, Istus pulls Taako aside and hands him the bracelets, and tells him that they will not dissipate at midnight. She hints vaguely at Taako and Lup’s plans to go away after the ball is over, tells him to consider the bracelets a gift. They are two of a kind, she tells him, and perhaps they will fetch a price.

Taako does not know why this woman knows so much about their life, but he’s eager to get to the party, accepts the bracelets, and before he can ask her more, she’s gone.

They head out to the ball for the third time.

It is this night that we get the majority of the material between Taako and Kravitz. Kravitz, this time, is waiting right inside the door to the ballroom, and when Taako arrives he is immediately swept up by the prince into a dance. Although, after a few hours of dancing and eating and generally enjoying themselves in the ballroom, they take a walk in the gardens.

Meanwhile, it is at this time that we get the scene where Barry has been chatting Lup up, quite obliviously, and finally he asks her if she’d like to see his lab, unable to take it anymore, he’s so excited that someone’s interested in his work. Lup, of course, thinks it’s a come-on, as discussed here, but upon going up to Barry’s tower lab she realizes that he actually, genuinely was inviting her up to look at his research which is just... too cute.

Meanwhile, Taako and Kravitz are taking a stroll through the extensive terraced palace gardens, talking all the while and the both of them are just... enamored. Taako feels beautiful and important for the first time in a long time and it’s wonderful. Kravitz has found someone interesting and gorgeous and wonderful, and it’s just... too much. It’s hard to write in short form here that they’re in love, but they like... are. Just trust me. Not fully, because it’s only been a few meetings, a few nights, but there’s something there. There’s a pull that they haven’t felt before, and feels somehow beyond them.

They wander, and the gardens are beautiful, and the moonlight is beautiful, and they end up on a sort of terrace, secluded by trees, and the sea is down below them and they dance again, just the two of them, and then there’s kissing and it’s all very romantic, I promise. There’s a scene from it here.

Then the clock strikes midnight.

And Taako panics.

The time got away from him, he got distracted, and he tries to run, but Kravitz catches his hand and he’s begging Taako to stay but Taako can’t, because Kravitz doesn’t know what’s going on here.

He thinks fast. He unclasps one of the bracelets and places it in Kravitz’s hand and says so fast that if Kravitz wants to see him again he can look for him and Taako will have the other bracelet ok bye and then he runs. 

He barely makes it out of the palace in time.

But of course, by this time, Lup is not at the front gates. They planned out a fallback location, less conspicuous, if one of them got held up, and Taako is already late, and he gets there as fast as he can, and Lup is pissed.

(she’s mostly just worried).

She kind of goes at him for being late but Taako just says he lost track of time, and whatever that feeling is in his voice makes Lup back off. She’s never heard Taako sound like that before. She lets it go, but she’s more worried than before.

They make their way home, ready to pick up their packs and run like they were planning. But they open the door to the kitchen, and there’s a thud, and a candle lights, and Tostaada is there, the contents of their packs spread out before him, and absolute fury in his eyes.

It’s awful. After his suspicion, he saw Taako enter the ball tonight. And knew it was him. And he was furious. He came home, headed them off, and yells at them something fierce, locking them in separate closets to deal with them, because they can’t be trusted to be together, they’ll scheme. (Some of the cousins, by the way, are here for this, because fuck the cousins). 

They try desperately to break out. Banging on the door, trying to bust out the doorknob, to cast something on the door to unlock it, but they’ve been going three days only getting a couple hours of sleep a night. It finally hits them how exhausted they are. After a while, there’s nothing they can do.

Now you may say to yourself “this is awfully convenient.” And you would be right. But it’s also a fairytale, and this is a summary of a fairytale, so there.

Tostaada, because he fucking sucks, finds some way to separate the twins. Probably something along the lines of dragging Taako out of his “cell” and being like guess what I’ve always hated you and I’m a real bastard so you’re working for this shady caravan now, have a good time. Taako is Not Down to be separated from his sister but he’s also like hey fuck you to Tostaada and is going to dip from that caravan in about 30 seconds so he’s like yeah have a nice life, too, dickweed.

He slips away from the caravan in like... a day. Fuck those guys. He’s gonna go back and get Lup.

And just a bit later, Lup gets let out of the closet, and finds out that Taako’s gone. And she goes fucking berserk. She casts her first fireball (yes I know that’s now how it works in DnD but shhhhhhh it’s fine).

She burns Tostaada’s fucking dumbass city house to the ground. And Tostaada and the cousins are panicking but Lup is honestly like fuck the cousins, and she slips away in the chaos. Fuck Tostaada. Fuck the family. Lup’s going to go find her fucking brother.

*~*~*~*~*

We haven’t checked in on Kravitz in a hot minute, but he’s been completely smitten with Taako from the moment he met him, and has been saying as much to Mama Bird herself, the Raven Queen, who has been... a little less than stoked. She is skeptical because this isn’t going exactly as planned, and on top of that, Kravitz hasn’t even learned this man’s name. He’s an absolute enigma, and Raven worries not only that this man will potentially not be a good asset to the kingdom, but he also might not turn up and completely break Kravitz’s heart.

But Kravitz stands firm. The Queen said he could make his choice, well, he’s going to. He’s going to go after this guy.

...Or so he thinks. See, the Royal Council, as in all things, gets their say. And they’re not happy with this. Generally disapproving when Kravitz tries to make his own decisions, they say absolutely not to his wish to search for Taako. Raven tries to help by talking them down from letting them handle the search and keeping Kravitz in the capital to letting Kravitz go himself but only giving him a few months time. If he hasn’t found Taako by then, he’s going to have to call off the search altogether and look for another match.

It’s not good, but it’s something. Kravitz takes his bracelet and begins seeking out every elf in the land who even vaguely matches Taako’s description.

*~*~*~*~*

The elf in question is, at this point, on his own. Meeting up with your sister when you have no idea where she is and she has no idea where you are, and you’re running back and forth and missing each other, well. It’s difficult. 

It takes them a little while to get back together, and I’m sure there are plenty of minor trials and tribulations along the way. I won’t go into them all here, because this is a summary.

*~*~*~*~*

Kravitz is on the move, looking for Taako. He searches and searches and comes up with nothing. It’s been two months. It’s almost the height of winter. He’s running out of his allotted time for his search. And that’s when it happens.

He’s riding through this one town, a ways from the capital, when he sees, there, out of the corner of his eye, a flash of silver and blue and maybe some pink, and he turns his head, and there’s the bracelet. The one Taako gave him.

But it’s not on Taako’s wrist.

Kravitz calls for the guards travelling with him and they stop the woman and they question her as to where she got that bracelet. She says that she bought it off a travelling salesman, and seems rather embarrassed about it. She’s reluctant to give it up, having bought it fair and square, but Kravitz pays her, and gets it back.

Kravitz is, of course, heartbroken. Taako said he would have the other bracelet. He told Kravitz to look for him. He said to look for him. If he gave it up, if he sold it, does it mean he doesn’t want to see Kravitz again after all?

Kravitz wants answers for a minute. But then he listens to reason. Or so he thinks. Discouraged, he returns to the capital, as per Lord Sterling’s suggestion.

Many people and things are trying to keep these two apart. It is at this point that these forces begin to win.

So he goes home, in time for the first snow to cover Neverwinter.

*~*~*~*~*

What Taako and Lup are up to in the meantime:

It’s pretty close to canon in that they mostly hop from job to job, and caravan to caravan, taking odd jobs and cooking and making their way. And it’s hard. It’s really hard. But something about it is good. This is the first time they’ve had, maybe in their whole lives, to just be in charge of themselves. They’re deciding their own destiny now.

Lup can see that Taako is different. Something has changed. The news that the prince is looking for him isn’t a secret at all, so she keeps a careful eye on him for how he feels about that. She brings it up a few times that maybe they could come forward in their own way, maybe let people know that he’s out there, but Taako keeps shutting her down before she can really talk about it.

As for Taako, he’s more than thrilled to finally be free of Tostaada, and to have his sister back after a few months of absence. But the whole thing at the ball and with Kravitz is... weighing on his mind.

I should explain the bracelet fiasco.

See, Taako and Lup returned from the ball, and the whole thing with Tostaada went down. Of course, while he was deciding what to do with Taako he confiscated the bracelet, and sold it off a bit later for whatever he could get. This is how it was able to travel so far from where Taako actually is; the jewelry seller went one way, Taako another, and Tostaada and the family, when they finally left Neverwinter, a third.

This is all running through Taako’s mind of course. It would be nice for Kravitz to find him, sure, but Taako was the one who set up the system of verification through the bracelet. Without it, what credibility does he have? And sure, maybe Kravitz will recognize him, but what if he doesn’t? It was dark, and it was only a few nights, and - 

Anyway, Taako’s not going to worry about it. He’s fine, really, and it was only a few nights anyway, and what does he care about the dumb old prince. It’s not like Kravitz said he wanted to marry him. He just said he wanted to see him again. What the hell does that mean? And it’s not like Taako was the only one he spent time with at the ball.

Basically our sweet boy is snackin’ on a big slice of denial pie and it’s very sad.

Taako is saying that he doesn’t care whether he sees Kravitz again or not, but Lup can tell something is wrong. She suggests that they stick around in Faerun, work for the winter, and come spring, they’ll head out. They’ll hitch their way with the caravans, and work their way over the border. New country, new life. Leave all that Tostaada shit and everything behind.

Taako’s on board. They find themselves a job cooking and occasionally tending the bar at an inn, not a gross one but not the fanciest either. They’re going to work up some money, and they’re going to hit the road.

But back to Kravitz.

*~*~*~*~*

Kravitz is back home at the palace in Neverwinter. The first snow on the not-very-aptly named city makes traveling difficult. If Kravitz hadn’t already given up the dream of Taako, it would well and truly be impossible to find him now. No one in their right mind would send a search party out in the winter months.

So he’s essentially on house arrest.

And so begins the parade of potential partners. Everyone knows about the ball. Everyone knows now that the plan of having the prince find a partner there was a colossal failure. Every young and eligible nobleman in the capital who is even remotely interested in men gets thrown at this boy. Artemis Sterling most of all, a spoiled brat of a boy, who, when he’s not being absolutely appalling to people is boring them to death.

Kravitz is fucking miserable.

Does this make him think of Taako? Yes. Does he miss him? Absolutely. Does it only twist the knife of heartbreak in this boy who thought he had found someone good and then that person gave him up? 100 percent.

Kravitz is ready to jump off the cliffs out back the palace into the Stillwater Sea and swim to a new country when the word from Raven’s Roost comes.

Rebellion! Against Kalen, of all people! How could it be?

(Kravitz has hated Kalen for a while, but this certainly is a pickle).

Kalen is ousted, arrives in Neverwinter half-frozen and fuming, a few cronies on his tail, and chaos in the palace ensues. Who to believe? Kalen, who claims he has been unfairly attacked, or the people, claiming Kalen’s long-term abuse.

