#again there's nothing wrong with not wanting kids or not enjoying their company but blatant hate is fucked up

[mitragynines]

imagine if someone said this shit about any other group of human beings lol some people are this website are actually sociopathic. of course parents should stop their kids from doing this but why the fuck are you blaming the kid for their natural curiosity? most people tried doing this as children

[redundantz]

Found an old write up of my Star War OCs Backstory and info 🤔

I’m not really a writer and usually don’t enjoy it at all so this is pretty big for me ahha

Yanna Sen'ka

Born on a distant planet, not uncivilized but not refined. A place full of plant life living in a small village on the edge of a forest near a large river.

She is an only child raised by her mother and father.

Her strong force sensitivity was noticed early on by Supreme Leader Snoke. Moulding and manipulating her thoughts and actions. Small whispers in her ear, little seeds of doubt, fear and anger. Building on her childlike fears and worries.

She clashed often with her strong willed mother. Who became distrusting of her daughters troubling and sinister behaviour. Only growing worse when she would go to her father for everything and get dotted on by him. Jealousy bloomed. Her mother was jealous of the great attention she got from him. And how she never came to her for help or comfort. All the while Snoke fanning the flames of your bitterness and resentment towards her. Becoming a dark ball of hate whenever near her. Often causing Yanna to lash out or run off sometimes for days.

Growing up in the forest she knew her way around well. What plants to eat and how to trap animals for food. She could spend days by herself. And she did. Not entirely out of her own desire. The other kids were also wary of her.

Her unstable behaviour and rumours surrounding her that strange and awful things happen.

On one of her outings by the waterfall, she was practicing her use of the force. Stacking rocks, building a little dam to catch the fish in the pond.

One of the village boys came through the brush spotting her using her powers. Startled, and still very angry the rock she had been floating flung into him with a startling velocity and power. So much so that his gasp of surprise was cut short and his limp body fell to the ground. In shock, she could only gape as blood started running down the stones into the pool. Dying it red.

Snapping out of it she started to panic and breathing hard, tears welled up in her eyes.

In shock, she just stared as the blood washed away. And a small consciousness came into the back of her mind saying. "You did nothing wrong my child. He saw you, you know what they would do if he told everyone. Imagine how disappointed your father would be if he found out? You don't want that....

Now, imagine how glad the other children will be now that he's gone. He was a useless boy, did nothing of value and lorded his false power over others.

And you my child have true power. Look what you did without even trying. Imagine what you could do with my full tutelage.

All of them would listen, never question you.

Your scum mother would never dare raise her voice at you...

And your papa would be so proud to look upon such a strong and accomplished daughter.

Now.... get rid off the body!”

Still horrified by what she's done yet with new found resolve she moves over to the corpse. Grabbing him by the back of his shirt she hauls him into the pool to be carried down river.

Washing away any of the blood on the stones and the evidence of her presence there. She glances at the body as it bobs down the river out of her sight before darting into the woods.

Frantic, she just couldn't get away from there fast enough still terrified by what she's done. She ran and wandered until her legs ached. The sun was setting causing the shadows in the forest to deepen before she climbed s tree to find a safe perch for the night.

Finally settling down and alone with her thoughts. The edge of panic had creeped off and she was surprisingly calm and serene. a voice in the night whispered "you've done well child...."

Looking up to the small group of stars she could see through the thick canopy. The fear and panic from earlier settled into the back of her mind she could only think of how glad she was rid of the boy.

None in the village could figure out what happened to the boy but everyone was on edge. And Yanna was put under more scrutiny. She couldn’t understand why everyone was so upset over the useless kid. Getting more and more withdrawn and angry.

Her mother was getting even worse to her as she got older and she got confronted by her if it was she who was the cause of the boys disappearance. Yelling and screaming, calling her a cursed child and that she stole everything from her. She was holding a knife in defence afraid of her own child or ready to attack..? Yanna looked for her father but he just looked at her with fear and uncertainty in his eyes. She felt despair. But really he was looking at his wife, maybe with clear eyes for the first time. As she went in to the attack, Yanna was able to avoid and fight back for the most part but her father tried to intervene and save her getting stabbed in the process. He wasn’t critically injured but she saw red and high pitched screaming filled her ears. Next thing she woke up to was her fathers body shielding her and the house, the village, and forest was on fire. Her mother was dead and her father was dead. Her mind was blank.

“It’s time”

When Snoke came to get her she was alone in the forest she couldn't stand to be around what she had done. Refusing to think about it as her rage died down. She couldn't. She just repeated what leader Snoke said to her before.

The code of the dark side.

Her only salvation.

She met Kylo Ren when she was 14. Only a few years older than her he was gangly yet exuded a great sense of power that radiated from him crackling and angry. He was reckless and had a childlike temperament.

She got on his nerves a lot and not always in purpose. Unlike him she has learned to focus her anger and fear. Her calculated control bothered him as she would look down on him every time he would throw a fit.

Often it would cause them to fight.

She wouldn't admit that she just liked to get on his nerves and show him how little control he had by flaunting hers. Also that she wanted to help teach him to master himself. Even though it should have been the other way around.

She knew it was not in her best interest but she grew quite attached to him. She was a decent comrade to the others. Especially Kuruk ren. He made her laugh with jokes and a sick sense of humour. Always having the most ridiculous of stories to tell. He even wanted to get in her pants a few times. She was tempted to be sure. Mostly to just get it over with and see what it's like. She really didn't enjoy his company "that" much. In either case she has never felt more included. she's finally a part of a group and working towards something bigger than herself. She was determined to be useful and prove herself. She wanted to make leader Snoke proud. He was the only one there for her her whole life guiding her, who truly understood her.

Master Snoke would train them all when he could but for the most part it was up to them to keep up their practices. Their fitness, saber wielding, meditation and use of the force. Most of the Knights would work independently as comradery was not something adherent to their teachings. Mostly sparing together to blow off extra energy and test their might.

Kylo was the over all strongest beating most of the Knights easily. A few where much more adept at swordplay and gymnastics each having their own strong suit . Some even preferring blasters and other physical weapons.

Yanna was not the best at swordplay, but was quite nimble and able to move around with a purpose from many years in the forests.

She would focus and use of the force to read movements and work around them. Reading their minds or just straight up using her powers to physically beat them or trip them. Usually that wasn't allowed in sparing but she didnt always listen.

Snoke chose Kylo to be the Master of the Knights of Ren and it must have been for a good reason. She just couldn't help but let a small part of herself felt slighted and jealous.

She was there when they helped kill all the Jedi training under Luke Skywalker. Snoke told her about Luke and how Kylo trained under him until he was shown the way to the dark side. How he was the cause of Vaders death. The Shinning example of pure darkness.

As a part of the Knights they all admired him greatly. None more so as Kylo. Not quite sure how deep his attachment goes.

They wore clothes and helmets in honour of him. Hoping to take up where he left off. Show the universe what true power is.

She has a special way she typically used her force powers. By exploding people's hearts. Not very messy but effective. Didn't require her to use her sword which was more for defence and secondary offence than anything.

Where would your character fall on a politeness/rudeness scale?

In the middle, she respects her elders and superiors but holds nothing back for her peers and children. Most rudeness is nonverbal just ignoring or blatant disregard.

How many friends does your character have?

Virtually none. The Knights of Ren are her closest allies. Kylo in particular and Kuruk. Leader Snoke himself has been her closest friend and Mentor.

Also Captain Phasma share a fun friendship the rare chance the meet.

How many friends does your character want?

She would say none. That ties to others always just end up in pain and are a weakness. In reality a few close good friends is what she wants and needs. People to share experience with and shared ambition.

How does your character feel about sex?

Not something she's particularly interested in. Neither is romance. Her life has been to driven and hectic to think of such things. Even being older it’s not really on her mind. If the fancy ever struck her she wouldn't say no. A few men/women and even the other Knights have tried. All their efforts just irritate her.

She does masterbate now and again, for release only when she's sure no one would know.

What was the best thing in your character’s life?

Her Father was her best friend and mentor. He would teach her all about living in the forest and wouldn’t treat her like a child. letting her figure stuff out on her own and make mistakes but always there to help out. But was also there to comfort her but was also a bit of a coward when it came to standing up to his wife.

[likeshipsonthesea]

heat of her breath in my mouth; im alive" for nurseydex?

heyyy remember months ago when i asked y’all to send in hozier lyrics as prompts and y’all fucking Delivered and i sat on my ass and did nothing??? (well,, two As and a citation in my classes but who gives a shit about that)

HERE IT IS. well. one of them. here one of them is. it’s weird and wishy washy and most reminiscent of my writing style from Forever Stained (remember that?) and nursey is mildly ooc and dex is Emotional and if you don’t know my oc luke it may be confusing for a bit but anyway it’s FUN and i hope y’all enjoy it

will be tackling the other prompts soon!! hopefully!! :]

warning for parental homophobia and older-person-young-person relationship (a 14 year old and a 17 year old, only in flashback)

The first night Dex is in New York, he dreams.

He dreams himself a house. A loud, angry house. The walls shiver, the floors ache. He drags his rough palm against peeling wallpaper until his fingers catch on the latch of a back door.

The night air is cold. It hurts, but tastes like water, and he chokes it down until his lungs close up. When he finishes swallowing, he is on a beach. The house is far away, a distant thrum in the back of his head. To his left is an outcropping of mossy rocks. To his right are the glassy waves of low tide. Behind him, he can feel, is a roaring fire.

If he turns around, he will find a ring of drunken teenagers cupping sixty cent beer like salvation. He will fade into their circle with little fuss and spend the night with sand in his jeans pockets wondering if he will ever be allowed to leave this place.

If he turns right, he will be chilled and damp and alone.

He turns left.

The rocks create a familiar path. The bottoms of the stones are encrusted with salt from high tide washing in and moss grows along their sides and tops, soft with stolen sunshine. The moss is smoother than the wallpaper and soothes his rough hands. Sand steals into his sneakers, irritating, but he continues to walk. He knows what is waiting for him at the end.

The house is all but silent, now. The bonfire’s warmth has evaporated, leaving the late autumn chill on Dex’s fingertips, his nose. He cannot hear his drunken peers and, more than that, he does not think of them. He tastes sixty cent beer and salvation and he has more important things to worry about.

After walking for hours, he turns the final corner, and there is a boy.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the boy says.

“Sorry,” Dex says. He dreams he is small. “I tried to be quick but—”

The boy shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter now.” The boy grab Dex’s wrist. His fingers are cold. He pulls Dex close. Dex comes to his chin, stares up at him with a broken back neck.

Moments before their lips meet, Dex realizes what’s wrong.

“You’re not Luke,” he says.

Nursey doesn’t stop to respond. His mouth, on Dex’s, is cold.

Dex wakes up, shivering in June, in an unfamiliar bed. He wants to go home. He wants to call Nursey. He turns over, instead, and tries to fall back asleep.

*~*~*

“Is the apartment nice?” Ma asks, when she calls the next morning.

Dex bends to grab a water bottle from his fridge. “It’s clean,” he says, pressing the bottle against his red, sweating neck. “It’s in a good location.”

“It was so nice of them to set you up with a place,” Ma says.

Dex nods, taking a breath. “Yeah, I got lucky.”

“It wasn’t luck,” Ma says. “You worked hard.”

Dex breathes.

“You’re breathing funny,” she says. Hesitant, “Are you okay?”

He shakes his head at nothing. “Yeah, I’m fine, Ma. You just caught me right as I finished my run.”

“Oh. You must’ve been up early.” Dex doesn’t know what to say to that, and doesn’t really want to explain that he woke up in the middle of the night after dreaming a memory all twisted and couldn’t force himself back to sleep, so he doesn’t say anything. After a moment, Ma asks, “Is there a nice running route nearby?”

“There’s a park close enough to go through.” He takes a quick sip of his water. “It’s nothing like home, though.”

“Well.” Ma fiddles with something—a pen or a piece of scrap paper in front of her. “It’s a good opportunity.”

“I know, Ma. I’m—I’m glad to be here.” 

“Good.” She lets out an audible breath. 

Dex can picture her, curled small against the phone, fiddling with a pen. She’s probably sitting in the kitchen, at the end of the table they squished in there. They use it as a kids’ table during family gatherings, but it’s otherwise just a junk surface for every odd end they bring into the house. Every few months Ma will get stressed at work, or worried about money, or someone in the family will get sick, and she’ll decide that it’s time to go through all the junk and keep the table clean for once, God damn it. Now, it’s probably half organized, half mess. She’d only started a week ago, when Dex got home from Samwell to pack for New York.

“Good,” Ma says again. “This really is a good opportunity. The company is great, right? And it will give you experience.” Dex hums, sipping his water. “And—and you won’t be alone, right? You have that—that friend of yours, Nurse something?”

Dex stops drinking. The water bottle sweats in his hand, one chilled droplet sliding down his skin. “Yeah,” Dex says, “he lives nearby.”

“Good.” Ma taps some more, with the pen. “Good.”

Dex puts down the water bottle and wipes his hand off on his gym shorts. “How’s cleaning going, Ma?”

“Oh. You know, it’s getting there.”

“This time’s the charm, I’m sure. As long as Dad remembers to keep it clean.”

“Yes, yes. He has to get better about that.” Dex breathes. Tries to think up another thing to say that won’t lead anywhere that makes Ma tap. He can’t think of anything. Ma says, “We all have to get better about things, though.”

Dex tangles his fingers in the fabric of his shorts. “I—I’ve got to go shower, Ma, but I’ll call you, okay?”

“Oh—okay.” She hesitates, and Dex thinks about just hanging up. “We love you.”

“I love you, too.” Dex picks up the cap from his water bottle. Ma doesn’t say anything more. “Okay, bye, Ma.” He hangs up, cutting her off in the middle of a second-too-late goodbye. He debates calling back to apologize.

He ends up leaving his phone on the counter, chugging the rest of his water, and stripping on the way to his shower. Whatever heat the run in the summer city air had given him has since disappeared, leaving his skin chilled, shivering.

*~*~*

The dreams don’t stop.

The next one is in a bathroom. Dex doesn’t remember the tile or the shower curtain with little blue whales on it, but he knows somehow that it’s Luke’s childhood bathroom. Downstairs a graduation party ensues, clean fun music simmering through the floorboards as Dex is nudged back into the wall.

Cold hands push under his shirt, nails catching. Cool breath hits his neck, wet, and he shivers. He is not drunk. He is worrying, about Luke’s parents, about the other guests. People here know him, know his family. This is a bad idea.

“We should go back,” he says, in the dream. He didn’t say it, back when this happened. “This is a bad idea.”

“You never go along with my ideas, Poindoodle.” Nursey laughs into Dex’s chin. “Come on, just try one play. I think we could make the two headed beast work.”

This is wrong, Dex thinks, and opens his eyes to the soft grey ceiling of his New York apartment.

*~*~*

“Good work so far, Will.”

Dex looks up from his screen as his boss raps his knuckles against Dex’s monitor. Dex’s fingers pause on the keyboard and he smiles. “Thank you, sir.”

Dex’s boss shakes his head. “Call me Hugh. I don’t feel old enough to be a sir yet.”

Dex inclines his head. “Thank you, Hugh.”

Hugh smiles, wide, and lifts his coffee mug. “Keep it up,” he says, and heads into his office. The walls of his office are see-through, all made of glass, and Dex’s eyes follow him without thought as he sits down at his desk. The building they work in is nice enough, clean, lots of glass that lets in sunlight. It’s nothing like Dex had been picturing, some dark room where they code for hours on end with no break. Dex likes it. Likes it here. Likes the people. To think such a thing feels almost like a betrayal, like he shouldn’t be enjoying this place of exile, but he can’t help it.

Dex returns his attention to his code. He lets the logic of the work soothe his brain, until thoughts of trading in worn wood for clean glass and disguised disappointment for blatant pride leave the forefront of his mind. He just works, and doesn’t think, and enjoys every moment.

Sometime later, his phone buzzes.

what’s up willy p, ready to hit the town this weekend :PPP

Dex stares at the screen until it goes to black. He turns over his phone and pushes it away, to focus on work, and two minutes later has to restrain himself from looking when it buzzes once again.

*~*~*

Not all of the dreams have Nursey in them.

“Good work so far, Will,” Luke pants into Dex’s neck.

They are in a car—Luke’s probably, it has the fancy leather seats and the driver’s side window isn’t stuck perpetually open. The air tastes like sweat and the windows are fogged, obscuring the beach outside with its black, freezing water.

Luke’s fingers scrape at the base of Dex’s back. “Keep it up,” he says, grin wide against Dex’s shoulder. “Keep it up, keep it up.”

Dex stares at the glassy waves. They loom ever closer, higher and higher tide until they reach the tires of the car. The air tastes more and more like salt until it’s dripping from his tongue. The car has filled with the sea. Luke is cold, like the water, and he keeps saying his lines, “Good work,” until Dex opens his eyes to a grey ceiling, alone.

