#To which I say - you��re clowns and you will have blood on your hands for as long as you refuse to engage for real change.

[wood-white-writer]

“Didn’t mean to make your heart Blue” || [9/…]

— OPLA!Buggy x F!Reader

“And I know no one will save me, I just need someone to kiss.

Give me one good honest kiss and I’ll be alright.”

— Mitski, “Nobody”

Pairing: Buggy the Clown (Live Action) x F!Reader

Parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Summary: You were an apprentice of Gol D. Roger’s crew in your youth, long before his eventual demise. Along with the Red-Haired Shanks and Buggy, you were a formidable trio; the embodiment of a new generation of pirates yet to come. But times changed, and so did you and your friends.  In which there is lost affections, mentions of the past, and re-bonding over a bath. Unshared thoughts and feelings of regret return from years of negligence, and whereas some aspects remain buried, others have a chance to resurface from the depths.

Warnings: fem!reader, LA!Verse, slight canon divergence, morally grey reader, mentions of violence and blood, dual-pov (though primarily Buggy's), Buggy being a simp, implications of Buggy being a horny simp

A/N: AND HERE WE ARE! FINALLY, AFTER SO MANY WEEKS, THE NEW CHAPTER IS UP! Seriously, I want to thank you all for your immense patience and support. As I mentioned in a previous post, work has been hectic as hell and I know I wrote that this chapter would hopefully be finished last week, but life took its toll. Hopefully, you'll enjoy this chapter, though I myself have mixed feelings about it.

INCLUDES SOME SELF-MADE SKETCHES AT THE BOTTOM, so you’re warned

The sun warms your face as you breathe in the fresh scent of the sea. You’re lounging on deck, hands folded behind your head and feet hanging over the railings in a rather peculiar position, but you’re perfectly content.

Luffy benched you for the rest of the voyage to Arlong Park, a decision you initially found insulting to no short degree. Well, maybe benched is not the right term to use, but more like “I don’t want you to die, and I think you need to relax this once”.

You had argued that no, you’re fine and the love bites Arlong left you are nothing compared to the marks Mihawk left on Zoro, and he’s still up and about as usual.

But Luffy is firm about his decision, and what the Captain says goes.

So, here you are, enjoying some quiet all while letting your wounds heal, and it seems that nothing can hope to put an end to this ambiance that is—

“HEY! THERE ‘YA ARE!”

…. You spoke too soon. Way too soon.

A shadow falls over your face like a curtain and blocks the view of the sun. A shadow belonging to - you make a lucky guess - a severed head that’s been talking for way longer than a severed head typically should, in your experience.

You open one lazy eye to pinpoint the exact perpetrator and see a bright red dot staring down at you from Usopp’s grip.

Buggy winks at you, making those mildly irritating clink-clink noises.

“I can’t stand it anymore,” Usopp grumbles. “You take him! He’s annoying and keeps telling me my nose is too long!”

“Because it is, you shidiot!”

“It’s average!”

“That’s what your mom said!”

“You keep my mom’s name out of your mouth, you psychotic, fucking—!”

“Be quiet.”

Both the clown and the slingshot simultaneously shut their mouths before things have a chance to escalate on a non-verbal scale, and you take this as a sign that your break is officially over and buried ten feet under.

Stretching your arms out loud enough to pop a few vertebrae, you shift to lean your back against the railing and give both boys an unimpressed look-over, like a disappointed mother having caught both of her children in the act of something. “It’s too early for you to be making a ruckus.”

“It’s 11 am,” Usopp points out.

“Still too early.” Deciding that you’d rather not deal with this with more effort than you’re willing to spend, you return to your previous position. “Leave the head, or don’t. Just let me rest.”

“Fine by me.”

With a thud and an “OW FUCK!”, Usopp unceremoniously drops the clown and forgoes his Buggy-sitting duties to do whatever he wants to do, leaving you to pick up the slack.

A string of curses flow from Buggy’s mouth, which you only vaguely pay attention to. There was something along the lines of “Long-nosed asshat,” and “Right on the nose”, but you abandon all interest in favor of feeling the sun on your cheek.

“So…” you hear him jump a little closer. “Alone at last.”

You don’t answer.

“What? Don’t give me that! I thought we were good!”

You remain selectively mute.

“Hey! Don’t ignore me! I don’t like it!”

“You survived it for twenty years. I’m sure you can stand it for a few more minutes.”

“…. Seriously?”

“Mhmm.”

You don’t know what possesses him, but he keeps quiet for most of the next thirty minutes, and you take the time to continue basking in the sun. 

It’s a luxury you can rarely afford, and you’ll be damned if it gets ruined now or all time, least of all by him. You’re not going to even open the can of worms that is last night’s events, so you lock it in a chest to be dug up for another day. 

Not now. It won't be that long until you reach Arlong Park, and shit will go down. This might be the only chance you get to replenish your strength and gods do you need it now more than ever.

"… Hey?” Buggy starts.

You let him decide whether to perceive your silence as an opening or a locked door.

“I’m bored.”

“Tough.”

“Can’t we do something else?”

“We could fish. Your head might serve as a good bait.” Despite yourself, your lip tugs a little in what is supposed to be a halfway smirk. The image of Buggy dangling above the shark-infested waters from a hook to his bandana would be an entertaining sight to behold.

He swallows audibly. “Was that a joke?”

“Keep bothering me and we’ll find out soon enough.”

“C’mon! Don’t be like that! Seriously, I’m bored! Ain’t much you can do when you’re just a head… except to give one, but that’s beside the point.”

Too much detailing, you think. He wants entertainment of any kind; you want peace and quiet. What to do and how to kill two birds with one stone? You open one eye and let it drift over to Buggy, who in turn is staring intently at you. 

In the sun, you make out every detail of his rugged face. His make-up’s almost wiped completely off the skin, with only remnants of the red lipstick and blue diamonds vaguely in place. His stubbles have grown slightly, given the lack of access to a barber, and if you get close enough, he probably stinks of—

A lightbulb goes off in your head. A devious one, blinking to every corner of your brain. 

Despite what anyone thinks, you’re not above being petty.

With a push, you sit up and glance over at him. “Anything?” 

Buggy raises his eyebrows and nods desperately. “Yeah! Anything! As long as I ain’t got to sit here doing naught-shit, I’m game!”

You turn to him, put each of your hands to the edges of his jaw, and lift him a little closer to you. Whether from the sun or just him alone, he’s warm and soft under your digits.

“Alright,” is all you say.

Buggy beams much like the bulb in your head, and a loud bark of laughter erupts from his mouth. You almost pity him, pity him for being oblivious to what’s to come.

But it needs to be done.

There’s no other way around it and he’s had it coming. He deserves this, you tell yourself. He deserves every inch of ruthlessness you can offer, and you’ll deliver.

————

Buggy blanches, lips wobbling in horror as he slowly glances up at you. Betrayal fills his bright-blue eyes and, for the first time since Orange Town, he sees you as the beast you both know you are. 

He’s afraid.

He’s afraid of you.

He knows you can be vindictive; he knows you can be brutal, but in all the time he’s known you, he’s never perceived you as cruel.

Maybe it’s time for him to reassess that thought.

“No,” he whispers softly. “No, please.”

Your face is blank, and cold, and he doesn’t know if it’s a trick of the light or not, but there’s a shadow across your face that darkens everything but your eyes. Those bright eyes he used to hold in such high regard.

“You want my forgiveness,” you state calmly as you gradually lower him to his demise. “You have to earn it.

“Please, anything but this. I’ll do anything other than this!”

But his pleas earn no mercy from you. He wiggles in your grasp like a fish out of water, and as much as he tries to beg and move and free himself, your hold is iron incarnate.

Buggy lets out an ear-curdling scream the moment he feels the water under his neck.

“NOOOOO!”

————

Honestly, how childish, you think as you begin to soak him in the basin you procured from the kitchens. He hisses like a cat as you pour the water over his head, rinsing his hair. Try as he might, he cannot escape your grasp. 

It’s not even deep enough to reach his chin, and still, he acts like it’s acid he’s been thrown into.

But you’re determined, this has to be done.

“Oh, quit whining” you chastise, getting drops of water your way with all his scuttling. “You need this.”

“You’re gonna drown me!” he accuses.

“It’s soap and water, and it’s not even that deep.”

“You say that now, sure! But the moment you let go, plop! Oh, there goes Buggy the Clown! Taken from this world too early!”

You roll your eyes. “I’m holding you up, you’re not going to drown. Now, stop acting like a child.”

Buggy is restless and continues to thrash around for a good ten seconds more before finally relenting, a look of sour disapproval on his face. It’s so caricatured and animated that it threatens to make a suppressed chuckle leave your throat.

He still looks the same when he’s mad.

Now that he’s finally calm, you lower him so that the edge of his neck finally stands on the bottom of the basin. Then, you soak a rag and raise it towards his face.

Buggy flinches. “Can you …. Eh… leave the face?”

“There’s hardly anything there anymore, and it’ll irritate your skin if you leave it on for too long.”

“I think I can tell you what irritates me or not, like this bird bath for instance, thank you very much.” He scowls and edges further away from the wet rag. “Seriously, just leave it.”

“I’ll reapply the make-up.”

“… What?”

When you first boarded the Merry, you happened to find some leftover make-up hidden away in one of the shelves. It was strange, considering how the boat was freshly built, and imagined that one of the builders had taken some personal liberty in the large space before the project was finished.

For whatever reason, you didn’t throw it out, though you didn’t use it yourself.

If it can get him to accept the fact that he needs a wash, you’re willing to do it.

“I’ll put on your make-up if I can wash off what you currently have,” you clarify. “Deal?”

Buggy goes quiet, and his eyes widen slightly, but not out of horror or dread. It’s more like … when you catch the sight of something unexpected; a delayed reaction that stirs feelings you have yet to decipher. 

Finally, after some internal debates with himself, Buggy nods. “Fuckin’ fine then,” he utters, and despite the crudeness of his words, they’re lenient.

Content, you gently place your free hand to his left to keep him stable and use the other one to carefully drag the rag across his stained cheek. 

Buggy watches you intently through the process, never taking his eyes off you unless you’re wiping off the painted diamonds on his eyes. Your hands, for once, are soft to the touch. They’re soft for him, as though a single misplaced touch might shatter him like glass.

He used to be acquainted with the soft touches long before the cold and brutal ones. Soft fingers that pinched his cheeks as you helped apply the paint over his face. 

Soft touches against his arm when he was feeling particular for some reason, whether it was good or bad.

Your fingers intertwined with his’ as you came to terms with your captain’s death, sitting by the edge of the docks as the rain poured from above. It was cold, he was freezing, and too close to the waters for his comfort, but he wanted nothing more than to sit in the rain with you and share the heat from your fingers.

Even after everything, you’re still capable of reserving those touches for him.

After wiping the makeup completely off him, you raise the cup and fill it with water. “Close your eyes.”

He doesn’t want to, but he does and feels the water rushing down like the rain on those docks.

When he’s finally finished, you fish him up from the basin and put him down atop a soft towel on the table. Like a cat, he instinctively shakes off the residue of water, only to find you already raising a new towel towards him.

He stops moving, and you takes this as your cue to continue. You’re attentive, he notices. You wipe his face first, then his ears, then his hair. You dry it and scratch his scalp at the same time through the fabric, and he instinctively leans against your touch.

This is … nice.

“When did you cut your hair?” You ask out of the blue as you continue to dry him, making sure to leave no spot too humid.

He almost failed to catch onto your words with how at ease he is. “Hmmm?”

“You used to have long hair before,” you elaborate. “Why did you cut it?”

“…. Too much of a hassle to maintain,” he answers after some thought. “It’s hard to find the time to take care of it.”

“… I see.”

The truth is, he cut it right after he left. Not particularly clean either. You know that feeling you get when you feel like you’re losing control, and ridding yourself of any additional weight seems to relieve it? 

Well, that’s what Buggy did.

He cut it with a pair of rusty scissors, severing chunks at a time — some bigger than others — until all he was left with was pieces sticking out to each side like a madman.

It didn’t help though. It didn’t make him feel any lighter from the weight on his chest. From that gnawing feeling.

Still, he maintained the habit and got better with practice. It became more of a practical thing with time; he was a busy man, and he could do well with fewer things to get in his eyes, but it never eased the pain.

But feeling the tips of your fingers lightly graze his hair, however, he feels more relieved than he’s done in the last twenty years.

After a few minutes, you remove the towel and give him a neutral one-over. It’s the first time you’ve seen him as an adult without any of that makeup, and you’re reminded of just how much he’s changed, but also how he’s not.

Even after all this time, it’s still Buggy.

Buggy sees you watching him, and he can’t help but feel slightly self-conscious now that your eyes are on him without his usual armor.

But you don’t comment on it, nor show any surprise in any sense of the word. There are times when he hates your face, not because of anything superficial, but because you make it so damn challenging for him to figure out what goes in that brain of yours. He’s reminded of how you were when you were younger, how lifeless you used to be, and it feels like you’ve regressed to that state.

Another thing to add to the shitlist of things he’s regretful about.

He licks his lips and opens his mouth to say something when the door suddenly bursts open. Buggy jumps whereas you merely look over your shoulder to spot Zoro standing there, his eyes narrowed between you and the clown.

Buggy frowns.

“Zoro,” you speak plainly, as if you failed to notice his annoyance towards the spectacle presented before him. “Is there anything?”

“The hell is this?” His eyes flicker between you and Buggy like it’s the worst show on earth. “What’s going on?”

“He reeked,” you explain. “I have merely been rectifying it for the sake of our noses.”

Buggy wants to argue with the statement that No, he fucking doesn’t, but he suppresses it for the sake of figuring out where this conversation’s headed.

“Since when do we make it a habit of bathing prisoners?” Zoro asks, his hand resting on the handle of his sword.

“Since when have we had prisoners?” You counter.

The swordsman scoffs. “The clown’s needed upstairs in ten.”

“Sure.”

“I’m right here, you know?”

Zoro gives him a nasty look and nothing more before heading back out the door, shutting it with a forceful thud.

“Why do you even stick around with these nobodies?!” Buggy questions. “They can’t navigate for shit, they have no sense of preservation, and they suck at fighting!”

You shift back to raise a knowing eyebrow at him. “They defeated you, didn’t they?”

“That’s—! … I was outnumbered, it wasn’t a fair fight!”

“No fights are fair in the life of piracy,” you point out. 

He bites the inside of his cheek. “All I’m saying is, you’re too powerful to be with these losers. You could join my crew! Think about it! We’d be unstoppable!”

“You mean, join the same people who locked me up and whose asses I subsequently kicked?” 

“Exactly! Don’t worry, they’ll get over it! Once they see how awesome you are, they’ll accept you with open ar—!”

“I decline.”

Buggy pauses, his enthusiasm promptly vanishing and getting replaced with bitter disappointment. “You’re not even going to consider it?”

“Why would I?” You wipe away a descending drop from his right eye. “I have no interest in joining another crew.”

“You say that, and yet here you are with these losers.”

“I was never going to stay permanently.” 

He pauses. “You weren’t?”

“I’m here for Luffy, and once I’ve decided that he can hold his own weight above the waters, I’ll leave.”

“… Where will you go? After, then?”

It takes you a moment to answer, like you don’t know the answer yourself quite yet. Your hand stills for a moment before resuming with the task at hand.

“Who knows?” You shrug. “The sea is my home. I’ve missed it, so I will remain where the waves pull me.”

That won’t do on its own. Stay with me. Buggy wants to ask, and if he had knees, he’d ask on them. Come with me. Be with me. You won’t have to be an official member of his crew; you don’t have to bend to him. You just have to stay. 

Stay with him.

That’s all he’ll ask.

Stay with him until he has the opportunity to figure out a way to make it up to you. 

Stay with him so he can compensate for the twenty years you suffered in each other’s absences.

Just stay.

“Hey.” He’s surprised by his own initiative. “Why’d you even leave your crew and stick your feet on land if you love the sea so much?”

You raise an eyebrow in question.

“I mean, you were Captain of the Cross-Haired Pirates, for crying out loud! You used to be legendary!” He proclaims, almost saddened by your apparent dismissal of your previous title. “You had fame, berries, a reputation that preceded everyone! Everyone feared you! Why’d you ditch all of that? Because of that rubbery prick? Because of Shanks?”

“Is that really what you want to ask me?”

“Yeah!”

You sigh through your nose and put the towel down to recline in your chair. “I didn’t become a Captain because that’s what I wanted. I became a Captain because it provided an outlet.”

“An outlet? For fucking what?”

It takes you a few seconds to finally reach a suitable response. 

“Anger,” you admit calmly, your arms crossing over your chest as the words stir on your tongue. They must taste bitter. “I was angry, and it festered every day, churning into a poisonous substance in my body. Being a captain with a crew, I could take it out on whoever I wanted. Pirate, marine, unruly crew member, it didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered.”

It makes sense now, he thinks, the reputation you’ve garnered over the years. Beware the Beast in the East, people would chant in passing towns and harbors, like you were a ghost story. Her eyes were like swords, and her hands were twice as sharp.

There wasn’t a single place where blood didn’t paint your steps.

He never met you while you were a captain; he didn’t want to, couldn’t find it in himself to pop by even once. Still, he kept your poster hidden in the dark depths of the chest in his quarters, if only for acrimonious reminiscence. He would spend some drunken nights doing nothing but staring at it, and it was like he could feel your rage seep through the ink on the page and scorch his fingers. A reminder of what he did.

Now, looking at you and comparing you to the poster, he fails to see the resemblance. He doubts he could’ve spotted it had you reunited earlier on. Captain Cross-Hairs was sharp around the edges, with pecks of blood on her cheeks and fresh scars on her face.

He licks his lips in deliberation. “You were pissed… because of what?”

Because of me?

“I don’t know.” He watches your chest expand with your breath, mesmerized simply by watching you commit to living. There used to be a time when you didn’t. “I didn’t care about money or power. I didn’t care for much of anything, except to purge that rage from my body. I fought, and I killed. It helped, for a time; I felt satisfied, but after a while, you grow bored of eating the same meal.”

When he looked at you when you were younger, he imagined he saw the scorching sun. Burning and bright and enlightening. 

You were … everything, but he never imagined that the same fire that used to mesmerize him would burn a thousand ships in his absence. 

But he was a boy back then. He’s older now, more experienced in the ways of life, he knows better.

He knows enough.

"But the boy," you say with a certain gentleness in your voice that does not evade his notice. "He's good."

"He's weak," Buggy scoffs, feeling his belly fill with sour smoke. He recognizes the feeling. It's the feeling he got when he watched Shanks talk to you that night by the fire. The same feeling he got when he watched you stay with Shanks that day. 

"He's defeated every opponent he's come across."

"Didn't beat Arlong, though." Buggy points out with a smidgen of childish pride and smirks. "Got his ass handed to him real good if I remember correctly."

You look back at him in that narrow way you usually reserve for him when he's crossed a line, and he can already tell he fucked up.

"I watched him grow, Buggy.” You say firmly. “I was there for all of it. I watched him learn, I watched him fight, I watched him leave land. He’s not like us — he doesn’t waste time on regret. He’ll become better than we ever were.”

Buggy glowers but doesn’t say anything else, insisting on letting your words simmer in his brain until he can find the will to let them go.

You procure something from the drawers and it’s only when he looks down that he realizes it’s the make-up. With gentle hands, you lift him and place him in your lap, the brush already blue and ready.

“I’m not here to talk about what used to be,” you say. “Now hold still.”

The diamonds across his eyes come first, the brushing makes his face tickle and it’s only by sheer willpower alone that he manages to refrain from staring at you. 

“Takes us back,” he whispers and closes his eyes so that you can finish. “Doesn’t it?”

He hears something akin to a chortle that doesn’t quite reach your throat, but he considers it a small win.

“You looked a mess,” you answer. “A child could’ve done a better job than I did.”

“Wasn’t bad for your first try, though.”

Except that it was. It was pretty bad. Your hands were shaking, and you held your breath like you were afraid of making a mistake. By the time you were finished, he looked like a canvas painted by a child, but he didn’t have the heart to tell you that.

He used to think that it was strange. You were skilled at nearly everything you committed yourself to, without even trying. 

When he thinks back on it, maybe it wasn’t skill; maybe it was just an ingrained fear of failure that drove you to become the best at what you did.

Then again, your worst could never be the worst in his eyes.

You finish his eyes, and when he looks up at you, he sees the same determination and focus in your eyes as he did that day. It’s the same look you have when you’re targeting something, be it an enemy or a point of interest. It’s always the same.

And he can’t look away.

You move onto the crossbones next, and he’s happy he won’t have to close his eyes for this one. He’s not certain you can pull off his iconic look, but he’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.

After all, you strive for perfection. He doubts this will be an exception.

Get it? Perfection and except— You know what? Nevermind.

He can feel your attention in every stroke of the brush, feel the white paint glisten on his skin before it dries. Your warmth lingers like burning embers, he feels like getting too close will burn him, yet he wants nothing more than blisters upon his skin.

He looks at you, looks into your focused eyes, and he feels … something tightening, back where his body is. It could be his stomach, his head… other places, but he can’t tell. Arlong’s been busy abusing his body long enough that he can’t differentiate between a kick or a punch anymore.

But this isn’t Arlong.

It’s you.

He can handle a tight body if it’s because of you.

When he was young, and his body began to work in the way of a man, he would sometimes wake up and feel sweaty and … stiff. He knew enough to know what it was, to know what caused it, but he didn’t know how to approach the situation.

He knew the source of his frustrations. He knew how to alleviate them, but he didn’t. He respected you far too much to ever dare cross the threshold. He figured that simply talking to you, simply holding your hand, and being at your side would be enough. He would be content with just that.

But he watched you … develop. It didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time, but he couldn’t help but marvel at the sight. He imagined feeling your flesh under his digits. The softness across your chest and hips. The warm skin. 

He looks at you now, sees the scars peeking from under your shirt, on your face, and he wants to feel the rough edges. 

Buggy gulps and he’s rather happy now that the rest of his body is not attached to him. He’s lost enough dignity as it is.

“And now, the mouth.”

Yes, he wants to touch that t—

You take the lipstick, and in a straight line, smear it across his mouth in a way that snaps him out of his thoughts. He can feel the warmth emitting from your thumb as you finish his face, and it takes him half a mind not to—

“Done.”

Disappointment lingers in the clown’s visage, and even when you present him a mirror and see the identical likeness to his wanted posters, it does not alleviate the feeling. For what it's worth, he's impressed with how far your make-up-applying skills have reached since last time. 

It's perfect.

But it means you’re done, and the nobodies require his flashy expertise to get Miss Ginger back. 

You dump the discolored water out and put the rest of the equipment away, and he feels his head weigh another ten pounds at so. He somewhat hopes it would; maybe it would be heavy enough that you wouldn’t bother carrying him up the deck?

… Oh, who is he kidding? It’s you. You won’t have any trouble in that department even if he were to weigh as much as a boulder. Ten boulders, even.

To his surprise, instead of reaching for him, you lounge back into your seat and nonchalantly cross your arms and ankles. He’s confused. Weren’t you going to go up with him already?

“If Zoro needs you, he can get you himself.”

That’s what you’ll leave it be like. He, freshly washed, dried, and painted. You, just casually sitting like you have no urgency to get back to the world.

“He’ll be pissed at you,” Buggy warns. “And probably threaten to throw you into the sea.”

You shrug, your eyes already closed, giving him no indication whatsoever that you’re particularly concerned with the veryscary swordsman. He grins with all his teeth on show.

Unfortunately, the green-haired asshole turns up not even five minutes later. All but ripping the clown by the roots of his hair and taking him away like a sack of flour. Buggy spews curses and threats, but they all fall on deaf ears.

It’s only when he’s positioned on deck that he’s finally free of his torment, if only for an hour or two. He begrudgingly instructs the long-nosed slingshot where to sail, adding a few creative insults along the way. Hey, it’s not Buggy’s fault they’re too easy to rile up.