It all shakes out somehow. This is a summary, though, so I don’t have to say. Julia does something badass. Also she’s not dead. She and Magnus show up in the capital and there’s the whole them vs Kalen before the Raven Queen fiasco and finally she chooses the good people as the correct ones and Kalen is thrown in prison or banished or something lol idk.

And now there are... 3 positions on the royal council empty and it is essentially non-functioning. The kingdom is in governmental crisis. Magnus and Julia are at the palace. This whole rebellion/trial thing has taken most of the winter months.

Barry and Magnus become fast friends, which of course puts Magnus into Kravitz’s orbit more than the Kalen ordeal already has. And they begin talking. And at the prompting of Magnus and Julia being so in love, Taako of course comes up.

Magnus is all omg wow buddy that’s true love u gotta pursue that, and Kravitz is like ok but also consider he probably doesn’t even like me, and also it’s impossible, and also I can’t. To which Magnus says umm how do you know, and also bullshit, and also why not?

And why not indeed?

Well, Barry says, perhaps because the government is in shambles and to abandon everything now would almost certainly trigger all kinds of issues amongst the aristocracy, upon whom your hold is currently tenuous at best.

Kravitz says >:((

And then along comes Merle.

Merle comes moseying up the palace one day like hey guys how’s it goin’ I’m Merle, and the [PLACE WHERE GUNDREN WAS FROM] sent me here to be Gundren’s replacement on the Royal Council, after all I am his cousin, don’t’cha know, and sorry it took us so long, we had some issues to work through. He does not explain what these were, nor does he have to, for this is a summary.

Merle’s addition is a real gamechanger, because not only is he miraculously able to neutralize the more antagonistic personalities on the council (usually through saying something Kravitz can’t decide is crazy or profound), but also he’s a big advocate for let’s get things up and running again, starting with just replacing Kalen with one of these two nice people who Raven’s Roost seems to have elected to represent them.

Magnus goes “oh well I don’t know this is a lot of responsibility-” and before he’s even done talking Julia’s like “I’ll fuckin’ do it.”

This, of course, gets the council running, and, importantly to our plot, creates a majority of people who Want kravitz to Go After A Boy. They work on cleaning up the mess in Raven’s Roost, finally find a replacement for Jack (it’s Cassidy, also by election, which is a shiny new toy for these people) and they iron all of it out by the time Spring has sprung.

Kravitz says now can I go Find A Boy PLEEEAAAAASE I did the governing thing and everything. And most people’s reactions are omg I can’t believe you’re still talking about that but Fine. Take some friends. Kravitz takes Barry and Magnus and (mumble mumble some others idk like avi or someone don’t @ me) and is like BYE MY CONFIDENCE IS RESTORED AND I’M GONNA FIND A BOY.

*~*~*~*~*

So Spring Has Sprung. 

Which means Lup and Taako are back on the move. Continuing their slow journey out of Faerun, working on their way (it’s nice to have money saved up, they find, but it’s not A Lot, and they don’t want to totally deplete it.) They usually stop for a week in a town, do some odd jobs, travel, stop for a week. It’s nice. 

But they’re on the way OUT OF THE COUNTRY *cue dramatic music*

Will Kravitz Reach Them In Time? If he does, will Taako even Want To Go Back? All these questions and more exist at this point in the narrative.

*~*~*~*~*

Kravitz follows the lead of the bracelet. He does not stop for a week in towns. In fact, he’s pushing pretty hard. He tracks down the woman who points him to the seller who points him to Another travelling seller who points him to a jeweler in town who looks at the bracelet and says oh yeah, I got that from Old Man Tostaada, outside of town, he’s a proud type, but you should ask him.

Well. Kravitz certainly does.

In the nearly six months since Taako and Lup slunk and exploded out of his life, respectively, Tostaada has become an even crochetier, nastier, meaner old man than ever. He has no servants now. The cousins have to do chores, oh the horror. He’s propping his appearance of nobility up on pride alone. The house is in Shambles. It’s a whole Thing™️.

But one fateful springy day, one of the cousins looks out the window…

And Sees An Entire Royal-insignia’d Party Riding Up The Lane. 

And promptly Panics.

Well Kravitz and co are ushered into the house with all kinds of Ceremony, and Tostaada is acting very proud, and Kravitz says excuse me sir, I was wondering if you might remember being in possession of this bracelet.

This is Bad News to Tostaada. 

I may recall, sir, he says. 

There’s a terribly polite and tense conversation after that. Tostaada refuses to say where he got the bracelet, even to royalty, being as old and spiteful as he is, and Kravitz is just about to threaten him with something terrible when one of the cousins breaks, and spills the whole story tearfully, about Taako and Lup and how they were treated and where Tostaada got the bracelet and “we didn’t know you wanted it, we didn’t know it was important, we swear,” and the only thing that keeps Kravitz from Severely Punishing them is that he refuses to waste any time getting to Taako, who he’s very keen to find now. Tostaada has no idea where Taako and Lup are now, though, so he wasn’t helpful in that sense. Only now Kravitz knows that they’ve Been The Fuck Through It, and that Taako didn’t give up the bracelet of his own accord, and so it’s possible that The Boy Still Likes Him. 

And with renewed energy, off they go.

Tostaada gets stripped of whatever title he has left, or something, because FUCK him.

Kravitz and the gang are putting out the word that hey, we’re still looking for this elf, if anyone’s seen him, that would be great.

The thing is, this time, they’re getting leads, on account of Lup and Taako sticking around in places long enough to make a friend or two.

*~*~*~*~*

It’s later, and almost Summertime, baby, when Lup and Taako finally hear the news. 

The prince is still looking for Taako? Damn. Boy’s serious.

Lup watches Taako’s face carefully when they hear this news. They’re leaving town. They only have one more before they reach the border and slip away. Lup says hey. Are you sure you don’t wanna come forward and say something?

Taako’s like no of course we shouldn’t do that don’t be silly it’s FINE. (It’s not fine, Lup can tell, but she’s not gonna push. This is Taako’s decision to make. They’re gonna make a fresh start in a new place. It’ll be great. 

They start hiking to the next town, hobbit style. They make it out into ye woods and find a nice spot to settle down and camp. Make up a fire, get cozy, cook a little dinner, the whole shindig. They settle down to sleep. 

Taako wakes up. In the middle of the night. The full moon is shining brightly down into the clearing they’re sleeping in and the fire is no longer the softly smoldering embers it was when he fell asleep. It’s nice crackling along. And sitting there, tending it, is a lady. 

Lady is the only way to describe her. She’s in a gown of silvery thread with silvery hair tumbling down her back. She asks Taako if he’d like some tea. He can’t tell if the light in the clearing is from the moon, or the fire, or just from her. She speaks with a voice that just sounds so familiar, but that he doesn’t quite place. 

She hands Taako a cup of tea. It’s floral and fragrant and lovely. She asks him what he’s running from. He says she sounds awfully condescending talking like that, and if she knew what he’d been through she wouldn’t act like leaving it all behind was such a bad decision. She says she never said it was a bad decision, she just wonders how much he’s thought about it, is all. There’s a quiet moment, as she sips her tea. She says, quietly, that perhaps Taako ought to be careful, not to run too far too fast. 

And taako wakes up again. There’s a teacup sitting beside him. Empty. Clean. There’s no sign that there was any visitor in the night. 

To Lup, Taako is acting weird the next day. He seems jumpy. He seems distant. She keeps worrying they’re gonna get jumped on the road, from the way he’s not paying attention to his surroundings. He’s in his head, even more than usual. But they manage to arrive to the next town without incident. 

And Taako’s weird over the next few days. And Lup suggests on the fourth that they get a move on. There’s a caravan headed across the border tomorrow, we can go with them. 

Taako looks at the drink in his hand for a long moment, not there with her, and she’s about to ask again when he says “maybe just a few more days.” 

Taako doesn’t ask her for much. Taako seems very serious, and it’s kind of scaring Lup. But she agrees. A few more days is fine. Then they’ll go.

And a few days pass. And Taako’s weird. He keeps looking around corners like he’s expecting something to jump out from around them. He keeps looking down the street like he expects something to come barreling into town. But nothing ever seems to. 

Come on, Taako, Lup says, three days later, while Taako’s dropped over a cup of wine in the local inn. Tomorrow some more people are leaving, mid-afternoon, they said, let’s go. Just over those hills and we can start everything over, make a name for ourselves. What do you say?

And Taako agrees. 

They go to bed.

And, in the bright-mid morning the next day, Kravitz and the gang come riding into town, Raven Queen standard flying high over their heads, dressed in shining silver on black. Lup’s out on the street, collecting some last-minute supplies when she sees them. 

Holy shit, Lup says. 

She recognizes the Prince. She recognizes BARRY. And after her moment of gawking in surprise, the prince glances her way, and does a frankly comedic wide-eyed double take. 

She does, after all, have Taako’s face.

He hops off his horse and very politely comes over and introduces himself, and identifies her by name (he met her grandfather) and asks, very kindly, if she might know where he can find her brother.

Lup does some quick mental calculus and says “yeah, I can show you where he is.”

That scene can be found HERE. (I truly can’t shortly summarize this one better than I wrote it so yikes secret few thousand words nested in this already monstrous summary, I’m sorry but not really I am sorry that it switches tense like three times, I do not have the energy to correct it).

Needless to say, they are reunited.

But it’s a lot to put on someone, the entire “come home with me I think you’re the love of my life even though we kind of only know each other a little, also if you say yes you might be responsible for governing a whole people” so Taako needs some time to think.

Kravitz leaves him some. 

And then Taako and Lup have a long conversation, where Taako makes lots of excuses as to why he shouldn’t go with Kravitz, and Lup listens very patiently and nods and hums along, and then finally asks him if he thinks Kravitz will make him happy. 

This stumps Taako for a good long time, standing stock still, looking terrified, before he nods. 

Well, Lup says, I think you know what you need to do. 

And Taako goes, the evening, as it’s getting late (which is about when he and Lup finished hashing it all out and he got his courage up) to Kravitz’s room in the inn, and Kravitz’s guards let him in, and oh. Oh Kravitz looks lovely, standing there, dressed down, comfortable in his own space. And Kravitz gets up and looks at Taako with wide eyes and Taako says, “I thought about what you said.”

“Yes?” Kravitz says. He might be crying. Taako can’t tell. He looks terrified.

“I think…” Taako says. “I think I want to go with you.”

Kravitz becomes a human embodiment of heart eyes and says “really?”

And Taako says oh my god yes but you have to not be weird.

“I’m not being weird,” says Kravitz, still heart eyes-ing, “I’m so not weird. I’m so normal, see?”

And they KISS.