*~*~*

On Friday afternoon, Dex texts Nursey back.

I’m not up for anything crazy. Still settling in.

Dex grabs his things—wallet, keys, sticky note reminding him to call Ma—and bids goodbye to the few left in the office, Hugh and a nice girl named Kate a few desks over he’s chatted with during their coffee breaks.

Nursey responds by the time Dex reaches the street. no p dude. wanna come over and watch a movie?

Dex falls into step with the endless, faceless mass of people. The city buildings around him cut into the sky, grey, unyielding. He needs something like fresh air.

What movie? he asks.

;) Nursey sends back.

Dex breathes. Okay.

*~*~*

Nursey’s brownstone is tall and clean and, surprisingly, cozy. Dex was picturing something styled out of a magazine, hard edges and white and unwelcoming. Nursey welcomes Dex into a house full of oranges and deep browns and yellows with a big smile. He’s wearing a t-shirt and Samwell branded shorts. He is not wearing socks.

“Dude,” he says, emphatic, and pulls Dex into a hug. “Feels like it’s been years, bro.”

Dex hugs back, automatic. “It’s been three weeks, Nursey. Chill.”

Nursey laughs, chest rumbling against Dex’s. His back shakes, sweaty and warm, under Dex’s hands. “Shut up,” he says, pulling back. “You’re allowed to say you missed me, too.”

Dex scrunches his eyebrows. “Did you say you missed me? I didn’t hear that part.”

Nursey laughs again. With all the colors around him, he looks like sunshine. Dex skitters his eyes away, blistering. Nursey coughs. “We’ll be in the living room tonight,” he says, walking towards one of the open doorways. Dex follows. “I’ve got snacks and shit, and my dad made food and put it in some containers before he left but I don’t know what it is.”

“He’s not here?” Dex asks, looking at the old concert posters on the far wall, next to a long stretch of built in bookcases, all filled to the brim.

“Nah, he left on a business trip on Wednesday. Mom and Mama have been gone since Monday. Date vacation.” Nursey flops onto a leather couch, plush. With limbs thrown about, he embodies coziness. Despite the heat outside, the air conditioner keeps it nice inside, and the idea of climbing onto the couch with him is irritatingly desirable.

“You’re here alone?” Dex asks, taking a seat on the other end of the sectional.

Nursey grins. “Not anymore, now that I have you.” He flutters his eyelashes at Dex. Dex laughs and says, “Shut up,” and doesn’t think about it any more than that.

*~*~*

When Dex gets home that night, after several movies, more than half of them Very Bad, full of popcorn and homemade food and laughter he’d forgotten the taste of, he gets into bed alone with his grey foreign ceiling and does not dream of anything.

*~*~*

“I’m glad work is going well,” Ma says, when Dex calls her in the morning. She’s on speaker phone, he can tell, while she works around the house.

“Me too.” Dex stirs the eggs in his pan. Eating Nursey’s dad’s food reminded him that he could actually use the kitchen in his temporary apartment. After his run, he decided to start easy, with breakfast.

“That girl you mentioned, Kate, she sounds nice.”

“She is.” He scrapes some cooked egg from the bottom of the pan and swirls around the yolks a bit. “She’s been working there for about two years now and she says it’s a nice place.”

“That’s good.” On Ma’s end, there’s some movement, probably throwing something out because there’s a soft swooshing sound, like the trash can makes. “Have you been able to do some fun things around the city yet? Maybe with your new coworkers?”

“Kate invited me out to dinner next weekend.” Dex turns down the heat and continues to scrape.

The movement noises stop. “Oh! How nice of her.”

“The restaurant is supposed to be really good. Her fiancé is the head chef there.” Dex checks on his toast just as they pop and he carefully plucks them from the toaster.

“Oh.”

Dex hums, dropping the toast on his plate and turning to find the eggs done. “I also watched some movies with Nursey last night.” He deposits the eggs next to the toast and then hurries to check the bacon before it gets too crispy.

“Oh. Your aunt and I wanted to see a movie, but nothing was playing that we liked.” Distantly, Dex hears tapping of something, probably as Ma cleans.

Dex pulls out the tray of bacon. “We didn’t go to the theaters, so we could just stream.”

“He came to your apartment?”

Dex uses tongs to transfer the bacon to his plate. “I went to his family’s brownstone.” Satisfied, he gets the pre-poured glass of orange juice out from the fridge.

Ma hums. “Were his parents nice?”

Dex gathers together his plate, utensils, napkin, drink, and phone onto a tray and carries it out to the living room. “They were traveling, but I’ve met them before. They’re nice.”

“Oh.”

Dex settles his things down on the coffee table and sits on the couch, refraining from digging in for a moment to admire his handy work. It isn’t amazing by any means, but since being home, since finals, the playoffs, even before that when the stove was temporarily disengaged, he hasn’t had a chance to make food for himself, really. He almost wants to snap a picture.

“Are you—”

Dex looks away from his plate, to his phone sitting next to it. He picks it up and turns off speaker. “What, Ma?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

Dex drags his thumb against the case. Either the lack of AC or keeping up the call has made his phone heat up. Against his cheek, it itches. “Everything okay, Ma?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. I just—” Dex hears the tapping, louder now that it’s in his ear. “I just want you to remember why you’re there. You’re working. This is for your future.”

The uncomfortable wrinkles appear between his eyebrows. “I know, Ma.”

“Good. I just don’t want you to—”

“To what, Ma?”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Tapping fills the silence. “I’m glad you’re having a good time so far,” she says, quiet. “I’ll let you go. Have a nice day.”

“You, too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Ma hangs up. Dex drops his phone from his ear, hot in his hand now. He breathes for a moment and then picks up the tray. He digs into his eggs and, though they’ve just started to go cold, it tastes good enough.

*~*~*

He dreams he’s trapped under sheets.

Fingers curl in his hair, tight. His scalp hurts, but he keeps going, stops breathing. He’s smothered under blankets, but he’s shivering. Every time he tries to surface, the hands on his head hold him steady.

After long, long minutes, the sheets flood with saltwater and he breaks through the waves and gulps in air. The world is still freezing but he can breathe. He can breathe.

“Be quiet,” Nursey rasps, cold breath against Dex’s ears. “Don’t want to wake anyone up.”

Nursey is swallowed by the sheets and Dex is left floating, freezing, staring at the ceiling of his own childhood bedroom. The open window lets in chilled winter air that flutters the drapes, dark blue that blends in with the water he’s drowning in. Ma could walk in at any moment. Jay could hear them, just a few walls away. What if someone walks in? What would happen then?

When Dex opens his eyes, he’s staring at the grey ceiling again. He can’t breathe, even though the air is air, and not water. He grabs at his chest and tries to press down, like he could manually make his lungs work.

With his free hand he reaches for the nightstand, the light, and floods the room with yellow. He sits up, gasping, and knocks his phone off the table, disconnecting it from the charger. Grabbing for it, because it seems important in the moment, he sees there’s a notification.

y tf are safiya nygaard’s videos so entertaining

it’s fucking 3 in the morning and i’m watching her wear clear plastic jeans for a week

like wtf

Dex realizes that he still can’t breathe, but now because laughter is bubbling in his chest and clogging up his throat. He laughs, hard and long and unbearable, until his whole body aches.

He lies back in his bed, on land, now. He types back a message.

Who let you on YouTube this late at night? You know how easy you fall into holes.

The three dots appear within seconds.

i am but a simple man with no self restraint

The dots appear again, disappear, and reappear.

you would understand if you watched her

Dex grabs for his laptop, sitting by the foot of his bed. He double checks the name and clicks on a random video about a merged Ugg and Teva shoe.

What… I.. what? Teva Uggs?

ur watching!!

I don’t understand

it’s Art dexington appreciate it

Dex doesn’t end up falling back asleep for a while, and getting up for work that morning is hell, but when he lies back down in bed with a buzzing phone and too-bright computer screen, he’s not drowning.

*~*~*

Someone taps Dex’s shoulder and he turns to find Kate smiling pleasantly at him. He takes out one earbud.

“Break time!” she says.

Dex laughs. “Wouldn’t want to be productive for too long.”

“Exactly.”

He turns off the music he was listening to to concentrate—some Spotify playlist Nursey made him to “be more productive” that just tends to make Dex laugh at inopportune moments—and then he joins Kate in the break room as she talks at him about dinner the other night.

“George says to come back whenever you want, he loves when people love his food, it’s a little ridiculous.” She fiddles with the coffee maker as Dex grabs his smoothie from the fridge. He’s taken to making himself smoothies in the morning and bringing them in for his breaks, since he’s never loved coffee all that much.

“I’ve been telling my friend all about it and he’s begging me to take him now, so tell George he can expect me back soon. My friend is pretty pushy.”

“Perfect, then he’ll stop bothering me about it.” Kate reaches out without looking. “Could you pass the cream?”

Dex dutifully hands her the cream.

“You’re coming to the office party next week right?” She fixes her coffee the way she likes it and turns to Dex, sipping. Her eyes are wide and clear that Dex’s answer should and will be yes. It’s a bit like Bitty’s captain look and it curls something sharp and sad in Dex’s chest. Going back to school in August is going to be so very different without him.

“I didn’t know there was a party next week,” Dex says, licking excess smoothie from his upper lip. “What’s it for?”

“Jenny’s birthday. There’s gonna be a cake.”

“How can I say no to cake?”

Kate grins. “You can bring a guest, too. We need fresh meat at these things. Also if you don’t bring a date someone is going to try to set you up with someone and believe me, you do not want to get stuck on a date with Karen’s second cousin Stew. He’s basically the opposite of whatever a hoot is.”

Dex snorts into his smoothie. “Noted.”

Dex’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out without thinking twice. He doesn’t check it while he’s working and there are a few messages.

buzzfeed unsolved is THE SHIT

shane and ryan r defo u and me but i can’t tell who’s who. you believe in ghosts right??

ur homework is to watch every episode tonight and then come sleep in my apartment bc i’m scared af rn

Dex smiles and quickly types out a response.

Sounds like the writing is going well.

“Who’s that?” Kate pushes onto her tiptoes to look over the lip of Dex’s phone screen.

“My friend from school.” Dex keeps his phone out long enough to see Nursey’s response– f off– and then shoves it back in his pocket. “He’s supposed to be writing a short story for the publication he’s working with over the summer and he’s getting a little sidetracked.”

“Ooh, a humanities. How did we meet someone from the Other Side?” Kate grins into her coffee.

“He’s on the hockey team with me.”

Kate hums. “Hockey, I should’ve known.”

“Huh?”

“George and I were betting that you played some kind of sport. I thought basketball because you’re so tall, but he guessed baseball.” She scrunches up her nose. “Basketball’s closer, I think.”

Dex huffs, laughing a little. “What was the prize?”

Kate is staring at nothing, face scrunched up, and then blinks, hearing Dex, apparently. She waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, I can’t tell you that, HR would have a fit.” She sips her coffee again and Dex can’t help the volume of the laugh he lets out.

*~*~*

In the next dream, the sun is high and bright and dead in the sky.

“You’re good,” Luke says, walking next to him on the sidewalk. The ground is too hard against Dex’s feet, even through his sneakers. He turns and Luke is Luke, but also Jack. They speak at once. “If you work hard, you could take this somewhere.”

“You really think so?” Dex asks. He is small. Short. He looks up at Jack and his neck aches.

Luke grins, all teeth. “I really do.”

Dex wakes up reaching for his phone. Two texts wait for him, and he breathes as he makes his shaking fingers type out a response.

*~*~*

“I can’t believe you work a block away from my favorite coffee shop and it’s taken you this long to meet me on your lunch break.” Nursey tsks, reaching over to steal a bit of Dex’s muffin.

Dex slaps lightly at his hand, but Nursey still escapes with a sizable crumb. “I’ve been here for less than a month, it isn’t that long.”

“It’s ages,” Nursey insists, fingers still in his mouth as he speaks.

Dex winces to smother his smile. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Nursey retorts, and then sticks out his tongue to further prove it.

Dex huffs, sipping his smoothie to keep himself from doing something stupid, like responding. “How’s writing going?” he asks, when he’s taken his sip.

Nursey hums, swirling a mixing stick through his iced coffee. “Pretty good. I have a working draft done, but it needs some serious editing.”

“That’s good, dude. ‘Swawesome, even.”

Nursey grins around his straw. “’Swawesome,” he repeats. “C would be proud.”

“You talk to him recently?” Dex picks at his muffin.

“Yesterday, actually. Training is going well.”

Dex chews thoughtfully. “S’good. Last time I talked to him he was more worried about Bitty than the NHL.”

“Oh, he definitely still is.” Nursey laughs and makes another dive for Dex’s muffin. Dex deftly moves the plate out of the line of fire.

“It took him two weeks to pick a wall color,” Dex says, pausing to drink his smoothie. “And Jack must be drowning in all the tester bakes.”

“Let’s be real, though, if Bitty Bakes ever does open it’s gonna be the sickest bakery of all time.”

Dex inclines his head, slowly nodding. “Oh, I’ll definitely be spending my entire paycheck on imported pastries.”

“If you run out we can share my trust fund,” Nursey says, batting his eyelashes.

The laughter tastes so pleasant and—more than that—familiar on Dex’s tongue that he doesn’t even do anything as Nursey makes another grab for his muffin.

*~*~*

The worst dreams are ones that aren’t really memories at all.

It’s a beach, but the sand is blue and the ocean is clear and all Dex can see is sunshine, though he can’t feel a thing. Nursey is next to him and their hands are stuck in the sand, twisted together and hiding.

“I love you,” Nursey says, and it’s his voice and his words except not, because Dex knows it’s wrong, know it’s his brain that made it all up, and he starts running, slipping against the sand.

He trips and falls onto his knees and he looks up and it’s Luke and he’s grinning and looming and huge and he speaks, “Quiet, kid, quiet or they’ll hear you,” and for some reason Dex knows they is Nursey and he swallows every breath, worried it will sound like a scream, and when he wakes up he is, screaming, except no sound will come out and he’s just broken with his throat open and empty and—

He presses call without thinking and Nursey answers on the third ring.

“Dex—what—”

“Can you—just—” Dex swallows, tries again. “Just talk. Please.”

“Dex, what’s going—”

“Please.”

“I—uh. Okay.”

And he does. He talks, about the funny conversation he had with his mama today and these cool shoes he saw on Instagram and the pretty clouds he saw yesterday and this fruity drink he wants to try at a bar downtown that he’s going to drag Dex to whether he wants to go or not.

And sometime later, Dex falls asleep. He wakes up with his phone warm and nearly dead against his ear and a text from Nursey asking if everything’s g and Dex doesn’t respond, half because Nursey used g for good and half because he doesn’t know the answer.

*~*~*

His old running route in Maine took him through the woods. Past gnarled roots that curled, mischievous, and tried to trip him up, under a canopy of green that shivered in the early morning wind. He liked to wake up with the sun, at home, liked the quiet moments before the rest of town woke up and started looking at him. So he’d wake and run and take his path until the trees gave way to a dusky beach, accompanied by a barely awake sun.

A lot of the time, the water would still be smeared with the red hues of the fading sunrise, and Dex would stand and pant and stare and think about nothing, or Samwell, or—later on—Nursey.

It was a nice path, back home. Even if it would inevitably bring him back to houses that creaked under his footsteps, full of people that couldn’t look away until he met their gaze.

In New York, he runs against sidewalk. Smooth and uncomplicated, it brings him to a small park, with a few trees and some grass and, occasionally, some pigeons. He takes the path set out for him there and doesn’t have to think about winding roots, but does, anyway. He thinks about how easy it is without them, and how much he misses them, and wonders what that means before the adrenaline in his body pulses in his temples and he stops thinking of much all together.

He returns to his apartment and guzzles down water and makes himself breakfast and sometimes calls Ma and tries not to think about how different his life is here, tries not to categorize the things he misses, and the things he’s glad to be without.

He runs to forget, and it doesn’t always work, but it doesn’t mean he can’t try.

*~*~*

Jenny’s birthday party is, surprisingly, fun. Nursey texts him in the middle of the afternoon apologizing, saying that his meeting is running late and he might not be there in time, but he will be there. Dex, dejected, expects the party to suck, but when they all clock out and the cake is wheeled out on one of the trays they typically use for mail and Kate grabs the AUX cord for the speakers, things actually become interesting.

It’s not quite a kegster—nothing is quite like a kegster—but his coworkers are nice, funny people and the music is lively and the cake, while not Bitty’s, is pretty damn good. Nursey texts him intermittent updates with ridiculous comments and Dex, after Karen is drawn to the dance floor to Cotton Eyed Joe, takes up a spot by the wall with his cake and his phone and snickers down icing to type out a response to do you think they sell candles that smell like the subway.

Then, suddenly, Hugh pops up.

“Will, hi,” he says, holding his own plate of cake. “Thought I’d come over and say hello, now that Karen’s let you go.”

Dex swallows a bite of cake and shoves his phone in his pocket. “Oh, Karen wasn’t holding me hostage or anything. We were talking apple pie recipes.”