“Is that long nose compensating for something?”

To which he earned a slap to the back of his head. From whom, he doesn’t know, but he’ll take his victories in whatever light weight they come in.

After a while, he shifts his head to eject another insult to the slingshot when he sees that you’re standing a few feet away, your arms crossed while leaning against the railing; eyes closed but face focused and attentive.

He cuts his verbal daggers down a notch.

It gets late, the sky darkens, and one after another, the crew members resign to their chambers save for the slingshot, who still insists on going for a while longer. Him, and you, surprisingly enough. 

You stay, for all of it; neither complaining nor muttering a sound. 

You're stoically positioned on the sidelines, hardly moving at all. He would've died if he'd been standing in the same position for more than one hour, but you endured a total of six without a shiver or a strain. Like a soldier in the rain. A monk in a temple of thorns. 

A beast in an empty forest, lonesome in its hunger, yet content with what content remains buried in its stomach for the time being.

Long-nosed slingshot finally calls it a night and withdraws from the steering wheel with his hands outreached for the head. Before his dirty fingers can hope to graze the magnificent head that is Buggy's, you stretch your arm out like a shield between them.

"I'll take him."

Slingshot snorts. "Really? You want to?"

"Do you want to?"

With his hands raised in mock surrender, Slingshot relents. "... Fine, be my guest."

With a nod, you take the head and retire back to your chamber on the ship. Buggy yawns in your arms, tired, but satisfied with the warmth embracing him. Your steps feel like waves with each one you take, nudging him further and further toward the edge of sleep. Only unadulterated stubbornness keeps him awake.

It darkens for a moment. When he rouses back, he feels softness underneath him. A pillow of sorts, not comforting enough to offer him sleep, but enough to keep him relaxed.

He nudges around, like a fish in a small bowl, only to find that he's not on the table, nor in a barrel, nor a bag. The surface beneath him is made of fabric, and swings with his movements. 

He's in a hammock.

More precisely, your hammock.

“Sleep.” He hears your command. 

He finally locates you, seated by the window of your cabin with your palm under your chin, staring out into the darkened ocean.

He turns, voice diluted with drowsiness. “You too…”

“Soon.”

“Now," he almost whines.

The look you give him is not any different from the kind you usually provide, but it lacks the usual undertone of annoyance. He can tell you're tired, even if you're refusing to show it. The shadows under your eyes stand out more prominently, even in the dimmed candlelight. 

With an inaudible sigh, you stand and while he expects you to move towards the hammock, he's disappointed to see you aiming towards the door instead.

"H-Hey, where are you going?"

"The kitchens," you respond. "You can sleep here for the night; I'll take the couch."

"That's not necessary!" He wiggles so that he can look at you from over the edge of the hammock, careful as not to fall from the height. A thought dawns over him, one that makes his cheeks feel warm. "We- We can share! I don't take a lot of space!"

"You still take up too much of it."

"Are you calling me fat?!"

He's almost insulted when you don't answer to contradict his assumption, yet despite the innate urge to defend his honor and spew shit at you, he decides to let it slide.

"C'mon! I promise I'll behave," he tries again. "You'll hardly notice me. Those couches suck balls anyway, so why not?"

He watches you give it some thought for probably a good two minutes. He expects you'll decline his proposition, finding that your own pride weighs more than the need for decent sleep. 

Then, you lower your shoulders in defeat and make your way over to the hammock. "Scoot over."

He obliges rather excitedly, and when he wiggles back a bit too much to make space, he can feel gravity threaten to drop him on the other side of the hammock. Before it gets to that point, you grab him by the side of his face and hold him until you can lift yourself and lay down. 

Only then do you lay him down, on the right side of your abdomen. He's mindful of the wounds that have yet to heal there, so he tries not to invade too much. Still, he can't deny, he's quite comfortable. Very comfortable. 

He's the most comfortable he's been in a long time - twenty years.

He surpasses the urge to push closer to you, share your warmth, and elects to look up at the ceiling instead.

"Hope you don't snore," he jokes, only to have a yawn follow promptly behind.

"I don't snore," you answer, deadpan. "Now go to sleep."

He's not convinced, but he doesn't comment on it. This peace hangs by a thread, and he'll be damned if it's cut short now of all times. He shuts his eyes, and in his dreams, he's presented with the sun on the blue skies above.

He feels warm all over.

----

Taglist: @kurinhimenezu, @carpinchootaku, @ay0nha, @teh-vampire-bunny, @lokiscure, @internationalsuper-spy, @detectivesparrow , @yuriwk , @notyuralycat, @angeli-fucking-cat, @machinema7k , @shuujin, @avatar-lover, @gingernut1314, @autumn-slaves. @marvelouskatie, @floristoflillys, @dizzyenby, @redpool, @deliri-yum22, @aemondsb1tch, @ackroxia, @gayandfairycore, @knightsfavoriteprincess, @asterizee, @aamethyst23, @lizzie1107, @cyberwears, @heylookliisten, @f41k47, @beep-beep1, @crimsonflameproxy, @unpopular-sober-thoughts, @rayleeya, @timeladyrikaofgallifrey, @fanshavegottensotoxic, @fluffybunnyu, @sirenmelody23

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(Additionally, some sketches of how I imagine Cross-Hairs to look like while I’m writing.)

[dishtothedeath]

buddy, you're killing it out there | bonbon bourbon | ch1 trial | re: start

An interrogation is a guilt-presumptive process, a bombardment; we have this, that, and those, and we know it was all you, don’t take water offered, don’t make conclusive statements, don’t dig your own grave. Believability is in the nitty gritty, the fine details, and once the specifics begin to hitch, that’s when the world closes in. Give only as much information as is needed, knock at least ten sentences out of this script. Concise, concise, concise.

As the first on the scene, he knows they’ll demand it of him: where were you, when was it, what did you see? And then, you did it, you did it, you did it.

Stage lights are on. Bonbon’s nestled between Alfie and Castella like a good chickadee in a nest of canaries, just as put together in the nighttime as he is in the day. From far away, nobody can tell that his makeup’s started to cake. The cameras, they can touch him up, can break him down, but right now? They stare down at him, press down on him, crick in his shoulder, pound for pound of watching weight. Bonbon, sweet Bonbon Bourbon, this kind of situation was never meant for you. But there’s an audience, and they’re expecting another day’s performance. Somehow, scrounge it up, pin yourself down, fasten, hold it together. Lose everything you have, but never your composure. Posturing is half the game.

A gloved hand comes to raise in the air. No energetic straight arm, no rolling wrist, no dazzling fingers. Straight and serious and unbecoming of everyone’s lovable fool.

“Well, um. Hi there, everybody. I know this ain’t the, ideal circumstances fer us all t’gather in. But I figured youse’d all have questions fer the first guy on the scene, I mean, I know I would. Still a good deal, topsy-turvy, over the whole thing, but I’ma try an’ tell y’all what went down to the best that I know. An’, I apologize, real big, if I go ahead an’ croak somethin’ laugh-wise. It’s a nerves thing, I don’t mean it. Hard’ta find any o’ this funny in the slightest.”

Sharp clear of the throat. Relentless fidgeting of the cup of coffee in front of him, left hand drumming on the rim, right hand turning it a quarter turn forward, then a quarter turn back. Left hand goes up to fix some loose strands of hair in the way. Left hand adjusts the ruffle of his collar. Left hand goes back to tapping.

“Like th’thing said, was ‘bout half past midnight when I came down to th’studio kitchen. Wanted t’sneak something to drink ‘fore I hit the sack, yeah? Then I come up by the door, an’, you were there, you could see it, blood everywhere. Smell’a it gets ‘round fast, an’ it ain’t pretty. Took a look in— didn’t even really see the bananas ‘till I rounded th corner an’ saw. Ides, down there.”

Two toned eyes flick down to the coffee cup for a split second to check himself in the reflection. He looks presentable. Not good, but presentable, which is a poor eye’s good. People are more keen to believe somebody eloquent and well groomed, it conveys refinement, and refinement means that what he says is of importance. Don’t lose the details in the narrative, Bonbon.

“Had no idea ‘bout Sunny ‘till everybody found ‘im later, ‘cuz I pretty much bolted back the moment I saw the, the good judge, on the floor, that is. Clowns don’t exactly got a lotta crime scene experience, y’see, jus’ felt like I had to, to— the smell— had to get away from th’smell. All I done saw at first was the blood, but, once we got back to it, seems like they had’a buncha stabs in the front. One’a them was a ‘lil funkier than the others, a ‘lil deeper. Said they died’uva, whazzit, heart failure? I ain’t a doctor, don’t know if that’s the term fer ‘stabbed a lot’ they use in order t’be nice in the hospital, but that ain’t the kinda wound ya come back from.”

Back up, putting his head at a good angle for visibility. Keeping his breathing steady.

“That’s ‘bout it. Didn’t see anybody comin’ or goin’ from there on the way. Don’t know who was out an’ rompin’ at that hour. Jus’ saw what I saw.”

[splickedylit]

hey, i was just wondering what's up with those giant claw fingers you draw trolls with? and gamzee's with fins and gills even when he's a landweller? thanks!

bare face gamzee because I'm too lazy for clown paint tonight, avert your eyes lol The level of xeno I bother to put into troll drawings varies depending on my mood but here are some of the most common things I put in my art

The big claws just feel really fun--normal claws are plenty dangerous, but it seems very trollish if it's physically HARD to be gentle or nonthreatening with your hands--it's a physical effort to be careful, when your entire fingertip is a chitinous claw with limited flexibility. They're horn-colored because I like how that looks, lol.

peets.................

i just think they're neat........

Hair that trails down the back of the neck and down the shoulders/arms, especially as blood color gets warmer.

Trolls with worse nutrition or caretaking habits having paler/flakier horns and claws.

I like to give trolls pupils reflective of their lusii! Goat-eye Gamzee, slit-pupil Nepeta, cuttlefish pupils for Feferi, etc.

RE: Gamzee specifically, I started drawing him a long time ago with half-seadweller traits because of his lusus/sign, capricorn. So he gets long ears with half-fins and dud gills. Sometimes if I'm feeling spicy I try to draw him with digitigrade legs but I'm bad at those so I often don't bother

I have lots of thoughts about fun options for gender on alternia but suffice it to say I intentionally try to mix up which trolls have curves or don't, relative to pronouns. don't try to tell me these pansexual aliens have strict sexually dimorphic anatomy that determines their societally-acceptable gender, Hussie!!! don't come into my house and try that shit!!

[hrokkall]

No one asked but here’s how Solipsis could connect with the main Mullinsverse games anyway:

Right off the bat there’s a clear connection: as an Easter egg, everyone’s favorite tumblr-banned Dark Clown Sado can be seen in Solipsis if the player also has a save file for The Hex (hence why it’s really difficult to find evidence of this; no one played The Hex either). She makes a brief appearance when the player falls down the stairs, scuttling away from the remains of the broken stairwell just out of sight. Now, this means one of three things:

Sado was on the fucking moon (I sure hope not, but she can go into the real world so… it’s not entirely out of the question).

Solipsis is a game in-universe as well, and therefore Sado was able to visit it mid-campaign.

Solipsis was a real-life occurrence in the Mullinsverse but—as it was recorded via classified camera footage—Sado was able to inhabit said footage and view the events in third-person limited just as we do.

None of these are very helpful, but we’ll go with option 2 just because it makes my segue into this next part easier (though option 3 works as well with a little hand-waving: games can take from real-life events, after all). Especially if we throw a little more bullshit into the mix and say the game was produced with the Gameworks engine and/or published via Gamefuna.

As we know assets are frequently re-used across Gameworks games (see: Rebecha, the Amalgam/Steambot cards, the concept of Mox/Orbs of Power, all the Pony Island cameos in Secrets of Legendaria as a whole), we’re going to say that the Moon from Solipsis is one of those assets, bringing us to the next part:

The Moon as an entity is both in Inscryption and Solipsis, in the former of which it appears as Leshy’s ultimate card and the latter as the main antagonist. In Solipsis, however, it’s definitely sentient: not only does it have a visible face, but it’s also a Genius Loci of sorts: it appears to have complete control over its own terrain and—by extent—control over whatever (or whoever) is unfortunate enough to end up within its vicinity. This is a trait that carries over to Inscryption; although its face isn’t visible there, it does have full control over its orbit (sucking in squirrels/rabbits via the Tidal Lock sigil; pretty similar to what the Moon did to the ship in Solipsis) and some degree of sentience.

“Okay, I was following up until that last part. How the hell does the Moon have any degree of awareness in Inscryption.” So glad that this very hypothetical question was asked! The long and short of it is that, in order for something to be Inscrybed, it seems to need some degree of awareness (with a few exceptions that will be touched upon soon). It’s pretty obvious with Leshy and Magnificus’s decks: Leshy uses beasts which, by merit of being animals, are conscious. Magnificus inscrybes his pupils which (as seen in his tower) were very clearly once people. Grimora and P03’s decks are a little shakier, but the same principle follows: Grimora’s ghouls (see: the crypt-dwellers + Royal orchestrating his own boss fight) are definitively conscious even if their brains have long since rotted away, and P03’s robots seem to all have some level of awareness if the worker bots are to be used as a baseline (he’s just copying their CPUs, after all, not their whole bodies. They’ve got to be able to execute basic commands + have a schematic of what their bodies look like otherwise they wouldn’t be able to be inscrybed through that means).

The exception is, of course, terrain cards. Zero attack, varying health, free to play: the ones you can’t sacrifice (they even have a neat little dagger in the bottom left corner to indicate this). In act 1, this is your trees/boulders/tree stumps, none of which you can draw blood from. In act 2, this persists, but also applies to mox cards + the masters’ hybrid mox (they’re just chunks of crystal, after all). The moon, of course, is also a rock, but… it’s not a terrain card. Not only does it have attack, but, as can be seen here, it lacks the “terrain card” background (which is a subtly darker shade of tan). Whether it can be sacrificed or not isn’t a question I can answer (it’s not obtainable in normal gameplay and while I could edit my save file and find out, it’s pretty damn late at the time of writing and I’m not about to do that for a Solipsis post), but assuming it can (as there isn’t an indicator that it can’t)… then it’s Definitely not a terrain card and, as established earlier, therefore has some level of sentience.

TL;DR this post got long and I don’t expect Anyone to read any of it, much less all of it:

Sado isn’t actually on the moon; Solipsis was a game made using the gameworks engine and therefore Sado is able to make a guest appearance for the Easter egg. (Or, alternatively, Solipsis was a real life occurrence in the Mullinsverse but was recorded via camera footage, which—as shown in Inscryption—Sado can inhabit).

The Moon in Solipsis is the same moon in Inscryption, hence why it’s not a terrain card and they both play “final-boss” type antagonistic roles.

The Moon possesses consciousness in both Solipsis and Inscryption and therefore is a regular card as opposed to a terrain card.

[broadstflyers]

A/N: Hello everyone! This is my first ever fic! It's really just an idea I've had for months, and then wrote, and then couldn't figure out which hockey boy it fit, until some mutuals were kind enough to help. I settled on our boy Barzy! It's inspired by Taylor Swift's "Gold Rush", and I really wanted to do my best in reflecting the beautiful imagery this story creates for me. I hope I did it justice. It's a little terrifying putting my writing out there, but I hope people enjoy it!

Word count: 3.4k

Warnings: Two curse words, it's really just internal conflict within the reader

Summary: You're celebrating your dad's 50th birthday with some friends and family at a dinner party. You happen to land your eyes on a beautiful stranger, who you can't seem to get out of your head. You spend the rest of the night wondering, should you go up to him?

Or do you let him walk out the door?

___________

They say when you first lay eyes on your soulmate, time stands completely still. As you gaze into their eyes, it feels as though you’ve known them for multiple lifetimes. It feels like home. Is that even remotely true?

You start to take a sip of your drink and turn your head slightly to take in your surroundings. Your eyes dance around the room, until they stumble upon another pair of wondering eyes. Your eyes lock, and you’re instantly sucked into the mysterious yet intriguing twinkling grey-blue color that compliments his navy blue suit. Suddenly, your breath hitches in your throat, every part of your body stiffens, except for your lips that part slightly and eyes that widen. The drink is long forgotten, you’re even struggling to keep it from practically falling out of your hands and onto the wooden floor. The party is now just a blur, the noise? What noise? The world is muffled, as if someone stuck your head into a hundred pillows. Images stream through your mind like an endless movie reel wrapped in shimmery gold. Endless laughter on a first date over coffee. Him rubbing the back of your hand as you take a stroll through the park. Holiday mornings, exchanging gifts. Would he participate in the tradition of opening small gifts first, or would he want the biggest gift right off the bat? Ice skating and him catching you as you stumble on a pesky track in the ice. Him tossing you into the pool while you’re trying to put up a fight in a losing battle. A sweet and quiet proposal where he promises his forever love. A kiss at the altar in front of all your friends and family. Chasing after rambunctious little kids trying to get them to nap. All these gold dripping images of a pure love plow through your brain. Your heart is the unmovable object. They are the unstoppable force.

You and him only shared a look for what was probably half a second, but the thick air that seemed to only be affecting you made time feel like it stood completely still.

You burst back into reality with the help of a slight head shake. “Woah,” you quietly whisper. You blink a few times and finally get around to taking a sip of your drink to quench your parched throat. Did you just see a whole future...with a stranger?

“Hey, are you okay?” Stella asks. Her hand gently touches your arm as she cocks her head to the side. Her brows are furrowed in what can only be described as pure confusion. Did you really space out that badly as she was talking? What were you guys even talking about?

“Oh,” you say as you gently shake your head, “yeah.” You chuckle, “yeah, I’m just fine.” You wait a beat then say, “Hey, I’m going to use the bathroom really quickly, okay?”

“Sure thing,” she nods. “Do you need me to come with?”

“I’m totally fine, I promise,” you reassure with every bone in your body while giving her your drink. You really just needed to be alone to calm your racing mind that has now turned a complete stranger into a romantic interest with the power of a golden montage.

You make your way over to the exit of the dining hall and push the creaky open with your shoulder, and the amount of force you had to use honestly hurt. Your heels click down the tiled hallway of the golf club to find the bathroom door. The rectangular bathroom mirror framed in an intricate gold design holds your reflection. You slightly tilt your head as you take a look at your face. It’s like someone took the color of a clown nose and colored in your face with it. Jeez. You shake your head and sigh. This isn’t good, and deep down, you know that. You hate when you’re like this, all flustered over someone who just happened to lock eyes with you. His eyes. They were gleaming and just all around beautiful. What were you thinking again?

Oh, right.

Well, it’s pretty obvious he has this power over you, and you don’t like that. Now is your face going to become red everytime you see him? You check your phone. There’s still two hours left, plenty of time to possibly see him again. You can’t tell if that’s necessarily a good or bad thing.

You pace around the bathroom trying to reason with your begging heart. He was pretty good looking, which means that so many people naturally want him. Who was he even talking to, anyways? You gasp and stop in your tracks, blood running cold. “He was talking to a girl,” you mumble. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t sound completely and utterly crushed. In the heat of the moment, you completely failed to realize the blonde standing next to him. You lean over the counter, the cold marble feeling on your arms making your arms break out in goosebumps. You take one last stern look in the mirror at your face. “See, this is why we can’t allow ourselves to fall that hard,” you whisper angrily, “everyone wants him, and I just...I don’t like a gold rush like that.” You shake your head again and take one last deep breath to shake out any other thoughts. You can see yourself standing barefooted at the bottom of a hole looking astounded at how tall the walls have grown, and how distant the light looks. It feels like you soared lightheartedly into the sky, just to fall and crush every bone in your body.

You roll your eyes to yourself while slightly cursing yourself out. Pushing the bathroom door open, you step out into the hallway and make a beeline back for the dining hall. Your purse starts spastically vibrating, so you hastily fish your phone out to put an end to the obnoxious noise. Scanning the text, you read that your mom is asking where you went, as the cake for your dad’s birthday is going to be cut soon. You sigh as you text, “I’m hurrying back now.”

That’s all you see before you feel a slight brush tickle your bare shoulder. Your eyes don’t dare move from your phone screen. You reason that it’s not someone you know, as they would have said something to you. Your hands shake as you put your phone back in your purse.

“Oh, sorry,” the voice trails off as he continues to walk down the hallway after he brushed up against you.

“It’s okay,” you whisper, without turning around, which is admittedly ridiculous.

As soon as you can judge his footsteps are far away enough, you make a quick glance behind to see if it really was him. And judging by the navy blue suit, it was.

Suddenly, the golden montage flows through your mind once more, showing an image of yourself wearing an old shirt of his, maybe one from when he was in high school for whatever sport he played, if he played one. Your feet feel the coolness of the wooden floor of the supposed home. The home both of you share? It’s so tangible, so real that you almost reach out to touch it. It’s right there...

Your head jerks yourself out of the vision once more, or rather the fact that you’re now faced with a white wall in front of you. You sigh a long frustrated sigh. I can’t believe I really walked by the entrance, how embarrassing, you think as you turn on your heels to backtrack. Why does this stranger have you so wrapped around his finger? No one else has been able to even come close to doing that. You feel your face with your hand, and it’s burning. I’ll go in there looking like a tomato, it’s fine.

You do your best to quite literally shake off those thoughts as you push open the dining room hall door. “There you are!” your mom says. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Come on, we’re going to sing happy birthday to Dad.”

“Can’t wait,” you beam. After all, your dad only turns 50 once, and this night is about him, afterall. You follow your mom to a table with a white tablecloth resting on it.

Stella pops out from behind your dad to approach you and whispers, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

You resist the urge to gently shove her in front of everyone. “Yes,” you pleadingly insist, “now stop asking me in front of Mom and Dad, they’ll think something is wrong.”

She side eyes you with an attitude. “Fine.”

“They’re my girls,” your dad says with a smile.

You and Stella laugh while leaning into him for a quick hug. “Hey dad,” you both say in unison.

The room completely dies down, people could hear a pin drop. “Ready?” your mom asks the guests. The room takes a collective deep breath.

And so the melody of Happy Birthday rings joyously through the hall, you can see the mystery stranger out of the corner of your eye. Heat radiates off your skin, it’s almost like you can feel his eyes boring into you. It takes all the willpower you can muster, but you resist the temptation to look over at him all throughout the song.

When the song is over, the room breaks out into obnoxiously loud clapping. You, Stella, and your parents share loving looks and warm smiles.

Eventually, everyone proceeds to return to normal chatter at the one rectangular table of two that they’re sitting at, and so do you, Stella and your parents.

You pull out your seat next to your sister near the middle of the middle of the table and sit, fixing your dress.

“Ahem,” Stella says in an ill attempt to cover her suspiciousness with a clearing throat noise. Queue whatever accusatory question she’s got.

“Let me just set something straight,” she starts.

“Go for it,” you say as you reach for some water.

“It’s definitely that guy a few seats down, isn’t it?” She smirks. She’s got you trapped in her little web, and she knows it.

You may or may not have fought back choking on your water or pulling a ridiculous spit take on the nice white table cloth.

You lean in and harshly whisper, “Well you didn’t have to say it that loudly.” You glance over at the mystery stranger and see his hand wrapped around his glass as he goes to drink it. He has a thick silver ring on his pointer finger?

“Hello?” Stella shifts her head to selfishly cut off your view of him.

“Okay,” you sigh in defeat, “yes it’s him. Happy?”

“Very,” she says, very satisfied because she finally pried it out of you and got you to admit it. Someone else has you wrapped around their finger. She didn’t even have to know all the details of the montages to know. She could tell by the way your eyes glossed over and how your lips would slightly part like you were in a hazy daydream.

And you were.

“Who is he anyway? And why don’t we know him?” You ask.

“I don’t know, honestly. A little strange, isn’t it? Why don’t you ask mom who he is?” She suggests, but her cheshire smile suggests that she will somehow find out, with or without your mom’s help.