*~*~*~*~*

Everybody packs up the next morning to head on their merry way home. Kravitz is over the moon. Taako is, kind of, too, but is trying to be chill about it. Lup tells Barry as they leave that she was the one he was hanging with at the ball that one time, good to see him again, and Barry becomes human heart eyes for approximately four seconds before he reigns it in and he’s like oh cool nice to officially meet you, and the two of them spend the rest of the trip circling each other trying not to act in love because like there’s a lot going on and Taako needs lup and all, and Taako and Kravitz are very amused by this. 

Taako and Magnus become fast friends. And, he and Kravitz get time to properly get to know each other during all that travel together, and the scary thing is they fit better than they ever thought they would, they really do. Taako likes the boy more by the day. Kravitz is so smitten it’s revolting. 

When they get back to Neverwinter, there’s a fair bit of fanfare and the Raven Queen makes a big stink about Kravitz shirking his duties and being irresponsible and whatnot, but he can tell she’s secretly pleased. She comes to like Taako very much. 

And well… you know what’s next. After a bit, Taako and Kravitz get married.

*~*~*~*~*

EPILOGUE:

The marriage of King Kravitz to Prince Taako is known as one of the more fortuitous in the history of the nation.

Prince Taako, after his history as one of the working common folk of Faerun, went on to use his new seat on the royal council to champion reforms that changed the lives of working people everywhere. The laws he helped draft that established basic working condition requirements for those in domestic services helped launch a new era of equal pay and treatment for the working classes of Faerun, and a culling of the power of the wealthy. 

He helped establish a new nation-wide system of government, based on regional elections, and with King Kravitz, gradually placed more political power in the hands of the people. The minimum requirements for the royal council to balance the number of aristocratic members with those without titles stands to this day.

Prince Taako was known, also, for his aptitude for the arcane. Though never did he manage to surpass his sister and brother-in-law in his lifetime, he is revered as one of the more powerful and skilled mages in Faerun’s history. Though perhaps more famous is his legacy as a great instructor in the arcane sciences, known especially for training Grand Archmage Angus McDonald in his early years. 

Though perhaps chief among his achievements was his role in the war against the Hunger in the twenty-third year of King Kravitz’s reign. He was among those who formulated the plan to infiltrate the Hunger’s forces and carry out the assassination of John the Devourer. And when King Kravitz was injured in the final battle against the Hunger’s armies, it was Prince Taako who held the line, and was unmoved in the face of their power. For this, he became known during his reign as Prince Taako the Steadfast, though over the years his long-time connection with Lady Istus was cited as evidence to his improbable marriage and ascension to the throne being an act of Providence, and in many secret circles he was referred to as Prince Taako the Blessed.

Upon his abdication from the throne in the thirtieth year of his reign, Prince Taako and King Kravitz were succeeded by the former’s sister, Queen Lup and Prince Barold, whose daughter, Queen Lilliana, finally dissolved the monarchy in the twelfth year of her reign, thus ending the Faerun’s royal line forever, and ushering the world into a new era of peace and equality. 

From:  Faerun: A History by Lucretia Moreau, published 538 T.E.

*~*~*~*~*

BIG Thank you to @fandomsnstuff and @her-biness who helped me with this for a Long Time. The little cameo of the blupjeans baby belongs to @lillianabluejeans, and the last name from Lucretia is taken from one of my favorite fics, Bureau of Badass on ao3, by Chemicallywrit and miceenscene.

Bonus points will be given to those who notice the 500 references in here to various adaptations of the cinderella story :)

[anistarrose]

Summary: Angus leads a virtual book club meeting. Kravitz connects the dots. Taako makes significant updates to the list of people he trusts and things he believes.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos, Julia Burnsides, Garyl

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Bit by bit, we’re inching closer to the endgame! Lots of plot and angst in this update, but also I think I might’ve implied that Minecraft exists in Faerun, so it evens out, y’know?

By virtue of their trance state replacing sleep, elves were supposed to be good lucid dreamers. Taako had always experienced mixed results, but never moreso than tonight, with a dream that started out all saccharine romantic fantasy �� fishing with Kravitz and sharing a kiss after falling into the lake together — before a clap of thunder and an unholy scream plunged the world into darkness and left one single source of light, one last surviving star, cradled in Taako’s unassuming hands.

Then a ripple in the darkness, the invisible maw of some ravenous entity, closed around that final star — and Taako screamed, as loud as he could muster yet still not loud enough to drown the ringing in his ears, as he flailed in the dark against the invisible monster that stole the world from him —

At once, two hands closed around his own, one cold and the other warm. On Taako’s left was Kravitz, aghast but holding himself together, a steely composure to his posture despite the fear in his eyes.

On Taako’s right was a Red Robe — but not Barry, and in fact not anything like what Taako had started to accept as normal for Red Robes. Where Barry had a clouded darkness in place of hands and a face, this lich had pure static escaping from within her sleeves and beneath her hood, crackling and constantly changing shape like lightning, or… like fire.

Taako sat up in his bed covered in cold sweat, heart pounding as he realized his legs were hopelessly tangled in his sheets, and only slightly slowing when he realized there was nothing in his bedroom to run from.

Elves were supposed to rarely awaken late, but Taako’s wizard hat-shaped alarm clock — a gift that Angus that he’d quietly appreciated, even though it should have been redundant — indicated that it was mid-morning, and when he trudged out into the common area, he found no sign of his doormates besides a note written in Magnus’s distinctive scrawl.

I know you were busy last night, so we’re letting you sleep in while we go play Fantasy Kickball on the quad! Killian and Avi are team captains and their rivalry is fierce, so we’ll probably be playing all day if you want to join us! Love, Magnus! (And Merle)

Taako didn’t realize how relieved he was until he felt himself let out a sigh.

He had a sinking feeling that the same dream — or at least, a similar dream — had played out more than once that night, looping over and over again as he repeatedly failed to remember, much less control, where it was going. He felt too exhausted to be operating on even a single minute of dreamless sleep, and didn’t even want to think about holding a conversation with anyone…

Well, with most people. There was someone he’d really been meaning to chat with, before he’d been distracted by haircuts and Kravitz and pottery and stargazing and Kravitz.

He transmuted a mug of lukewarm tap water to a piping hot, high-caffeine tea, then picked up his Umbra Staff, and conjured a familiar phantom steed with twin horns that nearly grazed the ceiling as he reared and whinnied.

“Yooo! Mornin’, Taako!”

“Morning, Garyl.” Taako yawned. “Could you do me a favor, and tell me literally anything you know about the liches you said I used to hang out with?”

***

CalebClevelandFan#2045: All early-installment weirdness aside, I really do think it’s a great introduction to the series! Because of the retcons you’ll encounter later, there are some conspiracy theories that the most recent arc of Caleb Cleveland was ghostwritten to maximize the publishing rate (which I think is hogwash, because continuity errors are going to be inevitable no matter who’s writing) but I guess I’ll let you decide for yourself when you get there! Do you need to stop by the moon again to borrow Book 2?

ReaperAwMan#1672: No thank you, Angus! I think I’m going to try and download the “digital” version, now that I know I can do that on my Stone! Taako told me about that feature and a lot of others last night, so if I can’t get it to work, I’ll just call him and ask him to walk me through it. :)

ReaperAwMan: Did I use the smiley face correctly?

CalebClevelandFan: Yes! :) You’ve picked up on technology a lot faster than my grandpa did.

CalebClevelandFan: Did Taako also choose your username on this app, though?

ReaperAwMan: How did you know? Is it a reference to something? :)

CalebClevelandFan: Um

CalebClevelandFan: Yes, but it’s a long story. It’s not mean-spirited or anything, though! I think it’s pretty funny!

ReaperAwMan: Okay! :)

CalebClevelandFan: Is that all for book club today? If it is, Mr. Kravitz, I just want to say that I’d be happy to talk to you again about Caleb Cleveland anytime!

CalebClevelandFan: It means a lot to me, but I understand if you’re too busy (message edited)

ReaperAwMan: Oh, there’s always time for book club, Angus!

ReaperAwMan: But I admit, I have had a lot on my mind…

CalebClevelandFan: Is it the liches? Since the Reclaimers aren’t in trouble anymore? (By the way, I went to tell Noelle she didn’t have to worry about getting reaped, but apparently she’s visiting family, so I left a message with her teammates Carey and Killain..)

ReaperAwMan: Excellent deduction. (And thank you for that. I hope she gets the message soon.)

ReaperAwMan: You’re right, I’m still hunting Lup and Barry Bluejeans, but… I just can’t shake the feeling that they’re connected to Taako and the others.

CalebClevelandFan: Really? What makes you say that?

ReaperAwMan: Well, I didn’t think much of this for a long time, and now I’m kicking myself for it, but their bounties registered in our system at the same time as Taako’s, Magnus’s, and Merle’s. We figured it was just a widespread detection glitch, which has happened before on a much smaller scale, but now it feels awfully suspicious. The Reclaimers have also encountered Barry at least four times now, without even seeking him out the first three times, whereas finding Barry is my job, and I get a lead on him about twice a year, if I’m lucky.

CalebClevelandFan: That is odd. Did any other bounties show up at that same time? Do you know if they have any kind of connections to Barry?

ReaperAwMan: Only two others, for a couple of people named Lucretia and Davenport. They must be living like hermits, because it’s been 12 years and I know as little about them as I do about Lup. Not a lot of leads there, I’m afraid.

(CalebClevelandFan is typing…)

(CalebClevelandFan is typing…)

CalebClevelandFan: Hmm. Huh! I wish I could say those names meant something to me, but I’ve never heard them before in my life! Truly unfortunate, that. But, I do suspect that Barry appearing to the Reclaimers is because the Red Robes made the Grand Relics, and it’s the Reclaimers’ job to track those seven relics down!

ReaperAwMan: You mean to tell me that Barold J. Bluejeans made a Grand Relic, and the Reclaimers all knew that information, but didn’t think it would be important to tell me?! This is simultaneously the most and least surprised I’ve been at any point in my afterlife.

CalebClevelandFan: Well, I guess there’s a reason I’m the moon’s resident boy detective and they aren’t, sir!

ReaperAwMan: Wait. Angus.

CalebClevelandFan: Yes?

ReaperAwMan: Seven relics. Seven bounties.

CalebClevelandFan: Sorry, sir, I’m not following. What’s the connection?

ReaperAwMan: I know this is going to sound impossible, but…

ReaperAwMan: Taako is a transmutation wizard. The Philosopher’s Stone can transmute any material into anything else. Merle is a nature cleric, and the Gaia Sash offers control over natural disasters and the wilderness. Then of course, Barry is a lich like no other, and the Animus Bell is the most dangerous necromantic artifact I’ve ever been tasked with monitoring. I don’t know exactly how Magnus fitz into this, or how the other three bounties have managed to hide from me, but…

ReaperAwMan: I think Taako, Merle, and Magnus made three of the Grand Relics!

ReaperAwMan: Angus? Are you still there?