“Good to hear she wasn’t trying to get you to meet Stew.” Hugh leans in, secretive and exaggerated. “I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but he isn’t quite the catch she makes him out to be.”

Dex laughs, because Hugh is his boss and you laugh when your boss makes a joke. “I’ve been warned.”

“Good, good.” Hugh leans back, nodding. The silence hovers for a second, then he asks, “How’ve you been liking it here?”

“New York or the company?”

Hugh shrugs. “Either. Both.”

“New York I’m liking more than I thought I would. I’m from Maine,” Dex says, smiling in that way Nursey describes as country-boy-sheepish, “so I’m used to some greenery, but the city has its perks too.”

“Good, good!” Hugh grins. “I grew up in the country too. Northern Michigan. It sure is an adjustment. But I think it’s worth it.”

“Working here has helped,” Dex says, and if Nursey was here he’d probably cough to poorly disguise a kiss up but he isn’t really lying. Working here has proved to him that he would enjoy going into this field, and while he is keeping his options open, that’s a good thing to know.

“Oh, I’m glad,” Hugh says, gesturing haphazardly with his cake. “We’re lucky to have you here.”

“Thank you, sir—Hugh.”

Hugh smiles, and they stand there for a beat, two, and then he says, “Forgive me if this is inappropriate, but are you seeing anyone?”

Dex stiffens. Hugh isn’t—? He’s Dex’s boss, he can’t—is he? It’s like ice, gone down Dex’s back, through his veins. He wants to pinch himself, almost. Is he dreaming? But Luke never said those words before. But the dreams have been stranger lately. Is it—?

“Because my brother,” Hugh continues to speak, unaware, “just got out of college and I couldn’t help but notice the Bruins t-shirt you had on last Friday and he is the biggest hockey fan—”

Nursey is there, suddenly, and he’s right there, bumping his shoulder into Dex’s. He’s out of breath and smiling and warm and Dex leans back into him without thinking. “I am so sorry I’m late,” he’s saying, to Dex, and then to Hugh, “I’m sorry, I just completely interrupted you. I’m Nursey—well, Derek, but everyone calls me Nursey, so take your pick.” Then, to Dex, “Do you go as Dex or William here?” He scrunches up his face. “William. Ew. You sound like an uncle.”

“I was named after my uncle,” Dex says, vaguely.

Nursey nods. “Exactly.”

Hugh coughs. “My apologies, Will. I didn’t know—well. I see now.” He smiles, tight. “I’ll let you two catch up,” he says, lifting his cake, untouched, in parting.

“What was that about?” Nursey ask, peering after him obviously. “Ooh, is that cake?”

Dex hands over the rest of his second slice. He isn’t much hungry now.

“You will not believe my trip here,” Nursey says, beginning to eat. “It was, like, totally unchill, dude.”

Nursey hasn’t moved, still pressed up against Dex’s shoulder. Dex takes a deep breath. “Tell me about it,” he says, and Nursey does.

*~*~*

“—and all the ladies at church say hi,” Ma says, over speaker phone as she works around the kitchen. 

The table, a continuous project, has been tabled for now—pun intended—for the sake of getting the dishes clean. Ma has to yell over the roar of the faucet. Dex is doing his own tidying as he folds laundry and listens to Ma talk. She always did used to talk while doing chores, Dex following her around, soothed by the words and the humming and the simplicity. It’s been a while since they’ve done chores together, and the familiarity, the comfort, mellows an ache in Dex’s chest.

“They all worry for you down in the big city,” Ma says, scrubbing audibly. “They don’t like the idea of a sweet country boy like you surrounded by all that crime and greyness.”

“You can tell them I’m holding my own,” Dex says, which makes Ma laugh a little, the short chuckle thing that he inherited from her.

“I will,” she says. A small clatter comes over the line as she, presumably, adds a dish to the drying rack. “They’re all in a tizzy planning for the July 4th social. I’ve been assigned drink coordination, which really means fielding arguments between Mrs. McMahon and Mrs. Fielding about soda over spirits, even though we all know we’re going to end up with the same drinks we always get and one of the rotten teenage boys is going to spike the lemonade despite whatever ridiculousness Mr. Spaulding tries to rig up.”

Dex smiles, remembering. When he was a kid and accidentally drank some of the spiked lemonade and wouldn’t stop giggling the whole ride home, when he was a teen and helped his then-girlfriend Isabelle spike it herself, when he was back from college and roped into standing watch over the lemonade but let one of the teens through anyway, on account of tradition.

“Oh, and you’ll never guess who I ran into in the grocery store the other day,” Ma continues as Dex reminisces. He probably could guess—there’s only so many people in their town, after all—but he lets Ma tell it how she wants as he searches for the pair to the sock in his hand. “Do you remember your old hockey captain? Luke Rossi?”

Dex freezes with his hand buried in laundry. A chill runs through the apartment.

“I ran into his mother,” Ma continues without a response. “She looks great—she says it’s yoga! I wish I had the time for something like that. But she was telling me all about Luke—you remember him, he was your hockey captain back when you were what? A sophomore?”

“A freshman,” Dex says, rough.

“Oh, that’s right. Well, anyway, his mother was telling me, he’s working with some big company out in Boston. He’s engaged! His mother says the girl is sweet as all get out, a tiny little thing. And she’s one of us, a ginger!”

Dex sits back on his couch. Small. Ginger.

“His mother’s just thrilled. It must be so nice to have a son engaged. Jay’s been with Kelsey for years, but who knows with him. Maybe I should send him Luke’s way, let that boy rub off on him!” Ma laughs. “Maybe he could rub off on you, too.”

A sick kind of laugh bubbles up in Dex’s throat. He swallows.

“It was just such a surprise. I knew all those kids you boys were friends with in high school, but I never get to hear what happens to them after, really. Luke was such a nice boy, too. It was just nice to hear about him.”

Nice. Yeah.

*~*~*

He dreams he is swallowing ice.

Someone’s mouth is on his and their tongue is heavy, leaden. Dex’s mouth catches on it, too cold, and it rips the skin from his lips until they’re bloodied. Copper stains everything, his tongue and eyes, and it rushes until he can’t hear anything but the blood.

He tries to open his eyes, and between one blink and the next the boy above him shifts, blond hair and blue eyes and too many teeth, then green and smile and salvation, and back again, sickening, spinning.

He manages to push himself away, sits up in whatever bed, ocean, driftwood, he’s on. Ma stands in the doorway. “Luke was such a nice boy,” she says, smiling, laughing. “That friend of yours, Nurse something? Is he a nice boy?” she asks, frowning suddenly, eyes intent.

“You’re wrong,” Dex goes to say, but chokes on the blood on his lips. He looks back over to the end of the bed, where Luke or Nursey or whoever is sitting, except it’s not just them anymore, it’s Jack and Hugh and Bitty, even, and they’re all staring at him.

“Good work,” they say, “If you work hard, you could take this somewhere,” they say, “Keep it up,” they say.

“She’s one of us,” Ma says, “Maybe he could rub off on you,” she says, “Nice boy,” she says.

Through it all, he can hear Nursey. “I love you,” shivers down Dex’s spine, ice. Dex swallows and swallows and tries to push through the rest of the voices to find Nursey in the haze.

Dex wakes up running and doesn’t—can’t—stop.

*~*~*

The sky is dark and the world is dizzyingly bright when Dex knocks on Nursey’s front door.

By all rights, it should be too warm to stomach. Late June, with all these people stuffed into one little place, blistering. But Dex clutches his jacket to his body, shivering. He can’t get warm. He can never get warm.

“Dex?” Nursey answers the door with a frown. Dex’s eyes catch on it and can’t pull away.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

“I—okay?”

Dex nods. He steps inside, around Nursey, and their arms brush. It burns.

“What’s going on?” Nursey asks, shutting the door.

“Are your parents home?” Dex turns around to face him. The door—big and green behind Nursey—brings out the deeper green tones in his worried eyes. Nursey’s eyes have always made Dex homesick. Now, he aches.

“No,” Nursey says. “Mom’s in Milan and Dad’s in Chicago and Mama—she’s somewhere in the UK. Why are you—”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Okay?” His face is all scrunched and his hair’s a little messy, curls hanging over his forehead, and he’s soft in Samwell pajama bottoms and so fucking gorgeous and Dex’s whole body is shaking, shivering, freezing.

“I—I’ve been having these dreams,” Dex says, hands clenching in his pockets. “For months now, these—these dreams about—” He swallows and shakes his head. “And now he’s engaged and it doesn’t—it doesn’t make sense, he—he shouldn’t get to move on when I’m drowning every fucking night, I don’t—I—”

“Dex.” Nursey is closer. Hands up, palms forward. Frowning. “What are you talking about?”

Dex shakes his head, but all of him is shaking and he doesn’t—he shouldn’t have come here. His broken brain isn’t Nursey’s problem, just because he’s in New York doesn’t mean they’re more than what they were before all this. Just because Dex’s home isn’t home anymore doesn’t mean he can build one in Nursey.

“I’m—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—I should go.” His mouth tastes like a panic attack. How did he make the decision to come here in the middle of the night?

“Dex.” Nursey grabs onto Dex’s forearm, a brand. “Sit down. Please.”

Dex stares at Nursey’s hand. He hasn’t been warm in—it feels like years, now. It feels like he went out into the Maine winter one year with a boy’s hand curled around his wrist and frost spread from that point out and he never got warm again.

“Nursey,” Dex says, the word broken like so many shards of ice, and Nursey’s grip on his arm stutters, hesitation. Dex, without thinking, breaks the hold, and in the next moment he has his mouth pressed against Nursey and it’s warm, it’s warm, it’s—

Dex doesn’t know if he’s been alive, before this. The heat from Nursey’s mouth, soft and surprised and then—firmer, more intent, it warms him from the bones out, until his skin itches with it, sings. Dex sighs into it, slumps.

Hands come up to his cheeks, pull him back, so soft. “Dex,” Nursey says, quiet. “Can we please sit down?”

Okay, Dex thinks. He breathes. Okay.

*~*~*

Nursey makes them cocoa. In July.

Dex holds the mug between his shaking hands and explains, in starts, but mostly stops. I had this captain when I was a kid, he says, and then, not a kid, he says. Well.

“I was fourteen,” he says. “He was—older. I wanted—I wanted to be good for him.”

I was, he says, but doesn’t quite make the words work.

“Ma never knew. No one ever knew. Ma, though, she loved him. Thought he—brought me out of my shell.” He brushes his thumbs along the sides of the mug, takes a sip and licks marshmallow off his lip.

He jumps in time. “After Bitty and Jack—after the kiss, home wasn’t—home. Maybe before that, too, but—but after the kiss, everyone knew, they knew I was.” He shakes his head. “It was hard to be there. So I came here.”

She doesn’t, he says. She thinks, he says. “Ma thinks you’re gay, because you live in New York, and you go to Samwell, and it’s easier to think it’s—it’s you. Easier than thinking it’s me.”

Nursey holds back questions. Dex swallows. It’s me, he says. I talk about you. Too much. She worries. She thinks—she sees. Sees that I—that I love—hm. “She doesn’t like it,” he says, without finishing the last sentence. “It worries her. It worries me, I guess.”

He tries to put it together. The dreams—they pulled it all together. “She looks at Luke and she doesn’t—she likes him, he’s a nice boy, but he—he left me with all of these—these things, the things where I can’t have a normal relationship with my fucking boss, and all this—this cold in my body, and she doesn’t—she likes him when he is so cold and she doesn’t like you when you’re so warm and it just—I couldn’t stop thinking about how wrong it was and how angry it made me and Nursey, it’s just—it’s so—you’re so–”

Nursey curls his mug-warm hand over Dex’s knee. “Hey,” he says, quiet. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Dex says, and he can feel the way his eyes are rimmed red, itchy, and hear the hoarseness in his throat, and feel the way that Nursey’s hand burns against his skin, and he wishes that he’d done this different, more coherently, earlier.

“No,” Nursey agrees, “it’s not. But I—it’s late. And we’re both tired. We can talk more in the morning, if you want. But I think—I think we both need to sleep.”

Dex swallows. He tastes cocoa and gratitude and—thick, clinging love. “Okay,” he breathes.

Nursey leads him up to a bedroom filled with books. Mussed blankets encourage Dex into the bed. Nursey gets in on the other side. It’s cozy and the duvet is heavy against his aching body and the ceiling is blue and Dex is not alone.

Nursey curls his hand around Dex’s, under the blankets. Dex curls back, and squeezes.

“I love,” Dex says and swallows.

“I know,” Nursey says, close, breath hot against Dex’s skin. “Me, too.”

Dex closes his eyes. He may dream. He may not. Either way, when he opens his eyes, he will not be cold.

[deans-baby-momma]

Past Haunts-Part 6

A/N: This is an hour early because I have company coming. So enjoy!!!

When a hunt brings the Winchesters back to their old stomping grounds of Truman High, they both discover something that astounds and shocks them. How will this discovery affect their family dynamic?

I couldn't believe my eyes. Dean was here,  in our old high school, grinning like a fool. Like he hadn't completely broken my heart over a decade ago, that he hadn't taken from me the one thing that could never be returned and sped out of town in that stupid black muscle car with its offensive loud exhaust. Leaving me alone and unable to follow my dream. Not that I regret my daughter, but it would be nice to have a better job than the one I have. 

"How have I been?! Really? That's what you ask me after almost 14 years?" I ask him, disbelieving that he is just waltzing around these halls once again  "You come in here like you own the place, break a couple hearts- break MY heart- and then vanish without a trace!" Before I even think about it, I step up and slap him across the face "I've been wonderful, Dean. Just fucking great. No thanks to you!"

Dean is at a loss for words. Holding his reddening cheek, he opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. Because he has nothing to say. Because of course, he knows that everything she said is true. For the month they were stuck in Fairfax, Dean had walked the halls like he owned the place. But breaking hearts? The only heart he knew that had been broken was his own. 

*FLASHBACK (Rebecca's POV)*

Amanda and Dean hit it off and was hot and heavy pretty fast. They were always cuddled up together, laughing and talking amongst themselves. I would see them around campus either holding hands or he would have his arm slung around her shoulders, his free arm full of books, his and hers. They were quickly becoming the ‘IT’ couple.  It was sickening!

A week and a half after Dean Winchester started attending Truman High, their love was over.  Amanda caught him in the janitor’s closet with Melody, one of the cheerleaders. I have a bird's eye view of the whole incident because the closet is right across from my locker and I had been switching out books between classes. Amanda doesn’t say a word as she backs up and Dean and Melody exit the closet. 

Dean tries to play it off by saying the two of them were studying for a history test. I roll my eyes at the blatant lie.

“Come on, baby. She means nothing to me. Don't be mad,” Dean pleads.

Amanda looks at him exasperated. “I'm not mad, Dean. I thought maybe... underneath your whole "I could give a crap," bad-boy thing, that there was something more going on. I mean, like the way you are with your brother. But I was wrong. And you spend so much time trying to convince people that you're cool, but it's just an act. We both know that you're just a sad... lonely little kid. And I feel sorry for you, Dean.” She walks away from him and toward her friends, the popular kids.

Dean huffs and sighs and then starts yelling, “You feel sorry for me, huh? Don't feel sorry for me. You don't know anything about me. I save lives. I'm a hero. A hero!” 

All the kids in the hallway look at him, most of them laughing and pointing and calling him a tool and a fraud. I can’t help but feel kind of sorry for him. But he brought it on himself. I close my locker and head to my next class. 

*END FLASHBACK*

Dean finally gets his voice back and looks at her, pleadingly.. "What are you talking about? I hated leaving here, I didn't want to. Believe me, I didn't want to but Dad showed up and had another job in another town so I HAD to."

I rolled my eyes at his lame attempt at lying. But before I can retort, Sam comes back into the hallway and looks at Dean.

"Sorry to cut this little reunion short but I found the information we need. We got to go."

Dean glances at his brother and nods. He grabs his wallet from the track pants and pulls out one of his fake business cards. "Here. That's my real cell number.  Call me later please? I want to catch up with you more," he begs as he reaches the card towards her. "Please know that what happened back then was special to me and I never forgot about you."

I hesitantly take it from him and stare at it. Agent D. Plant, FBI. His number is listed after his fake alias..” So he's lying yet again,' I think to myself. 'FBI my ass!' I look back up to confront him and to rip the stupid card in front of his face but am met with an empty hallway.  All I can do is look at the card and the spot where he was just standing in. 