“But mom’s going to absolutely harass me until I say something to him. Just you on my tail is enough,” you say with an eyebrow raised as to say ‘don’t test me.’ And Stella knows you’re right.

“Alright, fine,” she concedes, “But why don’t you, I don’t know, talk to him?”

“I did,” you nonchalantly float.

Her eyes widen and her mouth forms an “O” from disbelief. Did you really not talk to people that much?

“Really?” she practically squeals.

“Yeah, he brushed by me and said, ‘Sorry’ so I said, ‘It’s okay.’” Okay, now you get why your friends and family get mad at you for refusing to talk to people. But cracking this joke was one you could not pass up.

Her face scrunches up and she exhibits the biggest eye roll you have ever seen. She opens her mouth to start saying something, probably to scold at you, but you open your mouth to cut her off first.

“Alright no, I haven’t. And do you know why?” As you’re about to get your thought out, you’re interrupted by a fit of laughter down the stretch of the table. Your eyes scan but freeze on the stranger, whose nose is adorably scrunched up as he laughs with multiple, yes multiple, people about goodness knows what. And there’s that other blonde that you still don’t know, laughing with him. You tear your stare away and focus back on your sister.

“Look, that right there. That’s why,” you say, anger burning through your chest.

Stella raises an eyebrow in her own judgemental manner. “He talks to people? You know people do that right?”

Now it’s your turn to return the favor of a judgemental eye roll. “No, Stella, I mean just look at him and the people he’s surrounded by. It’s so obvious that everyone wants him. Just look at that girl with him. I’m not the only one who wants to love him.”

Silence ensues between you two. She picks up her phone and shoots a quick text. After a moment she says, “Well, I think if you just talked to him, you’d be pleasantly surprised with what could happen. I have to help mom with distributing gift bags. You stay here,” she instructs.

You can only assume you’re not being called to help because Stella graciously told your mom that you’re potentially working up the courage to talk to someone that’s not one of your three friends or your family. How generous of her.

A few friends of your dad stop by your seat to say goodbye before they head out. The noise slightly dies down enough to scarcely hear some other conversations. You hear nothing out of the ordinary, just a girl talking about getting into her dream school to some guy. Your ears slightly move as you pick up on a voice that sounds like the one in the hallway earlier.

“Yeah dude, but did you see the fake out on the goalie on the second goal? That had to have been the best part.”

Out of instinct you open your mouth to interject, but quickly shut it and put it under lock and key. You blink in disbelief. Hockey? Did this man just speak on hockey?

You circle the rim of the coffee cup and stare at the brown liquid. In a different universe…

In a different universe you would have actually kept your mouth open, and maybe even squeezed some words out, too.

“Actually, that seamless stretch pass down the neutral zone from the defenseman after a pretty difficult forecheck set up the play pretty well. I’d give him a lot of credit, too.”

He’d probably look a little shocked, as do most guys when you interject your two-sense about hockey. But maybe he’d break out into a small smile and offer a rebuttal. Yeah, that sounds nice. Maybe one day…

Maybe one day you’ll be sitting next to him on the couch, watching a game while cuddling and brushing the hair out of his face. Oh who are you kidding, you’ll be up and screaming at the TV. It’s your staple.

A noise of someone dropping something behind you slightly startles you and pulls you out of your once again golden daydream. You finally stop mindlessly circling the rim of your coffee cup to take a sip, but only to find it’s now ice cold.

This is why you hate looking through a pair of rose colored glasses. It distracts you from enjoying things. You glance over at your dad who’s still talking to one of his good friends that lingered after festivities. You’re supposed to be celebrating him right now, but instead you’re literally stuck in this cursedly pure golden daydream that is almost too good to break.

You can see him. He’s still there, at the end of the table, chatting away with some dude. The blonde left at some point, though.

“Well, I gotta head out, man, good to see you. My sister needs help with packing her stuff for college tomorrow, so we’ve got a busy day coming up.”

Could that girl have been his sister?

“Congratulations to her on getting into her dream school by the way,” the guy says. “I talked to her when she was here earlier, and she seemed super excited.”

A wave of cool relief washes over your body, remembering the conversation about college you picked up on earlier. It was his sister.

“Yeah she is, she worked really hard, and it also involved a whole lot of crying,” he chuckles.

Ain’t that right, you think to yourself.

The table shakes as he pushes out of his chair. Your eyes remain glued to your coffee cup no matter how much you want them to move. You just can’t gather the courage to say something, and you’re cursing yourself for it. You don’t want to sit here and dream about him anymore. You want to actually let these things happen, for once. You want to just unleash all these swirling and sickeningly sweet emotions from your body and drown him in it. You want so badly to leap up and say something, anything. Step on those voices taunting you and mocking you saying that it could never happen, it could never be so it will never be. He’s so inviting that you can’t resist any longer. You go to reach out to him, but the door shuts before you know it.

And just as fleeting as he came,

He’s gone.

Fuck. It feels as though a brick is sitting on your chest, suffocating you. You really let your worries control you, and this time it feels as though you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. You just can’t believe you let it happen when your mind was begging you to talk to him. You always do-

“Shit,” you mumble. In your frustration, you knocked over the remnants of the coffee onto the not-so-white-anymore table cloth. Tears prickle up in your eyes, your throat closes, and your nose begins to sting. You quickly swallow these emotions down your throat and begin to use a napkin to soak up the excess coffee. Drinks have really not been your friend tonight.

For the first time, you notice as you clean that it’s just you left in the room, besides a few people cleaning up on the other end. You’re not sure where your family has gone, but you haven’t received any texts prompting you to leave yet. It’s so silent that you can hear some muffled chatter down the hall.

Suddenly, you hear the same creak of the door open with an “oof” that doesn’t quite sound like your dad. Your blood runs cold and you freeze mid press into the tablecloth. You glance up without turning around to see a lone jacket hanging on a chair suspiciously close to the chair he previously sat in. Your eyes widen and dart around the room, but you dare not move, waiting to see what he does. Even after cursing yourself out for ten minutes while cleaning up spilled coffee, you still haven’t learned to make the first move. His presence feels like a forcefield, you can feel it heavily pressing into your back.

But he isn’t moving to grab the jacket, no.

A pointer finger with a silver ring taps your shoulder.

“Hey,” the clarity of his voice rings in your ears like a bell. Your heart is racing so fast that it feels like it’s going to burst out of your rib cage and run its own 10k. You slowly crank your head around to meet his eyes for the first time-- face to face.

And you must say, his face is really pretty when you actually talk to him face to face. Maybe you should do this more often. You take in his golden features, and struggle to hide a small smirk creeping up on your face. His messy hair falls perfectly into place on his head, and his kind face makes you feel as though a mess of metallic gold swirls are playfully swirling and dashing around you both. You’ve found him in this lifetime.

“I’m Mat, can I help you clean up before I grab my jacket?”

[fancyfade]

Okay, a lonely place of dying thoughts. This will be long

So, I just finished re-reading a lonely place of dying. before I get to far into it: This is specifically to analyze the way the character and information is presented to the reader. It’s not to say “so and so is a bad character” or “this is a bad plotline”.

Starting off: they were definitely playing it super safe for the comic reader when they introduced Tim. It feels as if he is introduced literally as an audience avatar. For a large portion of the time before we meet him, we literally are seeing through his eyes -- the panel is positioned so that we would be at his head height, looking at whatever he’s looking at. we never see him except for his hands (so the audience can presumably imagine themselves in his shoes).

this isn’t the way they usually frame unknown characters or characters whose identity is obscured to create an air of mystery -- and there’s an excellent comparison in this same plotline, because there is a character with their identity obscured, who was framed a different way

[image: first two panels are of two face, who is wearing a trench coat and a fedora that casts a shadodw and obscures his face so we cannot tell who he is. His face is completely in shadow. he is talking to someone behind him. he says "Tomorrow. The zwei brothers warehouse. Two am. Now go back to your wife. the fat lady's about to sing." in the next panel, we see him from behind. the back of his head is entirely in shadow to avoid giving us any hints as to who he is. the man he's talking to, Gerry sky, says "whatever it is -- later." two face says "now. 'payroll activation'" and gerry says "okay, okay -- now."

next there's a panel with the dialogue whited out. We still see two face, wearing gloves and having nearly all of his skin (except for his face, which is always in shadow) covered. First we look at him from above and he is small against a dark room with a bookshelf in the background. Then there's a closeup of only his gloved hand as he turns off the radio. We see him from behind (thighs up) as he stands in front of a window, then another shot of his gloved hand trying to touch the radio. and both his hands clench in fists. He hits the radio, breaking it (his body is still off screen except for his arm and hand) and then at his feet we see the broken radio. end image]

end image/begin commentary - Framing of two face on panel

Notice: The presumed “camera angle” is dynamic around Two face. We see him from multiple angles -- from both in front and behind. When we are looking at the same thing he's looking at, we are positioned behind him, like we're looking over his shoulder. the close ups on his hand are not positioned as if he's looking at his own hand and we are in his head pay special attention to the panel he's adjusting the radio on and the fourth panel of the page -- we're looking from the side of him or from behind him and under his elbow there.

Two face is our mysterious bad guy. This is how they visually frame a character they want an air of mystery around.

compare that to the framing around tim

[image: first, we are looking through a camera that is continuously taking pictures of Batman as he stumbles down a slide, walks shakily to his batmobile, and takes off. then the camera is lowered (we see the hand that is lowering the camera in the view, it is below us as if we were looking through this person's eyes) and put inside a duffle bag. after that, we see something in the conrer of the screen -- an arm wearing a jacket?) and puddles of blood, then a bike tire -- but not the rest of the bike, which is off panel -- cutting through the puddles of blood. next pages shows a bunch of internal monologue that has been blockedo ut. a series of batman and robin pictures from the newspapers and a picture of batman swinging on a line in a scrap book. (in the first panel, batman and robin looking victorious in pictures, the second panel some headlines: “batman attacks mom” and “batman on the rampage” and “batman collars dope ring”. the third a picture of reporters interviewing gordon captioned with “batman batters bandits”. we can see the hand grabbing this picture as if we were holding it.

then we appear to be behind whoever is on the page, looking at his elbow, as he opens up a drawer, then we're back "inside" his head again as he holds up a photo with the graysons (john, dick, mary) and the drakes (tim and his parents). 3 year old tim is sitting on 12 year old dick's leg. end image]

end image/begin commentary - Framing of  Tim in Panel

okay sorry forgive me but this is fucking fascinating in my opinion. Notice that for two face, most of the close ups on his hands were specifically away from his point of view -- we weren’t positioned where his eyes were, but looking from the outside in.

For tim, we’re almost always looking through his eyes, contrasting to two face

and for tim, even when we were not looking through his eyes, in the very first page, he wasn’t even on panel -- we knew nothing about him, we just saw the edge of his bike. the second page we saw a bit of his arm but we never zoom out far enough to see his whole body and definitely not his face -- even if it would be obscured by shadow.

The first read through, I assumed they were going for an air of mystery, but the contrast between how they handle two face and tim to me makes it clear that they weren’t -- it might have been an unintended side effect, or a bonus effect, but it wasn’t the main purpose. The audience is literally viewing most of the panels Tim is in through Tim’s eyes. He is almost literally an audience avatar.

My general hypothesis here (which I think I am supplying proof of) is that Tim is intended to be an avatar in universe for the “average comic reader" (with some assumptions made by the writer about the average comic reader re: race, age,  gender, socioeconomic class)

For more support of this, let’s see how Tim talks about batman and robin --

[image: 3 comic panels from batman 440 featuring newspaper clippings (in the first panel, batman and robin looking victorious in pictures, the second panel some headlines: “batman attacks mom” and “batman on the rampage” and “batman collars dope ring”. the third a picture of reporters interviewing gordon captioned with “batman batters bandits”. there is internal monologue from (the framing of the scene implies tim drake, but at this point he is unknown to the audience) reading “He seemed happier with dick. Now, I guess it’s like he just doesn’t care. But I want him to care again. I want him to be the batman I remember.” then, we have panels from the new titans 61 dick, as nightwing, is reaching in to talk to tim. he grabs tim's arm. dick says, “I don't believe this. that man raised me. I've gone through hell with him and because of him. Don't lecture me about him until you've cared for him and loved him as long as I have”. dick puts his helmet on and drives off on his bike. before leaving, he says "when jason died, he took robin with him." Tim cries and calls after him: "I... I was only thinking of the team... of what Batman and Robin meant! You can't let a legend die like that, Dick..." end image]

end image/begin comment - Tim’s perception of Batman & Robin

Notice in the first panels (with the newspaper clippings) that Tim is reminiscent, he specifically talks about ‘teh batman and robin’ that he remembers. The narrative puts more significance for tim on the fact that batman is not happy and he is not the batman tim remembers, rather than the fact that batman is beating people nearly to death (tim notices this, and it seems to be a “because batman is so clearly sad” thing -- which this is not I believe intended to be a commentary on tim’s priorities, since the general narrative seems to be using bruce’s ultra-violence as a sign he’s angsty).

Then, compare dick’s reaction to bruce with Tim’s.

Dick’s connection to Bruce is extremely personal. Bruce, Batman, whatever, is his dad and raised him and, like he said, put him through hell sometimes. His connection to Jason’s death is similarly personal.

Tim’s connection to Batman and Robin is extremely abstract and idealized. He is thinking of them as, say, a comics reader might think of them. As a crimefighting team who are not together anymore, and this is bad.

this is just bulletpoint 2 in “tim is supposed to represent the audience”, not intending to be a condemnation of tim.

Thirdly

[image: first, a comic panel from Batman 440 showing a close up of Tim’s hand as he reads a paper and him thinking ‘No! the haly circus is closing?’ then, a series of comic panels from the new titans # 60. first, we see mr haly (off screen) and his cigar (on screen) as haly gestures at a photo of the flying grayson's on the wall. then he says "Yeah. Cost us a fortune and brought down our selling price. You know, sometimes I sit here and just remember the good old days. We were barely breaking even back then, too -- but man, were we having fun. then, we see dick grayson wearing jeans and a red shirt, walking through the circus ground. first, he looks kind of dejected and his hands are in his pockets. the narration box reads "he leaves, trying to reconcile the past and the present. Kids grow up and change. but why should everything do the same? The animal cages stink with waste. Was it always this way? At times like now, he wishes for never-never land." then, dick turns as he hears something and says "Hunh? That scream?" end image]

end image/begin comment - Nostalgia as a Theme

Nostalgia is an EXTREMELY strong theme in this comic. Batman is different, he’s not like he used to be. Haley’s circus is different and at risk, but Dick goes back and meets the performers he used to know -- some are still the same, some are in a more rough situation (alcoholic clown). Someone’s trying to kill his friends in the circus, it’s not really a place of childhood innocence for Dick.  Dick explicitly wishes to be in never-never land (the imaginary far off place where you never grow up)

How things should be -- both in Tim’s mind and Dick’s mind, Haly’s mind  -- is the idealistic past, but we clearly can’t go back to it -- Dick says that the first thing Bruce taught him was how to grow up.

Next bulletpoint:

[image: first are some comic panels showing Tim Drake talking to Dick Grayson and Alfred Pennyworth in wayne manor. Tim says “You know, since I was able to read, I clipped every article I could about Batman and Robin. Heck, I used to fantasize about what it would be like to be robin. I study hard. I get mostly A’s. I work out. I’m no circus acrobat, but I’m pretty good, I guess. But mostly, I read aobut you two. You’ve both been so important to me in so many ways. And when I see that without Robin Batman is going off hte deep end, I know there’s serious trouble.” next, we see Dick stepping forward and talking to Tim. he says "But you haven't told me anything I don't already know. I want the rest of it. All of it." end image]

end image/ begin commentary - textually a fanboy

Textually, Tim is presented as a Batman and Robin fanboy -- that’s how he found Batman’s secret identity (link)

He studies Batman and Robin from afar. He reads about them. Kind of like a comics reader would. he wants to be Robin. Again, superhero comics have some wish fulfillment element and definitely wanting to imagine yourself in a character’s shoes is an appeal for many fans. Tim wanted to imagine himself in robin’s shoes and fantasized about being him -- there’s kind of two layers here, one is the presumed audience member reading tim, wanting to imagine themselves in his shoes as he interacts with his heroes, the other is tim, who wanted to imagine himself in dick’s shoes.

re: the second posted image in this set: Tim hasn’t told dick anything that dick doesn’t know, because tim doesn’t know anything dick doesn’t know -- he is the comic reader here. That’s also why he’s so up-to-date on all of the other comic character’s stuff -- we see him list off all of the teen titans, he talks about jason’s death casually, he knows that alfred is batman’s confident -- he pretty much has all of the information that a reader of DC comics would have if they just got beamed into the DC universe at this point.

[image: first, two panels, one showing tim smiling and thinking "Wow! And I thought Harry did it. Man, Dick is good". tehn we see dick holding some photos and talking ot tim, who is at his bike. dick says "These pictures, two face is back in town, isn't he?" Tim says "You can tell, just from them? Wow! You're even better than I thought." the next scene is in the batcave. Dick is nightwing and is about to leave on his motor cycle, alfred and tim are behind him. tim says "no, not nightwing, Dick. don't you understand -- Batman needs Robin!" he turns to look at alfred and says "Doesn't anyone understand?" Alfred says "Perhaps, young man. Perhaps master Dick understands profoundly -- perhaps that is why he brought you here." tim looks surprised. end image]

end image/begin commentary: The old robin’s approval

another very important thing here: DC plays it as safe as possible with tim’s introduction, trying to make the audience like him, and one is definitely establishing that Tim both looks up to dick and thinks he’s cool (first two panels) and that he has dick’s presumed approval/blessing to be robin (last three panels). it’s also important to note that while tim is portrayed as competent, he never shows up Batman and Nightwing -- he rescues them because two-face lured them into an expert trap, but he doesn’t outdo either of them on fighting or detective work. this has an in universe explanation -- he is 13 years old, just starting out -- and an out of universe explanation -- if he’s not showing up anyone’s favorite character, he is presumably more palatable and less threatening for the presumed reader.

that’s what i mean when I say taht DC played their intro of tim very safe -- he falls in with the established characters, already likes them, is practically already a fan of them with full fanboy connotations. The idealized past is presented as something as desirable, both to the reader and to the characters themselves, and there is a strong current of nostalgia and returning things to how they “should” be with Batman having a robin. Tim voices what many readers may feel: That batman lost his way, that he needs Robin, and he gets to act out those feelings in the comic. the text acknowledges that they can’t just force dick back into it, that people have to grow up, and dick passes the mantle to tim.

overall I think that tim’s employment here was effective, but I look forward to seeing more when he’s allowed to be himself rather than an audience avatar. I understand lots of people like audience avatars and he was wildly popular presumably for those reasons, but I personally found the plotline lackluster at points.

[therealvalkyrie]

Through the Mirror: Part 1

my body, my music

Pairing/setting: Detective!Levi Ackerman x Female!Ghost!Reader, modern!AU within the Walls

Summary: When you’re murdered one Tuesday morning, can Levi piece together the true circumstances of your death with your help from beyond the grave?

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: dead body, descriptions of blood, swearing, mentions of violence

AN: Welcome to my new series because I have no self control and can’t finish projects before starting others! Lemme just start off by saying updates may come pretty irregularly because I do have a lot of other WIPs to work on, but! I’m really excited about this idea and have a whole lot planned:) I seriously hope you enjoy. After all, who doesn’t love a good murder mystery? Drop into my DMs/askbox/comments/reblogs to let me know what you think! Be kind to yourselves and others. ~valkyrie

“Ah, shit! Hello!? I’m standing right here!”

The woman completely ignores you, stepping carefully over the puddle of blood and across your tiny living room. You cross your arms and pout. She ignores that, too. 

“‘Scuse me, boys, let the experts take it from here,” she quips, gently pushing past the two detectives and crouching next to your body on the ground. 

It’s ugly, but she’s probably seen worse, you muse from where you’re leaning against the door jamb. It’s only been lying there for a couple of hours, so at least you haven’t bloated to something out of an NCIS episode. Must smell horrid, though, judging by the mask the head detective has pulled over his face.

“So, you said the landlady called at about 7 am?” the ME inquires, cocking her head up to look at the detectives, nylon gloved hands held at the ready.

“7:07 exactly. Said a neighbor made a noise complaint, she came up to check it out, found signs of a forced entry, and called us.” It’s the taller blonde who speaks up, reading from an off-brand pocket notepad in his left hand. The kind you’d find on sale at Staples after Back-to-School season.

Interesting. You lean your head against the wall, eyes trained on the trio. You’d pegged the ill-tempered shorter one as in charge. Maybe he’s just the quiet type. 

“Hmm, alright. Moblit, get off your ass and come take the pictures before we move her,” the woman calls to someone behind you, and you turn just in time to get a face full of Moblit’s chest as he walks towards you. 

You cringe back with a “God, seriously?” to no response.

“Yes, sorry, right away, Hange!” Moblit hurries past- no, through -you, sidestepping the ottoman and the blood. It feels weird, like a strong wind, but not altogether unpleasant to have someone walk through you, you suppose. You look down at your chest to watch your misty body re-settle into itself before looking back at the group in your living room.

Were it not for the gruesome accents of blood flecked up the walls and your body riddled with stab wounds, you’d chuckle at how all four of them struggled to navigate the space. It’s cramped enough when it’s just you, fitting only a couch, a chair, a coffee table, your fern (Boris), and a narrow IKEA bookshelf. With the four of them plus a dead body, it’s like watching a freaking clown car.

“Sorry, excuse me, Captain, oh, was that your toe—?” Moblit’s struggling the most, having to move to capture different angles with his bulky camera. When he steps on the shorter man’s toe, he positively blanches, fumbling over himself to apologize while the ME laughs openly.

“God, alright, just,” the Captain pinches his delicate nose between a thumb and forefinger, then decides it’s better to wait in the kitchen. “C’mon, Gin, let’s chat in there.”

The Captain and the blonde detective both pass through you on the way back to the kitchen, but you only sigh and shake the tingly feeling of being incorporeal out of your fingers before following them.

“So,” the man called Gin takes the initiative, flipping back through his notebook and standing by the fridge. “I got statements from the landlady and two of the neighbors, numbers 303 and 304 down the hall. 301, directly across the hall, didn’t answer, but I got contact info from the landlady.” He pauses to read and scratch at his whiskery beard. “It was 304 who made the noise complaint, said she heard yelling this morning at around 5:45, and that she normally wouldn’t’ve said anything but it was, quote, the fourth goddamn time this week and I work the goddamn night shift, I deserve some fucking rest, unquote.”

You grin. Mrs. Sheffield was never one to mince words, something you appreciated when your ex-boyfriend got too loud and she took it upon herself to give him a piece of her mind. You catch a glimmer of a smile on the ornery Captain’s face above where he’s pulled his mask down before he gestures for Gin to keep going, keeping his thoughtful gaze fixed on the floor and his back against your countertop.

“Then after she called the landlady, she went to bed, only to be woken by us two hours later.”

“You said she called the landlady at 5:45 and that she works the night shift?”

Gin double checks his notes. “That’s right.”

“And she works at the hospital?”

“Yes, as a scrub nurse on the night shift.”

“But the night shift at the hospital ends at 6:30.”

“It was her night off,” you and Gin say at the same time before you catch yourself. They can’t hear you, anyway. This’d be a lot easier if they could.

Gin plows ahead. “But she says she keeps the same sleep schedule so she doesn’t, ah, fuck up her circadian rhythm.”

The Captain practically snorts at this, itching for a second under his silk cravat (can someone say pretentious) before settling back into a listening silence.