CalebClevelandFan: Sorry, I just rebooted my Stone, but I still can’t read your second-to-last message! It just looks like static, but I was inoculated, so that shouldn’t be possible!

ReaperAwMan: I’m not sure what you mean by “inoculated,” but if the app is glitching, then do you want me to call you?

CalebClevelandFan: It may not be the app, sir. And if it isn’t, I fear a phone call won’t make any difference… but I just got an idea! I’m going to go check if Noelle is back yet — she should be able to help with this. Please bear with me for a few minutes, sir!

ReaperAwMan: Okay, then… good luck!

Head in his hand, Kravitz scrolled back up to the offending message, reading it over once more.

I think Taako, Merle, and Magnus made three of the Grand Relics!

It made sense, but it shouldn’t have. Despite all the questions it answered, it raised more in their place — and Kravitz had been ready to accept that he was wrong, ready for brilliant little Angus to chime in with a piece of evidence that refuted it all...

Except that message, and that message alone, hadn’t made it to Angus in the first place — and wasn’t that the most damning, of all the so-called coincidences aligning before Kravitz’s eyes?

The Reclaimers made Grand Relics and consorted with liches. The Reclaimers can’t remember making Grand Relics or consorting with liches.

Someone is hiding the truth from the Reclaimers, and from Angus. Someone is hiding the truth from the entire Bureau of Balance.

Is it Barry? Does he have that much power? Is he working with someone? With Lup?

Kravitz summoned his scythe with the full intention of warping straight to the moonbase, and bringing his four friends from the Bureau directly back to the Astral Plane — not to take them prisoner, but simply to get them somewhere safe, somewhere to talk without Queen-knows-what outside forces eavesdropping or interfering. Yet before he could open a rift, Kravitz’s vision flashed blue, and a faint yet familiar tug directed his focus towards a much different region of the Material Plane.

A voice echoed in his head, too distorted to identify the speaker, but the words themselves were clear enough:

Kravitz, help!

Kravitz’s Stone of Farspeech clattered onto his desk as he raised his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes, honing in on the location of the summoning arrow. It was surrounded by undead presences of several shapes and forms, but one aura outshone all the others — one unmistakable red aura, crackling with power, and… desperation.

There was a very short list of people on the Material Plane with access to this kind of summoning beacon — and no matter what dark secrets their pasts held, Kravitz couldn’t bear the thought of any of them being left alone with an incredibly powerful, secret-keeping, Relic-crafting lich who had finally, finally snapped.

With a frantic swing of his scythe, he ripped open a jagged portal to the arrow’s location, and leapt through without even pausing to retrieve his Stone.

Hang on, boys! I’m coming!

***

“If you wanna hear anything about liches,” Garyl declared, “that information comes with a price. Which you know is gonna be oats, ‘cause what would I even do with gold? I’m just a funky little 80’s horse remix, so you gotta hand over those spectral oats, dude.”

Taako sighed. “Garyl. I know you’re not gonna like this question. But before you whine, please consider the fact that I’m not in the fucking mood. Now: does it have to be oats?”

“A pound of spectral oats is worth two spectral carrots or one spectral sugar cube! That’s the conversion rate. If you offer a spectral salt lick, I may be willing to negotiate.”

Taako conjured two floating, semi-tangible carrots with a wave of his umbrella, and levitated them over to Garyl, who took a bite out of both at once.

“That’s the stuff!” he whinnied. “Okay, so. Liches. Whatcha wanna know about ‘em?”

“You said, like — like two days ago now — that you used to get spectral oats from liches that I hung out with. Garyl, I need to know: was that true, or were you just guilting me for not spoiling you with enough treats?”

Garyl’s response was rendered completely indecipherable by the fresh bite of carrot in his mouth, part of which splattered across the floor and narrowly missed Taako.

“This is serious, Garyl! I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a while, but it keeps getting more serious.” Taako groaned. “I… I didn’t even realize it, until I was talking to Kravitz last night, but… it’s just… okay, look. He remembers his whole life crystal clear, right down to how many stars you could see from this planet eight hundred and twenty years ago, but…”

He lowered his voice, glancing towards the door. “My past has always just been… fuzzy to me. I never really worried about it, but… I’m just now realizing that this might not be normal. And that if it isn’t, then I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Garyl swallowed the last of the carrots. “Yo, your past isn’t fuzzy to me. You really don’t remember your lich buddies — your lich family? Your literal sister and brother-in-law?”

“No, Garold, I don’t remember the sound of getting electrocuted in a fantasy garbage disposal!” Taako rubbed his forehead with increasing vigor, futilely attempting to massage away the sensation of an approaching migraine. “I don’t know how you made that noise with your nasty horse mouth, but it sounded just as bad as the static Lich Barry was speaking when —”

He gasped — and in the ensuing silence, the static kept ringing in his ears, but not as an audible echo. It was coming from within his own head, like a misdirected electric current leaping from neuron to neuron, generated as his mind repeatedly tried and failed to process what he’d just heard… and Taako knew exactly where he’d felt that sensation before.

“Oh, fuck.”

He bolted for the door, locked it, then frantically emptied his pockets until he found his Stone of Farspeech, which he powered down and then magically silenced for extra insurance. “Shit. Shit. Fuck.”

“Yo, what’s the rush?” Garyl asked. “Didja just remember you owe the unicorn mafia a whole bushel of oatsss?”

“What the hell? No!” Taako cradled Garyl’s snout in his hands, standing on his tiptoes to stare at Garyl in the eyes. “Promise me, promise me right now, Garyl, that you’re not gonna fucking snitch.”

Garyl’s expression turned as serious as a binicorn’s expression could turn, given two horns, technicolor eyes, and glittering lashes to work with. “Taako, you gave me life. I’ve always got your back, man.”

“There’s a second voidfish,” Taako blurted out. “And you’re more ghost than horse, I guess, so you’re immune to it, but I’m not. And I — I think I lost something big to it.”

“Huh.” Garyl snorted. “Damn. Geez, yeah. That would explain some things about, man, musta been…” He closed his eyes, nostrils twitching. “The last twelve years? That sound right?”

“Please, Garyl. You — you might know me better than I know me, at this point, so I need you to tell me — who can I trust?”

“I can’t decide that for you, Taako.” Garyl arched his majestic equine neck, as a single tear rolled down his face, and his mullet billowed in a wind that simply shouldn’t have been possible indoors. “Look at what you know to be true in your heart, and begin the journey towards your truth by trusting yourself.”

“I’m not here to listen to your poetry, Garyl — I need names!” Taako pleaded. “Like, I — I can at least trust Kravitz, right?”

“Look, man, I’m sorry! I could tell you who you used to trust, but if someone took a Voidfish-brand eraser to your chalkboard of a brain, that means someone had to betray you, and I dunno who it was! Kravitz is probably chill, because he seems on the level and you haven’t known him long enough for him to be the culprit — but I’m still juggling like six suspects, and I’ve only got four hooves, man! I’m trying my best to —”

Abruptly, Garyl’s voice died out, and he lowered his eyes. “Well, okay, it would be… five suspects. ‘Cause… Lup definitely went missing before any memories got…”

Taako clapped his hands over his ears. “Can you try not to do that? I’m already on the edge of a migraine without —”

A knock at the door interrupted him, and the next thing he knew, he was brandishing his Umbra Staff — never mind the fact that he’d locked that door just a minute ago, and it had since remained closed.

“Taako?” Lucretia called from the hallway. “Are you alright in there?”

After what must’ve been a suspiciously long pause, “Fine!” was the only word Taako could force out.

“Just dandy!” Garyl added in a terrible Taako impression, and Taako elbowed him in the equine shoulder.

“You’re sure?” The quizzical tilt to Lucretia’s head was downright audible. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

Taako bit back a reply of golly, I wonder if that’s because I don’t who I am or how much of myself I’m missing! but managed something more civil, clamping a hand over Garyl’s mouth as he spoke.

“Just had a late night last night! Took some… personal hours. May or may not be nursing a mild hangover now.”

“Oh, we’ve all been there. Merle did mention you were sleeping in.” Lucretia sounded like her suspicion had been sated — unless, of course, she just wanted Taako to think that — because in a much more casual voice that carried far less gravitas, the next thing she asked was: “Do you mind if I come in? I feel like we haven’t talked since Candlenights.”

“No problem!” Taako replied, probably much too quickly. He uttered the word ‘unlock’ under his breath in Elvish, to magically undo his little paranoia-induced security measure before swinging the door open, and hoping Lucretia wouldn’t notice the door had been locked or go on to question why. “Mi casa es tu casa — ‘cause, y’know, mi casa is technically part of your moonbase.”

If Lucretia did notice the unlocking door, she only questioned it silently, because her attention seemed understandably drawn to the binicorn trotting in place in the middle of the dorm.

“Oh, Garyl! Good to see you too.”

“Haha, yeah!” Garyl chuckled nervously. “Imagine meeting you, here, in a place like this! What are the odds?”

Lucretia lowered herself onto the sofa, glanced at Magnus’s rugged hand-crafted coffee table, and pointed to her feet. “Do you mind?”

Taako shrugged. “Uh… knock yourself out, Luce?”

She kicked off her heeled boots and slung her feet onto the table, laying her staff down in her lap. “Let’s get to the point. I did come here for a particular reason —”

“Oh?” Taako forced a smile. “Do tell.”

“Well, Merle and Leon got into a bit of an argument over — actually, let me start from the beginning. At some point in today’s second game, the kickball went over the edge of the moon, and has probably hit the planet Earth at terminal velocity by now.” Lucretia grimaced. “I hope no one was standing beneath it. Yikes.”

“Home run, baby!” Garyl cheered. Taako simply attempted to nod along.

“Actually, by our rules, it’s a foul with a sizeable penalty. Leon was pitching and Merle was kicking, so naturally they got into a fight over whose fault it was, and Merle threatened — let me see if I remember this all correctly — to ask you, Taako, to ask your ‘new friend the Grim Reaper’ to come up here and ‘reap Leon’s ass’ like said Grim Reaper purportedly once threatened to reap Merle’s own ass. So I was just hoping to get to you first, and stage an intervention to make sure the Bureau’s only artificer doesn’t take a one way trip to the heavens above — not to mention, maybe, ask if you had any idea what the hell Merle was talking about?”

“Well, bold statement saying Leon would go to heaven, first of all. Pretty sure he’d head the way of the plummeting kickball and smash through the planet’s crust. Second of all, um, I guess you could say I know the Grim Reaper? Look, we haven’t been seeing each other for very long, but I think we both feel a connection —”

“Oh! Well, good for you! Don’t get me wrong, that’s fucking wild if you mean it seriously rather than as a goof, but I’m still happy for you!”