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[kimvvantae]

Umbra; 7

➜   being ruled by an ancient commandment, your sole purpose is to serve. you were born to protect the king with your life, tied by an everlasting oath; you are nothing but a shadow, a silent and insignificant being. he appears to you like the sun, the warmest and brightest star in the sky, and gives you a chance to live. it is then that your entire universe starts to orbit around this sun, and you decide that you are truly willing to die for him.

pairing: King!Taehyung x (f) hybrid!reader

genre: royalty au, fantasy, angst  

warnings: descriptions of violence, blood and death that might be triggering.

word count: 11k  oOF

A/N: gOSH this chapter is a beast. i’m sorry y’all but i couldn’t hold back this time klaskdlsd after reading, y’all are cordially invited to the tea party in my askbox, where we can drink tea, eat cookies and discuss about this week’s chapter. what are your thoughts on it? what’s your favorite part so far? we can talk about anything, just stop by!

enjoy uwu

➜  Chapters: check up marterlist in bio!

“Chuu? I’m here,” I said, patting her shoulder softly.  

The girl groaned, but didn’t open her eyes. I looked back at Yoongi who was standing by the door with crossed arms, a shadow of concern over his features.

“What did the healer say?”, I asked.

“Infection. You know she gets sick easily,” Yoongi said, voice quiet and husky. “But she’s getting better. The fever ceased and she stopped vomiting. The medicine is working.”

I sighed and looked back at the sleeping girl. Chuu always had a fragile health because of her poor conditions when an infant. It was almost a common happening to see her like this, however it did not make us any less concerned. 

The moment I stepped inside the palace after so many weeks, I immediately found Yoongi and he told me about her condition. I “vanished” from my superior’s sight before they could give me any task and ran to visit her on her quarters. Fortunately, her state wasn’t as bad as the last time she fell sick. I’ve never been so frightened to lose her as I was that time.

Of course, a guardian is not supposed to feel anything over the death of others. But I just couldn’t bring myself to be so cold anymore.

As I was about to ask something, we heard someone entering the room, what made Yoongi slightly startled.

It was Martha.  

I frowned, looking at the chief of the servants. What was she doing this late at night?

She crossed her arms and stared at Chuu with a censoring gaze. "Is she awake?"

"No. Isn't it obvious?", Yoongi replied, glaring at the woman in front of him, anger taking over already. It always amazed me how he could be so blatant towards his superiors.

"I'm getting tired of your insolence, Yoongi! Perhaps you want to pass some days without any food?!" Martha snapped, eyeing him angrily.

"There's no need to scream. I'm right in front of you," I knew Martha hated when he sounded so unaffected by her, and Yoongi never missed a chance to do it. He never kept his head down.

I used to think it was a bad, stupid behavior. Now, I could just think of how brave he was.

Martha rolled her eyes and huffed. "I did not come here to argue with you. Instead, I want to make clear that, sick or not, that girl has to be up in the kitchen at five. Vanaheim's Royal Entourage will be here in a few days and I can't lose any staff. I won't let anyone have a break simply because of a flu or whatever. Understood?"

Yoongi tightened his jaw, gripped the sleeves of his shirt. If looks could kill, Martha would have fallen dead right there.  

"Understood." He said between gritted teeth.

Martha nodded and looked back at Chuu one last time, disgust on her features. And I felt disgusted by her. How could she look at Chuu that way? A lovely, hardworking young girl? Couldn't she see how sick she was?  

"This girl is bringing me problems ever since she arrived. I always say that we must never buy useless slaves..." she murmured to herself, clicked her tongue and turned around, leaving the room.

Anger took over me.

A small, quiet and evil voice whispered in my head... it would be so easy to hurt her... humans are fragile, tiny creatures. It would be so easy to punish her, teach her a lesson...

"Y/N? I'm talking to you."

I blinked and looked up at Yoongi, that stared at me with confusion.

"What?"

"We should let her rest for now. Hopefully she'll be feeling better tomorrow morning," he said, sighing. I nodded and got up from my sitting position near the bed, looking down at Chuu. She seemed peaceful at least. I adjusted her blankets and followed Yoongi out of her quarter.

We had much to talk.

"You look different."

I frowned. "What?"

Yoongi was still staring at me, all the weight of his body sustained on his hands. The nightly breeze played with his dark locks; his skin could be compared with porcelain under the moonlight. "I don't know. You just... look different."

I frowned and took the tip of my braid between my fingers. "I didn't even cut my hair..." Not that it was relevant, since my hair was always braided because of my conduct code. Yoongi shook his head.

"I'm not talking about appearance. It's just that... I don't know, your posture changed."

I still stared at him, utterly confused. We hadn't talked much for the past minutes, a peaceful silence reigning above us instead as we watched the night sky. It was a habit of us since we were children: sit on the roof of the servants' quarters and talk. Yoongi is a cat so he barely sleeps at night and enjoys high places naturally; I just learned to like this activity because of him.

I enjoyed Yoongi's company. He was a rather quiet man and I was even quieter, however our time spent together was never unpleasant. If Chuu wasn't with us we'd barely communicate at all.  

I liked it. The silence has been my friend since my birth. With Yoongi, I felt that I did not have to think too much or act perfectly aligned. I could just breathe and have someone's company.

"I still did not understand," I confessed, what made Yoongi ruffle his hair, thoughtful expression.

"You looked angry down there with Martha." He said. "I don't know if you're aware of it, but you barely ever show any emotion at all. You look like a doll all the time. And no, this is not a compliment: stiff and emotionless. So, seeing you show anger was... shocking."

I nodded. Another thing that I admired about Yoongi: he was straightforward. He did not adorn his words or tried to make them less harsh. His brutal honesty was what I needed sometimes.

Yoongi knew me very well, so it was understandable that he could notice I have changed, however it still surprised me. Was it that obvious?

"Did something happen during your travel?" He asked, narrowing his eyes.

Yes, Yoongi definitely knew me very well.  

I pushed my legs near my chest and hugged them, resting my chin atop my knees. Instead of answering, I stared ahead in silence. Yes, many things happened during my travel. Things like interacting with other people freely, something that was completely foreign to me. Things like being "normal" for some moments, even though it was just pretending. Things like feeling freedom for the first time in my life - something absolutely denied to a dragon hybrid.

Things like Taehyung.

And also that gnawing, stinging sensation within my chest...

I needed someone to lighten me up. And this person would be Yoongi.

"Why do you hate humans so much?" I asked suddenly.

He groaned and rolled his eyes, annoyance shadowing his features immediately. "Y/N, please, if you're about to censure me again I'll leave..."

"No! You didn't understand," I said promptly, waving my hands. "I don't want to argue with you, Yoongi. I want to understand you."

The catman stared at me with mouth ajar, eyes narrowed.  

"Did you hit your head somewhere?"  

It was my time to roll my eyes. "Yoongi, please. This is important."

He still stared at me, looking suspicious, surprised and incredulous, all at once. I could understand why. Never did I make such question; I always said he was wrong, he should not hate humans, he should respect his superiors even when he was right, he should obey and obey and obey.

But Yoongi was right: I have changed.

I wanted to understand him. Of course, for a hybrid to hate a human wasn't a hard task, but I wanted to understand his motives. I wanted to know what my closest friend thought, because I never gave him the chance to explain himself and I never gave myself the chance to listen to him.

Yoongi went quiet for several moments. He stared ahead, adjusted his posture. "Honestly, the question should be how can someone not hate humans," he said.

I watched him in silence, eager to absorb everything he had to say. I knew Yoongi is not the kind to express himself easily, so it would probably take time.  

His eyes darkened. It was as if his shoulders weighted. I saw something on his gaze very similar to what I saw in Mrs. Dayo's eyes that day...

"I don't know my parents," he started quietly, voice deep and husky. "I barely remember anything about them. Just like Chuu, I was very young when they sold me to this... particular rich woman."

I knew he had reached a sensitive area. He passed his hand through his dark hair, inhaled softly.  

"Food in her house was great. I could eat anything I wanted. My room was big and comfortable. She bought me fine clothes and presents almost every day." Yoongi sighed and looked ahead. "She said she loved me. And I... I loved her, too. How couldn't I when she treated me so well?"

My chest tightened at each word of his, because I saw how Yoongi became smaller at each word. I have never seen him look... fragile.

"But then, as I grew up... I started to notice things weren't so perfect. Why didn't she let me play with other kids outside? Why did I have to stay inside the mansion all day? Why when she invited people to her house she introduced me as if I was some kind of exhibition? Why did she make me-"

Yoongi gasped at his own words.  

My fists tightened. He massaged his own forehead, looked down at his legs. I could feel that his each word felt like spikes within him. I hated seeing him in that situation.

"That's when I finally realized. I was her pet." He let a humorless, hurtful chuckle past his lips. "I was just one if her possessions. She didn't see me as her equal. She said she loved me, but if she did, why would she make me walk around with a choker on my neck? Why would she make those things to me?" He exhaled weakly and whispered: "I was just a boy."

I gulped, my heart so tight it hurt. Of course, I had an idea of what Yoongi went through on his past, however he never said it out loud – and he didn’t even need to finish. I could fathom the things the woman made him do...  

This explained so much about him.  

And again – there was that small voice in the back of my mind whispering, you went through similar things in your childhood...

“And why is that?”, he continued, a newborn anger growing on his voice – the anger I always heard when he touched this subject. “What gave her the right to own me like that? She had money, but it didn’t matter; she wasn’t better than me. She couldn’t tell me what to do. That’s why I ran away. My life has been miserable ever since, and I still despise myself for having no other choice but to work for humans here, but I am aware that it is the best chance I’ll have for now. I’d rather face Martha or other superiors every day than go back to that woman that treated me like a toy.”

“Freedom in a sewer is still better than slavery within a golden cage,” Mrs. Dayo’s words echoed in my ears.

“And it angers me. Why us hybrids are doomed for a miserable life since birth? What wrong did we do?” Yoongi crossed his arms, face frowned. I could see his hatred, his resignation, his revolt. “Why humans think they are superior? We are biologically different, but it doesn’t mean we’re animals. We have needs, we have desires, we have feelings. And no, I don’t care about the elves!” he looked at me as if I would interrupt him, however I just wanted to hear. “It’s been millennia since an elf stepped foot on Earth. I don’t know where they are now, I don’t know what happened and maybe I’m wrong, but if they cared about what happens here they wouldn’t have disappeared, so they have no right to tell us how things should be now. And it includes you.”

Yoongi stared at me seriously. There was still anger on his eyes, however I saw something underneath it... concern.

“I’ll never forget the day we met. You had a fucking poisoned arrow buried on your shoulder, Y/N. Did your master care about it?” He scoffed and shook his head slightly. “I don’t care if you truly believe that the elves ‘determined’ that your race should exist to protect kings. And even if it’s true, then they’re just pure evil. You were a kid. I know you’ve been through worse than me. But still, you’re so... submissive.”

I avoided his gaze, feeling somehow exposed by his speech. “This is not about me...”

“Yes, it is. It is about us. It is about en entire race.” Yoongi stared ahead, his gaze far away. “I’m always arguing with you about it because I want you to understand. Because I know you’re not the only one. How many hybrids think the same way as you? They simply accept their condition without saying a word. They’re slaves; just because their ‘owners’ treat them with minimal care they think they’re blessed, but they are still slaves. I could have anything I wanted from that woman, live a comfortable life; but I was still a slave. This is not our fate. This is not right. And it doesn’t matter how many years pass, even if I die being just a miserable man, even if I’m not able to change anything, I will never accept it. I won’t accept human’s crumbs. I want everything. I deserve everything.”

We fell in a deep, solemn silence.

It was almost hard to breathe. I knew Yoongi was a rebellious person, however I’ve never seen him speaking this way... with so much feeling.  

After everything I saw these past months, I could not ignore what he said. I could not ignore that flame inside of me, which just became stronger after I heard his words – as if my confused thoughts finally settled in a complete piece.

A part of me struggled. You are a dragon hybrid; you are a guardian. You exist to serve, to obey; this is the role the elves gave you, and you should feel honored. Hoseok’s voice echoed in my mind: “nothing is above honor.”

But then – there was that second voice, too. That second voice that was born the moment I accepted Taehyung’s offer, the moment I made a choice for the first time in my life, the moment someone offered me freedom for the first time:

Yoongi is right.

I shouldn’t. It was wrong. It went against everything I’ve ever done or learned my entire life...

But I agreed with him.

The whole Capital was at frenzy.

Vanaheim's Royal Entourage would arrive in a few days, so everyone - may it be at the palace or at the city overall - wanted nothing but perfection for their arrival. Squares were being decorated, streets impeccably cleaned, gardens reorganized; at the palace the work was just as hard, servants working with no rest to make every corner of the building pristinely clean and beautiful.

Vanaheim was Ëlv'en's greatest ally and one of the biggest and most powerful kingdoms of the continent. Placed at the Coast, they were well-known for the exportation of seafood, pearls, and their great navy, which possessed hundreds of ships both for war and exploration on their fleet. Rumors said that not even mermaids were brave enough to face Vanaheim's navy.  

Ëlv'en and Vanaheim held good relationships since the Five Great Kingdoms were stablished millennia ago. They had been partners not only in commercial accords but wars as well. That is why every ruler had to be very careful to keep this relationship working well. It reflected in why King Satoshi was coming himself to meet Taehyung, and not sending a representative in behalf of him.

Taehyung has been impossibly busy ever since the moment he stepped foot at the Capital again, working to make sure that the King's stay would be perfect. Since he wasn't meeting any foreign at the moment and staying inside the palace all the time, there was no need to follow him everywhere, however I saw him being followed by assistants and counselors all the time. When Taehyung wasn't inside his office working, he was resting on his royal quarters.

It was odd (and stupid), but the fact that we could barely talk made a hollowness set inside of me. I should not be feeling this way. I should be his shadow; quiet and imperceptible. I should not seek for his attention...

But I couldn't say I did not miss our secret expeditions, when I could pretend for a few hours that we did not have this insurmountable wall between us.

The fact is: I was deeply, utterly confused. Confusion was something I was not used to; my life has always been like a river floating peacefully in a single direction. Now, it felt like the angry sea under a storm.

Yoongi's words did not leave my mind. Why I always thought that he was wrong? It's not as if I had no idea hybrids where badly treated before. I didn't know so many hybrid villages existed before the expeditions with Taehyung, however I always knew most of them were slaves. I am a hybrid after all.

It felt as if I was blind all along; as if I was deaf, until someone finally took what was obstructing my ears and I was able to hear for the first time.

And what I heard were screams of pain and hatred. Voices yelling desperately to be heard...

Voices yelling for justice.

Why never did I hear them before?

And apparently, I was so out of my senses that I couldn't even hear literally, because it took me several moments to notice there was someone calling my name.

I turned around in the courtyard and saw Jungkook waving to me.

I walked towards the rabbit-boy. He looked physically way better than when we first met him – Jungkook had gained weight, his skin had a healthy color again, and he even cut his ebony hair, since when we met him his hair was long and horribly dirty. He still walked with a limp, but his injury was almost healed and he could do almost any task again – what he was doing at the moment, carrying some wooden crates towards the kitchen.

Instead of just letting him go, Taehyung decided that he still needed medical assistance and kept the young man with the Entourage. Jungkook barely interacted with anyone else, actually. Whenever Taehyung came around him, he would just nod and reply with monosyllabic sentences.  

He interacted with me, though.

It was odd, however I noticed that Jungkook felt somehow comfortable around be. Perhaps because I was one of the few females within the Entourage, perhaps because we were around the same age – I did not understand why, but he was slightly less stiff with me.

Just slightly.

I was the one who convinced him to come back with us and work at the palace. I knew they always needed manpower, and his good physique would be highly appreciated. As always, working at the palace wasn’t the best, but was also far from being the worst – and Jungkook surely knew the worst. He could work there for a while until he found out exactly what he wanted to do. Being honest, I didn’t even expect he would actually listen to me.

Of course, being a guardian, I shouldn’t have done what I did. But I’ve been doing a lot of things I shouldn’t lately, so I thought that one more thing wouldn’t hurt.

“Hello, Jungkook,” I greeted politely. “Are you getting used to the palace’s routine?”

The rabbit-boy cleaned his forehead with the back of his hand. “Perhaps. It’s not that bad.” He shrugged. “Is that woman Martha always so annoying?”

“She is worse,” I said honestly, what made Jungkook tilt his head – a very frequent habit of his, I could tell.

He exhaled and put his hands on each side of his waist, looking around. “Food is good here. The other servants are quite welcoming. I have more freedom than I had in my past work. I think having a bed is way better than sleeping on the ground. And, well... I like the fact that they call me servant and not slave.” he admitted. “Maybe you were right.”

“I’m happy to hear this,” I said, nodding.

“I am still a slave, though,” he murmured.

There it was again. That aggressiveness inside of him, a caged fire waiting for the right time to explode. I couldn’t judge him – not after what he suffered. I didn’t know what to say to ease his feelings. And honestly, I don’t think there was anything that could ease them at all.

“I can understand how you feel-” I started, only to be interrupted by his huff.

“No, you can’t understand me, Y/N. You’re a human, how could you understand?”

I stood there dazed for some seconds. Oh. Jungkook still did not know my true nature...  

“I am not a human, Jungkook.” I said quietly.

The rabbit-boy scoffed yet again, quirking one eyebrow. “And what are you, then? A dog?”