“303 says he didn’t hear a thing. College kid, looked exhausted. Said he was asleep the whole night after he got in at,” a page flip, “11 o’clock last night. Wasn’t much help, but looked genuinely upset when we told him about the murder. Wanted to know if there was anything he could do. Oh, but he did, uh, hang on,” more page flips, “He did tell us that he heard her and her boyfriend arguing a lot. Which is consistent with what Mrs. Sheffield told us.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” you correct into thin air. 

“A lover’s spat gone wrong, then,” Mr. Pretentious Captain muses. You huff in annoyance. A lover’s spat. If that’s all that this is written off as you’ll have some serious PD haunting to do. Chris may have been an angry, loud, disruptive manipulator, but he wouldn’t murder you. He didn’t murder you. “Any info on the whereabouts of the boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyf—!”

Blondie cuts you off, “Not currently, but we do have a name: Chris Henderson, works in admin down at the University. Lives across town closer to the Bridge.”

“Send some uniforms to bring him in for questioning. No arrests yet, tell ‘em to keep it friendly.”

“Right, I’ll put Dreyse and Bodt on it.”

“Dreyse, really?” Captain Cravat gives Gin an incredulous look. 

“Hey, she may look like a ditz but she gets the job done. And she might get him to let down his guard,” Gin argues, grinning. 

“Fine. I’ll meet them at the station, you stay here and make sure that mousy-haired dunce doesn’t fuck up my crime scene.”

“Hey, who’re you callin’ mousy-haired, short stack?” Hange actually sticks her whole head through yours this time, to butt into the conversation, and you shriek and jump away to the other side of your tiny kitchen, now sandwiched between Blondie and Shortstack. The latter twitches and swats at the air by his ear, as though to dislodge a fly, narrowly missing yours. You give him a weird look then turn back to listen to the ME. She’s leaning into the kitchen at an alarming angle, one hand on the doorframe and the other on the end of the gurney you assume is carrying your body. You shudder at the thought of being toted around in a dark, musty, humid glorified coat bag. Ugh. 

“—takin’ this baby”-she slaps the gurney twice and you flinch-“back so I can get started on the autopsy, Moblit’s staying to take more pictures and collect forensics. If Eld’s stayin’ here with Mob, does that mean you’re catching a ride with me, Levi?” The question is addressed to Captain Grump on your right, who gives a heavy sigh and pushes off the counter. 

“I guess so. I get to choose music though.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” she’s wagging a finger, grinning. “My body, my music!”

“How about my body, my music?” you suggest, following Levi. “I deserve it after the day I’ve had.”

Again, Levi twitches and swats aggressively by his ear, nearly hitting you full in the face this time. 

“You hear that, Gin? This place got a mosquito problem or something?”

“I do not have a mosquito problem!” and “No, sir, I don’t hear anything.” overlap in the air. 

Captain Levi only grunts, then starts spouting instructions, which Gin notes down. “I want footage from any cameras in the building, and from the shops next door and across the street. I want statements from residents both upstairs and downstairs. I want names, addresses, and numbers of next of kin on my desk by noon, and lastly, I want no one, save for myself, you, shitty glasses, and mousy-hair, in or out of this apartment. Are we clear?”

“Crystal clear, sir.”

“Good. I’m leaving you Braus to help and to show her the ropes of this kind of thing. Even though she’s on the case, she will not set foot in this apartment. I don’t trust her not to leave breadcrumbs in the bloodstains.

“Yes, sir.”

“I expect an in-person report before shift-change this evening. See you then.” Then, he’s sweeping out of the kitchen in pursuit of Hange and the gurney, leaving you to scurry after. As you exit your home, he shoots a young auburn-haired woman in a crisp white blouse and wool slacks a look. “Braus. You’re with Gin. Don’t go in the apartment.”

She straightens up from leaning against the wall with a jolt and brushes croissant crumbs off her front. “Yes, Captain Levi, sir!” It’s slightly muffled by the pastry stuffed into her mouth.

“Tch.”

It’s fascinating watching how Levi and Hange manage to navigate the gurney down the narrow, twisting stairs of your walk-up apartment building. They’re both clearly used to this sort of thing, communicating only in short phrases and grunts when they encounter an obstacle. Occasionally, you offer up a pointer and watch as Levi becomes increasingly irritated. 

“Watch out for Mr. Laslow’s cat, he likes to sneak up on ya!”

“Hange, do you hear— shit!” Levi hops to the side, narrowly avoiding the tabby tail as Tubbins McGee whisks past.

“It’s only a cat, Levi, dunno what’s got you so worked up today,” Hange teases, grin echoing your own as you chortle from the landing above them. 

Eventually, they spill out onto the sidewalk and into the bright mid-day, and Hange groans loudly, stretching with both hands on her back.

“Ugh. Remind me not to die in there, I’d hate to put someone else through that.”

“Boof, tell me about it,” you commiserate. 

“Noted,” Levi snarks. 

Hange removes jingling keys from her pocket and unlocks the ME’s van parked along the sidewalk with a beep, then opens the back doors and steps in. You follow, leaning against the cool metal siding to watch.

When they both load into the front seats and the engine turns over, you lean forward between them to listen in.

“So,” Hange starts, smoothly pulling out into the road behind a silver minivan. “I’ll be able to give you a more solid answer in a couple hours, but my initial estimated time of death would be around 5:45 this morning.”

Levi nods, staring out the passenger window while he answers. “That lines up with the neighbor’s story.”

“Theories so far?”

“Well, there’s the boyfriend,” he muses, lifting a hand to rub his chin.

“Too obvious,” you say dully, not bothering to amend the lack of “ex” yet again. “Next theory.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then mutter, almost too quietly for you to catch: “Too obvious, hmm? Next theory....”

You’re momentarily flabbergasted, hand falling through the faux-leather seat back in your shock. Can he actually hear you? You shake out your hand while it re-materializes, tuning in to the conversation as Hange’s responding. 

“—a little far-fetched, don’t you think? I mean, has there been any of that activity in this area recently?”

“Mm, I’ll have to touch base with Petra. If there has been, I think it’s worth looking into.”

“What is? Wait, go back,” you frantically plead, leaning further into his airspace. But Hange plows on. 

“Oh, it’s Petra, now, hmm? Not Raggedy Anne anymore?” Her tone is teasing, and she glances over to Levi for a reaction. 

He doesn’t give her one, just stares out the window pensively before reaching for the radio dial. The stereo blares up into an Oldies station, and you make a disgusted face along with Levi. 

“You listen to this shit?”

“Hey, my dead body, my music, sweetcheeks. Don’t like it, you can thumb it back to the PD.”

“How about my dead body, my music?” you suggest again, reaching for the dial at the same time as Levi does. Just as his slender fingers touch it, your hand passes through the whole front console and the oldies are replaced with a terrifyingly loud static screeching. 

“Christ, Levi, what’d you do?” Hange shrieks, lunging forward to punch the radio off as you remove your hand. 

“Nothing! It just went berserk!”

They bicker while you stare at your offending palm. “Huh. Didn’t know I could do that.”

If you can actually interact with objects, at least to some degree, and if it turns out Levi can hear you.... This whole thing might be easier than you thought.

[kitchen-witch-bitch]

6. Let’s make a deal shall we? With Reddie?

EEEE THANK YOU BBY I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS!! If not you can beat my ass Friday XD

“Let’s make a deal, shall we?”

The statement comes unprompted from Richie’s lazy form in the hammock, shouted across the clubhouse in a poor imitation of a Bond villain Eddie is too tired to keep up with. 

Eddie peeks over his comic book from Bill’s old spot; their friend, the last one of the Losers to leave besides Mike, had moved for college a few weeks prior, and Eddie and Richie honestly weren’t far behind. Richie was due to leave for California any day now, and Eddie...Eddie was headed to New York. Tomorrow. With his girlfriend (re: babysitter, as Richie had called her on more than one occasion) that he may or may not be hiding from in an effort to spend a few more hours with Richie.

Just a few more hours.

As Eddie’s stomach churns at the thought, he realizes he hasn’t given his friend an answer. He may have pulled out a voice, but it was a statement that Eddie was supposed to respond to, based on the way the raven-haired boy pushed up so he could look at Eddie and fiddle with his glasses.

Eddie turns a page without having really read the first one, his fingers just needing something to do besides stain the pages with sweat from their sitting in one place too long. “What kind of deal?”

“One of those marriage deals.” Eddie chokes, and Richie is quick to correct himself. “I mean! Wait! No! We don’t have to get married!” Richie really sits up now; he does it so fast the hammock angrily drops him to an unforgiving dirt floor. “I’m not, like, gay or anything--” he’s spitting out dirt as he tries to talk, and for some reason, Eddie can’t move from his spot to check on him.

Eddie grips the comic book so tightly he feels one of the pages tear a bit. He doesn’t care. “Yeah. uh. Not gay. I know you’re not gay. I’m not gay either.”

The statements hang in the air while Richie situates himself on a sturdier chair, neither of them really even breathing for fear of disturbing the bubble they’ve created here. The lies taste like dirt on Eddie’s tongue and he just barely catches himself in time to not retch. He figures the way his throat and eyes twitch and the blood that is pooling in his cheeks may have given him away or, at least, alerted Richie to the fact that he was uncomfortable. Neither one calls the other out. 

Richie clears his throat. “I guess, uh, what I meant was--God, I sound like Bill--what I meant was we could, you know, live together. You know. If I’m not married and you’re not married by the time we’re 35, we could buy a house wherever we want and be bachelors forever.”

“I can’t stand you, how the fuck could I live with you?”

“You can too stand me,” Richie insists, but there’s a look behind his eyes that Eddie knows means he’s been hurt. “You would have gone and hidden from Myra at Mike’s farm instead of hiding here with me if you couldn’t stand me.”

Eddie pulls his bottom lip into his mouth; Richie has a point. He doesn’t know how right he is. Eddie would give anything to be going to California with Richie instead of to New York with Myra. He doesn’t have anything to retort. “Richie, I...I’m getting married. Right after college.”

“Things can change,” Richie’s voice has taken on a definite edge, but Eddie hears the hitch in his breath. It’s enough to make Eddie hide his face behind his comic to hide his own red eyes.

“I don’t know, Rich. I...mom already had me give her the ring.”

Richie is uncharacteristically silent before storming to the ladder, quickly scaling it. “Well, offer’s on the table. We all know that’s not gonna last.”

Eddie breathes out a quiet “Deal,” although he’s not sure Richie heard. He swears he sees Richie’s foot waver on the top rung when Eddie speaks, but when Richie keeps going, Eddie is afraid he didn’t hear him.

He doesn’t call Richie and apologize like he feels like he should.

*~*~*

It's 23 years before Eddie sees Richie again, 27 years after their first encounter with the clown that has killed so many, including sweet Stan, and took their memories of one another piece by piece. Everything was so murky when he got back to Derry at first, but now it's all clear as a bell, now that he's lying in a hospital bed, actually struggling to breathe for the first time in his life. 

He's not alone, though. It's not so scary. Richie and Beverly are holding his hands; Ben is rubbing at his feet because not only are his hands good for building delicate things, they're good at reflexology, too; Bill is settled on the bed with a hand on part of his chest that isn't torn, trying to be a steady force against which Eddie can start to regulate his breathing; Mike is stroking his hair from somewhere above. 

In all of it, he lets out a choked laugh. If he dies, he's not alone. 

He passes out shortly after staring Richie in the eyes, remembering their last encounter as teenagers. The way Richie ran away from him, and how this entire time he’d been home, Richie kept running back to him, protecting him just like he had all those years before. 

Richie's the only one in the room when Eddie wakes up for real, eyes fluttering open and then snapping shut against the startling sun, intruding through the windows. He's got a killer migraine, but he can breathe. 

Fuck, he can breathe.

His chest doesn't hurt. 

He lets one hand move across where there should be a gaping hole, but there's nothing. 

He feels someone sit on the bed next to him and gently take his hand. He recognizes those hands as Richie's, but he can't open his eyes. Even though he wants to look at Richie all the time, his head hurts too badly. 

"What happened?" Eddie slurred.

"We don't know." It is a quiet admission, and Richie starts stroking his thumb across the back of Eddie’s hand. "They had you in surgery and...you just started closing up? Everything's working perfectly, the doctors say you can go home soon." One knuckle strokes at Eddie's cheek. "You gotta open those doe eyes, though."

Eddie keeps them closed. "I don't wanna go home."

They're both quiet for a long moment, and Richie pulls his hand back down to where his other one is holding Eddie’s. "No?"

"No." Eddie shifts a little, moving his head from where the window is so that he can just barely squint. Nope. Still hurts. He shuts them tight again. "Where is everybody?"

"They had to go get everything packed up at the Inn, but they'll be back soon, Eds."

Eddie hums and tries to nod. Good. That gives them time to talk. "We had a deal."

Richie chuckles lowly; it's self-deprecating, a tone Eddie doesn't like him using. It's the only voice of Richie's he actually hates, just because it breaks his heart. "Yeah, that only works if you agreed to it and held up your end of the bargain, baby."

"I did agree to it," Eddie insisted, voice strained. He needs water, but he needs to finish this conversation more. "I don't wanna go home to Myra. I wanna find a new home with you."

There's a long pause, and Richie is frozen in place. "Bachelor life calling your name, hm?"

"No," Eddie insists. "I don't want that either."

Richie is still and quiet long enough for Eddie to almost open his eyes, fuck the pain, but right as he's doing so, Richie's lips are pressed against his own. His fingers keep Eddie’s chin tilted toward him as they kiss, soft and sweet and hesitant. Eddie melts, tears from the stress of this whole situation and sadness of a lifetime lost with his best friend hitting him hard while Richie coos at him. 

"Deal," Richie says softly, moving to kiss at Eddie's cheeks, his temples. "We'll find a new home, Eds, I promise. You don't gotta cry. You're okay. You're gonna walk out of here and we're gonna go home, baby. We're gonna spend as much time as we can with our friends, too, because life is too fuckin' short." 

Eddie lets out a little snort--when did Richie get so good with words?--and nods, finally able to flutter his eyes open all the way and smile at his friend, who looks just as tired and sick as Eddie feels.

"Close the blinds and lay down with me, Trashmouth," he insists, moving to make room. 

"Deal." 

If the other Losers come back to find them curled up together, Richie's face buried in Eddie’s hair and Eddie’s face finally blissful, they don't tease. 

They knew well enough. 

[suckitsurveys]

R

The R Survey by joybucket

List ten things that are red. Blood, roses, apples, strawberries, lipstick, fire, leaves, tomatoes, hair, rubies. Do you like to read? No. Have you ever owned a rainbow rose? I think so? Or maybe a carnation. What’s your favorite flavor of Ramen noodles? Chicken and mushroom WHICH I CAN NEVER FIND.

List three of your favorite ways to relax. Around a bonfire, watching TV, being in water. List ten words that rhyme with “red.” Bread, cred, dead, fed, led, ted, wed, bled, dread, said.

Do you like…

ranch dressing? the color red? roses? Reese’s cups? running? random surveys? random surprises? Ronald McDonald? resting when needed? raisins? renessaince fairs? raspberries? raviolis? the name Rebecca? Rascal Flatts? ribbons? Raisin Bran? raking leaves? racing games? rodeo clowns? the name Raven? ravens? ripped jeans? Have you ever…. ran a marathon? ran a 5k? worn ripped jeans? been to Rhode Island? been given roses? found a dead rat in your house? danced in the rain? watched the cartoon Rocket Power? been to a renaissance faire? owned a Raggedy Ann doll? driven a Range Rover? had a friend named Rachel? been to Rome? visited the Roman baths? had to pay rent? rented a car? rented an apartment? spent the whole day reading? read the entire Bible? enjoyed watching Nascar racing? been to a Nascar race live? remodeled your living room? painted a picture of a rose? seen a double rainbow? raked leaves? seen a red-tailed hawk? had a pet rabbit? built a robot? tried to re-boot a computer? went for a walk in the rain without an umbrella? gotten drenched in the rain? Do you know anyone named… Rosalie? Raven? Rocco? Rebecca? Rachel? Randal? Rose? Remi? Raelynn? Riley? Rylan? Ryker? Rosa? Rosanna? Rosemary? Rico? Rhea? Rhiannon? Rihanna? Reyna? Rain? Rhani? Roxie? Rosie? Rodney? Roderick? Rhonda? Would you say you are…. reliable? responsible? reasonable? ridiculous? real? relational? rational? More Q’s Do you like the name Ryan? Sure. Do you think “rhododendron” is a cool word? Sure. What are three of your favorite things to eat with rice? Curry, shrimp scampi, burrito bowls. And if you count things MADE with rice, then sushi, hands down. What is your favorite resort that you’ve stayed at? The Wilderness indoor waterpark resort in The Dells.

Do you like the name Rhiannon? I do. What is your favorite song by Rascal Flatts? No. Do you like to read romance novels? No. Name a song you like that is about romance. My brain is broken. How many of these words do you know the meaning of: ricochet, rhododendron, reflux, reciprocate, respiratory? All of them. Do you own any N95 respirator masks? Yes. Can you run a mile easily? No. List five things you associate with the word “ranch.” An actual ranch, the style of house, the Blink 182 album Dude Ranch, the dressing, Texas. Has red ever been one of your school’s colors? Burgundy. Do you read a lot? No. That’s all for now- have a wonderful day! :)

[randomly-a-fan]

Malon’s First Time at the Hospital Pt. 1

Archie was walking over to Camp Crystal Lake to visit his best friend, Malon. He knew Malon very well, usually she gets soo excited and rushes over for a hug. But today is different, he saw Malon sitting on a porch snuggling her blanket tightly. “Hi Malon... What’s up?” Archie greeted. Malon faced up and saw Archie, but she didn’t rush over to him, she just smiles and waves at him. “Malon... Are you okay, what’s wrong?” Archie asked as he went over and sat next to Malon. “Hi Archie...” Malon said with a low tone, then she started to cough. “Sorry... I’m not feeling very good... I’ve been having this cough and it’s getting worse... My mommy said that I have to go to the children’s hospital tomorrow down in Haddonfield...” Malon explained with a cough. “Whoa... that’s tough... So you’re sad because you’re nervous?” Archie asked while patting her back. Malon nodded as she tears up. “I don’t want to go, I’m scared!” Malon teared up. Archie wrapped his arm around his scared friend as he’s trying to comfort her.

While Archie tries to comfort Malon, Jason came out to see his daughter; he sensed her daughter’s destress, so he sat next to Malon and picked her up and placed her on his lap. “Hey Jay, I was only trying to comfort Malon.” Archie explained. Jason smiled from behind his mask and wrapped his arm around him comfortingly. Jason knew that Malon needed to go to the hospital to find out what’s been wrong with his baby girl; the moment when him and his wife found out that there’s something wrong with Malon was considered the most scary experience.

[Three days ago]

In the middle of the night, Malon was woken up by her continuous cough. MJ woke up after hearing her coughing through the walls. “Aw, poor Malon is having one of those nighttime coughs... Remember back then before Malon came into our lives, you were concerned about my continuous coughs? You thought it was serious so you gave me water and backrubs.” Jason nodded as he remembered that night. They both heard Malon coming towards their room, as they were assuming that Malon has trouble sleeping. “Mommy... Daddy... I can’t sleep... My coughing is keeping me awake.” Malon said in a tired tone. “Yes, I’m assuming that you’re having trouble sleeping, I’ll go and get you a glass of water--” Jason held MJ back as he insisted on helping with the late-night service while he let’s his wife sleep. “On the other hand, daddy will get you a glass of water.” MJ said before she goes back to sleep. 

Malon went over to the kitchen to sit while her dad gives her a glass of water. “Daddy... Is it normal to have a sore chest while coughing?” Malon asked, sounding like she was worried. Jason too was worried; he doesn’t entirely know if having a sore chest is normal or not. So he kept his answer silent; Malon can tell that her dad doesn’t know the answer, so she just shrugs it out and drink her water.

After Malon finishes her water, and make a quick stop to the bathroom, Jason tucked Malon back in and gave her a kiss goodnight while Malon tries to sleep again with her teddy. When Jason went back to his room with MJ, he heard Malon coughing a little, but not very much, it indicates that Malon is going to be fine.

***

However, Malon hasn’t gotten any better, as a matter of fact, her coughing has gotten worse the next day. MJ tried to feed her breakfast with a hot bowl of oatmeal with honey, but Malon didn’t eat much as she wasn’t very hungry. “Malon, are you not hungry?” MJ asked. Malon shook her head as she didn’t want to talk. MJ wanted to call Star’s cousin, but she didn’t want to disturb her as she might be busy.

As the hours passed, MJ and Jason freaked out when they heard Malon throwing up outside in the backyard. “Malon!?” MJ cried as she was holding her daughter’s hair back while Jason gently rubs his daughter’s back. “I’m sorry...” Malon said after she was finished. “Don’t be sorry baby girl, you’re obviously sick... I’m calling Cassandra right now!” MJ said while she walks back into the house to make a phone call while Jason takes Malon to the bathroom to clean her up.

***

The next day, Cassandra came over to check on Malon, she was lying in bed with her dad who is giving her gentle side rubs. “Hello uh... Jason... Mind if I observe Malon’s conditions?” Cassandra asked nervously; she has every right to be nervous around the Camp Blood Serial Killer of Camp Crystal Lake, from all the rumors and stories she has heard. But if she can handle her crazy clown cousin-in-law, she can somehow handle the sick patient’s dad. Jason got up to give Cassandra her space to check on his daughter, while Malon slowly gets up with a tired and painful moan. “Hi Malon, may I have a look inside of your mouth?” Cassandra asked in a gentle tone. Malon nodded and opened her mouth wide. “Hmm... Your throat seems to be red--” Then Malon coughed before Cassandra could explain more. “Sorry...” Malon said. “That’s okay, it’s not the first time I’ve been coughed at,” Cassandra said with a smile.

After a few minutes, Cassandra came out to give MJ and Jason the possible result. “From what you have described to me with Malon’s cases, the description sounded a lot similar to a ‘Lung Infection’,” Cassandra indicated. Jason tilted his head, he’s never heard of a Lung Infection, or even had one; since he drowned as a child, his corpse body doesn’t get any common or serious diseases. However, MJ has, so she is familiar to that childhood state. “So you’re saying that she needed to go to the hospital?” MJ asked. Jason definitely knew what a hospital is, he’s been there a couple of times during his afterlife, the hospital wasn’t a nice place to his perspective.

So they have a brief discussion on what they needed to do, and how to get Malon prepared for when the time comes. “I have a little booklet for kids for when they have to go through that situation; I’ll drive by to drop it off to your mailbox before I go to Haddonfield for work.” Cassandra promised. “I have friends that work at the Children’s Hospital in that location, I’ll ask them to give you guys an appointment there.” Cassandra added. “Thank you, Cassie. We’ll keep in touch,” MJ thanked.

[The Present] + One day

MJ has set an alarm for 5:00 am in the morning to get Malon ready; even though she’s not supposed to eat anything due to fasting after midnight that night, she still needs to have something for herself before getting her daughter ready. While MJ gets a quick shower, Jason gently woke Malon up to get her dressed. “...It’s still dark...” Malon whined. Jason picked his daughter up and gave her a gentle hug and kiss before helping her get dressed. MJ had Malon’s bag packed for the hospital trip; her change of clothes, an extra blanket, and some coloring books. Malon also insisted on bringing her teddy to keep her calm. “What about Skippy?” Malon asked worriedly. “Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ve spoken to Star on the phone and told her what you’ve going through, she’s going to have Archie look after Skippy until we return.” MJ explained.

Just then, Cassandra honked her horn. “Are you guys ready?” Cassandra called out. Malon started to tear up as she was scared, but she didn’t want her parents to know that she was crying, so she had to be brave, so she walked over to the car to sit in the back with her mom while her dad sits in the front. Cassandra understand that Jason is a big beefy boy, so him sitting in the back would be a little squishy for him.