“Not a goof. That is the whole story there, though. I’m dating the Grim Reaper, what more is there to say?” Taako grinned from ear to ear, and it felt slightly more sincere than every other smile he’d put on in this disaster of a conversation. “But as a… as an aside… uh, Garyl, do you remember those… six, no, five people you mentioned to me, just before Lucretia showed up?”

Garyl blinked at him with a downright hostility, as if to say You’re circling back to this topic NOW?

“Your, um, suspect list?” Taako clarified. “Of… people on the moon most likely to give you oats? I guess it was more like a power ranking, actually, let’s definitely call it a power ranking instead of a suspect list — but my point is, um, was the ‘Director’ here on it?”

“Yee-esssss,” Garyl replied slowly, still giving Taako the evil eye. “You know what I always say about Lucretia: she… she totes got the oats!”

“Okay!” Taako replied, knuckles turning white as he gripped the handle of the Umbra Staff. “Thanks! For letting me know! About those oat facts!”

“Um,” said Lucretia, which was probably the best reaction that Taako could’ve reasonably hoped for. “I… think I misplaced my oats today. Also, maybe my supply of oats for this entire year?” She reached for her boots. “Is this a hint that I should go back to refereeing kickball?”

“Yes!” Taako blurted out. “Oh, I mean, no, it’s not — I mean, you can leave! But you don’t have to. We don’t mind you being here!”

“We don’t not want you to leave but we also don’t not not not want you to leave,” Garyl added, as if it were a verbal Fantasy Rosetta Stone that would clarify and explain all of Taako’s anxious floundering. “Because we trust and cherish you. And oats! Mostly oats.”

Lucretia slipped her boots back on, then rose from her seat in a regal manner that probably wasn’t intended to intimidate the living daylights out of Taako. “No, you have a point. I should go make sure our secret society doesn’t fracture into warring kickball factions — but I’ll be back to chat more, don’t worry. Hopefully on a day you’re feeling better, Taako.”

She winked at Garyl as she turned to leave. “And I’ll try and remember to bring oats. Gotta move up in those power rankings.”

“It was actually more like a tier list!” Garyl called as she closed the door. When Taako magically locked it behind her, Garyl began pacing around the dorm, his tail swishing with enough force to knock several paintings and decorative vases onto the floor.

“Taako! She never has oats and she knows it! She’s onto us!”

“Yeah, you think?” Taako sunk into the couch Lucretia had vacated, burying his head in his hands. “I need backup who can hear through the static, before she puts it together and comes back to throw me in the brig. I’m calling Kravitz.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do that. I’ll keep working on the tier list.” As Taako began to reboot his Stone, Garyl accelerated his nervous pacing to a nervous trot.

“Garyl, if this turns into a canter, I swear to gods —” Taako muttered, tapping the Stone’s unresponsive screen with a shaky thumb.

“Sorry.” Garyl slowed to a halt. “Hmm. You trust Davenport more, less, or the same as Lucretia?”

“What, you think he just pretends he can only say his own name to disguise his role as the evil mastermind?” Taako’s stomach churned. “Shit. You might be onto something. Put him below Lucretia on the tier list. Or above? I dunno how —”

“Wait, I’m not following you, man. Since when can Dav can only say his own name?”

Taako groaned. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say since twelve fucking years ago — alright, finally! Here we go!” His Stone of Farspeech flickered to life, and he navigated to Kravitz’s contact page as quickly as his trembling fingers allowed.

When he hit Call, an eerie silence filled the dorm as he and Garyl listened to one, two, three, four short rings — then, a beep, and a horrendous pre-recorded Cockney accent.

Hullo, greetings, and top o’ the morning! You’ve successfully reached the desk of Kravitz, Emissary of Her Majesty the Raven Queen, but I’m away right now, so if you have a zombie outbreak to report, press 1. If you wish to subscribe to our mailing list of anti-necromancy resources, press 2. If you’re dead and in need of an escort to the Astral Plane, press 3. If you just wanted to have a friendly chat, please leave a message after the caw, and I’ll get back to you once I’m able.

A raven cawed, and Taako started talking:

“Hey, babe, it’s me! Your boy. Um, don’t let me take you away from saving the world from necromancers or anything important like that… but if you’re not busy, I could really use your help, so if you could swing by the moonbase, and — and maybe not tell anyone you’re coming here or that you’re coming to see me — then that would be just swell! Everything’s cool, nothing’s wrong — well, no, you’re a perceptive guy, you can definitely tell something’s wrong — but I’m sure you and me, and Garyl, and maybe Angus will be able to figure it out, no problem! Except, now that I think about it, maybe not Angus, because I’ve put him in enough danger to solve my own problems already — but uh, thanks in advance, love you, see you soon, bye!”

Then he dropped his Stone, grabbed the nearest couch pillow, and screamed into it.

“Hey, hey, relaaax,” Garyl told him. “You heard him — he’ll get back to you soon.”

“Yeah. I know.” Taako took a deep breath, letting the pillow fall to the ground. “He’s just a busy guy, with an important job. He’ll be here as soon as he can…”

Garyl nodded sagely. “And you’d do the same, for him, because that’s love. Unless…”

Taako’s heart skipped a beat. “Unless?”

“Unless someone on the lower end of the trust tier list knows about his connection to you, and to keep hiding the truth, they capture him before he can get here!” Garyl sniffed. “Just like the unicorn mafia captured my dear ol’ uncle…”

Taako pressed the Call button again, and when he was once again directed to voicemail, he picked the pillow back up and resumed screaming.

“Hey, take it easyyy, man. It’s not like they can kill him,” Garyl soothed. “And b’sides, haven’t you got that… that whatsit-called, that magic arrow? You can still check in on him that way, even if the bad guys stole his Stone!”

“Right!” Taako sprung up from the couch, and bolted towards the quiver of arrows that Magnus had casually slung onto the doorknob of his room. “I mean, I’m sure his phone didn’t even get taken from him — he’s eight and a half centuries old, for crying out loud! He probably just misplaced it, or accidentally put it on silent, or… gee, we really don’t have a lot of traditional surfaces to jab arrows into here, do we?”

He glanced around the dorm, gaze finally landing on Magnus’s homemade coffee table. “I’ll just… wedge it in one of the seams in the wood, so it definitely won’t be noticeable, right?”

“You asking me? I’m apparently an amnesia-immune ghost horse, man — what makes ya think I’d ever want or attempt to understand woodworking?”

“Guess you’ve never attempted to understand a rhetorical question, either,” Taako muttered as he crouched on the ground. Clasping the arrow between two hands, he took a deep breath, then plunged it into the coffee table. “Kravitz? I could really use your help, I won’t lie, but — but mostly, I’m worried and just checking in to make sure you’re okay —”

For a sliver of a second, everything seemed to proceed as it should, with an electric blue glow flickering to life inside the arrowhead — and then, it exploded, spitting out fragments of crystal and tongues of vicious astral fire. Taako reflexively turned his head and dropped to the floor, but still felt something sharp and burning prick into his biceps like a red-hot needle, and he held his breath until the sound of shattering crystal halted and the sound of burning wood faded to a faint sizzling.

“So, uh…” Garyl slowly backed away from Magnus’s poor table, which was already more ‘smoldering pile of ash and sapphire dust’ than it was furniture. “This ever happen before?”

“No,” Taako whispered. He raised a hand to touch the stinging point on his arm, and pulled away with a droplet of blood and a tiny pointed crystal both resting atop his index fingertip. “Never —”

“Okay, cool, that narrows down the possibilities,” Garyl concluded. “Either he’s really busy, or we’re really fucked.”

This time, Taako didn’t even bother to grab a pillow before he started screaming.

***

End Notes:

thanks for reading, comments welcomed as always!

next chapter: Ghost Fight (or in other words, we get to see what Kravitz has been up to in the meantime)

[maybeyapping]

Katy’s TAZ Fic Recs

disclaimer: these aren’t all the ones i read/liked, just my most memorable ones. that being said, if you have anything to add, go for it! 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18009503

Of Beating Hearts And Hooves

By @kravkalackin !!!

You know those stories where the girl moves to a farm and it’s being threatened by a rich dude? Yeah, that, but Taako and Lup are the girl.

 WIP, Taakitz, Blupjeans

 https://archiveofourown.org/works/13321215

Star Crossed is One Way Of Putting It

By @kravkalackin

 AU where Kravitz is the 7th bird, and Taako is snuck onto the Starblaster!

 WIP, Taakitz

  https://archiveofourown.org/works/12792789

The Worst Candlenights Ever

By @Kravkalackin

 Lup and Taako get a scene on TV, and their relatives want them back. They recruit Barry and Kravitz and destroy Candlenights for the greedy elf elitists.

 Completed, Taakitz fake dating, Blupjeans

  https://archiveofourown.org/works/13188000

Feeblemind

by ToTillAGarden

 A spell is fired, and there are 7 different possible outcomes to it.

 Completed, Davenchurch, Taakitz, Blupjeans

  https://archiveofourown.org/works/16167455

Mercy at The Gallows

By @kravkalackin

 Taako is a lich in search of his brother in law and sister, and Kravitz isn’t really sure how he got to this point of inevitability.

 Completed, Taakitz

 https://archiveofourown.org/works/18335198

Red, Blue, Colorblind

By (you guessed it!) @kravkalackin

 Barry breaks all his rules, if only to save his brother from Sazed. Shit goes south.

 WIP, Blupjeans,

  https://archiveofourown.org/works/14416653

Hot Single Dads in Your area

By @kravkalakin

 Angus gets a tutor, Taako needs another job, and Kravitz is getting increasingly worried over how good he is at the dad thing.

 Taakitz, WIP, Blupjeans, Dadvitz

  https://archiveofourown.org/works/13923720

Taakos and Hurleys maximum fun drive

By grimmseye

 Hurley asks Taako to race again. He, along with a few others, accept.

 Taako ends up racing his husband, sister, and brother in law.

 Completed, oneshot

  https://archiveofourown.org/works/12868647

Bury the Lead

By marywhale

 Taako is—in all honesty—an asshole. Lucretia is just trying to keep her newspaper. Taako doesn’t wanna get expelled, or fail, so he agrees to help. There’s the Davey Lamp, and Kravitz.

 Taako goes from “I only care about my sister and passing high school” to “I will risk getting expelled for you”

 Completed, 7 birds bonding, Taakitz, Blupjeans, Majulia

[youhearstatic]

Cor’s Adventure Zone Writing

Longer Fics - colabs

A Single Slat of Wood and Canvas - After months of training, Lup fails to bring in her first solo reaper contract. She won’t tell anyone exactly what happened, even Barry. (By @tanger-catnip & @youhearstatic)

Barry woke with a start. His hand reached for the other side of the bed before he even knew who or where he was.

“Lup?” he asked the empty room.

Her side of the bed was cold. Barry was up and fumbling for his glasses in an instant, his heart pounding.