Instead of replying his quite unpolite sentence, I just stared deep within his eyes in silence.

Jungkook still had that mocking demeanor for some moments. Then, slowly, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he stared back at me.

From confusion, pure shock.

His eyes widened. He stepped behind. His breath got caught on his throat.

“You are... y-you are...” he stuttered weakly.  

I just nodded once.

Jungkook let a shaky exhale, passed his hand through his hair. “I-I would never have noticed if you didn’t tell me... dragon,” he whispered the last word weakly.

“Yes. Believe me, I understand how you feel-”

“You are a dragon hybrid,” Jungkook repeated as if he hadn’t heard me at all.

Then, I saw a reaction I was definitely not expecting.

His big round eyes shining in pure amazement. His lips lifted up in a smile. He measured me from head to toe as if seeing me for the first time.  

Why did he look amazed? The only person I saw showing a similar reaction was Taehyung, but with Jungkook it was much more intense.

“This is why I felt something about you- something I couldn’t understand back then-” Jungkook continued, his maniac grin only growing. “A dragon hybrid! How can you camouflage yourself so well between humans? Why are you covering your own presence? Now that you told me I can feel it- It’s like- it's like a noise so constant you get used to it and don’t even notice it until someone points out, and now that you pointed out... I can feel your power!”

I watched him, completely confused, as Jungkook mumbled his nonsense.  

What?

“Of course I have to cover my presence. I am the guardian of the King,” I said, eyeing him.

And with a single sentence, all the amazement vanished from Jungkook's eyes, being replaced by shock...

And outrage.

"The King's guardian?", he crossed his arms over his toned chest, narrowing his eyes. "Why do you serve them?"

"You know why," I said, now even more confused. "It was the role the elves gave my species."  

However, after hearing Yoongi's words, after everything I went through for the past two months, even I thought my words sounded empty. I did not pronounce them with the same intent, with the same pride I used to pronounce.

It was just an excuse.  

I didn't even know if it was right anymore.

Jungkook rolled his eyes - eyes that just a few seconds ago looked at me with astonishment, now looked at me judgingly. "You are a dragon. How can you accept this situation? How can you willingly let them tame you? These... these humans?"  

"You don't understand, Jungkook. I chose to be here. I chose to protect the King," I said, tightening my fists. Who this boy thought he was to judge me like that? He didn't know me.  

"Why do you let them treat you like that?" Jungkook continued, once again, as if he hadn't heard me. "I saw that man slapping your face at the inn, one day before we came to the Capital."

I almost gasped.  

"He is my superior..." I said weakly.

"And?" Jungkook shook his head in disbelief. "I can't believe it. You are- your race is the most powerful in existence, and you still let these humans treat you like this? You let them treat you like a slave? You submissively let them do it to you?"  

I could only stare at him.

I did not know what to say.

Jungkook shook his head again.

"My parents always told me about dragons. They said you were mighty and powerful. But now what I see is just disappointing."

Once again, I was confused. Why would his parents even tell him something about dragon hybrids in the first place? "And what did you expect of me?"

"Certainly not this." He stepped forward, suddenly lowering his voice. I could see the fiery anger burning within his eyes, within his soul. "You know very well how our race is suffering not only here, but through the entire continent. You know we are enslaved and treated like animals. However, you do nothing. Most of us can't fight against them, but you can. And you do nothing! You accept this situation, you agree with it. You let us rot and die."

"What?" I stared at him in disbelief. "Are you even hearing yourself? How can you blame me? This is not my fault!"

"If you have the power to change it yet you chose to do nothing, then yes, it is your fault!" Jungkook stormed, making me look at him in utter shock. "You prefer to serve a human, a man from a lineage of murderers, instead of helping the ones of your own race!"

"You are wrong." I immediately stepped forward, rage suddenly taking over me. I saw regret and fear passing through Jungkook's eyes for a moment, as if he realized he shouldn't have gone this far. I did not care if he offended me, but I wouldn't let him say such things about Taehyung. "His Majesty is not a murderer. You should know it. If it wasn't for him, you would be dead by now; he saved you. His Majesty is good."

Jungkook stared at me for some moments. I saw his anger calming down a little, but not disappearing. The flame was still there, burning him inside out.

"If he is good," Jungkook started, his voice quieter yet spiteful, "Then why did he make you his slave?"

"I am not his slave-" I tried to say.

"Can you quit your job?" He interrupted me. "Can you tell him you want to leave? Can you go anywhere without his or other superior's consent? Can you live a life of your own?" I slowly closed my mouth. I didn't know what to say. "We both know the answer is no. This is called slavery. You are just like me; you are a slave." He stepped closer to me, lowering his voice even more. "He might do some good things, like what he did to me. But he will never understand us or know what we feel. He is the most privileged one, why would he want to change anything? It might look like he will change things, but he does it to keep his good popularity. He is young, he is charismatic, people believe him easily. This is what the Kim Dynasty has been doing since the beginning. And if you don't believe me, then see things by yourself. You know him more than I do after all."

I hated it. I hated not knowing what to say. I hated not having an answer. I hated it that I could not defend my master.

I hated it that he managed to put this question inside of me.

Because something started to bother me terribly from the moment he pronounced these words.

"If she loved me so much, why would she make me walk around with a choker?", I heard Yoongi's voice saying quietly in my mind.

I carried something similar around my neck, too.

My medallion. One of the only five in existence. Five Great Kingdoms, five great guardians. The symbols that pointed me as Ëlv'en's Royal Guardian; symbols of loyalty and submission...

It was nothing but a choker.

A choker for a trained animal.

Why do you let them tame you like that?

No human should tame you.

"The King requests your presence at the principal hall."

That single sentence made a thrill rush over my body.

I thanked the guard that came to give me this message and closed the door of my room. What did he want? It's been days since the last time we've been close. Besides, it was already late in the night...

I gulped.

After dressing myself appropriately to be in the presence of the King, I left my room. A twirl of feelings made havoc inside of me - some I could recognize, some I couldn't. There was excitement, I couldn't deny. As wrong as it was, I missed him.

And there was... suspicion.

As if Yoongi's words weren't enough, now Jungkook's words also did not let me rest - especially what he said about Taehyung.  

I have always been suspicious of him. Again, I did not know why he chose me as his guardian, and honestly most of his intentions were unknown. Jungkook just added more fire to the pit.  

"If he is so good, then why did he make you his slave?"

Only a little time ago, I would never see things this way. I was always proud to be a guardian. But now... I couldn't deny that I partially agreed with what Jungkook said. I was a slave.  

Did it mean Taehyung was just another evil King...?

No, an angry part of me said. I tightened my fists, my steps echoing through the quiet palace hallways. Jungkook didn't know what he was saying; he didn't know Taehyung as well as me. I might not fully understand him, but he was the man that helped hybrids with his own power after all. How could it be considered a political movement when the hybrids didn't even know they were at the presence of their King? I knew Taehyung hated this situation, he hated seeing people suffer. Besides, he was good to me from the moment we met. Taehyung never forced me to do anything. He was the one who made me feel freedom for the first time in my life.  

He was not evil...

But I could not think much of it, because in the moment I saw him standing there my mind went completely blank.

It was odd how my heart was beating so fast. It's been just a few days since I did not see him from up close, yet the sight was enough to almost make me trip over my own feet. Why every detail about him was able to make me so amazed? His tanned skin, his soft dark hair, his broad shoulders and perfect posture. Graceful, but at the same time strongly masculine. Everything about him was perfectly balanced.

He had his hands inside the front pockets of his pants. Taehyung wore casual clothes (note that the royal standard of casual is what a common person would never be able to purchase). Black pants, navy blue shirt. I always thought he looked good in blue.

He turned around when noticed my presence and opened a small smile.

I stopped in front of him and bowed respectfully. "Good night, Your Majesty."

"Good night," he replied. It was also odd that I missed the sound of his quiet, deep voice.  

"Your Majesty requested my presence. Did something wrong happen?" I asked. Why was I feeling so stiff all of sudden?

"We're going somewhere," he said with no further explanations. "Follow me."

I did as he said in silence as he guided me through the palace. The whole building was utterly quiet, almost empty, only guards doing the nightly vigilance. Vanaheim's King would arrive the next day, so the place was already prepared for his arrival. It was time for everyone to rest before the big event.

Taehyung should be included, but as always, he did the exact opposite of what everyone expected.

I side eyed him. The King looked weirdly relaxed, his hands still inside the pockets. He smelled of soap and his hair was slightly damp, what told me he had just taken a shower. However, I still noticed the bags beneath his eyes.

"You're uncharacteristically quiet today," Taehyung said suddenly.

He was right. But somehow, it felt strange to be around him again. I did not feel so comfortable to interact with him inside the palace where he was the King twenty-four hours a day as when we were traveling. Also, I could not forget General Seokjin's warning...

"I am a quiet person, Your Majesty," I said sheepishly.

Taehyung chuckled quietly. "I know. Well, it's not a big deal. I enjoy your company, quiet or not."

It was also odd how my heart nearly stopped because of his sentence.

We arrived at one of the palace's side exits near the gardens. The royal garden was gigantic, millimetrically pruned into perfection. Millions of flowers, fountains made of gold gurgling water quietly, and there was even a maze made of bush walls. The scenery still looked beautiful even at night.  

We crossed the camp in silence and reached the almost hidden exit. There was a guard waiting for us. With no words, he handed us two simple hooded cloaks, which he put over our shoulders promptly. Before we left, Taehyung put his hand on the guard's shoulder and nodded.

"Thank you, Jaehyun," he said. The guard just bowed respectfully.

And in a few minutes we were walking freely through the city.

Most streets were quiet, but as expected of a big city there was a considerable number of people awake, inside taverns or restaurants, having peaceful walks at the Capital's many squares, enjoying the cozy night. Most big cities in Ëlv'en were safe, so it was not shocking to see kids walking around this late at night.  

I have never been out at that hour. I could not leave the palace without permission. Seeing people having fun, dancing inside taverns at the sound of loud music or simply enjoying themselves was somehow pleasing-

My mind went blank again when I felt Taehyung's hand holding mine.

"Your Majesty-" I gasped, completely shocked.

"It will be less suspicious if people think we're just a couple walking around," Taehyung explained quietly, sounding unbothered.

I swallowed and nodded weakly. "Alright."

Alright. Yes, alright.

We walked through a busy street, people just too drunk to even bother noticing us. Taehyung walked unhurriedly, his other hand still inside the front pocket.  

His hand was big.

It made a warmth spread through my entire arm, and my neck, and my face-

Focus!, I scolded myself. We're just holding hands. This is to make us less suspicious. There's no need to be so nervous.

He started to swing our hands between our bodies just slightly.  

There's no need to be so nervous.

Taehyung looked so carefree and young...

Don't be nervous! It will be embarrassing if your hand start sweating!

He looked up to the cloudless night sky. A faint smirk adorned his features.

His grip around my hand tightened almost imperceptibly.  

Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe-

"We arrived," Taehyung said, his steps coming to a halt.

I looked up to the building in front of us, placed in an empty street. The wooden board just above the front door said...

Royal Capital's Orphanage?

Taehyung stepped closer and knocked on the door three times.

Almost immediately, an old woman opened the door, a wide smile on her face.

"Tae Tae!" She exclaimed, opening her arms for a hug.

I frowned. Tae Tae?

Taehyung dropped my hand and engulfed the short woman into one of his tight hugs. "Zofia! It's been so long!" He said happily.

I watched the scene in utter confusion. I should be used to this already.  

It took me some moments to notice the small deer horns peeking from her grizzly hair. A hybrid.

"Get inside!" She said, still smiling and patting Taehyung's back softly.  

I followed them quietly, while that woman Zofia ruffled his hair and made questions such as "How have you been? How's your sister? Are you eating well?"

(I wondered why Taehyung held the love of each elder woman he encountered.)

He then looked at me. "Ah! Zofia, this is Y/N. She's my friend." He said happily. The woman's eyes fell on me and she smiled. I stepped forward and offered my hand for her to take, as I have learned to do when meeting someone, but instead of just the hand she took my entire arm and squeezed me in a tight hug.

"Y/N! It is a pleasure to meet you!" She said, laughing.

"Huh... the pleasure is mine, ma'am," I replied, bashful.

"Where are the kids?" Taehyung asked as Zofia finally let me go, looking around.  

"They are already sleeping, Tae. What did you expect? You came so late," she said, crossing her arms.

Taehyung looked disappointed for a second. I already knew he liked kids a lot. "Well, unfortunately we can't stay long anyway."

"There's no problem, Tae. I know you are very busy." She then put her hands on her chest and sighed, looking up at him with yelling affection. "I can't believe my little boy now is the King! You looked so beautiful during the coronation ceremony!"

Taehyung smiled and scratched the nape of his neck. As odd as it sounds, he did look like a little boy in that moment. "Thank you, Zofia. I promise I'll come back another day when I have more time." He then straightened his posture. "Where's Jimin?"

"He's in the office, waiting for you."  

Taehyung nodded and motioned me to follow him.

The orphanage was big and clean, although I could see some toys threw her and there. It wasn't a big surprise that Taehyung would know such place anymore.  

He opened a particular door and smiled. "Jimin!"

I followed him inside the office and saw another man, a human, probably the same age as Taehyung. He had honey blond hair and feline eyes, which were almost completely closed as he smiled and approached Taehyung.

They hugged and patted each other's backs for some moments, mumbling greetings to each other. As usual, I stood awkwardly some steps away. Who was that man? Why did Taehyung want to meet him?

I introduced myself and Jimin smiled sweetly in reply. There was a smoothness about him I didn't frequently see in common humans; his gaze was almost as piercing as Taehyung's.  

"So, why did you call me?" Jimin started, crossing his arms and leaning his hip on the wooden desk. "I have to say, all this mystery made me nervous. Why is Ëlv'en's King wanting to meet me in secret?"

I saw Taehyung rolling his eyes and they smiled at each other. Jimin said "Ëlv'en's King" with a mocking playfulness, as an old friend would say.

"I need you to do something for me, Jimin," Taehyung said, still smiling, however his voice got serious.  

"You understand that I can't do it without asking something in return, don't you?" Jimin said quirking one eyebrow.

Taehyung huffed and crossed his arms. "Of course you'll be fairly paid."

"Well, taking money from the King is not something that happens everyday. I can't let this chance go," Jimin said, shrugging, a mischievous smirk on his plump lips. "What is it?"

"I need you to find some archives to me at the Tower," Taehyung said. "I want to know the name of every shapeshifter in this continent. A wolf shapeshifter, to be more specific."

Oh.

So that's why we came here. I should've figured; Taehyung did not explain what he wanted to do inside the palace because it would be dangerous, since he thought the culprit was one of his own family and could be hearing our conversation.  

Jimin nodded. "Well, it won't be difficult. There aren't many shapeshifters out there." The blond man narrowed his eyes. "But why don't you ask for it yourself? You are the King, Taehyung. You could get anything you wanted from the Royal Mages."

"No questions, Jimin. For your own sake," Taehyung said seriously. Jimin still eyed him suspiciously, but ended up agreeing.

"Alright, I'll see what I can do."  

"Thank you." Taehyung then smiled sadly. "Unfortunately, I can't stay long. We can talk properly when I have more time."

"But I won't have time from now on," Jimin said, his eyes suddenly gleaming with excitement.  

He approached Taehyung and put his hand on his shoulder.

"Seulgi is pregnant, Taehyung."

The King looked at him in complete awe, his mouth forming a perfect "o".

“What?” Taehyung exclaimed, a huge, genuine smile growing on his lips. He immediately pushed Jimin (rather roughly) into a tight hug, both men laughing – while once again I stood there uncomfortably, feeling like an intruder. “God! I am so happy for you!”

“It was unexpected, but we’re happy, too,” Jimin said. If auras had color, Jimin’s would be bright yellow; pure joy.  

“Where is Seulgi?” Taehyung asked, finally leaving the shorter one.  

“She’s hidden and safe.” Jimin assured. I frowned. Why would she – Jimin's wife, apparently – need to be hidden? “I promise that when things get calmer, I’ll take you to visit her. She misses you, too.”

I watched as they kept talking with smiles on their faces. As usual, I did not fully understand the situation... but all I could focus on was Taehyung’s smile. Taehyung’s eyes shining in delight.

He got so happy simply because of other’s happiness.

How could someone like him be evil?

Our way back to the palace was silent, but it was my fault. I couldn’t think properly with Taehyung holding my hand.

The moment we stepped out of the Orphanage (after Zofia shoved Taehyung with hugs, kisses on his cheeks and said “may the elves guide you” to us hundreds of times), his hand immediately held mine again. I had to gather all of my self-control not to gasp. I was not used to such physical contact; however, if it was any other man, I would have pushed them away. With Taehyung, though...

Well.

He looked even more relaxed after our visit, a lazy smile on his lips all the time. We entered the palace’s property again and-

And he was still holding my hand.