***

After a long drive to Haddonfield, they made it to the Children’s Hospital. So they parked over to the Emergency Room parking lot, so they can let her in. Malon wasn’t the only one who is scared, her dad is also afraid, he just hoped that no one will notice; after all, he is wearing a more casual outfit and not wearing a mask. He even saw some kids that reminded him of himself when he had a serious face dislocation.

At the front desk, the lady at the counter was asking questions to Malon’s parents while Malon was being tested by the nurses and doctors; such as her temperature, blood pressure, and checking her throat. Malon has been tearing up again while trying her best to hold her tears back. 

After she was finished with the examination, Malon gets a bracelet on her whist and is being transported in a wheelchair to the X-Ray room. “What’s this place?” Malon asked. “That’s the X-Ray room, we’re going to take a picture of the inside of your chest, so we can see what was wrong with your chest.” The doctor explained. As they entered in, Jason and MJ have to stay outside the door so they don’t get radiation problems. “We’ll have you wear an X-Ray gown so we can take a picture of the inside of your chest.” The doctor explained. So the nurse helped Malon into her heavy gown before they begin. “You just stand there, Malon, and start breathing in.” The doctor instructed. Malon does what she was told, but then she starts bawling her eyes out. “Aww... Malon, what’s the matter?” The doctor asked. “I’m trying to be brave, really I’ve tried, but I just can’t help it... I want to go home!” Malon teared up. “I understand, we all do, we’ve been through patients being scared 24/7... Even grownups...” The doctor explained. Malon perked up a bit after hearing that. “Re--re--really? So I’m not the only one?” Malon asked with a small smile. “Of course not, so don’t ever feel bad about yourself, it’s nobody’s fault, these things happen all the time.” The Doctor reassures.

After Malon calmed down, she did as she was told and stand against the camera and have her chest checked. After that’s done, Malon was being transported to her room with her parents coming from behind. Her room was huge and it has two beds, indicating that she has to share with some other person. “Alright my dear, we’re going to get you into your hospital gown now, and you get to pick which ever one you want out of the four.” The doctor said as he was revealing the gowns to her.

Malon loved them all, she didn’t know which to pick, until she decides on getting the ones with the teddy bears on it, since they remind her of her dad. “Good choice, I love the teddy bears. Alright then, I’ll have you get into your hospital gown, and I’ll be right back.” The doctor said. MJ and Jason helped Malon get out of her clothes and put on her hospital gown. “It’s very comfy, I wish I can keep it.” Malon said with a smile. “Yes, it is very cute, now let’s get you on the bed.” MJ said before Jason helped Malon up onto her bed.

Just then, the doctor came back with the I.V and a needle. “Okay Malon, first I wanted you to take your medicine...” Malon didn’t like medicine, but she wanted to be a good patient, so she has to take her medicine, even if it’s yucky. “Good girl, you’re one of our best patients, now we’ll just give you your I.V so the medicine will help you get better faster.” The doctor showed. Malon saw the needle, so she’s nervous. “Will it hurt?” Malon asked. “Just a little, but not for very long... You can hold your mom or dad’s hand if you want.” The doctor suggested. “Daddy?” Malon said immediately. Jason right away knew that his daughter wanted to hold his hand, so he let her do just that. “Alright Malon, here we go.” The doctor said before he injects the needle into her arm. Malon started to cry a little, so Jason soothed her by rubbing her hand. “Malon, why not tell us what you wanted to do after you’re feeling better.” MJ said while trying to keep Malon distracted. “Play with Archie... Hug my rabbit, *painful groan* play with Abby at school... *tearing up* Snuggle with you and daddy!” Malon cried. “There we go, all done; you see Malon, that medicine will go into your body and help cure your lung infection.” The nurse explained. 

After a little while, the Voorhees have been noted that Malon will have to stay in the hospital for two to three days, so it means that MJ or Jason will have to stay behind, while the other stays in the special building called the Ronald McDonald House.  “Malon, who would you like to stay with you tonight, me or your dad?” MJ asked her daughter. “Umm... Can daddy stay?” Malon asked. Jason nodded to Malon’s answer and gave her a gentle hug. “I’ll be staying the night at the Ronald McDonald House, which is just down the street from here.” MJ explained. “What’s a Ronald McDonald House?” Malon asked. “It’s a special building for families who wanted to stay close to their sick child as they’re staying for more than a night, your dad and I will take turns staying the night at that building until you’re feeling better.” MJ explained. 

Malon nodded with a smile as she understands the circumstances, yet, she’s still upset about staying for a few days at a strange place. Just then, the nurse came in. “Hi, Malon, how are you doing today, I’m nurse Linda and I will be your nurse for the time. Are you ready to have something to eat? you must be hungry from fasting.” The nurse said. Malon didn’t want to eat since her throat hurts from coughing so much, however, she is getting a little hungry, so she decided to at least try to eat something. So she decided to pick Potato Tarts with a side of Broccoli and Carrots, Mango-Pineapple Juice and for dessert, Raspberry Yogurt.

***

As the hours passed, it was time for MJ to head for the Ronald McDonald House while Jason stays with Malon for the night. “Do you really have to leave, mommy?” Malon asked. “I won’t be far, pumpkin; Once you wake up in the morning, I’ll be there,” MJ promised before she hugged and kissed her daughter. “I love you, mommy...” Malon said. “I love you too, baby girl...” MJ said before she approaches Jason for a hug and a kiss. “I know Malon will be in good hands, and I’m not just talking about the nurses and doctors either,” MJ winked. Jason smiled to her remark before he kisses her one last time.

After MJ left, Nurse Linda came in to check on Malon. “Hi Malon, before you go to sleep, I want you to take your medicine while I check your temperature, okay?” Linda explained. After Malon took her medicine and have her temperature checked, she was getting ready to get some shut eye. “Now if you needed anything, just press this button and I’ll respond.” The nurse explained. Malon nodded as she understood. Before the nurse left, she gave Jason a pillow and blanket to help him feel more comfortable. “You have a goodnight, sir. Your daughter is in good hands, 24/7.” Linda said. Jason nodded as it was his way of saying thank you.

Jason has been watching Malon sleep, she may be coughing a little bit, but she’s still having some trouble sleeping, his main goal is to protect his sick child at all cost, while hoping MJ was safe at the other building; at least Haddonfield is safer than Camp Crystal Lake anyway... So he hoped.

To be Continued

[fanfic-corner]

15x18 Fics - !SPOILERS AHEAD!

I think we can all agree that everyone - fans or not - were pretty shocked by the reveal of last week, and everywhere (Tumblr most of all) seemed to explode. AO3 was not exempt from this massive outpouring of creations, so here are some fics based on That Scene. I will warn you that not all of them are fix-it fics, and most of them are quite short for obvious reasons.

Like Real People Do by prosopopeya on AO3. (4,490 words).

Tags: Coda, Episode Fix-it, Fluff and Angst, Spoilers, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Angst with a Happy Ending.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Castiel experienced a moment of pure happiness, expecting it to be his last. It wasn't. 

Notes: This was so poetic and absolutely gorgeous.

The same old tears (wish you were here) by DestielIsFuckinReal on AO3. (1,992 words).

Tags: Temporary Character Death, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Coda, Love Confessions, Angst with a Happy Ending.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Notes: The speech marks were slightly annoying, but other than that, this was beautiful.

Never Enough by make_your_user_a_name on AO3. (1,556 words).

Tags: Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Angst, Suicidal Thoughts, Love Confessions, Supportive Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester Knows, Domestic Fluff.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: It took him hours to notice it. He hadn’t felt it in the moment. Hadn’t felt the Cas’ hand stick slightly to his shoulder as it pushed him away, leaving him to face the Empty alone. But now that he’d noticed it, it was all he could look at. That bright red handprint standing out starkly against his jacket. It was perfect, really. Not a drop out of place. Just a handprint and nothing else. That was all he had left. The handprint where Castiel had “gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.” And now he’d saved him one more time. Same shoulder, same placement, same sting when Dean looked at it. It was poetic in the cruelest of ways. And if it weren’t for everything, he would have thought this was Chuck’s writing. But, no. Castiel was the only part of Chuck’s story that he couldn’t control. Because Cas had fallen.

Notes: Now this fic brought out the ugly tears.

this is a good thing, dean. (prayer is a sign of faith) by cascountsdeansfreckles on AO3. (529 words).

Tags: Prayer, Dean Winchester Prays to Castiel, post 15x18, 15x18 coda.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Dean’s legs still don’t want to move. He sits propped up against the wall and stares unseeing at the chair in the middle of the room. Everything that Cas said plays over and over in his head. The image of Cas looking devastatingly relieved, content, as he was taken from Dean won’t leave his mind. He doesn’t know what else to do. So he prays.

Notes: Okay, and I’m crying. Again. The one time Cas can’t hear Dean’s prayers is the one time it is the most important.

all the things i’ve never said by Saffir on AO3. (849 words).

Tags: 15x18 Fix-it, Angst, Heavy Angst, First Kiss, Confessions, Sad Ending, Nonbinary Castiel.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Castiel knows that their time has come. The past decade has been spent protecting Dean, living for Dean, dying for Dean. It finally comes time to sacrifice themself one last time. He wasn’t expecting it to hurt this much.

Notes: Confirmation of their relationship would have been nice! I mean, I firmly believe Dean reciprocated, but it would be nice to know for sure. And oh boy, I had not stopped to think about the scene from Cas’ point of view.

gay love pierced through the veil of death and saved the day by firefliesandstarlight on AO3. (444 words).

Tags: Fix-it, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Cas doesn’t die. That’s literally it.

Notes: Is it bad I found out that Charlie died through the end notes of this fic? Like, imagine writing a scene so moving that it overpowers the fact that several other fan favourites died in that same episode.

15x18 coda: it’s in the being by contemplativepancakes on AO3. (1,167 words). 

Tags: Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Coda, Dean Winchester Can’t Cope, Hurt Dean Winchester.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Blood splatters from a severed neck, the body twitching before it collapses to the floor. It sprays across Dean’s face, dotting red droplets over his cheeks and in his hair. Dean keeps his mouth shut so he doesn’t get the taste of copper stuck in it; he already can’t get Cas’s face out of his mind. Dean knows this is the last place he should be, that with the world ending, it doesn’t really matter if there’s one less nest of vamps in the world, but if he stops moving, then he’ll… have to think. “I wondered what my true happiness could even look like, because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have.” 

Fuck, they wasted so much time.

Notes: I don’t even know what to say anymore. My heart is simultaneously full and utterly broken.

1 Missed Call by glenien on AO3. (597 words).

Tags: Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Referenced Character Death, Angst, Dean Winchester is a Dumbass, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death!Castiel, Coda, Fluff and Angst.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: The buzzing never stops.

Notes: I love the implications of Dean literally flirting with Death here, and even though this isn’t the ending I think we’ll get, I can still hope!

Only know you love him when you let him go by Azura_lights_18 on AO3. (1,365 words).

Tags: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Hurt/Comfort, Dean Deserves to be Happy, Angst with a Happy Ending.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Destiel is finally canon... for ten seconds. My hopes for the upcoming episodes (just let Destiel live, please.)

Notes: I am loving the inventive ways people are bringing Cas back! I have hope, but that might just be me putting my clown wig on.

maybe just this once (let me keep this one) by psyiocke on AO3. (1,678 words).

Tags: Episode: s15e18 Despair, Canonical Character Death, Angst with a Happy Ending.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Dean Winchester listens in silence, and he mourns in it too.

or the aftermath of hearing your best friend say he loves you and then watching him die.

Notes: Oh boy here I go again. That tag, by the way, is much too soon. But if this is what happened at the end, I would be happy.

Instinct by CKLizzy on AO3. (510 words).

Tags: Fix-it of Sorts, Episode s15e18 Despair, Episode Fix-it.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Dean reacted on pure instinct. Instinct he didn't know he even had.

Notes: Oh, if only. I would have passed out.

A World Redeemed by Lif61 on AO3. (732 words).

Tags: Season 15 Spoilers, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, POV Dean Winchester, Romance, Love, Happy Ending.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: Cas is gone, and the world is saved. But not for Dean.

Notes: I do really hope Cas comes back. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to go and have some words with someone.

Happiness is What Makes You Cry by AnotherWorld3111 on AO3. (358 words).

Tags: Angst, Referenced Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Hurt No Comfort, Love Confessions.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: Just... read the goddamn tags

Notes: Oh man, if Dean actually breaks down in front of Sam, I will die on the spot.

All Out of Love by asofthesea on AO3. (681 words).

Tags: Not Actually Unrequited Love, Angst and Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Homophobic John Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Jack Kline, One Shot, Brotherly Love, Feelings.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: After the events of 15x18, Despair, Sam and Jack rush back to the bunker to find Dean alone, and falling apart at the seams.

Notes: John Winchester would have been homophobic and no one can change my mind.

Tag to “Despair” (15x18) by Alvinola on AO3. (793 words).

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: Sam has to pick up the pieces when Cas is gone.

Notes: Seriously, these fics are making me cry all over again. I mean, what can Sam possibly say to make any of this better? That’s heartbreaking in itself.

And a shameless self-promotion:

‘I love you’ by LinaRai on AO3. (420 words).

Tags: Angst, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, I’m Sorry.

Description: "I love you." Dean just stares at him.

Notes: I wrote this in a Criminology lesson while eating a bag of crisps which basically equated to my lunch because I was a mess and I had to. And yes, I am fully aware that I write things with major character death too often. So sue me.

So, how is everyone feeling? I’ve started re-reading Angel’s Wild in a wild (get it) attempt to cope. Also, this led to me having a full conversation with one of my teachers about Sherlock. ‘Maybe next time don’t use a current show as an example of queerbaiting,’ she said, as if any of us expected Destiel to go canon. Seriously, how do you explain to a 40 year old woman who only just realised that BBC Sherlock might possibly be queerbaiting how much no one expected that to happen? 

[cedricstower]

Hear me out but poly relationship of Cedric x Reader x Greylock?

oh ABSOLUTELY! 

~gender neutral reader~

Poly Relationship between Cedric x Greylock x Reader

how all three of you end up together is beyond me or anyone else in Enchancia 

at first it was just you and Cedric, you guys had been incredibly committed to each other albeit for a short while, but you guys seemed to have something really special between the two of you

the day you meet Greylock is when you two cross paths at a Conjurer’s Conference (if you’re magical, it’s probably your first time going together, but if you’re not, Cedric probably offered to show you around and you’re beyond excited), much to Cedric’s confusion because he thought Greylock would’ve been exiled by now 

“All I had to do was use the ol’ charm on them and I got re-instated in three years time!”

“Of course” Cedric grumbles, annoyed beyond belief

you however are fascinated, taken with this jester-esc wizard. You begin to ask him a multitude of questions, annoying and confusing Cedric even further. 

“So what did you tell the guards?” “What did you do?” “Are you a royal sorcerer too?” 

Greylock was more than happy to answer all your questions, quite endeared by your wide-eyedness 

Cedric’s probably standing there like “what is happening????”

You get distracted by a booth that catches your eye, give Cedric a kiss on the cheek and tell him you’ll be right back after checking it out while he catches up with his friend

You run off, and a smug looking Greylock walks up beside a still grumpy but slightly softer Cedric

“Well, they’re quite a catch, aren’t they, Cedric old chum?” He says, giving his comrade a wink

“I will fucking stab you” is what Cedric wish he could’ve said, however he settled for crossing his arms and grumbling something incoherent, good call, Ceddy. 

over time the more you and Greylock cross paths, the more you guys get to know and enjoy each others company. Much to Cedric’s distaste. 

You really don’t understand what Cedric doesn’t like about Greylock, but you decide not to push any questions on him for now

every time you two hang out, Greylock dazzles you with magic tricks, humors you with harmless pranks on the villagers, and occasionally attempts to woo you say via conjuring a lovely pink tulip for you.

You always have so much fun with Greylock. He was charming, witty, and smarter than people gave him credit for... sort of like your Ceddy. They didn’t see it, but they have a lot more in common then they both think

it’s not like Cedric stops you from hanging out with Greylock, god forbid he let himself be one of those boyfriends. He’d sooner throw himself back in the dungeon than control any aspect of your life (unless of course you were cheating on him or harming yourself in any way shape or form, stuff like that, but those aren’t relevant here so we’re not gonna unpack all of that)

however he starts getting suspicious when you two act a little more than friendly around him...

you were bidding Greylock goodbye when you gave him a small kiss on his cheek, to which he smiled and told you he’d keep it there forever. 

this made you laugh, he always did

heading back to give Cedric a hug, he continued to stare off in the direction that his “old friend” had taken off to

“what was that about?” he asks

“huh?” 

“Th-that, that kiss you just gave to him.”

You wave your hand. “Aw, hun, don’t worry about it. It was just a friendly little kiss.” You said, gently and playfully pinching his cheek which always caused the blood to rush to his face from embarrassment.

Cedric trusts you, he always has. It’s Greylock he doesn’t trust. They way that man looks at you... he knows what it means because he’s had to give you the exact same look for a whole year before you realized he liked you. However Cedric was much less crude about it. 

he’s not proud to say it’s something he thinks and worries about a lot, his own insecurities of not being good enough slipping in every now and again, not that he’d tell you though

but he’s shockingly unsurprised when you and Greylock, as gently as possible, approach him about a relationship.

“All three of us, together! I think... I think it can really work out.”

“And I concur! Whadaya say, Cedric old chum?”

Immediately Cedric’s first thought was “No. Absolutely not.” No way was he willing to let you go about gallivanting with this jester of a sorcerer in a romantic sense. 

It’s not that he didn’t want you to be happy, he really did, but it was Cedric who wholeheartedly denied he and Greylock could ever get along in a romantic sense, they were barely able to stay cordial for Merlin’s sake!

he’s shaking a little, but gulps down his internal thoughts and sighs. “I’ll think about it.” 

the following week is a bit awkward for you two, every time you touch Cedric’s shoulder, it’s the lightest of feather touches and you speak to him extra carefully and softly, because you know this sort of proposal is telling him one thing

that he isn’t good enough for you 

it comes to a point when you’re both lying in bed, and he’s finally ready to talk about it with you. He takes both your hands in his and locks his hazel eyes onto yours. 

“Y/n, I-I really want you to be happy and... and have a fulfilling relationship but... before I continue, I need you to promise that... that it isn’t me. Is it?”

you know exactly what he means by that. And how could it be him? He was looking at you with wide eyes glossy on the verge of tears, it made your heart shatter and those tiny pieces melt. 

“Oh, Cedric...” you brought a hand to his cheek, softly caressing him. You never used his full name unless you were being completely serious. It was always either ‘Ceddy’ or one of the various sweet pet names you had for him. “Of course it’s not you. You’re perfect.” 

He’s hesitant at first, but he felt the honesty drip from your tone and radiating from your soul. Softening, he smiled. “Well, in that case, I suppose I don’t see the harm in you two having a relationship.” 

You are beyond excited and leap into his arms for a hug, blurting out a thousand ‘thank you’s’ while feverishly kissing him up and down the side of his face, sending Cedric into a giggling mess. 

Goodness gracious you were adorable, if he caught Greylock treating you with even the slightest bit of mistreatment, he’d be sure to cut all ties between you two and that monocle-wearing warlock immediately

as time went on, you and Greylock became inseparable. Prompting you to always convince Cedric to join in on your dates.

at first he’d only come along for you, and any time Greylock attempted to put the moves on him Cedric swerved that bitch.

 but the more those two are forced to spend time together for your sake, the more they actually start to bond

at first, it’s mostly over their adoration for you

“Isn’t y/n just the cutest little crum, Cedric ol’ pal?”

“I suppose I can’t argue with you there, but do be careful with the “cute” word around them, they absolutely hate it.”

“Oh? I bet they’re adorable when they’re mad~”

Cedric rolls his eyes playfully. “Oh on the contrary, they’re horrifying. But... their cheeks do puff up and get red and it’s admittedly endearing.” 

this was the start of a beautiful... romance? friendship? nobody really knows, least of all Cedric and Greylock

you notice how much more Cedric starts to loosen up around Greylock, he actually laughed at one of his jokes for the first time! It made your stomach do flips and your heart squeeze itself in your chest.

it makes you so happy to see your boys getting along <3

and it’s only a matter of time until Greylock had successfully won Cedric over, and he needs to announce it in the most dramatic way possible

he storms into the workshop one day, where you waited for Cedric because he “had a surprise” for you

Greylock kicks down the door with Cedric being carried in his arms (much to his embarrassment, his arms crossed and his face on fire) and loudly proclaims that he had finally “claimed Cedric’s ass”

this causes Cedric to yell out a surprised, “WHAT?” and push Greylocks face away while he stumbles out of his arms. “I did not agree to you saying that!”

too bad, it got you laughing and Cedric blushing, which is all Greylock wanted out of this to be honest

from then on, you three are the most chaotic polyamory in Enchanica

Greylock’s always trying to get you both to laugh, thought it’s easier for you then Cedric

yes, he occasionally resorts to tickling him, and Cedric is extremely ticklish 

they still bicker a lot though, and you’re typically the peace-keeper. Though luckily none of you actually argue.

it’s usually over petty things, like how the bed shouldn't be used as a cracker platter Greylock 

“Well then why is it called a spread sheet, Cedric?”

yeah this is usually how mornings go. 

obviously they’ve calmed down a lot since dating though, knowing if they wanted this relationship to work, they’d have to be more level-headed with each other

dates are always super fun though! You guys alternate between your interests and even have a whole weekly date-night chart (courtesy of Cedric)

Greylock, because he’s a clown at heart, really likes the stereotypical “fun” dates like amusement parks, carnivals, swimming, dancing, bars, ect. 

Cedric is partial staying inside because at heart, he’s an introvert and an old soul, so a day inside the workshop with the two of you, some tea, snacks, and a game of chess is more than enough for him (in a modern AU he’d enjoy movie nights at home and cuddling on the couch, fantasy/fantastical being his favorite genre)

you’re a little more adventurous than Cedric, but not quite as outgoing as Greylock, so you enjoy outdoor dates like festivals, nature walks, concerts, picnics, all that Fun Summer jazz. 

however if you guys literally have no idea what else to do, going out for dinner is your go-to.

Cuddle-piles that turn into naps??? 100%

Cedric clings onto you and Greylock while Greylock has you in his lap, and his arm around Cedric while you three are lying down

Greylock is one for giving you both creative surprise smooches. Once he gave Cedric one of those squirt flowers but instead of spraying him with water a pair of comically puckered lips jumped out and planted one right on Cedric’s mouth. 

Of course what he thought was gonna be a sweet gift turned into a gag, but Greylock made it up by giving him a real peck on the lips after

he tried the same thing on you after, but you were smart and declined, even after Greylock pretending to pout and beg you to take it lest he die from your lack of love, but you weren’t having it and laughed while tapping his nose

“Nice try, hunny bun.”

you know that meme that’s like “What if I put the oven to 40000000 degrees and baked the cookies for 1 second?” and one friend on the line is like “no wtf you’ll burn your house” and the other is like “lmao do it”? Yeah, that’s Greylock, Cedric, and you, in that order. 

[arthurflecksgirl]

Your first Halloween spent with Arthur

Arthur never celebrated Halloween before, so you try to give him the best Halloween experience possible.

Apartment 8J seemed different today. The room was filled with the delicious smell of pumpkin spice and scented candles. Countless of them burning in every corner of the room, drowning Arthurs home in golden light. Warm blankets and cushions helped to create an cosy atmosphere while the ceiling was decorated wth all kinds of Halloween images. Self made pumkin lanterns standing on the floor....

You took a step back to get the full view of the apartment. This was perfect. At least ypu hoped so. You tried to see your result through the eyes of someone who had never experienced Halloween before, thinking this was pretty impressive.

The last pumkin was still waiting to be carved. But that was for Arthur only. You couldnt wait to see what kinda face he would choose for that little guy.