Made Before the Voidfish (Broken by a Voidfish) - For months Lup, Magnus, and Merle have been haunted by the presence of the ‘red robe’. Often showing up after their adventures to offer cryptic and usually unhelpful warnings and advice. Shortly after the events at Refuge, Lup hatches a plan to finally pin this incomprehensible creature down and get the answers to the questions burning inside her. [TwinSwap AU 1.0]  (By @tanger-catnip & @youhearstatic)

Lup heard her own voice twist into a burst of static. She couldn’t remember what she had just said or hold it in her brain, but her mouth knew the words. She bent over, a lance of pain shooting through her head. It hurt so much, but she was so close to something she just had to keep going.

More static. It was like something was stealing the words away from her. She tried to claw them back, but they just would not stay in. It was like vomiting, but with words that she couldn’t hear.

Lust is a Thing with Fangs - Lup tries to sneak in one more day of laboratory work before her annual heat cycle kicks in. Barry is there. It goes about how you would expect. (Explicit content.) (By @tanger-catnip & @youhearstatic)

Lup paused at the door to the lab. She stood up straight, wrapping herself in dignity and ignoring her heart pounding in her chest like a jackhammer. It would be fine. It was only Barry. He would be way too focused on his work to notice her trembling, or the fact she was flushed from the tips of her ears to her toes.

Lup licked her lips. She suddenly had the strangest feeling. Like part of her had come to a revelation about something and another was frantically trying to muffle it before it could be brought to her attention.

A Night at The Naughty Kitten - Out of options after the Starblaster hastily relocated without them, Lup and Barry spend the night at a “boutique” “short stay” hotel.

There’s only one bed, but that’s the least of anyone’s problems. (By @tanger-catnip & @youhearstatic)

The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. It wasn’t the first time she’d ended up like this, but every time Lup wondered if it would be the one to break her. He wanted her so badly. Lup didn’t understand how she was supposed to handle seeing it so clearly on his face on top of her own longing.

Sandworms and Other Concerns - Barry discovers that Lup’s presence can improve any situation, including having his arm torn off by a fifty-foot-long, carnivorous, burrowing, acid-spitting, hook-toothed, pinstriped Sandworm. (By @tanger-catnip & @youhearstatic - Also on AO3.) {Hey guys, just to let you know: The sandworm is all in the title. This is Hurt/Comfort wrapped in Fluff. Angst levels are at absolute minimum!}

Lup blinked. Once, then twice. At first, she didn’t know what had woken her up. The ship was perfectly still, aside from the faint thrum of the bond engine that she’d learned how to tune out decades ago. The interior lighting that simulated a day-night cycle was dimmed as low as it went which meant it was still ‘nighttime.’

After a moment, Lup realised what it was. The steady pattern of breathing that lulled her into sleep was coming at its normal pace. Barry was awake.

Longer Fics - solo

Bluejeans, Boxers, and One Bed - A prompt that got out of hand, this is my contribution to the best mutual pining trope out there: There Was Only One Bed! 4500+ words of ridiculous pining with a side dish of underwear angst. Yup, it’s a thing.

She’s tempted to watch but doesn’t, turning to give him the same privacy he afforded her. She already knows he wears boxers. They’ve all seen each other’s laundry enough to know every article of clothing by heart. He has navy blue ones, two different types of plaids, and red ones with white hearts that she’s wanted to ask about for years now. Something about them screams Valentine’s Gift Set and she wants to know the story. Were they a serious gift? A gag gift? Did he get his heart broken? Was he…

Lup’s heart stutters wildly for a few beats. Was he in a relationship when they left?

Losing Time - (Post Story and Song) After being missing for three days, Barry has been mysteriously de-aged. Now he looks 20 years old and doesn’t remember anyone. Lup, Kravitz, and Taako are trying to figure things out. (17k words)

His hair is thicker, his face smoother. He’s still heavy but lighter than she’s used to. She’s known him for over a hundred years while neither of them aged.

And now he’s a stranger.

Part One  | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten | Part Eleven | Part Twelve | Part Thirteen | Part Fourteen | Part Fifteen

Losing Time “Exit Interview” (10 fanfic questions answered about Losing Time. Includes a lot of behind the scenes and extended explanations.)

It’s About Time - This is a love letter to Barry Bluejeans of sorts: the whole campaign of The Adventure Zone: Balance (and then some) told from Barry’s point of view. (All the Time in the Worlds Series, Pt two. Meaning it’s essentially the Barry POV companion fic to A Thousand Tiny Moments. WIP, updates Fridays.)

Two days later Barry is dead.

Again.

All those contradictions and questions are filled when he rises, spectral and nearly overwhelmed with more emotions than his lich form can handle.

Because when he’s dead he can remember it all.

Contradictions  (Prologue - tumblr link)

A Thousand Tiny Moments - Before being chosen for the Starblaster crew, Lup meets someone at a party. It doesn’t go well. (All the Time in the Worlds Series, Pt one, the Lup POV companion fic to It’s About Time. 14k words)

She drifts closer to him and slowly, so slowly, she bends her head to his. She pauses inches away, not yet touching but so close they share breath. Her hand slides along the lapel of his jacket and she feels his chest rise as he breathes in.

She looks at his mouth and thinks this is the last moment before I kiss him.It’s as inevitable as his chest falling beneath her hand as he exhales. So she kisses him. His lips are warm and soft against hers with the rich sting of alcohol painted on both their mouths.

The Lup POV minific that became A Thousand Tiny Moments

A Thousand Tiny Moments “Exit Interview” (10 fanfic questions answered about ATTM. Includes a lot of behind the scenes and extended explanations.)

Short Fics

Barry & Lup:

Morning in Bed (Lup and Barry just cuddling and being in love. Prompt Request.)

It’s Cold Outside But You’re Warm (Lup and Barry mutual pining. Prompt Request.)

Strings (Lup and Barry just performed their song. Lup has a few final doubts.)

What If She’s Just Gone? (Barry’s anxieties get away from him when Lup is missing. Prompt request.)

Will You Marry Me (Barry does what he has to. Prompt Request.)

Reactions (The twins deal with Barry being ill. Prompt Request.)

Curse and Canyon (Barry is hurt. Lup is trying to deal. Prompt Request.)

Take a Picture (Lup is frustrated. Prompt request.)

Your Laugh is so Adorable (Lup does some reluctant pining. Prompt request.)

Don’t Touch Me (Barry and Lup short experimental piece.)

Gathering (Taako plans a party. Prompt request.)

It was the Pottery (Taako teasing Barry. Prompt request.)

Super Short & Cutesy (Barry and Lup in the lab. Prompt request.)

What You Did Was Stupid (Barry and Lup on Tesseralia. Prompt request.)

This One is Really Dark (You’ve been warned. Prompt request.)

Let Me Help You (Prompt request for Barry & Lup.)

You Don’t Have to Act Like You’re Okay (Prompt request for Barry and Lup.)

Pride (Prompt based minific of Lup coming to Barry’s rescue at a Pride event.)

Hotel Balcony (A prompt based modern meet-cute for Barry and Lup.)

Hotel Balcony Pt 2 (Hey look, there’s more!)

Contradictions (Test minific/opener for the Barry POV fic that is in progress.)

Lup and Barry switch (Lup is the one that falls from the Starblaster, taking Taako with her.)

At the Wedding (Barry and Lup at Carey and Killian’s wedding. Quick scene inspired by a post.)

True Seeing (Barry in a voidfished body with a group of adventurers. Short group write piece.)

Other Short TAZ Pieces:

Getting Home (Super short Magnulia prompt)

Love is Dead (Taako has never had a soulmark. Kravitz gets one only after he dies. Taakitz Soulmate/Soulmark AU with Blupjeans background)

Second Chances ( When Lucretia gets the second void fish she realizes she can inoculate Davenport and talk to him.)

Just You and Me (JohnChurch prompt request.)

Karma is a Bitch/What Did You Say? (Taako & Barry’s friendship prompt request.)

Can You Keep a Secret? (Taako & Barry’s friendship prompt request.)

Meta, Etc

Headcanons:

[The Twins | Taako & Lup]

[The Lover | Barry]

[The Protector | Magnus]

[The Lonely Journal Keeper | Lucretia | The Director]

[The Peacemaker | Merle]

[The Wordless One | Davenport]

[Kravitz]

[Miscellaneous]

Meta:

Lucretia and the Red Robes (Pt 1) Lucretia and the Red Robes (Pt 2)

A list of every conversation Lucretia has with the boys about the Red Robes and a discussion of her thought process/intentions. Part 2 focuses specifically on how her words in Ep 59 may have influenced Magnus’s decisions going forward.

Murder or Suicide: What is it when lich!Barry sets up his living!Barry body to die?

Other:

TAZ Balance Characters as WoW Classes

[malevolentmango]

i heard you were taking prompts so i yeeted myself directly into your inbox may i get 34 taakitz “Please don’t do this.”

I can always count on you to deliver me angst, seren.

cw for character death y’all

Taako grows old.

That’s just how it works. Kravitz is well acquainted with the passage of time and the toll it takes on the souls that live in the Prime Material Plane. Eventually, all things become old, and withered, and decayed.

Eventually, all things die.

Even with so many years to get used to the idea, it still comes as a surprise when Taako lays down next to him one night and doesn’t wake up the next morning.

Kravitz doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the panic that clenches in his chest when no amount of frantic shaking wakes Taako up. He goes in peace, without pain, and a sliver of Kravitz is grateful for that, even if it’s drowned out by grief soon after.

He goes to the Astral Plane immediately, when he realizes what’s happened. He follows the pull on his heart that belongs solely to Taako, and finds his husband standing halfway up the path that leads to Julia’s house.

No one lives there anymore. All the souls who needed to come through here have long since passed on to the Soul Sea without a backward glance, ready for their chance at eternal peace. The windows are dark and the wood has begun to splinter and decay, weighed down with age and lack of upkeep.

Taako looks over his shoulder at Kravitz and then back at the house.

“They didn’t wait for me,” he says.

Kravitz has no response to this, no way to console him but to join him on the path and take his hand.

“I suppose that makes sense,” Taako adds. “Cha’boy lived too long.”

“Taako…”

“I should fix it up.”

Taako lets go of his hand and approaches the house before Kravitz can stop him. Not that he tries very hard. By the time he makes his feet move to join Taako inside, Taako is already pulling open cabinets and drawers and throwing things in the vague direction of the door - hammer, nails, hand saw, tape measure.

“Taako.”

“Where would I even get wood around here anyway?”

“Taako. Please don’t do this.”

Taako rounds on him, and his eyes are brimming with furious tears. “Don’t do what, Krav?”

“Don’t--don’t prolong the inevitable.”

There’s silence in the old house for a long time.

“They’re waiting for you,” Kravitz adds. “In the Soul Sea. You’ll find them again.”

Taako stares at him for a moment, and then he leans down and picks up the hammer, brandishing it at him threateningly, even though his hand curls around the unfamiliar handle as if he doesn’t really know what to do with it.