Why is he still holding my hand? We’re not in the streets anymore, there’s no need to pretend-

“I have to keep reminding you all the time that you can make me questions, isn’t it, Y/N?”

I blinked, side eyeing my master. It was difficult to look at him when he was so close. He probably thought I wanted to make questions about today, when in fact I was trying not to combust.

“I apologize, Your Majesty,” I said weakly. Taehyung chuckled.

“You don’t have to apologize all the time, Y/N.”

“Oh. I apologize for apologizing too much.”

Taehyung laughed for real at this, looking at me playfully. “Was that a joke?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know how to make jokes, Your Majesty,” I said.  

“And this was sarcasm.” Taehyung tilted his head slightly. Why did he look endeared? “Who are you learning these things from?”

Only if he knew my closest friend was the most sarcastic person in existence...

“Why does Jimin’s wife needs to hide?” I got brave enough and decided to ask, changing the topic completely to take his attention off of me.

“Because she’s a hybrid. You know how hard this situation is for pregnant hybrids,” Taehyung replied. I knew it; their babies could be stolen so they could be sold as slaves. It was a sad, common occurrence free hybrids had to deal with.

That’s not what shocked me, though.

“She is a hybrid? And they are married?” I exclaimed to myself. Taehyung nodded.

“Yes. Many humans are married to hybrids, Y/N. You just don’t hear about it because it’s against the law,” the King explained.

Before I could make any more questions about this strange and unexpected situation, Taehyung gasped and his steps came to a halt, making me stop as well. He stared up to the sky.

"It's full moon," he exclaimed, as if he had remembered something very important.

"It is," I murmured, looking at the silver orb glowing brightly in the cloudless sky.

Taehyung thought for some moments, then faced me. It was one of these moments which I couldn't bring myself to look away. And he has never been so close...

His eyes gleamed with newborn excitement. "Do you want to see something amazing?"

I stared at him in awe. How could a man look so pure? How could I say no to whatever he was proposing?  

"Yes...?" I said, confused.

Taehyung nodded, his grip on my hand tightening. "Then let's go. We don't have much time!"

And with that, he started to run towards the entrance of the palace, dragging me along.  

I accompanied his pace with no difficulty, our hurried steps echoing loudly through the building. Taehyung guided me through the labyrinth that is this colossal palace, turning on corners and going upstairs, never once slowing his pace. I recognized where he was leading me to: the royal quarters where members of the royalty had their private rooms, a zone usually forbidden to me. 

"We're almost there!" He said, stopping momentarily in front of a great painting, just as tall as the entire wall. I watched as Taehyung pushed the frame, revealing it to be actually a hidden door. It was not surprising; this palace had hundreds of secret passages, all of them which I had memorized...

But I never entered this particular passage.

Taehyung guided me inside and closed the door behind him; I saw a spiral staircase that led several floors up.  

"Let's go," he said, panting. We started to make our way up relentlessly until, after some minutes, we finally reached the top.

Taehyung opened one door and I found myself breathless.  

Not because of our run, though.

We were at the top of one of the highest towers of the castle, hundreds of meters away from the ground. It had no ceiling, what gave us a beautiful sight of the entire Capital, blanketed by the night.  

Taehyung finally dropped my hand, breathing heavily, and dried the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. I too took some moments to recover my breath.  

Taehyung looked up. "Good. It seems we arrived just in time," he said.  

"In time to what, Your Majesty?" I asked. Wasn't this beautiful view the "amazing" thing he said before?

Taehyung stared at the horizon. Slowly, a smile creeped up on his lips.

He pointed ahead. "In time for that", he said quietly. I looked in the direction he was pointing, confused.

At first, it was just a tiny white point.

But it started to grow. It was approaching us, flying in the sky in our direction.

When I finally figured out what that thing was, I gasped loudly. Taehyung laughed.

I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing.

"Y/N, I introduce you my friend Alpha," the King said proudly.

I watched in utter shock as it finally landed on the tower, its gigantic wings making so much wind it made our hairs and clothes wave violently. Its feathers and fur were completely white. Head and wings similar of an eagle; bottom similar of a lion. Its eyes were icy blue - intelligent eyes that landed on Taehyung immediately.

It was...

"A griffin", I whispered in pure astonishment.

Taehyung approached the majestic creature, a wide smile on his lips. "Hi, Alpha. How have you been?"

The griffin stared at him and lowered his head. I watched in pure awe as Taehyung caressed his head, making the creature close his eyes, pleasured.

Taehyung looked back at me, who was still completely frozen in place. "Come here, Y/N!" He exclaimed, gesticulating for me to approach.

I stepped closer hesitantly. The griffin was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen; his snow-white body seemed to shine under the moonlight. He was colossal and his claws could rip a person apart. Beautiful, however powerful and lethal.

Taehyung held my wrist gently. "It's okay. He won't hurt you," he said quietly, guiding my hand to rest on the griffin's head.

The creature looked at me intently. I tentatively caressed him, and Alpha seemed to like it. I couldn't hold my smile.

"Alpha," I pronounced his name in a whisper. The griffin stared at me. I could tell he was too intelligent, so intelligent he could understand us to some level. I noticed his completely white body - the perfect camouflage. A creature of ice. "Were you born in Niflheim, too?" I asked. Alpha blinked slowly, as if saying 'yes'. My smile only grew. "Then it means you're my brother."

"He knows who you are," Taehyung said slowly, his voice barely audible over the sound of the wind. "He respects you."

He looked amazed. Not by Alpha; by me.  

I immediately avoided his gaze.

"How...?" I questioned, unable to formulate a coherent sentence.

"I saved him from hunters, three years ago. He was severely injured," Taehyung explained. I noticed a big scar crossing Alpha's face. "I also helped him to heal. After that, Alpha visits me wherever I go, always during the first full moon of a lunar cycle. I don't understand why he chose this specific date, though."

I nodded, my hand still resting on Alpha's head. He seemed comfortable. "It is said that griffins were the familiars of elves," I said quietly.

Taehyung nodded. "I know. That is, until mankind almost made them extinct." Taehyung sighed, staring at Alpha deeply. "I can't understand how someone could be able to hurt such creature. They almost don't exist anymore. That's why nobody knows about Alpha. I'm concerned that someone might hurt him again."

I nodded. An idea popped up on my mind.

"Do you think Alpha wants to be your familiar, that's why he follows you?" I asked.

Taehyung crossed his arms and shook his head. "Ah, no. I just think he wants to show his gratitude. Sometimes I think he sees me as his child," Taehyung chuckled. "He is not tied to me; he is free. That is how everyone should be, don't you think? Free."

In that moment, I couldn’t agree more with what he said.

But a small voice inside of me whispered... am I free, too?

Alpha suddenly moved, straightening his posture and watched us from above. Taehyung put his hands on his waist. “It’s time for him to leave. He never stays long when I’m at the Capital; he knows it’s dangerous to be in such a crowded city.” The King smiled and waved to the ethereal creature. “See you soon, Alpha.”

The griffin landed his gaze on Taehyung for some moments, then he looked at me. I could see and feel the purity of his soul. A creature so imposing and noble, the last reminiscent that elves once lived among us in Earth. I never thought I would live long enough to see one in person. So little of them remained after the elves disappeared...

“Bye, Alpha,” I said softly. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

Alpha looked at me intently, and I swear I saw him nodding his head. We stepped behind when he extended his immense wings, flying away with yet another gust of wind.

We watched in silence as the creature became smaller and smaller, until he disappeared in the night.

“This is yet another secret I ask you to keep,” Taehyung said lightheartedly. I nodded.

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

Stepping away from him, I looked around. The sight was breathtaking; the city below looked like a glowing map. The sight extended kilometers and kilometers in front of us, so far I could see where the city ended, so far I could almost see the Styx River at West and the Great Forest Baïkarh at East. Legends said Baïkarh hid the entrance to Alfheim and the Styx River hid the entrance to Helheim; East and West, good and evil, mighty and dishonored side by side.  

“It’s wonderful,” I whispered to myself, putting my hands over the parapet made of stone.

“I’d rather say frightening.”

I frowned and looked back to my master.

Taehyung seemed uneasy, shifting the weight of his body uncomfortably. His eyebrows were frowned in a concerned expression, he gulped and suddenly looked small-

“Is Your Majesty scared of heights?” I questioned, quirking one eyebrow.

The King scratched the nape of his neck, looking bashful. “Is it embarrassing?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Of course not, Your Majesty. This is a common phobia,” I reassured him.

Taehyung almost screamed when he saw me sitting on the parapet, my legs swinging into nothing.

“Hey- this is dangerous! You shouldn’t-” he tried, approaching one step.

He froze whein I extended my arm encouragingly in his direction in silence.

“Hm, I don’t think so...” he murmured, staring at my hand with pure fright on his eyes.

“It’s alright,” I reassured him again. “I won’t let Your Majesty fall.”

Taehyung looked at me. He definitely caught the slight tone of challenge in my voice. The King sighed, passed his hand through his hair and rolled his eyes, giving in. “I hope you’re not trying to kill me, Y/N.”

He approached with hesitant steps, gripping my hand. Very carefully, he sat by my side on the parapet. It was almost like seeing a cat approaching water. Taehyung gulped, his legs wobbly, his hand gripping mine so tightly it would’ve hurt if I weren’t so accustomed with pain.

“Wow, this is high. Very, very high.” he gulped again; I could feel his hand shaking slightly against mine. His voice sounded uncharacteristically high pitched and I had to control myself not to laugh. “Oh my God, I think I’ll vomit-”

“Don’t look down. Look ahead instead,” I advised.  

Taehyung did what I said, however his body was completely stiff. “How can you be so relaxed when we’re hundreds of meters away from the ground?”

“I am focusing in the view instead of caring about the danger, Your Majesty,” I said softly. And of course, there was the fact I can actually fly, but he didn’t know about it.

“Hm. Okay.” Taehyung went quiet for some more moments. “I get quite talkative when I’m scared, so you’ll have to bear me right now.”

“If it makes Your Majesty feel better,” I said, still looking ahead.

“I remembered something interesting these days,” Taehyung continued, his voice sounding slightly maniac at the moment. “I remember you from when I was little.”

I widened my eyes, shocked. “You do?”

“Yes. Sometimes, I had the impression I saw a little girl following my father. Seokjin said it was the angry spirit of a dead princess that haunted the palace. I couldn’t sleep for weeks.” Taehyung laughed shakily. I smiled too, imagining a frightened young Taehyung under the blankets, trying to sleep. “When I told my father, he simply scolded me as always.”

I side eyed him; it’s been a while since I noticed Taehyung held some hard feelings towards his father, yet he never said it out loud. “He was indeed a severe man,” I said very carefully.

Taehyung huffed. “He was beyond severe. It’s alright, Y/N. We don’t need to pretend. We both know he was not a good person.”

The words got stuck in my throat.  

That was unexpected; the stinging sorrow in his voice, the amount of feelings he had within himself. And more importantly – I never thought of my past master this way...

Not yet.

“I... can’t say it for sure,” I admitted, suddenly feeling that turmoil of feelings again. It’s been a while since I’ve been remembering my interactions with King Taejun; he was severe and serious, did not accept any failure. Yet – saying out loud he was bad was something hard to do.

Taehyung watched me in silence for some moments.

“Did you love him, Y/N?” he asked quietly.

I didn’t know what to say.

More importantly, I didn’t understand why he was asking me that.

Love? I respected King Taejun. He was my sun, the reason I would wake up every day. He was the main purpose of my existence. But... love?

“I don’t know,” I whispered, almost as if it was a secret confession. “I don’t know what love is.”

Taehyung nodded and looked ahead.

“It’s alright. I don’t have much experience in this area, either. At least when it’s about paternal love.” I watched him in silence, eager to hear more – especially because I noticed how his grip in my hand was softening, how he was slowly relaxing as he talked. “I was a long-awaited son, but not for the right reasons. My father needed a heir, someone to carry on his legacy. But my mother always had a fragile health. They tried to have children multiple times and failed. My father was going desperate; if he did not have a child of his own, then one of my cousins would become the heir. The crown would leave the principal branch of the Kim House, and disgrace would fall on his shoulders. So you can imagine how satisfied he was when my mother finally gave birth.”

I nodded slowly, encouraging him to keep talking. I did not know why he decided to talk about his life, but I was more than satisfied.

“In the end, I don’t think Taejun saw me as his son after all. I was just the heir, the crown prince. And in order to carry his legacy, he wanted me to be like him.” Taehyung tilted his head. I could see his mind was far away, drowned in memories. “I had classes with the teachers he chose about the themes he wanted. He never approved my interest for magic, because he thought it was useless. However, when I bothered him way too much, guess what? He chose who would teach me.”

“Sir Gael,” I remembered. Now things were starting to make sense. Taehyung nodded.

“Yes. I was always surrounded by people that thought like him. People that said things like pure-human supremacy and unholy hybrids.” He huffed, rolling his eyes. “I would escape to that Orphanage we visited when things got too boring, you know. I met Jimin and Seulgi there. In that Orphanage, both human and hybrid kids grow together with no difference between them. While at home I heard things like unholy hybrids, at that Orphanage I played with these kids and they were just... normal. How could them be bad and unholy? Even as a kid I could see there was something wrong with it.”

His entire body was relaxing slowly, voice getting lower. His grip around my hand was comfortable now.  

“When I was old enough, I finally got tired of my father wanting to control every aspect of my life. I wanted to see things with my own eyes, to learn from people that did not think like him, to see the real world. Me and my father fought every day. It felt like hell, honestly.” Taehyung let a quiet, humorless chuckle past his lips. “Until we finally made a deal. How did he like to say? “You don’t gain things, you negotiate them.” And so did I. Taejun finally let me go. For the past six years, I’ve been traveling the world. I’ve been visiting places, learning from different people.”

“This is how Your Majesty met your mentor?” I asked quietly.

“Yes. This is how I met Petrus. My father would never approve it if he knew who was teaching me, but now he couldn’t tell me what to do.”

“And this is why people know you as ‘Vante’”. So many things were getting clear right now, like the fact that I barely knew or remembered anything about him; he has been away. Taehyung nodded.

“I wanted to get close to people, hybrids in special, but if I went to them and introduced myself as the crown prince they would probably kill me or worse. I’m sure you noticed how the common population hates the royal family. Because of that, Vante was born. My disguise was more a safety measure than anything... well, being honest, as I started to help people in these villages, I didn’t want them to know who I was after all. Everything I did as the prince would reflect in my father’s reputation, and I didn’t want to make him seem good at this point.”

“Didn’t your father know what Your Majesty was doing?”  

“Not really.” Taehyung said, tilting his head. “I knew he sent people to follow me, but I always managed to escape. Of course, sometimes I had no other choice but come back for official events and such. In the meantime, I was just Vante.”

I watched him in silence for some moments, just the sound of the wind between us. His hair waved softly. “Your Majesty likes being Vante.” It wasn’t a question, for I already knew the answer.

“Being Vante is simple. No luxury, no pretending, not having to impress everyone all the time.” Taehyung sighed deeply. “Unfortunately, I can’t be him anymore from now on.”

I frowned slightly. What did he mean?

“Who do you like the most? Taehyung or Vante?” he asked suddenly, voice playful, making me avoid his gaze, flustered.

“You and him are the same person,” I said sincerely, making Taehyung roll his eyes.

“You know what I mean.”

“But that’s what I see. You and Vante are the same, I don’t see any difference between you. Both are good people that cares for others.”  

Taehyung stared at me, a smile slowly growing on his lips. “So, that means you like me.”

My lungs failed.

“I- well-” I stuttered, looking at anything but him, feeling my entire body get hot when he suddenly intertwined his fingers with mine. Why did I get so nervous? Why was my heart beating so fast? He didn’t even say something shocking – he was my master, so it was no surprise that I would like him, right?

But King Taejun used to be my master, and my heart never fluttered when I was around him. Not this way...  

Why is that? What does he mean by “like”? “Like” in what sense?  

Taehyung laughed loudly. It seems that he was already very comfortable.

“Well, I personally prefer Vante,” he said, looking at our intertwined hands. While his was warm, mine was cold. “Vante is a simple guy. Kim Taehyung... he is complicated. He has many secrets.”

Again, I saw a glimpse of sorrow in his eyes. Beautiful, dark eyes. How could he be so honest, but at the same time so difficult to understand? It felt like staring at the surface of a lake; beautiful at sight, but impossible to know its true depth.

It was scary how I wanted to get into this lake.

“It seems that Your Majesty isn’t afraid of the height anymore,” I pondered after some seconds of silence. Taehyung chuckled.

“No, I’m still frightened. Please, don’t ask me to do this again.” A small smile adorned his lips. “But... you were right. The sight is beautiful.”

I smiled too, focusing in the gorgeous sight in front of us.

Trying to pretend that I didn’t notice how he said that last sentence looking at me, and not at the landscape.

I watched as King Satoshi entered the Throne Room accompanied by his Entourage.