A quick look into the mirror left you wondering if he would like the costume you choose for tonight. You wanted it to be perfect. You wanted him to look at you with his big puppy eyes and melt. The black cat costume was pretty tight and not as comfortable as you hoped for, but if he thought it was sexy it would be worth it. You knew from the images he glued into his diary that he was very much into cat costumes. So why not give it a try on Halloween? Its the perfect night to be his black kitten.

You smiled at your own thoughts and made your way into the kitchen. The pumpkin soup was finally done, so as the self baked spooky muffins. Hopefully the smell of it would make Arthur hungry. At least a bit, since his meds made it difficult for him to eat . You placed the food on the table in front of the couch and lit another orange candle before you left him a little love note "May your first Halloween be just as magical as our love for each other". You drew a little pumpkin with heart shaped eyes and stuck the note between the muffins.

Done.

Now everything you had to do was wait until Arthur would be home.

You checked the clock. He`ll be back from the childrens hospital soon.  You sat down on the couch and sighed. Your love for him was immeassurable. Just thinking of him making the kids at the hospital smile with his little dances and magic tricks made your eyes water. He was the purest soul wih the biggest heart you have ever met. All he wanted in life was to see people happy. And all you wanted in life was to give those smiles back to him. He needed it. He needed smiles and love and happiness so desperately and he deserved all of it and more.

You knew for a fact that Arthur never experienced halloween before. Or christmas. Or his very own birthday even. His so called family would have never done anything for him. Not even when he was little. Especially not when he was little. Arthur grew up unloved, which created a huge hole in his heart only you were able to fill. And you filled it with your unconditional love every day. You filled it with warm and cosy light until he was radiating it on its own.

And tonight you would give him the most memorable Halloween ever. He would tell your kids about it some day, if you would ever have kids together.

A noise. Keys turning in the door lock. He was back. You checked your hair to make sure to look perfect for him and headed to the door. Arthur was falling into your arms, realizing that something was different. His puffy Carnival wig felt tickelish against your cheek.

"Y/N?.....let me take a look at you....wow...you`re.....wow. Oh my god...." if he wasnt wearing his clown make up you would have been able to see him blushing. Cat costumes really did a lot to him. "Thats just...." his eyes started glimmering "You`re a cat!"

You took off his big clown nose to kiss the tip of his own nose  before you put it back on, laughing "Yeah....I guess I am. Do you like it?"

Arthur wrapped his arms around your hips, staring at you with love "If I.....Like it? You are kidding me right? This is making me wild....Oh my god. I need to kiss you."

You couldnt help but laugh at his cuteness "So what are you waitng for?"

Arthur pulled you closer and pushed you softly against the wall. His hands all over you while he kissed you passionately. You could still taste the cigarette he was smoking before he got into the elevator. He grabbed his wig and threw it on the floor. As soon as his brown curls got exposed you put your hands into them. Oh how familar they felt between your fingers.

"My sexy, little kitten" he whispered into your mouth "I`m so glad to be home with you. I missed you so much. " His hands wandered down your legs. You wanted him. Now. But this had to wait. Time was running out. The kids will soon be ringing the door.

"I missed you,too, darling. "You held his face between your hands "But you gotta wait until tonight to see this kitten get undressed".

Arthur frowned "Baby?"

"We`ve got a lot to do today. Look!"

You turned him around to show him what he haven`t seen yet.  Arthur glanced at the living room "Oh my god. Y/N! This is....this looks wonderful. You made all of this by yourself?"

"Sure. Everything for you, Arthur. I know you never celebrated Haloween before. I just wanna make sure today is gonna be your first".

Arthur walked through the room, observing all the details of your decoration. "I love the candles and it smells so good. I love everything. This is amazing. Thank you so much!" He sat down and lit himself a cig, noticing the bowls on the table.

"You made pumkin soup and muffins! Oh baby, I dont even know if I deserve all of this....you`re the best." he inhaled the smoke and leaned back on the couch "I dont even know what to say".

You sat down beside him, toching his colorful tie, kissing his white cheek "I`m glad you like it. We gotta hurry a bit, the kids will start with their trick or treat tour soon!"

"Ohhhh! I`ve always wanted to give them sweets but I never had the money to buy them anything..."

"I got some goodies for them. You can hand it to them when they`re at the door."

"Awesome!" he smiled "Do you think they would like to hear some jokes? Or see some of my magic tricks?"

"Of course, Artie. I´m sure they will love it. You will be the only one showng them some tricks. They will tell all their friends about you. I am sure."

Arthurs eyes started to shine thinking of this "I will show them some of my best tricks, I swear.  But.... I`ve got no time to change my outfit. I`m just a regular clown right now." He put his cig into the ahtray, looking worried.

You grabbed his hand and lead him to the make up table in the bedroom "Dont worry, we will change Carnival to be a little bit scary".

Arthur sat down and closed his eyes "Thats a good idea! I know you`ve got some great make up skills. "

You started to cover his face with a bit of fake blood and gave the whole face paint a darker look to it. Arthur didnt moved through the whole process. Painting his face made you fall in love with every single wrinkle over and over again. His facial features always managed to drive you crazy, even when most of them kept hiding under all the make up. You could still see it through. You knew exacly where his birth marks and spots were hiding. Feeling the urge to kiss his make up off and taste his bare skin underneath.

"Finished!"

Arthur took a close look into the mirrow "Thats great. Now I look like a Halloween worthy clown. Do you think I should put the wig back on?"

"No I think it looks darker this way."

"Okay" Arthur watched you getting the paper plates with the candy, feeling nervous for the first kids to arrive.

"I hope the kids will like me as a spooky clown,too"

"Of course they will. Kids love you eighter way. And they want to see something spooky today, you know?"

"Yeah. I guess you`re right Y/N"

10 minutes after you got ready the first group of kids was ringing the door. Arthur opened it and waited until they got out of the elevator. You handed him a pile of goodies.

"Hey kids! Looking good" Aww look at this scary skeleton boy right there!" The little boy giggled "Trick or treat Mr Clown!" he yelled.

Arthur frowned "Ohhh I sure dont wanna get into trouble today.....but I dont have any candy I´m afraid"

The kids made long faces.

Arthur pulled his magic wand and made a little dance. The kids looked at him with curiousity. Suddenly all sorts of candys fell out of his sleeve "Ahhhhhhh look at that! I guess I was wrong!"

The skeleton boy laughed "Hey, how did you do it? We wanna know!"

"Yeah " a little girl in a zombie costume said "We wanna know".

Arthur picked up the candy and handed it to them, blinking "Shhhht....Its magic!"

"Wow!" the smallest one of the kids said "Thank you so much Mr Clown."

Arthur smiled at you as he closed the door again and fell into your arms "Did you see that darling? They loved it. They loved me. "

You stroke his sweaty hair "I told you so!"

Seeing Arthurs face light up meant the world to you.

Another ring of the doorbell.

"Ohhhhh more kids, Artie. Grab your stuff!"

Arthur grabbed the candy and opened the door again.

A scary pirate and a bloody meremaid stood in front of him "Trick or treat!"

"Ummmm......" Arthur  acted like he was thinking hard "Not sure if I got something for you. At least you can tell me why the clown got to the doctor?"

The little pirate was looking overwhelmed "What?"

"Why did the clown go to the doctor?" he repeated.

The meremaid whispered something in the boys ear "Ha! I know it! Because he felt funny!"

Arthur clapped his hands "Thats was the right answer! So this is all for the both of you" he handed them two plates of sweets "Ohhhhh , thats a lot. Thank you Mister!" the girl giggled as they left.

Arthur closed the door and felt more than happy "It feels so good to see them smile" he sighed. The next group of kids got their candy for singing "If you happy and you know it" with him and you couldnt help but crying a happy tear while watching it. Seeing him with kids made you think that he would be the best dad ever. Maybe you should ask him what he thinks about being parents.

After it started to get too late for kids being out on the streets Arhur fell back onthe couch. Happy about the outcome of the evning.

"You did great, Arthur. You made a lot of kids happy today"

"You think so?"

"Yeah"

"Thank you!"

You grabbed the last pumpkin "So Artie, its your turn now. I will tell you how to do it and you will carve this little guy. Better think about what kinda face you want him to have".

"Oh I never did this before."

"We`ll do it together" you said, helping him to cut it open and take the guts out. Arthur couldnt help but laugh "This feels funny to the touch" .

"I know. Okay so now that its hollow you can start drawing a face on it and then you take this and start to cut it out."

Arthur drew a big smiling clown face on it and took the tiney knife to carve it out. The result looked pretty good. He took a tealight and placed it on the right spot.

"My first pumpkin lamp ever".

"Its a great one. I love that you choosed a clown face."

You placed it right in front of the couch so you could see it for the rest of the night.

"Now its your turn to eat something. Wanna watch a scary movie together and get comfortabe?"

Arthur looked at the Muffins while you put a tape in and started the movie.

As soon as you got back on the couch you covered him with his fave blanket and crawled underneath. He immediately took you in his loving arms.

Arthur grabbed a muffin and took a bite. You ate one,too.  "I love those little  sugar spiders you put on top of it. " He now noticed the little note you write to him. "May your first Hallooween be just as magical as our love for each other....oh god, you`re the cutest catlady out there!" He took another bite.  "Its delicious. I wish I had an normal appetite. I think my stomach cant handle more than two of them at once."

"I know, darling, dont worry. Go slow okay. Maybe I can feed you some soup?"

Arthur nodded after he finished half of  the second muffin and let you feed him the warm pumpkin soup. "It tastes so good, its impossible to say no to this." He licked his red painted lips. His hair looked like dark gold in the candle light. Arthur was so focused on the movie and how well you treated him , he wasnt even aware that he managed to eat the whole plate.

"I`m proud of you, Arthur. You just finished your soup."

"Oh, really? Well thats on you. Thank you. Tonight I dont have to go to bed with an empty stomach. "

You put the plate away and rested your had on his tummy before you pulled up his vest to kiss his lower belly , which was now sicking out a tiney bit.

Arthur started to stroke your hair in the most gentle way "So.....what are we gonna do now, Miss kitty cat?"

You slowly started to unbotton his shirt, grinning.

"Oh I see you`ve got something on your mind" he chuckled, wrapping his hands around your waist to turn you over. He was now on top of you, smirking. "Are you afraid of the scary clown? And what he could do to you?" he chuckled.

Your opened the botton of his carnival pants "Um......maybe a little bit?"

Arthur leaned in to kiss you as the weight of his body was covering you like the most comfortable blanket in the world "You better be. Tonight  I`m gonna make you purr!"

[celosiaa]

Submission by @entitynumber5: Hi Connor, I hope you’re having a WONDERFUL birthday and that you get to take a break from studying to do the things you enjoy and just have the lovely day you deserve!!! For this morning’s “write what I like” sprint (trying a new method of getting it all out before I have to put the brain into study mode), I wrote a lil something about 🎃 spooky season birthdays 🎃set in the Emmaverse… which turned out kind of long and a bit sappy. So there is no pressure to read it! I just love these characters :’) the working title is “Martin and Jon get proven wrong by an adorable five year old”.

Content warnings: brief mentions of blood, alcohol and minor injury (in relation to Martin working a Halloween paramedic shift); food.

Emma is obsessed with birthdays. Just not her own.

She turned five in May, and no matter how special they tried to make the day—with rainbow layer cake and carefully-selected presents and a visit to the roller-skating rink with her best friends—she didn’t seem half as excited as when it was someone else’s birthday. She would hardly sleep the night before friends’ parties. She spent hours wrapping the presents she picked for them with ribbons and bows and even confetti stuffed inside the paper. The only time they could encourage her to practice the piano for her weekly lessons was when she played the Happy Birthday song over FaceTime for her friends’ birthdays that were during school holidays.

The only thing Emma seems to have held onto from her own birthday is the notebook given to her Georgie and Melanie. Martin seems to remember there being two: one with little cartoon ghost drawn in the front by Georgie and the other with a scribble of the Admiral by Melanie. But Emma only carries the one around with her everywhere, and Martin is starting to doubt his own memory about there being a duplicate.

She has it with her now, as they sit outside the lecture theatre where Jon is currently teaching. In the too-big chair beside the door, her legs swing as she holds the notebook very close, staring intently at its pages while she wriggles her fluffy purple pen in thought.

“Daddy,” Emma says, in that voice that means she has a Very Serious Question, “When is your birthday?”

Martin is still a little dazed from nearly a week of night shifts. It’s the first time in six days that he hasn’t been working or sleeping at this time in the afternoon, and while walking with Emma to Jon’s work to surprise him at the end of the day seemed like a nice idea in practice, he really wishes he was lying on the sofa. They could be watching Peppa Pig for the thousandth time. Or getting started on dinner, which he isn’t going to let Jon make after a long day of teaching. He’s been mentally calculating how many hours it is until he can go to bed, how many tasks he has to do before then.

This feels like a selfish thought, though, and he pushes it aside quickly in favour of smiling at Emma. “My birthday?”

“Yes,” Emma replies, still very grave, “That’s what I said. At school today, Miss Jones made us all put stickers on the big calendar on the wall for our birthdays. I wrote down all of my friends’ birthdays.”

“That’s nice.”

“And now I want to write down yours.”

“Okay, well, my birthday is next month.”

Emma frowns. “Next month. That’s…” she counts on her fingers until she seems to reach the answer she’s looking for. “October?”

“It is!” Martin grins. “Well done.”

Emma’s little frown doesn’t ease. “What day?”

“Well, do you know how many days are in October?”

Emma thinks. Shakes her head.

“There are thirty-one days in October,” Martin tells Emma, “And my birthday is on the very last day.”

Emma nods and returns to her notebook, slowly enunciating the words as she writes them down: “Oc-to-ber three-one.”

Martin wonders if Emma realises his birthday coincides with Halloween. Besides birthdays, she still doesn’t seem too interested in dates, no matter how many times her teacher makes her write them at the top of every page in her workbook. And during previous years, they celebrated Martin’s birthday the day before or after Halloween itself, so they can separate the two events, although perhaps she doesn’t remember.

Before Martin can ask, the door of the lecture theatre opens and students start filing out. Emma puts away her notebook and pen, her frown of concentration replaced by a glowing smile as she waits, bouncing excitedly in the chair, for her Baba to notice them waiting just outside.

*

“Jon,” Martin whisper-shouts as he tiptoes into the house after his shift, hoping he doesn’t wake Emma—but that his husband knows it’s urgent. “Jon, Jon, Jon.”

Jon emerges from the kitchen, wearing a pair of yellow washing up gloves dripping soap suds and a look of alarm. “What’s wrong?”

Martin ushers him back into the kitchen and shuts the door as quietly as possible, hoping it won’t wake Emma—or, worse yet, the cats, who will sit outside any closed door and cry to be let inside no matter what activity they were engaged in before.

“Martin,” Jon says, “What’s going on?”

“They just released the shifts for the next few weeks,” Martin replies, “And I’m working.”

“Well, good. I should hope so.”

“On my birthday.”

Jon’s expression merges into one of comprehension: Emma. And her newfound obsession with birthdays. “Ah.”

“Yep.”

“I don’t suppose you could swap shifts with someone?” Jon asks.

Martin sits down at the table, lowering his head into his hands. He wants to shower, change out of his paramedic uniform, but he knows he won’t be able to focus on anything else until they’ve had this conversation. “No one’s going to willingly take a Halloween shift. For a start, Andrew is terrified of clowns. And people are usually drunk, and it’s actually really hard to tell the difference between real and fake blood.”

“We could celebrate the day after,” Jon says, taking off the washing up gloves and sitting opposite Martin. He reaches across the table to take Martin’s hand. “I mean, you were born five minutes before midnight. It wouldn’t be a lie so much as a… slight shifting of the truth.”

“Jonathan Sims.” Martin gapes across the table at him. “Are you suggesting we lie to our daughter?”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“No, Martin,” Jon says again, “I’m simply suggesting we separate your birthday from Halloween, as we have done every year, and not draw attention to the fact because our daughter is currently obsessed with other peoples’ birthdays.”

“And it might upset her if she knew we were actually celebrating on the wrong day.”

“Exactly.”

Martin sighs. “I don’t know. It feels… sort of wrong.”

“Apparently, children under the age of seven have no concept of the passing of time and—”

“Did Tim tell you that?”

“No.”

“Oh, god. It wasn’t Helen, was it? Please tell me you haven’t been having philosophical discussions about parenting with Helen again.”

“Martin,” Jon interrupts, “It was in the parenting book you gave me.”

“Huh. I don’t remember that chapter. Oh, god, maybe I should re-read it. The whole thing. Beginning to end. I—”

“Martin.” Jon squeezes his hand. “You deserve a day of your own. Tim and Sasha already agreed to take Emma trick-or-treating on Halloween. She will be focused on that for most of the day; she’s already talking about how excited she is. Let us spend the day after that treating you to all the wonderful things you deserve on your birthday—and every day.”

Martin manages a small smile, although every instinct inside of him is telling him not to accept Jon’s proposal. Not because he is worried about the ethics of manipulating their daughter’s concept of time—although this is a concern, too—but because he doesn’t want Jon to feel like he has to do any of this. To make a whole day about him, even if he takes great pleasure and care in doing the same for Jon on his birthday.

“Thanks, Jon,” Martin murmurs.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Now, why don’t you go and have a warm shower? I’ve put the hot water on so it shouldn’t run out while you’re in there this time.”

Martin smirks. “Are you saying I smell?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Martin presses, teasing now. “Because I did have to treat a farmer who’d been kicked by one of his cows this evening.”

“Okay, alright, yes. Yes, you smell. Please go and have a shower.”

Martin laughs and gets up from the table. “I’m going, I’m going.”

“That really is disgusting, Martin.”

“It’s actually a pretty funny story. About the farmer, I mean. He’s fine, by the way. I’ll tell you about it when I’m out of the shower.”

Jon shakes his head. “Why today, of all days, have you abandoned the notion of showering before you sit down at the dinner table?”

“I had something important to tell you!”

“Fine. Alright.” Jon shakes his head again. “Now please have a shower. For your sake as much as mine.”

“Love you,” Martin sing-songs as he exits the kitchen. He hears Jon’s gentle laugh chase him into the warmth of the bathroom, where Jon has put on the radiator and left him a fresh towel. He smiles, feeling his love for Jon balloon in his chest, and settles into the sensation being home.

*

Martin’s Halloween—and birthday—shift is so busy that he barely has time to check his phone. Tim has sent an album of photos of him, Sasha and Emma out trick-or-treating, dressed as Mike, Sulley and Boo from Monsters, Inc. Jon has been updating him on the number of trick-or-treaters who have visited their house (fifty-four, as of ten thirty p.m.), and how Iris and the cats are holding up with the constant ringing of the doorbell.

On his break, Martin quickly texts Tim to watch his glucose levels and not to forget his insulin (to which Tim replies yes, sir with a number of yellow heart emojis). He also texts Sasha to say she can take home any of the Skittles they get on their expedition, since they’re her favourite but Emma hates them. He tells Jon he loves him and to give Iris a pet on his behalf and that there’s some spare sweets under the sink, if they’re running low. Then it’s back to work.

The shift passes quickly, in the end. There is so much to do and no time to think about anything other than their patients. He does get given a toffee apple by someone dressed as a Minion at a student house party, and he narrowly avoids getting his face painted by twins who are the same age as Emma while his team are checking their mother’s twisted ankle after a fall trying to get to the door in time for a last-minute delivery of sweets. It’s not an awful shift, but it is, like always, exhausting and difficult in the same measure as it’s rewarding and hopeful.

By the time he gets home, all he wants to do is sleep. Emma is tucked into bed, fast asleep, while her nightlight projects solar systems onto the ceiling. Jon, too, is sleeping soundly with the cats for company. Iris barely looks up from her bed when he comes inside, but she gives a little wag of her tail each time he passes down the hallway to shower or get a drink of water. There’s a plastic pumpkin full of Emma’s sweets on the table, next to the empty bowl that had once been full of treats to hand out to their visitors.

Martin’s smiles—it looks like a night well-spent for his family—and this thought carries him through an exhausted shower before he crawls into bed next to Jon. Jon must be tired, too, because he doesn’t stir. Martin makes a mental note to check his joints aren’t playing up from all the getting up and down from the sofa during the trick-or-treat visits.

Sometime later, Martin wakes to the soft click of the door as it opens. He squints against the light bursting around the edges of the still-shut curtains, expecting to see Jon tiptoeing to the bathroom to get ready for the day. Instead, Emma is creeping inside, holding a tray of pancakes while Jon follows behind, balancing two cups of tea.

“Happy birthday!” Emma says, as she places the tray down on the bed next to Martin. “We made spooky pancakes!”

Martin rubs the sleep from his eyes and sits up fully. He glances at the alarm clock next to the bed: 11:42 a.m. He���s been asleep for just over six hours, but it somehow feels longer and yet not enough. “It’s not—”

Jon clears his throat.

“Oh. Oh, thank you, Emma! These are wonderful.”

The pancakes are, indeed, spooky. Emma has used a pumpkin cookie cutter to shape them and then drawn on funny faces with fruit and syrup. No longer responsible for balancing the tray, Emma looks at Jon, a little uncertain, and Jon nods in encouragement as he places their cups of tea down on the bedside table.

“I made you a present,” Emma says almost shyly.

Martin smiles gently at her. “That’s very kind of you. Thank you, Emma.”

Emma pulls something off the tray. It’s the second notebook, the one Martin thought he’d imagined, wrapped in a glittery silver ribbon and some confetti streamers. She offers it to Martin, and he takes it carefully, holding it as if it might fall apart in his hands.

“You can open it,” Emma tells him seriously.

Martin unwraps the ribbon. Emma takes it from him, along with the confetti, perhaps to reuse for another present. Slowly, Martin cracks open the notebook to the first page. There is Georgie’s ghoulish sketch, alongside a new inscription in Emma’s handwriting: Sorted Poems By Emma K. Blackwood-Sims. For Daddy’s Birthday. October 31.

Martin feels something tender and soft unfurl in his chest, until he’s certain he is going to cry. He begins to flick through the pages, but Emma says: “Wait!”

Martin stops. “What is it?”

“Look.” Emma climbs on to the bed, elbowing her way into the space next to him, and reaches across Martin to open the notebook on the first page again, where her inscription is. She points at her name.

“It’s meant to say assorted poems,” Jon says, “But neither of us were sure how to spell it.”

Martin laughs, the sound a little wet and shaky with the tears he can feel building. Jon hates spelling. It’s his least favourite type of homework to help Emma with.

“Look,” Emma says again, “I wrote my name like yours!”

Martin smiles. “Blackwood-Sims? But that’s your name, too.”

“No,” Emma insists, “Emma K Blackwood-Sims. Like you! Like a proper poet.”

“Oh,” Martin murmurs, “Oh.”

He’s sure he and Jon will laugh about this later. Martin doesn’t actually have a middle name. Emma does, but it certainly doesn’t begin with K. But right now, he feels tears on his cheeks as he takes in his daughter’s hard work.

Emma reaches for his face, patting away his tears with the palms of her hands. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, I promise,” Martin replies, sniffling in an attempt to draw back the tears, “I’m happy. And I love you so, so much.”

Emma frowns. “Will pancakes make you feel better?”

“I’m alright, Emma. I promise. These are happy tears.”

“Pancakes always make me feel better,” Jon announces, climbing onto the other side of the bed and sliding back underneath the covers. He settles Emma down in the middle of them, handing her a mug full of juice. She doesn’t drink tea yet, but she doesn’t like to be left out when they do, so she has her own mug.

“These look wonderful,” Martin tells them, arranging the tray so they can all reach. Emma takes a plate and hands it to Jon, then does the same for Martin, before grabbing the final one for herself. “You’re getting very good at pancakes.”

“Baba said we can learn French toast next,” Emma says.

“Wow. That’s big.”

Emma nods. “It’s more difficult than normal toast.”

Martin chuckles. “It certainly is.”