“So what!” he says, his voice filling the space with angry heat. “So what if they are? You won’t be there! What--what the fuck am I supposed to do without you, huh? Float off into nothingness and forget you ever existed? Fuck that, Krav. Fuck. That.”

“That’s how it works, Taako. We’ve talked about this--”

“I don’t care! The way I see it, I’ve got two choices: Either I stay here, and fix up this stupid old house, and spend whatever the hell eternity looks like with you; or I dive into your fucking pool and find our family, and lose you in the process.” Taako laughs bitterly. “What a fucking choice. What a fucking shitty choice.”

Kravitz looks at the the tools scattered around the squeaking wooden floors, sorely in need of repairs, and then back up at Taako.

And he smiles.

“What--”

“You should know better than that, Taako,” he says. “There’s always a third option. I could go with you.”

Taako look stunned. “I can’t--I can’t ask you to do that. Krav, I can’t ask you to die for me.”

“Why not? You’re always saying that I’m already dead anyway.”

“Oh, with the jokes now, you fucking--”

Kravitz crosses the floor in a few quick strides, stepping carefully over nails and saws, and pulls Taako into his arms. Taako leans into him immediately, and Kravitz can feel him shaking.

“It’s not really a choice, if I’m being honest. There’s, uh… there’s not much point to an eternity without you, Taako.”

“Sap,” Taako mutters, but he sounds less tense than before. “Are you su--”

“Absolutely.”

Taako looks up at him, and he doesn’t look happy, exactly. There’s a distinct melancholy to the way he takes Kravitz’s face in his hands and brings their lips together in a searing kiss, something desperate in the way he presses every inch of his body against Kravitz’s that he can manage, as if the idea of separation is too horrible to contemplate. Kravitz can relate.

Taako rests his forehead against Kravitz’s. For a moment, it seems like they could be frozen in time here, in this little house of forgotten souls, supported only by each other.

And then, Taako says, “I guess I’ll take option three then, Bones. After all, it’s always worked out for me before.”

[come2quarks]

Questions about 3 fandoms

Tagged by @midnight-in-town  and I’m so sorry this is so late, I’m always on mobile so I couldn’t add to it or do the formatting in a way I wanted (the draft was... html on my phone...), and I kept forgetting to when I was on PC. I do very much like being tagged in things like this, though

Rules: choose any three fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions, then tag 10 people.

Tagging goes first (feel free to ignore me if you’ve already done it or don’t feel like it lmao): @allieinarden @pigexn @aprimreaper @kuroshitsujiundertaker @contrarian-marion @thequeensfakedog @asthmaticastre @natt-theghost @twilightknight17 @disco-rangerr @ravencacaw and that’s 11,

Fandoms:

Kuroshitsuji

TAZ

Wodehouse

the first character you loved:

Undertaker is the character I started the series for! I’ve loved him since I first saw him, and he was one of the first kuro characters I ever came across. The second, in fact. I’ve got a thing for the villain-with-a-grin type, so he was right up my alley. I’ve also recently decided he probably best fits the ENTP typing for myers briggs, which means even if his appearance hadn’t sold me, his personality had to, because that also tends to be my type. There’s nothing about him that isn’t my thing

Taako because I mean................................... who doesn’t love Taako? I feel for him so much, and he’s so entertaining, and I love his whole vibe. He deserves his status as a fan-favourite

Bertie! I didn’t expect at all that he’d be such a favourite, but he’s a ball of sunshine, and he’s so earnest, and the way he talks to the reader like they’re a friend is so inviting?

the character you never expected to love so much:

WILLIAM. I barely knew who he was until I ended up playing him in a closed rp group. There were no OCs allowed and no doubles, so it went like this: Matto chose to be Grelle, and because Grelle was taken, Vlad chose Undertaker, and because Undertaker was chosen and at the time I was closest to Matto, the obvious choice for me was the recently-vacated William (before Will was freed, I’d been playing as Lord Randall lmao), but I very nearly picked Arthur Wordsmith instead. Can you even imagine? From that point, it was an inevitable slow descent into adoration, and he’s now set the standard for a whole new Type I look for in media

None? they’re almost all good characters, and I marathoned Balance, so I never really stopped to think about it. I have complex feelings towards Merle. He’s okay, but I don’t like bad fathers, but he’s worked on that, so, he’s... okay. He’s still not my favourite but I don’t dislike him for that anymore.

see above, Bertie. I don’t tend to go in for the dumb’n’sweet type, but... you can’t not love him. Asides from him, then both Psmith and Mike. Because I knew Psmith was Wild before I started, I was aware of him as a character already, but I didn’t realise just quite how supremely buck wild that boy would be. He’s incredible. Unfathomable. Incomparable. I adore him. But I almost didn’t get through the first half of the first book to even get to him, because I was not so very into Mike and I don’t care for cricket. If Psmith knocked me off my feet when I got to him, then Mike crept up on me slowly, slowly, then very suddenly with a cricket bat. The suddenly was when he not just dropped the ball, but threw that metaphorical ball out the window at breakneck speed during the dinner party with the socialists. When he couldn’t understand the question and so flat out refused to pass whatever it was to the guy with the lisp, I was sold on the spot.

the character you relate to the most:

Othello. Not going to lie, I was legit blown away when he first showed up, even just by his physical appearance. We’re both short (I think we’re close to the same height tbh), babyfaced, wonky eyes, dark hair that defies gravity. And then the lab coat? when I was in high school, up until my final years, I was so into science class, and even though I ultimately went into the humanities because I’m not mathematically gifted so chemistry wasn’t a great elective choice and sort of killed my science buzz, I’m still very personally into the ethically ambiguous scientist character type. Then comes the personality, and oh jeez it’s me, we’re both prone to collecting odd things if they relate to our interests, both not very tactful, (he’s admittedly more outgoing than me), both not physically inclined, both very into our respective interests, both tend to carry snacks, neither very inclined to keep official information secret provided it’s not Super Secret, the only things I can’t agree with him on are his choice of sweets and the specific nicknames the official English has him use for other characters. I can’t relate to, but can forgive, his choice of footwear. He feels like a self-insert almost. It’s incredible

Taako. Just, Taako. He’s nowhere near the same level of “oh, me?” as Othello (I think... it would have to literally be me to eclipse Othello), but there’s so many things about him that I relate to. The rough upbringing, the solitude, the really muddled sense of morals from that upbringing, he’s gay lmao, he has that artistic passion for food, he holds grudges, he’s so extra, I adore him

one part Jeeves and one part Gussie, with a sprinkle of Rocky Todd

the character you’d slap (currently):

oh god. so many. I can’t choose. But I have to pick Grelle, I know she’d kill me for it but I have to pick her, I’ll never like her at this point, her fans have ensured that even if I could get past what she does in canon (which would be possible, I’m not opposed to villains,) I will never fully enjoy her. And let’s be real, she’d deserve it with everything she’s done. I’m so glad Will does it for me,

Currently? Probably Lucas, but idk, I don’t hate him very strongly even though I don’t like him. He’s not really on my radar. the TAZ characters overall are all... good.

let me at Spode, just give me five minutes, please, he’s the Worst,

three favorite characters (in order of preference):

not including Will and UT and Othello (who would be in that order,), then it’s Lau, Doll, and I’m legally required By Law to say Abberline

Taako, Uncle Oni, and Michael (the angel of death from Dust), (followed closely by Beacon)

Psmith, Jeeves, Bertie. (fingerguns)

a character you liked at first but don’t anymore:

Well, I never really liked her in the first place, but Grelle, since she’s fallen so hard in favour and my first impression of a character tends to stick so none of the others have done anything that warrants it.

I mean... none of them really, but I guess Lucas

Madeline. I am... concerned by her taste in men, and the way she acts in a relationship, but I liked her Very much when she was first introduced as the super-sappy poetic ditz

three otps (amongst others):

UTWill, Sharperline (abberhanks), and finally Alexis/Francis because honestly? dream team right there

Taakitz, and I’m not going to hold my breath but I’m kinda feeling agent Stern/Bigfoot. Stern/anyone should be good tbfh. I don’t ship very quick or very much so I don’t have a third here gffhdhffh;;;;

Jooster, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I’d be fond of Psmith/Mike but something within me compels me to accept canon couples so I can’t even start with it - knowing even if I supposed they had a boyhood anything, there’s no future sandbox of ship possibilities there for me since they get paired off. But on the other hand Psmith/Eve just didn’t get enough time together for me to really fall for their pairing and call it a ship of mine, even though I have no complaints about it. Same thing goes in triplicate for Mike/Phyllis. I do support both pairs, but I feel like they could have had another book exploring them both.

[r00ib0s]

So @wildgoosery wrote some good nsfw taakitz again and I drew a thing for it that's relatively not porny, pls enjoy, very good shit, 18+ VVVVV http://wildgoosery.tumblr.com/post/162642100518/finally-gave-into-the-inevitable-and-wrote-another

[barry-j-blupjeans]

#9 with taakitz and Susan from that one live show where they were talking about their cats? Lol

9. "I fed your pets while you were away."

(101 ways to say I love you prompts - still accepting !!)

--

Taako was dripping wet. There was saltwater in his hair. He hadn't had access to a shower in days. He didn't know how Davenport could regularly live like this. They had all agreed they'd ride back to shore with Davenport, except for Lup, and Barry, and Kravitz, who had to go back to work. Taako didn't hate the trip. He got to fish in the middle of the night after not being able to sleep. But now, he wanted to go home, and he wanted to collapse into bed, and he wanted to have his back covered in cats.

Kravitz was still away with the Raven Queen when he got home. The trek back up to his apartment was long and tiring (he refused to take the Elevator anymore. It was a matter of pride, at this point). And then, as if to make matters worse, Susan was locking up the door to his apartment with the spare keys Kravitz had given her.

"Oh, Taako!" she said, in her sweet, suburban-white-mom voice, which didn't make sense because they lived in the fucking city. "I fed your pets while you were away, your boyfriend gave me the keys-"

"Yuh-huh," Taako said, brushing past her.

"And you're cats are so- oh my, dear, what is in your hair?"

"Blood," Taako said brightly. Susan cringed as he searched his pockets for his keys. "And fish piss, probably-"

"You know," Susan said, "I don't think it's very mannerly for you to be walking around with blood in your hair-"

"Oh, not just on my hair, homie," Taako said. "I gots like- mega squid blood all over me. Don't even question."

"Blood in your everything, then," Susan said, disgustedly. Taako put the key in the lock. "Just because you saved the world doesn't mean you can go around looking like you've just murdered someone."

Taako held out his hand and she deposited the spare keys in them.

"It's just a lil' blood, darling," Taako said. "Trust me, I'd be a lot happier if it was from a person. Might have one in mind, in fact!"