The short man smiled widely as his gaze locked with Taehyung’s, who was approaching as well. Vanaheim’s king has always been a warm person, as far as I remembered; he didn’t change much in appearance, his long black hair the same, as well as his extravagant green attire. He was considerably young, barely fifty years old.

Instead of shaking Taehyung’s hand when they were close enough, King Satoshi hugged my master, patting his back and smiling.  

I couldn’t really focus on them because of the other man behind Satoshi – barely a shadow.

Yuta.

Vanaheim’s dragon-guardian stared at me with confused and shocked eyes. However, instead of showing anger the way Hoseok did, Yuta locked gazes with me and nodded respectfully – his way to greet me in silence. Yuta has always been a pondered and calm man after all, the exact opposite of Hoseok.

I knew my brother was probably judging me, though, and yet again I would be forced to give explanations – but not now.

Satoshi put his hands on Taehyung’s shoulders and measured him from head to toe, eyes shining.

“Ah, look at you, Tae. The elves sure have been blessing you. I remember just yesterday you were a skinny brat running around. The man you’ve become!”  

Taehyung laughed loudly, and I could hear his laugh was sincere. Satoshi’s choice of words was quite inappropriate, but for a man that was similar to an uncle, it was no problem.

After greeting Taehyung, King Satoshi proceeded to greet the Queen Mother, Seojeon, in one of her rare appearances. The woman was still incredibly beautiful; it seems that the years had no effect on her at all. He then greeted Taehyung’s younger sister, Princes Yeri – just as beautiful as her mother.

“King Satoshi, it is an honor to receive the Minatozaki Royal House in our Kingdom,” Taehyung said when the greetings ended. Satoshi nodded.

“I am excited to begin our negotiations, Taehyung. I’m sure that the bond between our kingdoms will get stronger than ever. We have many issues to discuss, but I don’t want to delay things; you probably already know our main theme.”

Probably nobody noticed it. Nobody knew Taehyung as well as me. He stiffened just slightly for a single moment – too fast for anyone to notice.

When King Satoshi spoke again, I could understand why.

I not only understood, but also felt a foreign, deep and agonizing pain strike my heart like an arrow. Something I shouldn’t be feeling, something that didn’t make any sense. But I felt anyway. As stupid and inappropriate as it is, I felt it.

In that moment, I finally realized: Taehyung wasn’t just a master to me.

And he would never be anything more than this.  

Satoshi’s voice sounded lighthearted; however, each word of his echoing in the vast Throne Room just made me feel smaller until I wanted to disappear:

“I came here to talk about your betrothal with my daughter, Princess Sana.”  

[stephic-writings]

Nobody Crushers -- Organization XIII x Crushes (Part 1)

*squints* Do you mean, like, Nobody Organization or real Organization? ...Who am I kidding? Nobody Organization is more fun to write for anyways! (That and, like, half of the Seekers are the same person.)

Man... My 11 year old self would be so proud that I’m writing shippy KH stuff again. c’:

And since there’s alot of of people in Organization XIII, Imma break it up a bit for easier reading doses. So about 4-5 for each part. c: Three parts, yeah?

START IT FROM THE TOP THOUGH!

Part 1 -- YOU ARE HERE! Part 2 -- Coming Soon Part 3 -- Coming Soon

Xemnas -- The Superior of the In-Between

Can this guy really even feel anything for anyone? It’s a wonder, to be honest.

But he does have people whom he finds himself to be closest too. Is it a crush? He’s not sure.

But others can see just how close he is to Saix on a usual basis.

Whenever something goes wrong, Saix is often the first person he turns to because he can get it done.

Xemnas values loyalty, and so he often views Saix as not only an asset but as a companion whom he could trust until the very end.

Despite Saix having his own agenda, which I’m sure Xemnas knew about, Xemnas -- in his own twisted way -- probably got Saix to say more for the ‘power’ Xemnas offered than fulfilling this agenda.

Whatever he can do to having such loyalty remain.

Though when others see the blatant favoritism of Saix over other members of the Organization, they often express their annoyance from the shadows.

But hey, if they put in the work and effort to please Xemnas, then maybe they’d get special treatment too, as the superior stated several times before.

Xigbar -- The Freeshooter

He’s a cunning and kind of impulsive guy who often thinks he’s always one step ahead of the others when furthering his own evil agenda.

So people that call him out and are on par with his cunning nature often spark his attention.

Case in-point: Zexion. Possibly Vexen too, if Vexen weren’t so... Vexen.

The young guy always seems to know just what’s going on and often can see through the facades that people put on.

Highly observational or perhaps very good at detecting ‘illusions,’ considering his element.

Xigbar can’t help but entertain this fact, going up to Zexion and teasing him to perhaps break the Schemer’s own illusion of composure.

As if, though. It’s never to any avail, for Zexion is very good at being so ‘broody.’

But Xigbar just watches as Zexion leaves, a smirk on his face because one day, he’ll watch Zexion get flustered.

Xaldin has a bet that Xigbar will be able to do it. Axel bet on Zexion and his unbreakable demeanor.

Xaldin -- The Whirlwind Lancer

This guy isn’t really about love and romance, to be honest. He’s actually quite negative about his outlook on romance in general.

It never lasts, and so the sensations of ‘crushes’ and ‘attraction’ are mostly just on the impulsive side.

It’s probably why he simply views this ‘crush’ on Larxene of all people as a mere side-effect of having once been human.

She’s a strong and powerful woman, twisted and manic, impulsive and radical. It compliments what Xaldin is with his intrigue and wit.

He often grows curious of what the hell Larxene thinks sometimes, but he stays afar and only makes passive comments to avoid being on the other end of her lightning.

He enjoys the twisted side of her, yes. But he knows nothing would ever become of it. It’s just misery, and misery loves company.

Xigbar specifically notices Xaldin’s fascination with Larxene, and often teases him about it in that snide way he usually has.

But Xaldin’s easy to brush it off from. It’s just an interest in someone of opposite traits than himself, that’s all.

But still... Even if it never would work, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was such a thing as a lasting love. If ever such a thing were possible.

Vexen -- The Chilly Academic

He’s married to his work mostly, preferring the comfort of his laboratory than the comfort of someone’s arms.

Why in the World of Nothingness would he ever want that?

Well, he didn’t figure that out until some pink-haired dunce came up and greeted Vexen with a kiss on both sides of his cheeks. The deuces?!

When he first met Marluxia, he was sort of disgruntled at the younger man. This charismatic yet mysterious air to him made Vexen always befuddled when dealing with such a figure.

And yet, he probably found himself always curious and over-analyzing the situation in regard to Marluxia. Why was he so fascinated?

Perhaps it was similar to Xaldin’s analysis on the Larxene situation: opposites are sometimes more attractive than similar traits. Or perhaps it was some psychological thing he couldn’t really describe.

If only Marluxia wasn’t a little bastard though. He gets very irritated when thinking about how disrespectful Marluxia is most of the times.

And yet, Luxord cackles because he noticed just how whipped Vexen is when Marluxia comes calling for... Whatever Marluxia usually does.

Not a very lucky guy, by the looks of it.

[nascent-chaos]

Aaahhh I really really love OPAtS!!! ╰(*´ ︶ `*)╯♡ It’s such a good story, and the skeles are great, and the reader is great, and I just really like it! You’ve done such a good job so far, I’m so proud of you, and I’m sure your other readers are, too~ ٩( 'ω' )و Hopefully that isn’t weird. Regardless, I’m curious- What are each of the skeles thoughts on the reader, as of now- Are any actually in love or is it just a crush? Thank you for writing again, I hope you’re doing well!!!

Uaaaah!!!  ♡  ♡  ♡ Ty so much!!! ;w; With this being my first fanfic ever written, I’m always nervous about what you guys think of the story and its characters. Hearing things like this always brightens up my day sooooooo much!  ♡

As for what the guys think of Reader by the end of Chapter 19? :3 There’s a wide range of opinions about her throughout the Lodge. 

Sans :: Does Sans like the reader? Of course he does. She’s smart, witty, talented, has a great sense of humor, and gets along great with his brother. Plus, she even laughs at his lame jokes. What’s not to like? She’s a sweet kid, one he just happens to be very protective over given her history. As the one who extended the offer to stay with them, he feels it’s his duty to look out for her. End of story.

At least, that’s what he tells himself. He doesn’t quite realize how hard he’s fallen for her. Sans stands back and watches from a distance as she interacts with the others in the lodge and can’t help but feel a bit jealous at the bonds she’s starting to form with the others, even if he doesn’t realize it’s jealousy. He wants to keep her safe and secure, to give her a reason to have hope again even if he himself hasn’t been able to find such a thing yet. His feelings for her extend beyond that of a crush, but how far? He’s not entirely sure.

Papyrus :: Of course Papyrus loves her!!! He sees Reader as a kindred spirit, bright and cheery and curious like him, even if she’s a good deal more reserved than he is. The two of them quickly became the best of friends in the days following her arrival at the lodge. He’s just sad he hadn’t met her again sooner! He might not know as much about her history as Red or Hickory, but when it comes down to personality Papyrus knows her as only a best friend could.

.. Ooh. You meant romantically?

He’d never really even thought about how he might see her in that light until very recently, likely because of the way he’d fallen into the role of mother hen as he helped Green take care of her during her recovery. Following the incident with Dust near the strawberry patch, however, Papyrus realized just how terrified the thought of losing her makes him. She is indeed someone very precious to him and he cares for her dearly… maybe even as more than just a friend? He’s not sure, but he’s starting to take a closer look at the time they spend together and how she makes him feel: when he’s around her in the mornings watching as she pours her heart and soul into the meals she cooks for everyone; the lively conversations that the two of them can carry on for hours when he asks her to listen to another ingenious puzzle design he’s thought up; those quiet moments they have when taking care of the flower beds in the garden side by side and how happy he is just having her there.

Maybe he really is starting to see her as more than just a friend.

Red :: For all his lewd jokes perverted humor, Red’s does care deeply for our Reader. Like Sans, Red tends to be a bit overprotective of her as a result of his feelings - maybe not to the extent Sans is (he knows full she can take care of herself), but he won’t hesitate to step in from time to time if he feels she’s getting in over her head. He knows she’s a fighter deep down and that excites him to no end. Sure, she’s taken a few hard hits and is having a bit of a hard time getting on her feet again, but hey! Even the best struggle from time to time.

She’s like a breath of fresh air to him, her kindness and compassion a big change from the way people had treated him in his Universe, but she has a bit of a sharp side he finds attractive as well. Is it love? He’s not sure, but even if it was… he highly doubts it’d ever blossom into anything more than a one-sided fantasy. After all, he doubts he’s lucky enough for anybody to love such a fuck-up like him, much less someone as amazing as her…

Edge :: At first Edge wasn’t entirely sure what to make of our Reader. She had the potential to be quite the spit-fire when she chose - he’d seen it himself the first time he’d met her and he’ll admit he’d found it quite attractive - and so finds her usual quiet and kind-natured demeanor to be something of an annoyance. He thoroughly enjoys tormenting her, pitting his cunning against her own time and time against to see who’ll come out on top. What had initially been done as just a way to get his kicks, however, has recently grown into something more for him.

He does honestly think she has the hots for him - not only because he often misinterprets her kindness toward him as blatant displays of affection, but because he knows he has grown to become something of her secret-keeper alongside his fellow Fells (take that, Ashtray!). While he’d sooner die than openly admit to it at the moment, he has truly come to enjoy her company outside of their usual bickering and snide insults to one another. Yes, he is quite fond of her at this point and perhaps has grown a bit possessive of her as a result.

Now if only the damn woman wasn’t so stubborn!

Stretch :: It’s clear to most of the others in the lodge that Stretch has a bit of a crush on our Reader. Which would mean he’s done a pretty good job in hiding how he really feels because it’s more than just a simple crush.

At this point, this skeleton is honestly head-over-heals in l o v e, and he knows it. He just doesn’t quite know how to tell Reader though - what if she doesn’t feel the same way? D: He’s terrified he might risk ruining his friendship with her. And then there’s the machine to think about. He does want to return to his own timeline, sure, but… doing that means he’d never get to see her again. And even if there is another version of Reader in his own Universe, it would never be the same. He knows he could never compare some variant to her. At the moment he’s wondering if he should bother continuing to offer his expertise on the project at all - maybe it really would be better to just stay in this Universe - especially after that kiss!

Blue :: Blue feels as if he’s known the Reader almost as long as Stretch has, given his brother’s habit of frequently mentioning her back before the fire. She and him grew to become quick friends during her recovery, so just imagine how thrilled he was when he found out she had agreed to move in with them!!! And she’s the best housemate he could have dreamed of; she’s intelligent and sweet, pretty and patient, and a great cook to boot!

But… for all his sweetness and apparent innocence, Blue is far from a fool - he can see just how much his brother pines for her affections and, in all honestly, Blue kind of does as well. Maybe not to the extent Stretch does, but he does occasionally find himself wondering if she might ever someday come to look at him with that same sort of love and affection in her eyes. His attempts to show her how much he cares for her, however, seem have all fallen short thus far, having been mistaken as acts of friendship rather than possible tokens of affection. But that’s okay!!! The Magnificent Blueberry isn’t one to back down from a challenge!! Mweheheheh!

Black :: The Malevolent Blackberry, have feelings for that human?! HAA! Be grateful he’s not demanding your head for even considering such a thing! He’d never allow himself to fall for anyone like that, much less someone like her!

…

Okay. So maybe that’s not entirely true. But like hell if he’ll ever openly admit to holding any manner of affection for her. He does indeed have something of a crush on her, a fact that both surprises and concerns him. To him, our Reader is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, whose gentle and soft-spoken exterior belies a bold and authoritative interior he doesn’t get to see often yet finds himself drawn to nonetheless. He enjoys putting her in situations that bring that familiar fire of determination to her eyes and loves to see her get riled up, occasionally even at his own expense. But be that as it may, Black simply isn’t the sort to come out and profess his affections to her - why bother, when he can be as manipulative as he is? He’ll play the scene to make it appear she’s the one vying for his affections - and he may feel sorry enough for her that he’d allow her to hang on his arm from time to time!

Hickory :: Mutt’s feelings for the Reader are probably the most complicated of the lodge boys. She’s really not what he’d consider his type, and yet… he’s drawn to her regardless. He finds her presence comforting, her voice soothing his well-hidden anxieties and her touch calming and reassuring him more than he’d have thought possible. She’s sharp as a tack and takes his teasing and jokes with an easygoing sense of humor he finds refreshing. He lives to fluster her - and why not, when she looks so great with that blush he could practically devour her?

 Like the others able to hear the song emanating from her soul he wants to be able to give it a reason to sing its melody with joy and happiness - beautiful as he finds it now, Hickory’s pretty sure it would be nothing short of a drug when performed as it was meant to be. So… maybe he does have a crush on the Reader. But he’ll continue to hide it. After all, it’s obvious to him how much his brother likes her too, and he’d sooner put aside his own feelings for her so his brother can be happy. Even if doing so does slowly eat away at him…

Dust :: When it comes to the Reader this Sans finds himself at odds with his own soul. She wasn’t wrong when she noted his inability to trust anyone, and that includes her as well. But like she toward him, there seems to be something of a dissonance between his soul and his mind. He wouldn’t go as far as to call it a crush - he certainly doesn’t fawn over her the way the other skeletons around him do, but he doesn’t hate her either. He might actually go as far as to say he enjoys her company when its the two of them, the song radiating from her soul helping to sooth the itch that would otherwise leave him feeling on edge and hostile.

[civilorange]

behind the writing.

So, I’ve been pretty open about my writing style which is “plan nothing, but make it seem like you do”, and sometimes there’s things that just don’t work out. Not just whole snap shot ideas, but the theme/plan of them. The post-snapshot 50 arc of the swap came around probably ten or fifteen chapters earlier when I sent @randomthingsthatilike123 a really unhelpful word document that literally looked like this;

E-ONE: 13, 37, [33], 50 / E-TWO: 15, 31, [24], 47

Looking back, I understand that I intended to swap Kara Danvers, who is 24, with Kara Callaghan, who is 33. Nothing else planned, just, “I want to do this. So I will.” The plot behind how it happened didn’t matter, because I knew I’d make it happen somehow. So with the knowledge that I was going to be doing this eventually—shrug, when exactly, I didn’t care—I began typing up a meeting between Kara Callaghan and canon!Cat Grant.

Having done forty-six chapters since coming up with this plot idea, the tone of the whole event has changed—not to mention Alondra who was a spur of the moment addition while I wrote snapshot 51. No, literally, I was like, “I should make them have another kid” and worried about the details later.

But, anyway, I figure I’d let you guys enjoy the madness that is an unfinished snapshot that’s been scrapped because I’ve changed my mind too many times and it’s no longer relevant. Not that you might not see some similarities to the actual chapter of this meeting.

Note: Yes, those little brackets are part of my system, I don’t even write chapters in chronological order, I jump around as I like and then connect them.

The day starts out as usual.

“Laura,” it isn’t yelling, it’s talking loudly.