They distribute the pumpkin-shaped pancakes between them. While they eat in bed, they tell each other stories about their Halloween night. Jon talks about the costumes of the people who visited their house, how many compliments they got on their pumpkin carving skills. Emma narrates her trick-or-treating adventure with Tim and Sasha. Martin shares the safest tales of his nightshift, the funny costumes he saw and the extravagant decorations at the parties they visited.

Martin is exhausted again by the time they’ve finished the pancakes. Jon insists on taking their empty plates back to the kitchen and making them another cup of tea, while Emma snuggles against Martin’s side. She rests her head on his shoulder.

“I know it’s not your birthday, Daddy,” Emma whispers.

Half-asleep until now, Martin grunts himself awake. “What was that, sweetheart?”

“I know it’s not really your birthday,” Emma tells him, not moving from where she’s clinging to his arm, “Your birthday was yesterday. On Halloween.”

“Oh, Emma, we—”

“It’s okay,” Emma says, “It’s like when we had a party on Saturday even though my birthday was on Wednesday because I had school.”

“Yeah.” Martin stokes his hand through Emma’s hair. “It is a bit like that.”

“I still get to say happy birthday.”

“You do.”

“But can we have a party on the right day next year?” Emma asks.

“For your birthday?”

“No, for your birthday.”

“Oh.” Martin laughs. “Yes. It might not be a party, if I have to work again, but we can do this. This is lovely. Thank you for being so thoughtful. And I’m excited to read your poems.”

“Baba said they were good.”

“Well, that’s high praise indeed.”

“It was fun.”

“That’s good. That’s what matters most when you make things.“

Emma wriggles around until she’s grinning up at him. “Can I read your poems now?”

Martin sighs, barely supressing a laugh. This isn’t the first time she’s asked. “Emma.”

She sticks her bottom lip out, pouting in a way that breaks Martin’s heart to the point where he can never turn her down when she’s looking at him like this. “Please.”

“Alright,” Martin gives in, “I’ll read you one tonight. Before bed.”

“Yay!” Emma’s grin grows even wider. "Thank you, Daddy.”

“Thank you. And I love you very, very much.”

“Love you, too.”

They settle back down. Martin dozes a little again, a smile on his face, as he thinks about telling Jon later that their daughter very much does understand the concept of time. There really are some things parenting books don’t prepare you for—like the way his love seems to grow with each day he gets with Emma and Jon, even when he thinks it’s impossible, that he already loves them more than any person can.

Some things are gifts even when they are not given as such, and Martin is beginning to allow himself to think of his life with his daughter and his husband as one. He didn’t ask for it with words or lists. He doesn’t know, even now, if he deserves it. But it’s his. And he will treasure it always.

Not featured: Martin realising what he’s agreed to and frantically trying to find a non-angsty poem he can read to his five-year-old daughter. Jon thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

<3

[avauntus]

2020 favs: (short) fic recs

I am stealing this idea from @macgyver-sheriff, who has no clue who I am, but whose post I saw go across my dash. Thank you! 👋

Would you like some recs for the holiday season? - I too would like to share love for my favorite things I read that were written this year! <3

I’m going to do this in two parts - the short fics (10k or less, generally one-shot), and another post for the long or series fics I loved this year (it’s 2020, I figure we can use too much of a good thing?)

( @staidwaters - I’m ‘disqualifying’ your works because I’m biased, sorry! Look away! Unless you want recs!) 

"Congratulations, Get Rich" (9,238 words) by Attila (The Untamed - modern AU)

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year, which means Wei Wuxian has to get all of his bad decisions out of the way tonight.

Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng, Mianmian are all so screamingly perfect as modern versions of themselves in this, and it is KNOCK DOWN HILLARIOUS. Wei Wuxian is just a screaming queer disaster (affectionate) - as he should be.

Excerpt:

After a long beat, Lan Xichen sinks gracelessly into the chair Lan Wangji had been sitting in earlier. “I just want to be absolutely clear,” he says delicately, “that you are currently under the impression that my brother has no romantic feelings for you. That is what you’re saying to me right now, yes?”

“Yes?” Wei Wuxian says, feeling desperately confused. “Obviously? Why?”

“Because at least one of you is very stupid, and I’m trying to figure out who,” Lan Xichen tells him, sounding distracted. It’s the rudest thing Wei Wuxian has ever heard him say, and his mouth drops open slightly.

“caved to the careless” (6,708 words) by ilgaksu (The Untamed/MDZS - Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen)

Love is a choice you make - like this, and this, and this.

Have you ever read a writer whose work is so distinctly itself that you can feel yourself slipping in time even as you keep going? That’s not very articulate, but it’s the best way I can describe everything of ilgaksu’s I’ve read. Their fics are the same emotional register as having the breath knocked out of you after a fall. This was the first one I read, and I think it ends well-- with what Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen find along the path-- but it’s still heavy. Discussions of canon-compliant character death and grief/mourning here.

Excerpt:

He pauses. Until this very moment, he was unsure who to ask for. He has heard the rumours of the Yiling Patriarch’s ongoing residence here, about Zewu-jun’s seclusion: he’s dead, but even the dead are not free from gossip. But he remembers a courtyard, nearly two decades ago, and the weight of eyes some might have called angry in their intensity. He remembers those same eyes, and how for the wear of the intervening years, they had kept the same essence: longing, yearning, a kind of small unspoken grief.

Song Lan had a dream once. A dream of a sect, bound not by blood, but by a shared belief in the right path. So many things are only an inheritance: shame is one of them.  

Love is a choice. Love is a choice, and you choose until you can’t.

“I am here,” he decides, carving the words into the dirt, every stroke of every character resolute, “To meet with Hanguang-jun. Please show this one the way to go.”  

“Green River Running” (8,169 words) by @rain-hat (Love in the Moonlight - post-canon AU)

5+1: Kim Byeong-yeon returns to the land of the living.

I skimmed through Love in the Moonlight during my quarantine summer (distinguishable from my “quarantine spring” or “quarantine fall” only by fireworks), and immediately upon finishing, thought: “Psht, they killed off their best character.” And then, something happened that never happens -- I went on ao3 and found the exact thing I was looking for, written far  better than I could have imagined. Kim Byeong-yeon is such a quiet yet powerfully subversive presence and the progression here is so masterfully done. This is true of all of rainhat’s work’s I’ve read, but this is a fine example-- I really treasure the warm humanism of them.

Excerpt:

People needed helping hands even more than they needed sympathetic ears, though. Over the last year, Hong Gyeong-rae and Byeong-yeon had built houses and planted crops side by side; negotiating with moneylenders here, helping small-folk secure their stores against bandits there. There was nothing courtly about Byeong-yeon’s capacity for labour, or his expectation of reward. Wherever he went, he worked from dawn to dusk, ate the food he was given, and slept under a roof if he was offered one.

It suited him, Hong Gyeong-rae thought, even though there was something outlandish about his gentle speech and palace manners in the midst of it all. But to behave in any other way would be untrue to his upbringing; nor was he the sort of man to whom it would occur to try. And after all, most people liked to be treated with courtesy; it did not come across as mockery from this solemn, severely dressed young man, who seemed to find no task too big or too small. Hong Gyeong-rae had seen him argue tax law with local councillors and stand up to highwaymen armed with nothing but a knife and staff. But he watched cooking pots for women who had to run to the fields to tide over the day’s labour, too; he wrote letters for them, and tolerated their fractious children and spoon-fed their bedridden elders, if that was what was called for.

“The Veritable Records of King Taejo: Year 2, Entry 208“ (9,857 words) by @sadviper (My Country: the New Age - Nam Seon-ho & Hwang Sung-rok slice-of-life)

Hwang Sung-rok eats his way to the bottom of a real estate scam, and Seon-ho and Yeon help (a little).

No one is out here doing it like SadViper. This is technically part of a series, but they can all be read separately. I did not realize I needed to see more of Nam Seon-ho in all his “type-A government official glory” until Viper started sketching him out for us, and as a bonus, we get to see Yeon, and Sung-rok as the world’s surliest caretaker (but don’t call him that). I have an authorial fallacy where I always think stories have to have some grand “plot” -- a “Maltese Falcon” to pull the reader along-- the genius of Viper’s work is she shows us exactly how interesting and important the day-by-day tiny choices and connections we make are, with an impeccable background of historical research to ground you in the setting.

Excerpt:

Nam Seon-ho was his master now. He was a strange one. He was a traitor, for helping the escaped Liaodong soldiers, but not, because he managed to wiggle his way back into Yi Seong-gye’s favor and was now a sixth-ranked inspector with the privilege of having personal audiences with the King. He was temperamental and belligerent from being the son of a slave mother and a lifetime subject of Lord Nam’s fantastic parenting philosophy. He was afflicted with perpetual guilt. And he was also one of the hardest working and most desperate people Sung-rok had ever known.

It was a terrible combination. He was not merely a disaster waiting to happen, but a disaster perambulating on two legs at the edge of a chasm. If Sung-rok intended to stay in service for long, he needed to find a way to cool down some of Seon-ho’s intensity, even though admittedly, it was what drew him to Seon-ho in the first place.

Thoughts like these plagued Sung-rok for a while. It was one thing to know a person; it was quite another thing to try to change them.

“Orison” (4,975 words) by @gravelghosts​ (aeli_kindara) (Supernatural 15x18 coda)

Cas says, I love you.

So! This rips my heart out, every time. All the times Dean imagines himself together with Cas...and then he imagines himself, if not happy, then thriving.

Jack: “What is the point...if everyone I care about is going to leave?”

Castiel: “The point is that they were here at all and you got to know them, you... When they're gone, it will hurt, but that hurt will remind you of how much you loved them.”

Excerpt:

The thing Dean tries to do is: listen.

Happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just — being. It’s in just saying it, Cas tells him, and Dean’s whole heart is screaming, No, but he shuts his mouth. He listens. He listens like his life fucking depends on it, which it does, in more ways than one.

“Sky Full of Song” (6,632 words) by @drivingsideways (Supernatural, finale 15x20 fix-it, Dean/Cas)

Or: The One in which Cas ghosted Dean.

Look. Look. If Cas(tiel) can yank Dean Winchester out of Hell, celestial-scream at him not once but twice, burn out a woman’s eyes like an utter clown before thinking “Huh, an Earthly vessel, guess that’s not just bullshit, then,” and when they finally work it out, Dean greets them with a knife to the chest and THEN they’ll spend twelve years misunderstanding each other and bickering, you had better believe these two are going to be disasters even in Heaven. Drivingsideways gives us all of that dynamic, with the found family of Jack and Mary as facilitators, and the happy resolution, which of course includes a true form “roughly the size of your Chrysler Building.” <3

Excerpt:

The thing is, Castiel doesn’t want Dean to feel obligated.

Dean has a streak of self-sacrifice that's as wide as the Caspian Sea, and Castiel doesn't want to be any more of a chore or obligation than they have been to Dean for all the long years of their—brotherhood.

Castiel had shocked Dean, to the core of him, with their confession, and Castiel had seen the swirling confusion, the fear, the panic, the shit what do I say, what do I do—how do I stop him—

So, no, Castiel would not be paying a visit anytime soon.

Of course, if Dean evinced an interest in meeting them, then Castiel would not stay away.

Castiel isn't that cruel.

(They have, on occasion, been exactly that cruel, but they are trying to outgrow it.)

Dean is still their friend.

Dean knows how to reach them, if he wants to.

(see? disasters. haha)

“The Rough” (3,267 words) by anactoria (Supernatural, finale -15x20- ‘fix-it’)

 Heaven can absolutely fucking wait.

Rec’ed for the concept more than the style (this is dialogue-heavy, as a lot of 15x20 fix-its tend towards), but I *love* this course-correction: After kicking around Heaven, Dean and Cas return to Earth to take their place as urban legends among the hunter community. Just for a while.

Excerpt:

But it isn’t life. That’s the thing. It’s awesome, but it isn’t life; life’s a hard, painful, infuriating mess, and Dean only got halfway through his own, and he feels cheated. For all he held it together for Sammy at the end, for all he tried to take Cas’s big moment-of-happiness speech on board, he feels cheated.

There’s supposed to be peace at the end. When you’re done.

Dean wasn’t done.

[calumcest]

you and i were fireworks that went off too soon - chapter eight

[ao3]

yes...i cant believe it either. i really thought i’d finish britpop before posting another chapter of this but then i also thought britpop would be 8k i am not just a clown i am the entire circus. anyway big thank yous to @kaleidoscopeminds and @clumsyclifford for reading through the original version of this chapter that i wrote 2 months ago and hated and never posted and giving me feedback that i could sit on for ages before gathering the willpower (see: procrastinating writing an essay) to actually edit it 

also i know i have been so absent lately i’m so sorry i have been so insanely busy you would not believe but i’m slowly starting to get into a routine so lets pray that perhaps my online presence will return. yeah you all thought you were rid of me not so fast bitches 

Luke takes Clifford out for a short walk in the morning, during which time Ashton showers and gets dressed, and as Luke’s trying to get Clifford to eat the food that he’s turning his nose up at for absolutely no discernible reason, Ashton says something about going down for breakfast, does Luke want anything? Luke looks up at him, shakes his head and mumbles something that he hopes sounds vaguely like no, I’m not hungry, and Ashton just nods as he closes the door behind him, leaving Luke in their too-small and yet somehow too-big hotel room. Luke should be able to breathe, now that Ashton’s gone, should be able to sit back and relax and exhale freely, but every new inhale is tinged with that slight scent of pine and oak and spice, bittersweet on Luke’s tongue. It’s too much, makes his stomach flip in a way that’s at least eighty percent unpleasant, makes his head hurt and his heart and fists clench because of that last twenty percent, and because he doesn’t have space, now, even when Ashton’s not there. 

They’ve got to be at the research centre at ten, and Ashton doesn’t get back from breakfast until half-nine, so Luke’s in a foul fucking mood by the time they’ve got their things together and hurried out of the hotel. Ashton gets them lost on the way to the tube, too, and they’re really pushed for time by the time they get to Russell Square, where the building they’re supposed to be in by now apparently is. Ashton has the gall to chivvy Luke along when he stops to re-tie his shoelace, and Luke has to grit his teeth to stop himself hissing something vitriolic and spiteful in Ashton’s direction, half-hopping the rest of the way to the building with a sloppily tied shoelace and ducking down to re-tie it again when Ashton strides over to the receptionist and asks where the soulmate study is supposed to be taking place. 

The bloke at reception directs them to a room on the third floor, but the lift is broken so they have to take the stairs, and Luke’s thighs are burning by the time they turn into the room the guy had directed them to. It looks like a classroom, all desks and chairs and a projector screen at the front, and there’s a slightly uncomfortable-looking cluster of people standing in awkward silence towards the back of the room. Ashton glances over at Luke, an is this it? Us and them? sort of glance, and Luke just shrugs jerkily, following in Ashton’s wake to hover about two metres away from the nearest couple to them. It’s a middle-aged woman and man who are standing about three feet apart, like there’s some kind of invisible force field between the two of them, angled as far away from each other as it’s possible to get. It would look almost comical, actually, how viscerally uneasy they look in each other’s presence, if Luke weren’t acutely aware of the way he and Ashton are also stood three feet apart, of the way he’s leaning as far to the right and away from Ashton as he can. 

“Hi,” he hears Ashton say brightly, and has to stifle a groan, letting his eyes flutter shut as he exhales heavily. Trust Ashton to be the only one to fucking strike up a conversation in an uncomfortably silent room. “I’m Ashton.”

“Uh, Sally,” the woman says, a little hesitantly. “And this is Pete.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Ashton says happily, like he’s not aware of the fact that every single person in the room is listening to their conversation. “How long have you known each- uh?” He cuts himself off, seeming to realise that that’s probably not the best question to ask, given the reason for the study, but Sally just nods, like she understands. 

“Uh,” Sally says, glancing at Pete. “Twelve years, or so? Um.” She coughs delicately, and then adds: “Pete’s my sister’s husband.” 

Oh, Jesus Christ, Luke thinks, as someone across the room makes a choked-sounding noise and hastily (and badly) disguises it as a cough. Maybe his situation with Ashton isn’t so bad, after all.

“Oh,” Ashton says, sounding surprised, and like he’s not really sure how he should respond to that. “I, uh.” He pauses, and then turns to gesture at Luke. “This is Luke. He’s my ex.” Luke grimaces, and raises a hand in an awkward wave as he shoots Ashton a glare that he hopes conveys do not fucking drop me in the deep end like that. Jesus fucking Christ.

“We’re exes too,” a couple across the room pipe up - a short, blonde woman and a taller, green-haired woman - and Ashton beams at them.

“We’re, uh,” a member of a couple standing incredibly stiffly opposite Ashton and Luke pipes up. “Olly here was my school bully.” Luke watches the muscles in this Olly’s jaw flex as it clenches, but he doesn’t say anything, just grits his teeth and stares steadfastly ahead of him, eyes boring into the wall a few feet to Luke’s right. 

“Vanessa’s my daughter-in-law,” a man at the back of the room says, nodding at the woman at least twenty years his junior standing to his right, looking incredibly pissed off, and Luke has to try his hardest not to wince. Jesus. 

There’s only one person who hasn’t spoken yet, a short, dark-haired woman who’s standing on her own in the far corner, looking like she wants the ground to swallow her up as everyone turns to look at her. 

“I, uh,” she says, and clears her throat uncomfortably. “My soulmate is, uh.” She hesitates, and then says: “I’m not actually sure I can-” but she’s interrupted by the sound of the door swinging open and two people striding in, a smiling man and a slightly harassed-looking woman. 

“Good morning,” the man says cheerily. “I’m Colin, one of the coordinators of the study, and this is my wonderful partner in crime, Jess.” There’s a smattering of murmured hellos as Jess raises her hand to the group. 

“Thank you so much for your time,” Colin says, clapping his hands together. “I know this study is inconvenient for many of you, and some of you have come an incredible distance to participate, but we’re hoping that this study will shed some light into the growth of soulmate tattoos.” He pauses, but nobody says anything, just shifts from foot to foot uncomfortably and looks at everyone but Colin.  

“We also have an issue of a certain, uh.” Colin clears his throat. “It’s a little delicate. One person involved in this study is, uh, a household name, and in order to protect their public image, has requested that non-disclosure agreements be signed. It’s nothing major, but of course, if it affects your decision to partake in the study, we completely understand. Nothing is binding until the contracts have been signed, and even then, you always have the option to pull out at any time.” He pauses, and looks around the room, shrewd blue eyes watching to see how each of them have reacted to the information. Luke wonders whether maybe this is a test, something to see whether their palpable curiosity will win out and make them work together with their soulmate to find out what celebrity is allegedly involved in this study, or something. He doesn’t trust psychologists. 

“Alright,” Colin says, when nobody speaks, and smiles brilliantly at them. “We have the contracts for you to read through and sign, and if that’s all in order, we’d like to start with a questionnaire and today’s blood samples.” There’s an assortment of murmured assent, and then Colin starts placing papers and pens on desks, and, after a hesitant glance around the room, people start moving towards them, muttering things to their soulmates under their breaths. 

“A celebrity?” Ashton says quietly, slipping into a seat at the nearest desk. Luke sits down next to him, because where the fuck else is he going to go - he’s not about to strike up conversation with that bloke and his fucking daughter-in-law, Christ - and shrugs. 

“Might be a test,” he says, and Ashton shakes his head. 

“Nah,” he says, completely confident. “I wonder who it is.” He pauses, leaning back as Colin comes by and puts a pile of paper in front of them, and then leans in and adds in a conspiratorial whisper: “It’s got to be someone huge, otherwise they’d be here.” 

“Huge?” Luke echoes. “Someone huge wouldn’t be partaking in a random university study in London.” Ashton raises his eyebrows.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” he says. Luke knows what he’s trying to say; if we’ll fly all the way from Australia for this, who’s to say a celebrity wouldn’t be involved?

“We’re also not household names,” Luke says, reaching for a pen and one of the contracts Colin’s placed on the table. “If I had the money, I wouldn’t be here.” 

“It’s not about money,” Ashton says, pulling the other contract towards himself and handing Luke one of the NDAs. “This is all new. You’ve got to follow the research.”

“The research’ll come to you if you pay enough,” Luke retorts shortly, and then shields the side of his face with one hand under the pretence of focusing on the contract so that Ashton won’t respond. Ashton sighs, long-suffering and a little exasperated, but takes the hint and starts reading his own contract. Luke does actually start reading through his contract then, but keeps one eye on Ashton, because he’s certain Ashton’s going to find something to complain about, certain that no matter how much Ashton thinks he’s changed he’s still a pedant, and he tries not to think about the fact he remembers that about Ashton as he re-reads every sentence at least twice and very carefully. After all, it’d be embarrassing if Luke signed the contract and handed it back in happily and Ashton found a flaw in it that Luke had missed, wouldn’t it? 

Despite his best efforts, though, he can’t find anything, so he just signs and dates it and sets it aside, reaching for the NDA. Ashton’s still on the contract, frowning at the third page of it, but he hasn’t been scribbling on the paper like he usually does when he’s making notes of ambiguous phrasing or inconsistent or lacking clarity. Maybe he really does do it all differently, now. Maybe he just signs on the dotted line. 

The thought makes Luke’s stomach churn a little, makes him think for the most fleeting of moments - well, if Ashton’s changed, is it still reasonable for me to hate him? Then, though, just as that thought settles like a cold stone in his stomach, Ashton raises his hand, looks around the room for Colin, and says:

“I’m not quite sure about paragraph six, clause three?” Luke almost snorts derisively, spiteful glee and cool relief flooding his veins as he thinks yeah, you’ve not fucking changed a bit.  

“Let’s have a look,” Colin says, and Luke turns back to the NDA in front of him, busying himself with reading through the terms as he lets the not quite clear and questionable phrasing floating over from his right wash over him. Christ, they’re making it sound like he’s going to be in possession of state secrets - you shall do everything reasonably within your power to protect the confidentiality of the Confidential Information, what the fuck is that? Who the fuck is taking part in this study? 

By the time Colin’s moved away from their desk, Luke’s reached the end of the NDA and decided kicking up a fuss about this melodramatic document that he barely understands would be completely pointless, given the fact that he’s pretty much trapped in the UK for four weeks by virtue of his fixed flights and scarce finances, so he signs and dates it as Ashton pushes the contract to one side and reaches for the NDA. Luke watches out of the corner of his eye as Ashton’s gaze flits rapidly from left to right, as his brow furrows slightly and he nods thoughtfully, flips it over, reads some more, and then nods, satisfied, and signs it. It’s that easy; no fighting Colin over ambiguous phrasing, or whatever, just read and signed. 

Almost as though Ashton can sense Luke’s confusion, he catches his eye, and smiles a little sheepishly. 

“Signed a lot of these in my time,” he says, re-capping his pen. “This one’s fairly standard.” Luke frowns. 

“What d’you mean, you’ve signed a lot of these?” he says. Ashton shrugs. 

“Well, I can’t tell you, can I?” he says. “Sort of the point.” Luke’s frown deepens. 

“You’re a drummer,” he says, trying to make sense of it. What the fuck do drummers need to sign NDAs for?

“Exactly,” Ashton says, like it explains everything. What the fuck? 

“Are you a spy?” Ashton looks at him, surprised, and then huffs out a laugh, bright and amused. 

“No,” he says. “But I couldn’t tell you even if I were, could I?” That’s true, but Luke thinks he would know if Ashton were lying. 

“Well, no, but I’d know,” he says, without thinking, and Ashton raises an eyebrow. 

“How would you know?” he says, and Luke shrugs, a little uncomfortably. He’s not really sure why, but he knows that he would know, knows it like he knows how to blink and how to breathe. He can’t explain it, can’t teach anyone else how to do it, can’t break it down or point to where and when the knowledge was acquired, but he does know it. Ashton couldn’t keep something like that from him. 

“Just would,” he says, a little stiff, a little evasive. 