He gave her a pointed look and then shut the door before she could reply. A cat nudged against his leg and he scooped it up into his arms, hoping to get a little bit of rest before Susan inevitably reported him for murder threats again.

[epersonae]

Well, somehow I’ve ended up writing quite a bit of Taakitz lately? (Kraagnus, technically, but who’s counting?) As in, this is the third one in a week. Liner notes after the break....

I’m actually doing NaNoWriMo, and originally that was gonna be to write my Petals to the Metal/Fast and the Furious crossover, but instead it’s just Write Every Day, which has jumped all over the place.

And since I’ve been so deep into this Taako-Lucretia conflict, I’ve ended up thinking a lot about the roles of other characters in all that, which inevitably leads to Kravitz. He loves Taako, obviously, and also he’s very old (presumably, at least I try to write him so) and very much outside of the IPRE/BoB dynamic, which gives him such an interesting perspective! Plus in writing the noir coffeeshop fic, I got started writing some flirting with them, which is honestly just fun.

This one in particular evolved over a few days, starting with the opening conversation. For a little bit, I thought it was going to be part of a Candlenights fic I’m also working on, but it didn’t quite go there. But it wasn’t quite enough to stand on its own.

Then I remembered a piece I wrote back in July where Kravitz tries to talk to Lucretia after 11th Hour and realized that I’d never brought that back around in the post-canon. And it occurred to me that it could make for an interesting (and awkward!) conversation between Taako and Kravitz.

And then I got to dive into one of my favorite conjectures about TAZ characters: the similarities between Taako and Lucretia. I swear I could write a damn essay on that topic, but instead, lots of Taako talking around his feelings.

From there, it was agonizing trying to write an ending: all the dialogue that I tried out in my head just felt...wrong? And then it hit me that it absolutely had to end with just Krav thinking, not saying anything, letting it be still between them. He has so much time, really: he doesn't need to say all of it at once.

Then on the other hand, Taako is so interesting to write dialogue for! There's so many notes you can hit in a single sentence: confessional, evasive, self-deprecating, sarcastic. Justin’s "four idiots who played D&D so hard they made themselves cry" is honestly itself a very Taako line IMHO, with this emotional whiplash in almost every word. As a writer, there’s a tremendous challenge in writing dialogue that expresses a lot of different emotions without ever saying any of them directly, until there’s some crazy dead-on bombshell.

(Although, frankly, my favorite line of Taako’s in this is “Big meaty dreamboat, likes dogs. I'm aware of him.”)

[terezis]

5 TAAKITZ PLEASE

5. “Wait a minute. Are you jealous?”

“… and Barry’s theory about the diffusion of energy betweenplanar shifts was actually kind of brilliant. If he and Lup can figure out howto apply the equations to the liches’ magical signatures, it’ll make huntingthese circles so much easier in the long run –“

“Oh, word?”

“Absolutely! I mean, he did come up with the idea afterchattin’ up a bounty, which, I don’t really know how to make him understandthat he shouldn’t talk shop with his targets? But if this pans out, at leastsome good will come of it.”

“Sure, sure.”

“Anyways – oh, Lup mentioned a series of experiments thethree of you ran back in, I think she said it was cycle sixty-nine? I mean, thetechnical terms she used kind of, kind of flew over my head a bit, but itsounded similar to what we’re working with now.”

“Oh, yeah. That… that was some real interesting shit, absolutely.For sure. Hundo percent.”

“…”

“…”

“Taako?”

“Mm?”

“Is everything alright?”

“What? Yeah, you know me, I’m cool. Fuckin’ chill as an ice cube,baby. Why, what’s up.”

“Well, it’s just that, I said the sex number like thirtywhole seconds ago and you didn’t immediately jump in with terrible innuendo. Idon’t think that’s ever happened before. Are you… are you good?”

Taako glances up from the grading rubric he’s been doodlingon idly for the past fifteen minutes to frown at his Stone of Farspeech on thetable. It’s charmed to glow a serene blue when activated, and crackles brighterwhen the stone picks up noise on the other end of the call. Kravitz coughs –a nervous habit, rather than out of any actual need – and Taako watches thelight shimmer with the soundwave.

He’d been waiting for this call all day, is the thing. Allweek, if he’s being honest with himself – and Taako makes a point of neverbeing honest with himself, if he can help it. It’s not that he’s missed the sound of Kravitz’s voice. Taako’sa big boy. It’s not like he keeps his stone within arm’s reach at all timesjust in case Kravitz calls, or that he hangs off Lup’s every word when she getshome from a long day of reapin’ souls, on the off chance she mentions the guyin passing. He’s not pining.

Work’s been busy for Kravitz since the story and the song;he’s been training the newbies all day and then shepherding lost souls allnight. There’s a lot of them floating around the Prime Material Plane nowadays,and one too many necromancers who would like to take advantage of that. Keepshim busy.

It’s been three weeks, four days, and fifteen hours sinceTaako has last seen his boyfriend.

Not that he’s counting.

He’s been waiting to talk to Kravitz all day, and now that he’s finally got him on the line, all Kravitzwants to talk about is his new charges. Taako loves Lup, really, he does, andBarry is basically his brother at this point, and seriously, Taako is so glad they’re not locked up in GhostanamoBay for their lich-y crimes, but like – come on.

“If you’re not feeling well, you should rest,” Kravitz says.“I – I can go? Call you back, tomorrow maybe, if –“

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” Taako says, picking up the stone. “Listen,you still hunting that cult of Vector or whatever?”

“Vecna?”

“Velcro, yeah, him. You catch those nasty, nasty boys yet?”

Kravitz sighs. When he speaks again it’s a bit muffled, andTaako imagines him scrubbing a hand over his face. “Not all of them. There’sstill a few stragglers I haven’t been able to lure out.”

“Guess you ain’t gonna be free anytime soon then, huh,”Taako says. “No rest for the wicked.”

“None at all,” Kravitz agrees. “I’m thinking of bringing Lupand Barry in on the case, actually.” Taako, valiantly, resists the urge togroan as the topic inevitably swerves back to his family. Does it count ascockblocking if the people doing the third-wheeling aren’t even present? “They’vebeen doing a great job bringing in minor offenders. It’s about time I bump themup a level or three.”

“That so.”

“Property damage to active crime scenes has dropped fiftypercent since last month,” Kravitz says dryly. “We’re almost back to pre-Luplevels of arson.”

“Well, fire is her spec-i-al-ity,” Taako snorts. “Speaking of,I’ve got this new recipe I wanna workshop next time you’re around. S’basicallyice cream cake, but you douse it with vodka and light that sucker up. Browns the meringue. Fancy as hell.”

“I hope you’re not angling for my expert advice here,”Kravitz says, smiling. “I’m still not entirely sure what a whisk is.”

“Oh, no, absolutely not. Your role is strictly limited totaste-tester, thank you very much. Put that sweet tooth of yours to good use.”

“Singing your praises, you mean?”

“Got it in one.”

Kravitz laughs. “Maybe we can make it a double date sort ofthing, have dinner with your sister and Barry. They’ve been needling me abouthanging out outside the office for weeks. Apparently we need to bond.”

This time, Taako doesgroan, a low frustrated whine that he keeps up even as he slumps down and outof his seat. From the floor, he mumbles, “Do you, though? Do you really.”

Kravitz laughs again, a little confused. “What do you mean?”

Taako frowns at the ceiling as the past few weeks – and really,the long stretch of rainchecks and missed connections before that, they’ve bothbeen swamped for a while now – hit him hard. He recognizes the hollow pang inhis chest for what it is now, and scowls, annoyed. He throws an arm over his eyes.

“I mean, sure,fine, let’s do it,” he says. “Who cares if Lup ‘n Barold already see you more inone day than I do in the entire fuckin’ month. Not Taako. What’s it to me?”

“Are you –“

“I don’t need, like, one-on-one time with my mans, or, orphysical affection, or whatever.”Taako sits up. He knows he’s being ridiculous, but he can’t stop now. His mouthjust keeps moving of its own accord. “Who the fuck needs to cuddle, anyways!Not me! If I did I’d get a dog. Do I look like a man who wants to adopt one ofMaggie’s hellbeasts? I do not! They’d shed all over my good linen.”

“Taako—“

“Nope. Taako’s just fine. I’m fucking, fucking peachy. I’mso great.”

There’s a long pause, and Taako imagines the look of carefulconsideration that must be on Kravitz’s face right now. It makes him feel worsefor wear. It’s not Kravitz’s fault that Taako has the emotional intelligence ofa drunk toddler.  

“I thought you’d be happy that your family and I have beengetting on so well?”

“I am,” Taako says,a little despairingly.

“Then what –“ Kravitz pauses again, and then, to Taako’soutstanding horror, he says, “Wait.” He says, “Hold on.” He says, with thetiniest, most infuriating huff of disbelieving laughter, “Are you… jealous?”

“What? No. What?” Taako tugs on his braid. “Look—“

“You definitely did just consider adopting a dog because youmissed me, though.”

“Don’t sound so delighted! Wipe that dumb smirk off yourface, I can hear it all the way over here in the Material Plane.”

Kravitz tries and fails to muffle his laughter, which isrude, but when he speaks it’s at least sincere. “I’m sorry, I have been talking a lotabout work, haven’t I? It’s been a while. I wanted to catch you up on what youmissed.”

Taako opens his mouth, and then closes it again. “Well,yeah, you have,” he says, when his ears have stopped burning. “I’m, uh, I’mbeing a dick though. Like, you pretty much saved my whole entire family’s soulsand I’m sittin’ here complaining about it. That’s not cool.”

“Things have been busy,” Kravitz says. “End of the world andall that. Honestly, I expected it to be worse, all things considered. Lup andBarry have been a big help.”

“Yeah, they’re alright, I guess.”

“They are,” Kravitz smiles. “Things should quiet down soon.” There’s a shuffling noise on Kravitz’send, and then Taako hears the quiet thumpof a heavy book closing. “Actually, though, if you’re free right now…”

“Oh, yeah, totally. Just on the line with some guy, you know.Kind of a workaholic. Sounds cute, though.”

His stone flickers as it picks up a sound like thetearing of worlds, and Taako’s ears swivel when he hears it behind him, too. Heturns, and there’s Kravitz, impeccably dressed but looking tired and drawn.Still, he smiles at Taako and offers a hand, brow raised.

Taako takes it and heaves himself up and off the floor.“Thought you had paperwork to do, my fella.”

“I think I’ve earned a break,” Kravitz says.“It’s about time Lup learned to file her own, anyway.”

Taako steps closer, leans in and wraps his arms aroundKravitz’s middle. He smells like sandalwood and a little bit of smoke; musthave been out hunting earlier. Kravitz hugs back. His arms are cool, but it’swarm in Taako’s apartment. It feels nice.

“I missed you,” Kravitz says into Taako’s hair.

“Yeah,” Taako murmurs. “Me too.”

- 

(on ao3)