“What, soulmate experience number three is being able to know what my job is?” Ashton says, sounding amused, and Luke can’t help the tiny smile that forms on his lips at that. That would be a pretty shitty soulmate experience, wouldn’t it? 

“I’d rather that than- y’know,” he says, inclining his head a little, and Ashton’s small smile fades. 

“At least that one’s useful,” he says, and Luke huffs out a slightly incredulous laugh. 

“Useful?” he echoes. “Didn’t do you much good last night, did it?” Ashton pulls a face. 

“That’s my own fault,” he admits. “I- I should’ve listened.” 

“Yeah, you should’ve,” Luke says, aiming for venomous, just to make up for the fact that something in Ashton’s eyes had softened a little too much when Luke had smiled, but he misses the mark and lands somewhere around exasperated. It sounds a touch too friendly for his liking, but before Ashton has a chance to respond there’s a loud clap from the front of the room that makes them both jump a little.

“Okay,” Colin says, and Luke whips around to face the front of the room, glad for the distraction, hoping Ashton isn’t looking at the slight blush that’s clawing its way up his throat to his cheeks. “I’ll collect the contracts and NDAs, and Jess will tell you about the next part of the study.” Jess steps forward from the wall she’s been leaning against, smiling tightly at the group, and looks down at a clipboard. 

“We’re going to be taking blood samples from you every day of the study,” she says. “Colin’s focused on the psychological side of things, I’m more interested in the biological and potentially neurological. We’ll be monitoring various markers in your blood as the weeks go on, seeing whether any experiments change certain levels of proteins in the blood, and measuring whether there’s any difference between the group that are living together and the group that are living apart. Once you’ve completed the questionnaires, I’ll take you to the room where you’ll get your blood drawn. We’ll be doing these every day at ten, but you won’t necessarily have any other appointments with us, so you’ll have to find your own way on other days.” She looks around the room expectantly, like she’s checking everyone’s taken the information in, and Luke nods, feeling like he’s being given instructions by a teacher. “Right, well. I’ll hand back over to Colin to tell you about the questionnaires.” 

“Thank you Jess,” Colin says, smiling out at the group from the front of the room. “The questionnaires are fairly self explanatory - just a series of questions, some to be answered on a scale of one to five, one being strongly disagree and five being strongly agree, and some just straight yes or no answers. Not all of the questions may seem relevant, but please bear with us - this is new territory for everyone, and we’re just trying to prepare for every possibility.” Everyone nods at him, and he smiles brightly, claps his hands, and then reaches for another stack of papers and starts distributing them throughout the room. Luke leans back in his chair, trying to steadfastly avoid the way he can feel Ashton looking at him out of the corner of his eye, shaking some of his curls into his face to try and put a barrier between the two of them. What the fuck does he want? 

“Thanks,” he mutters, when Colin hands him a questionnaire, and Ashton echoes the same, picking up his pen and flipping the first page over. 

The first page seems to be all personality based, and Luke finds himself shifting, trying to cover the questions with his arm so Ashton won’t see he’s circled 4 - agree for ‘I often think about what I should have said in a conversation long after it has taken place’ or 1 - strongly disagree for ‘I am not easily upset’. He tries to get through them as quickly as possible, barely stops to think except on ‘I am still bothered by mistakes I made long ago’, where a little voice in his head says well, you’re still bothered by Ashton, aren’t you?, and chances a glance at Ashton when he flips the page to hide his answers. He’s frowning down at his own questionnaire, not trying to hide it at all, and Luke can see that he’s neatly circled 5 - strongly agree for being bothered by mistakes he made long ago. Well, good, Luke thinks, a little bitterly, as he starts circling answers to questions about his approach to romantic relationships. He fucking hopes Ashton’s bothered. 

The room’s strangely silent except for the odd cough, the flipping of pages, the scratching of pens, a scraping sound as someone leans forward or back in their chair, and it’s almost blissful white noise to Luke until Ashton leans in, and whispers: “What did you put for the one about soulmate experiences?” Luke jerks back instinctively, jumping at the sudden intrusion upon his thoughts. 

“Jesus, Ashton,” he hisses, and Ashton raises his eyebrows and holds his hands up in a sorry, sorry sort of way. “I haven’t got there yet.” 

“Well, it asks if we have a soulmate experience.” 

“Well, we do, don’t we? What’s the problem?” 

“Yeah, but we have two.” Luke blinks, and looks down at the page. 

“Where is it?”

“Number twenty-three.” Luke frowns, scanning the page - seventeen, eighteen- “I think it’s on the next page.” Luke rolls his eyes, but flips the page over, eyes running down the list of numbers until he gets to twenty-three. 

Do you and your soulmate share a so-called ‘soulmate experience’? 

“Yes,” Luke whispers to Ashton. The question asks whether they have one, and they do. Why the fuck is Ashton confused?  

“But we have two.”

“It’s a yes or no question.” 

“But-”

“Fuck’s sake, Ashton, ask Colin if you’re that concerned about it,” Luke snaps, and Ashton blinks at him for a moment, and then turns away and raises his hand. He looks cool as he does it, looks composed and collected, but Luke had seen the flash of hurt in his eyes at Luke’s harsh tone. It’s nothing new, and ordinarily Luke would probably feel a little spiteful glee, but now he feels a stab of guilt, a wave that breaks easily and washes over his heart, covering it entirely for a moment before its next beat flicks it away. 

“Colin,” Ashton says, blissfully unaware of the churning sensation in Luke’s stomach that’s followed the unexpected guilt, and Colin looks up from where he’s been leaning against the desk at the front of the room, noting something on his clipboard. He smiles at both of them, puts down his clipboard and jogs over, stopping just before he reaches their desk. 

“How can I help?” he asks, and Ashton points to the question. 

“We, uh,” Ashton says, and Luke can feel the sidelong glance Ashton gives him but stares steadfastly at Colin, “we have two.” There’s a pause, and Colin frowns. 

“You- you have two?” Ashton nods. “Are you absolutely certain?” 

“Well,” Ashton says, and glances at Luke again, who still refuses to meet his gaze, not knowing which of the mix of emotions currently squabbling over residency of his stomach have made it to his eyes. “We- I mean, I, uh. I’m fairly certain, yeah.” 

“I’ve never heard of that before,” Colin says, still frowning. Great. Fucking brilliant. Of course him and his ex-boyfriend are possibly the first set of soulmates in the world to be documented as having two soulmate experiences. 

“Well,” Ashton says again, a little uncomfortably. “Should we- should I make a note of that?” 

“Yes,” Colin says. “Yes, if you could.” He smiles at them, still looking a little bewildered, and steps back, frown set on his face. 

“Did you hear that?” Ashton asks lowly, as Colin walks back over to the desk at the front of the room.  

“I’m sat right next to you,” Luke says, but it doesn’t come out as acrid and snappy as he’d hoped. He just sounds a little panicked. Which he is, but he doesn’t want to sound it.

“He’s never heard of it before.” Ashton sounds worried, and it makes Luke’s heart flip and dive into his stomach, because Ashton doesn’t get worried, not about this. Luke’s the one who freaks out, the one who panics over the tattoos and about Ashton and about being soulmates with his ex, and it makes something unpleasant shoot through him to hear the concern in Ashton’s voice. 

“Just because he’s never heard of it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened,” Luke says. He thinks they probably both know that he’s trying to convince himself more than Ashton, knows he’s been caught out for it when Ashton bites his lip, eyes softening a little in something that looks like both comprehension and understanding, then sighs and turns back to his questionnaire, adding a little note in his oddly-neat scrawl. It’s too long to just be we have two and too small for Luke to read without craning his neck and making it obvious that he’s looking, and Ashton flips the page over almost as soon as he’s written it, like he doesn’t want Luke to see. And it probably shouldn’t make Luke feel a little spiritually sick, shouldn’t make him feel that strange queasiness in his throat and that sharp sting in his heart that he can identify so quickly as rejection, but it does. It doesn’t really matter, though, because that’s followed so quickly by a wave of panic and revulsion that he doesn’t even need to think about it, can just focus on letting the cold dread melt itself into familiar hot spikes of anger through the warmth of his veins.

It’s fine, Luke thinks a little bitterly, and turns back to his own questionnaire, circling no for ‘Do you have strong feelings about your soulmate, either positive or negative?’ so hard that he almost tears the paper. Let Ashton write whatever the fuck he wants about Luke. It’s not like Luke cares. 

(Is it?)  

  -------

  After the questionnaires have been handed in, Jess leads the group to a small room to the left of a lab on the second floor. There are two nurses waiting in there with trolleys covered in cotton buds and antiseptic wipes, and Luke feels an odd shiver run down his spine at the sight of a needle glinting as it catches the light. It makes his stomach turn, somehow, makes him feel like someone’s in some kind of danger, which makes him frown, because no one’s in danger of a fucking needle.  

They’re told to sit on a row of seats at the back of the room and called up one by one in alphabetical order, and Luke sits stiff as a plank while he watches Sally Cartwright and Oliver Evans get called up for their blood draws. Ashton’s sat next to him, fidgeting so much that it distracts Luke from the way his stomach is churning, makes him throw Ashton a glare, gives him something to channel his strangely nervous energy into, something to take his focus off someone needs help someone needs help that’s running through his mind. He doesn’t have much time, though, because then Peter Gallon and Luke Hemmings are being called, and he has to get to his feet, legs feeling heavy and leaden as he drags himself over to the nurse who’d called his name.

“How are you doing today?” the nurse says cheerily, and Luke smiles tightly at her as he sits down in the hard plastic chair opposite her and holds out an arm. 

“Great, thanks,” he says through gritted teeth, as she fastens a rubber tourniquet around it. Luke’s never been keen on them - thinks they’re the worst part of having blood taken, actually, that horrible, restricted feeling - but they’ve never made his heartbeat jump like this before, never made his palms slick with cold sweat. 

“You’re a long way from home,” the nurse comments, wiping down his inner elbow with a cold antiseptic wipe. Luke stares down at her hands as she works, trying to slow his racing heart. Jesus, he’s not even afraid of needles - what the fuck is wrong with him? 

“Yeah,” Luke says, a little distractedly. “Uh. Came here for the study.” The nurse raises her eyebrows as she reaches for a needle. 

“Oh?” she says. “Well, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, then, won’t we? You’re all down for daily blood draws.” Luke licks his lips, swallows, and nods. His mouth is dry, now, but he stares at the needle as she fits it together, watches as she screws a vial onto the end, trying to pinpoint what’s making him so stressed, but feels nothing from it. And yet, despite the fact that he’d stared directly at the needle without an increase in panic, his heart is pounding so fast he thinks it might shatter a rib, and his mind is racing like it’s trying to catch up. What the fuck is going on? He’s never had an issue with having blood taken before. What the fuck is he suddenly so panicked about, if it’s not the fucking needle? 

“Clench your fist for me, love,” the nurse says, and Luke does, digs his nails into his sweaty palm like it’s going to stop the bile from rising in his throat. “It’ll just be a sharp scratch-” Luke winces as the needle goes in, clenches his other fist too, but watches as the blood fills the vial, as she switches it out for a second vial and as the blood fills that one up too. That doesn’t make his breath come any quicker either, doesn’t make his heart beat any faster, but something’s doing it. Something’s telling him danger, danger, danger while he waits for the nurse to reach for a cotton bud and press it over the puncture wound as she pulls the needle out. 

“Hold this for me,” she says, and he reaches over, presses down on the cotton bud while she reaches for some tape. She smiles, sorting a few vials of blood out, as Luke pulls his sleeve back down and stretches his arm experimentally. 

“Not a fan of needles?” she says kindly, and Luke shakes his head, frowning. 

“No, I- uh, I don’t have a problem with them,” he says, and the nurse just hums like she doesn’t believe him. 

“Well, I’ll see you back here tomorrow,” she says, and Luke sends her a tight smile as he gets to his feet a little unsteadily and heads back to the row of chairs. 

“Ashton Irwin,” the other nurse calls, and as Luke sits down Ashton gets up, walking stiffly over to where she’s sat and plonking himself down in front of her.

“Clench your fist, please,” the nurse says briskly, and Luke watches Ashton swallow, watches the way his chest is rising and falling a little too fast with short, shallow breaths, and realises what the clammy panic that’s been constricting his own chest is.

Ashton’s never been good with needles. Luke remembers going to the hospital with him when he’d had appendicitis, the way Ashton had, even in his delirious and feverish state, groaned and looked away and somehow gone even more pale every time an IV or a cannula needed inserting or when more blood needed to be drawn, the way Luke had had to hold his hand, whisper to him and distract him from the metal as it punctured his skin. 

It hits him like a fucking train as soon as he sees Ashton clench his fists. Protect protect protect, suddenly crisp and clear, cutting through all the sticky fear in his mind, making his vision swim with the intensity with which it tells him get up, get up, pull the needle out, stop it, he hates it, he hates it. 

For fuck’s sake.

Ashton’s fists are clenched so tight that Luke can almost feel the fingernails digging into his own palm, and he takes a deep breath, tries to reach past the sharp insistence of the protect protect protect that’s clouding every single rational thought, but it builds a wall in front of him, blocks him every which way he tries to duck around it. Shit, he thinks, watching as Ashton inhales shakily, watching the way the blood drains from his face as he looks over to his left so he won’t have to look at the needle. Help him, help him, help him.  

“Ashton,” he blurts, and there’s something in his tone that he’s never heard before, something that he feels rising from somewhere in the depths of his heart and lungs and maybe even his soul, if he knew where that was stored. It’s soft, gentle, soothing, calm, kind, but there’s something more to it, something that penetrates the word so deeply that it almost turns it into something non-verbal entirely. “It’s okay.” Ashton stiffens momentarily, so briefly that had Luke not been completely tuned into his every move he would have missed it, then sags in the chair, like someone’s let all the air out of him. It makes Luke shiver as everything that’s been swelling in him seems to dissipate with his next exhale, because it’s over, that’s it, it’s done. He’s done his job; Ashton’s safe, Ashton’s okay, and he can breathe again, which is the most important thing. 

He’s still covered in a sheen of cold sweat, and he wipes his palms on his jeans as Ashton stands up and flexes his arm, wincing at the movement, and heads back over to Luke. He doesn’t look Luke in the eye, which is probably for the best, because Luke knows he wouldn’t be able to meet his gaze and doesn’t want to deal with the consequences of that. 

It doesn’t even make sense, he thinks, as his mind clears a little, carving out a space for the embarrassment to boil over into anger. Ashton wasn’t even in any fucking danger. What was going to happen, the big bad nurse would bleed him dry? It doesn’t make any fucking sense; Ashton was perfectly safe. Why the fuck did Luke get- get that? 

He can’t think of anything else for the remaining ten minutes it takes for everyone down to Vanessa and Roy Williamson to get their blood drawn, trying to make sense of the situation. Ashton was safe. He was fine. Nothing could possibly have hurt him - so why did Luke feel like something could have? 

He’s snapped out of it when Jess comes back into the room and informs them that they should go for lunch, that they’ll move onto the interview stage of the day when they get back at one, and Ashton turns to Luke and sends him a slightly hesitant look that says are we going to get lunch together, then? Luke just blinks at him for a moment and then nods, because what other choice does he have, really? Spend lunch with the school bully and his soulmate? 

The tension between the two of them is palpable when they leave the building, and Luke knows it’s only a matter of time before Ashton turns to him with a sigh and big, sad eyes and says we should talk about this. If Calum or Michael were here, he’d place bets, see whether it’d be ten or twenty or maybe even thirty minutes until Ashton brings it up, laugh derisively when he inevitably does, but instead, he’s stuck walking in silence with Ashton, the air between them colder than even the air of the English January surrounding them on all their other sides. 

Ashton says they shouldn’t go too far for lunch, which Luke thinks is probably a sensible idea but childishly resents simply because Ashton had proffered it before he had, so he fumes silently while he picks out a far-too-expensive tuna melt in the Pret around the corner from the building they’re due back in in an hour. 

“D’you want to get a table?” Ashton says, when they’ve paid. “I’ll bring your food.” Luke nods, turns on his heel and walks towards the free table in the corner that he’s been eyeing up since they walked in. He slides into the booth, sets his coat down on one side, and then takes the opportunity to stretch his legs under the table before Ashton wanders over with a tray in hand. 

“You just got the tuna melt, right?” Ashton says, settling down in the seat opposite Luke, and Luke nods again, pulling his plate off the tray and reaching for one of the napkins Ashton’s brought with him. Ashton sets the tray down in front of himself, arranges the items on it so that they’re in the right order, or whatever, and then sighs. 

“So,” he says heavily, and Luke almost wants to parrot we should talk about earlier and roll his eyes, just so Ashton knows how he feels about it. He doesn’t, though, chooses to just take a bite of his still-too-hot-to-eat tuna melt instead. See? He can be civil. 

“What the fuck was that?” Ashton says plainly, and it takes Luke by surprise as he swallows. 

“What?” he says, before he can help himself, and Ashton throws him a significant look. 

“Back there,” he says, picking at his baguette. A lobster roll, fucking hell. Maybe Luke should look into becoming a session musician. “I wasn’t- I wasn’t in any danger.” Luke raises his eyebrows, and takes another bite of his tuna melt, more for dramatic effect and to buy himself time than anything else. He hasn’t got a clue. 

“You tell me,” he says.

“Did you feel it?” What a stupid fucking question. Of course he felt it. What possible reason would he have had to say Ashton, it’s okay? other than to get the fucking instinct out of his mind? 

“Obviously.” Ashton hums at that, like he’s mulling it over, and takes a bite out of his baguette before speaking again. 

“D’you think it’s growing?” 

“Growing?”

“Like, getting stronger.” Jesus. Luke fucking hopes not. 

“I hope not.” 

“But d’you think it is?” Ashton presses. Luke shrugs. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s only happened- what, three times?” 

“Yeah,” Ashton says, frowning. “But two days in a row?” 

“I don’t know,” Luke says again, a little irritably this time. “Isn’t that why we’re here? To get answers? Because neither of us know?” Ashton scrunches his nose up for a moment. It’s a move Luke knows well, one that Ashton does when he’s weighing something up, standing at a fork in the roads and deliberating which path he wants to start down, and one that Luke always used to tease Ashton for, dodging the swat Ashton would aim in his direction with a laugh. You look adorable, he’d say, grinning, and Ashton would roll his eyes, but he’d be smiling too, eyes bright and happy because Luke thought it was cute. I look stupid, he’d say, and Luke would roll his eyes, still grinning, and shake his head, wrapping his arms around Ashton. You look fucking adorable, he’d say, and he’d mean it. He still does mean it, he thinks, as he gazes at Ashton. Ashton still looks fucking adorable. 

It’s strange to be reminded of those moments now, years later, sat in a coffee shop thousands of miles away from home with their legs carefully angled away from each other, makes Luke feel suddenly disconnected from himself, like his heart had never quite learnt how to be twenty-six and without Ashton and he’s only just realising it. Or maybe not his heart; maybe his mind. 

(Or maybe not his mind. Maybe his soul.) 

“Yeah,” Ashton says, completely unaware of the crisis Luke’s currently embroiled in. “Yeah, you’re right.” Luke blinks, trying to grasp the bits of himself that are currently floating somewhere in whatever dimension existential panic is and force them back down his throat. Yeah. He is right. He’s forgotten about what, but he is right. What are they talking about? Oh, the strange experience earlier. Yeah. Got it.

“I’m sure they’ll ask us about it, anyway,” Luke says, hoping he’s done a convincing job of acting like he hadn’t been staring at Ashton while reminiscing. Ashton’s hums again, a hum of assent this time, and takes another bite out of his baguette, but Luke catches the way his lips have quirked up in a tiny smile. Fuck, Luke thinks, and his eyes flick to Ashton’s, finding them already following Luke’s gaze, something pleased and happy pooling in his irises. He knows, Luke’s sure of it, but he doesn’t say anything, just smiles a little wider, enough for his eyes to crinkle at the corners, and then looks away. 

Whatever, Luke thinks, trying to ignore the way his heart has picked up its pace. It doesn’t mean anything that he was staring, does it? People stare all the time. Luke stares at Michael, for God’s sake. And a stare can mean lots of things, can’t it? It could have been a stare of disbelief. Or a zoned-out stare. There’s no way Ashton can know it was a stare about him specifically, let alone one caused by Luke finding Ashton cute. He can’t know that. 

They eat in silence until they’re both finished, and Luke’s just downing the rest of his water when Ashton suddenly says: “I wonder who the celebrity is.” Luke blinks.

“Well, there are only so many household names,” he says, and Ashton cocks his head thoughtfully. 

“It might be a British household name, not a universal one,” he says. 

“What, like the Queen?”

“How is the Queen not a universal household name?” Ashton says.

“Well, she’s British, isn’t she?”

“What, so a universal household name is someone from the universe?” Ashton says, sounding amused, and Luke stops. Shit. Yeah, okay, that was fucking stupid. “I mean, like, someone that they all know that we’ve never heard of.” Luke purses his lips. He hadn’t even thought of that. 

“Maybe,” he says. “I don’t know. You’re the one who’s signed NDAs before.” Ashton frowns. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says, and Luke shrugs. 

“You know more about this than me,” he says, and tries not to let the curiosity leak into the edges of his tone. He doesn’t need Ashton to know that there’s a card he could play. 

“I’ve not signed NDAs for stuff like this before, though,” Ashton says. “It’s all- y’know. Musician stuff.” He says almost conspiratorially, like it’s some kind of euphemism, like Luke’s supposed to hear ‘musician stuff’ and think of something in particular, and a little like he’s challenging Luke to ask what ‘musician stuff’ means so Ashton can have the pleasure of explaining it to him. 

“Well, you’ve still signed more than I have,” Luke says, a little sharper than he’d intended, irked by the fact that he’s not in on the joke but can’t ask without giving something of his dignity up. Ashton frowns. 

“Are you upset that I didn’t tell you?” he asks. 

“No,” Luke says. Ashton’s brow stays creased, like he thinks he knows what Luke’s feeling better than Luke does, and it sends a sharp stab of irritation right to Luke’s lungs. “I’m not upset.” 

“Okay,” Ashton says, but he says it slowly, like he still doesn’t believe Luke. 

“Ashton,” Luke says, and the annoyance is clear in his voice now. “Don’t patronise me.” Ashton blinks, and then he sits back, nodding. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Sorry. That’s not fair of me. I’m sorry.” Luke swallows. 

“That’s okay,” he says, testing out the words and finding they slip off his tongue a lot easier than he’d hoped, satin on silk, no resistance at all. Ashton looks at him for a moment, something unreadable on his face - or maybe Luke just doesn’t want to read it - and then he smiles, a little hesitantly.   

“What about the other soulmates, then?” he says. “Sister’s husband, what’s that all about?” Luke holds his gaze for a moment, his own scrunched-up-nose moment, and then smiles back; not hesitant, but small. 

“I think that’s still better than your daughter-in-law,” he says. Ashton grins, relief mingling with the amusement. 

“Makes you think we got off easy, doesn’t it?” he says, and Luke huffs out a laugh.

“I’d take my soulmate being my ex over my school bully any day,” he says. 

“Wasn’t Michael your school bully?” Luke pulls a face. 

“Exactly.” Ashton grins again, and Luke tries not to think about the way it makes something sizzle in his stomach. It’s probably just the tuna melt. 

"Good to know I've made it past Michael," Ashton says. "Next step is to make it past, I don't know, Charles Manson." Luke frowns.

"Didn't he die?"

"Did he?" 

"I think so."

"Well, hopefully I'm above him, then," Ashton says. Luke raises his eyebrows. 

"Jury's out," he says, and Ashton laughs, and it's warm, real, tinged with something that Luke's heart remembers - or never let go of - that makes it jump in his chest. He can feel the panic threatening to rise in his lungs to meet it and quells it just in time, just lets himself bask in Ashton's rays for once. 

It's probably just be the coffee shop, or maybe the food he's just eaten, but January's never felt so warm.

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