Even if it doesn’t end that way.

Your new assistant staggers just a little too long, and trips over her gaudy wedge heel and into the mail cart that is—by your estimate—a half hour late. No less than three bodies hit the floor, and there’s no hope for the papers that are submerged by the tumbling coffee cup. Kara’s computer hobbit stares on in complete horror. Arms, and legs, and cursing in at least two languages later, your assistant walks in with a laminated layout, slicking away coffee with the bottom of her shirt.

“H-here you are, Miss Grant,” she stammers, offering you the dark roast scented sheet, “The layout you asked for.” She’s shaking enough that you can practically hear her knees knocking together from underneath that insistently spring themed romper.

“I don’t recall requesting that it be dipped in expresso,” intoning, hand on hip, eyebrow cocking.

“I—no—of course not, but—you see,” she’s not going to last long, you can see it in the flush of her neck, and the way her fingers jumble and screw together. “There was an accident.”

You almost feel bad, almost—not really, “I have eyes, Laraine. I see how you maintain yourself with all the grace of a cancelled CW show.”

You spend the next fifteen minutes squinting at what might be passible English if you had suddenly reverted to a uneducated ten year old who speaks a very regional dialect of Swahili as their primarily language. But as it stands you do speak English—quiet well, on even your worst of days, which this is shaping up to be—and you expect the same from your writers.

Aren’t you just an unreasonable bitch?

Which explains how—an hour after that realization—you’re being politely reprimanded by Human Resources, which is led by a small seventy-three year old woman who thinks you would like to partake in her decade old strawberry foiled candy whenever you’re asked to explain why there’ve been a rash of firings that don’t seem to have much precedent prior to the incident.

You’re CEO, own fifty-nine percent of the stock options, and your name is on the damned building for fuck’s sake—can you outlaw the term the incident?

Does that break any fair employment act?

If it does Human Resources will probably add it to the folder with your name on it—again, you own the company, you don’t see how your name isn’t on all the folders—with the words incidents underlined and bracketed.

Sufficed to say, the day begins its slow tumble into hell an hour after lunch—give or take a diatribe; the drain on society that is social security, and the work ethic of millennials.

You try to split your dislike of the generations equally.

[ something happens here ]

[ probably nothing too important ]

[ TALKY TALKY ]

“The balcony,” the voice comes in from said balcony, and you turn to see Kara, one hand against the railing, the other pressed to her temple like she has a headache—which is fairly interesting because there is very little doubt in your mind that your former assistant is indeed the last daughter of Krypton. “It’s facing the wrong way.” She isn’t looking into the office, but up, like the outside of the building might explain whatever conundrum she’s in the middle of.

Stepping around your desk, and walking toward the sliding doors, you take in your resident hero—she’s wearing the usual fare, a pale cream colored shirt, with what seems to be very stylized ducks stenciled onto the fabric. It’s properly bohemian, and you don’t completely hate it, but it clashes with her skin tone. Her slacks are a little tighter than she usually wears them, snug and—dare you say—clingy, and you’re ready to say the outfit is a general success. If success could be measured in levels of failure—and then she turns to face you.

You’ve been a proprietor of the written word for the entirety of your life, you’ve spun sentences about the most beautiful sunset in the isles off the coast of the Philippines, you’ve woven stories about the crisp air at base camp of Mount Everest—you’ve taken people on journeys without ever asking them to step outside their homes.

So why can’t you define what’s different about Kara tonight?

Her eyes are the proper shade of extraterrestrial blue—bright, and drowning, and all manner of appealing—and her hair is the same burnished gold that too many socialites have to turn to the dye bottle to achieve. She’s curved, and firm, and so giving—despite the fact that you know she is anything but. She’s molten rock, and supple waves, a walking juxtaposition of herself.

“I didn’t realize you had architectural aspirations, Keira,” you drawl, tucking hands into the loose pockets of your slacks, leaning your shoulder against the doorframe. “And here I am, underutilizing your obvious expertise.” She’s looking at you like she’s having difficulty breathing, chest stuttering, and eyes widening—there’s a darkness in them, you notice, a shadow that you’ve witnessed in the hungry children of Africa, or the soldiers who flinch from a backfiring car. Has it always been there, or has it only been there since Myriad?

You’re growing concerned—which you’ll never actually admit—because she’s blinking rapidly like something has gotten caught in her lashes, and she’s trying to remove it—but can’t. Sucking air through her teeth like she’s not of the mind to open her mouth properly, trying to get as much air into greedy lungs as possible—desperation, and confusion, slanting the smooth lines of her face.

And she’s moving toward you.

No—stumbling toward you.

Feet hardly articulate enough to navigate around the furniture still between you, she hits the chair’s arm, and—as you figure—it spins out of her way like it never existed at all. She’s right in front of you before you can properly assess your options. Hot, hot palms bracketing your cheeks, and you’re not accustomed to being touched without explicit permission given on your part, so you flinch—which makes her flinch, but she doesn’t release you. If anything her grip tightens, not hard enough to cause pain or discomfort, but it is firm and unyielding.

“Zrhueiao,” she says, and her voice is different—not horribly so, but lower, and slower, like she has to pluck the words from her mind carefully before she’s able to say them. You don’t recognize the word from any of the three—and a half—languages you speak. “Something’s wrong.” Assertive, but her words are still shaking, like they’re simply trembling out of her mouth and falling into your ears. You lift your hands to cover hers, trying to pry her hands from your face—but they’re like steel.

Aptly so.

Kara isn’t usually this careless. She’s so good at pretending to be pliant, to bend how humans bend, that sometimes, when you’re tired, you forget that she’s really indestructible. When she hisses as her toe hits the edge of a desk, when she shivers and shakes. This tremor is different—like the plates of the earth rumbling until they come together in earthquakes and tsunamis.

“Keira,” you begin, and then amend, “Kara.” And now you’ve got her attention. Little swirls of star dust and the pitch cast of black holes in eyes that are wet, and glistening—and you see a blatant difference.

No pock mark near her eyebrow—no little scar that tethers absolutely ordinary Kara Danvers to impossibly extraordinary Supergirl.

Just smooth skin, and a furrowed brow.

Later, you’ll blame the fear beginning to mix into your blood, or the air of intimacy that Kara’s cultivated far too easily—but you’re lifting your hand to brush your thumb over the offending area. There’s nothing there, not that you truly expected to feel anything. She’s watching you, intensely, and doesn’t flinch or shy away from your touch like so much of you thought she might, despite the scalding hands still framing your cheeks.

“It’s gone.” You say, not able to help yourself.

She frowns, “What?”

“Your scar.”

Now she does move away, a stumble, like how she moved toward you, and when she spins to rest both hands on the railing, you don’t move closer. There’s a crackle to the air around her—a snap and fizzle in the night that doesn’t sit comfortably in your stomach. Kara’s threading hands through her hair, gripping tight enough to make her knuckles go white, and her forearms quiver.

[ some other paragraphs, or something ]

[ probably some dialog too ]

“How do you know you can trust me?” You ask, because she’s been here for less than an hour, and she’s willing to trust you with her deepest secrets, ready to fold you into her truths without any struggle, any effort. “You’re not exactly from around here.” And Kara—your Kara, your mind supplies—struggles with that trust. Keeps that last veil between you, and so much of you can’t even blame her, because at the slightest sign of trouble—you pushed her away. You tried to foster the idea of professionalism, which was really just poorly hidden vitriol.

She’s walking closer, an amble in her step, thumbs hooked into the loops of her too tight pants, and something simmering in her eyes. “Are you saying you’re the untrustworthy type?”

You scowl, to hide the jump in your heartbeat, “Hardly.” You scoff, “I’m saying—how do you know?”

“You’re not that different than her—my Cat, that is—a little sharper at the edges, but,” she hedges, but there’s something dark and promising in the way her extraterrestrial lips wraps around my Cat. It’s intimate, and throaty, and you like how it sounds on her tongue too much. “Underneath all that is the same heart.”

So you deflect. You push away the sudden hammering beat of your heart, and the clammy feeling of your palms from where you’ve clenched them into fists. Your arched brow is your shield, and your words a trusty dagger, “Well, you’re definitely the same naive, blindly trusting do-gooder as Keira.”

“Why do you call her that? You say my name, so you know hers.”

[ CUE STUNNED SILENCE ]

[ or some desc with no talk ]

[ fuck talky ]

“Your mother calls me that—Keira. Says I’m not worth knowing properly.” Her breath is fanning against your cheeks, and her eyes seem as dark as the sky above—glittering abysses that threaten to consume you, to make your knees weak and shoulders curl. “Is that the case, Miss Grant? Is she not worth knowing?”

[ stuff ]

“Honestly? I don’t know what to make of you without the cape,” you say to this stranger wearing her face.

[sasuhinasno1fan]

Pining insanity

So I think I know who this is, in terms of I might know you on Discord. @after-midnightmunchies, I hope you enjoy this for the @voltron-ss, it was easy on the part of we ship the same ships but I won’t discredit how hard it was to try and figure out what couple to do and come up with a prompt. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

“Hunk, open the door.” Lance whined from the other side of the door of the Samoan’s dorm room.

The door swung open, Hunk looking extremely concerned, that concern growing when Lance dropped his head against Hunk’s chest.

“Lance, what’s wrong?”

“They were kissing.” Lance moaned.

“Who? Oh, wait. You mean.” Lance nodded, sounding wounded. “There, there. It’s ok. Come on.”

Hunk led Lance into his room and let him drop on his bed. Hunk sat on the bed and patted Lance on the back, trying to let him feel better.

“Why can’t I forget it? This is so…uggg!” Lance moaned.

“Because love doesn’t leave when you want it to. So you saw Keith and Shiro kiss huh?” Hunk said.

“Yeah. I know it shouldn’t be a surprise. I’m Keith’s roommate and I’ve been friends with them since I worked on the project with them. I shouldn’t have fallen for them, but I did. What is wrong with me?”

It’s something Lance had been going through for the past couple months. Before the two even started dating, Lance had a crush on them both but when they got together, he tried forgetting it. And failed. Hanging out with them felt like torture sometimes and while he wanted to push away, he didn’t. They meant too much to him to try and forget them.

“Nothing is wrong with you. You heart just decided it wanted something you can’t have, though unless their poly, which I do remember them being.”

“Don’t start Hunk. There is no way it’s gonna happen.” Lance said, no matter how much he wished it. He took a big breath and pushed himself up. “I can do this, I can forget these feelings and I’ll be fine.”

“Yes you will.” Hunk said feelingly, patting Lance’s shoulders. “How about we do an indoor spa night? Maybe we can pull Allura away from all the clubs she’s in.”

“Oh, I can’t.” Lance said, looking a bit guilty. “I promised Shiro and Keith I’d go to the movies with them.”

“Movies? With them? On a Friday? Like, obvious date night?”

“They invited me. And they asked which movie I wanted to see. If they plan on making out the whole time, at least I’ll be focused on a movie I want to see and not them.”

“Uhhh,” Hunk seemed confused but nodded anyway. “Ok, sure I guess. Tell me how it goes right?”

The movie was fine. Lance enjoyed it and the small part that Lance wanted to show in a corner enjoyed how Keith and Shiro made him sit in between them. They had been on the level above the middle walkway, so Lance had propped his feet up on the railing. Keith had done the same, Shiro whispering to them that they’d get in trouble, but Keith made his feet rest in a way that he was leaning more on Lance.

Being a cuddler, Lance was fine, though he had been wondering why Keith was cuddling against him. Keith wasn’t much for physical contact unless he started it but even then, never to the point of cuddling. Lance decided to ignore that and focus on the movie. It did make him think though. This wasn’t the first time he joined them in an outing that could have been a date for them.

‘It can’t be that odd. We’re really close friends and Allura and Hunk are busy most of the time.’

Lance was walking to his dorm, trying to text Keith. Keith had offered to take him to the mall and after the day he had, Lance needed retail therapy. Plus, it would give him a chance to get Allura a pick me up present from the Lush store with all the work she was doing with the groups she was in and the work she was putting on herself.

“Get it loser, we’re going shopping.”

At the sound of iconic lines, he turned to see Keith pulling up to where Lance was standing.

“Did you just Regina George me? You?” Lance had never felt more in love-No, no, nope. Not love, because Keith had a boyfriend and wouldn’t be interested in Lance McClain, nope, no way.

“Yes, and I hated every minute of it.”

“What are you doing here anyway?” Lance asked, stepping closer to Keith’s open window.

“I was coming to invite you out to the mall and you look like you’ve had a day. Come on, I’ll even get you a Cinnabun.” Keith said the magic words. Lance was quick to get into the passenger seat. “You and your gigantic sweet tooth.” Keith said, laughing to himself.

“Less jokes and more driving. We’re getting Cinnabun first.”

It didn’t take long for them to arrive at the mall and Keith followed Lance as he dashed right over to where Cinnabun was held. He looked like a kid in a candy store at the sight of the iced rolls.

“Which one do you want?” Keith asked, leaning close to him, looking over his shoulder.

Lance pointed to one in the corner that looked like it was completely covered in icing. “That one.”

“How do you not get cavities?” Keith asked, while getting the worker’s attention.

“I take perfect care of my teeth, thank you very much. My dentist still can’t believe I’ve never got a cavity before.” Lance boasted, not seeming to pay a whole lot of attention to his dessert being taken and put into a box until it was handed to Keith, who paid and handed the desert to Lance. “I could have paid.”

“I don’t mind. Come on.”

Lance watched Keith walking away. It had been weird, all the times he hung out with Shiro, Keith or both, it felt different for some reason. Lance was sure that it was because he had crushes on them but it was different than that.

Just the other day, Lance had been missing his cat, and Shiro surprised him by driving him to the closest cat café, which was an hour away, even buying Lance a cat eared beanie he had been looking at when they got in there. Shiro was allergic to long haired cats but he didn’t complain a bit when all the long haired cats surrounded Lance, one blacked haired cat even crawled up into Shiro’s lap.

Even now, Keith letting Lance drag him around, and feeding him pieces of his Cinnabun while he carried his shopping bags after Lance refused Keith’s help carrying them, it felt very different. Lance didn’t know why, but these outings had been feeling a bit more like dates.

Which couldn’t be right, because Keith and Shiro didn’t like Lance like that.

Right?

Lance wasn’t sure how much more of this he could handle. For the past month, maybe more, Keith and Shiro had been acting flirtatious to Lance. Lance could say with full confidence that while he could let out pickup lines to any person who caught his fancy, getting them in return, he became a complete mess. It wasn’t blatant flirting, just little things. Compliments on his appearances, giving him praise when he did something good, doing small little things for him.

“I think they know.” Lance was telling Hunk.

They were in Lance’s dorm for a change. Lance knew Keith would have a long lab at the time, so he didn’t have to worry about Keith coming back when Lance was gushing about him and his boyfriend.

“What makes you think that?” Hunk asked, gently rubbing Lance back. His own back was against the wall the bed was pushed against, Lance laying on his stomach in front of him.

“They’re being…I don’t know, boyfriend-y? I mean I like it but it’s just weird. It’s like they know how I feel and they’re trying to get me to admit it, like try to kiss them or something.”

“Lance, come on. This is Keith and Shiro, they wouldn’t do something like that to trip you up or anything. Maybe they’re just being nice or-”

“Hunk, if you try to say that they might like me, I’m kicking you out. There isn’t a chance in hell that they’d feel that way for me.”

Hunk frowned at his friend’s self-deprecating comment. He really wished Lance had the confidence he could fake. Maybe then he’d realise just how important he was.

“Fine,” he said begrudgingly, “what are you going to do about it then?”

“I don’t know, pretend it doesn’t exist and hope like hell I’m just seeing things?”

Lance phone dinged with a notification and Lance leaned over to grab it from his bedside table.

“Don’t drop it again.” Hunk warned. He was honestly surprised Lance hadn’t cracked his phone’s screen the amount of time’s it’s slipped out of his hands. He was really gonna have to bug him about getting a pop socket for it.

It got safely into Lance’s hands and onto the bed so he could open and scroll through it. He pouted at the message. “Ugg, reminder to get tickets to the Royal Ballet’s film of Alice in Wonderland.”

“I’m really sorry I can’t take you.” Hunk apologized. His girlfriend went to the same school their friend Pidge attended and he was planning on driving up to go see her. Lance was determined to go and see the ballet, but so far he couldn’t find a ride.

“It’s fine. I mean the tickets are expensive anyway. But I really want to see it, I know they have the DVD of the first one they did, but the Alice that’s playing is a fav of mine from the company. And the White Rabbit. Besides, I think you’d get tired of me gushing about ballet.”

“I swear, if your parents could have afforded to send you and your sisters to ballet classes, you’d still be doing it wouldn’t you?”

“Hell yeah,” Lance said, turning on his back. “But just watching it is enough. It’s so worth it to see the beautiful dancing and the costumes. God, whoever could go with me will think I’m so weird for being so overly excited for this. I just really, god Hunk. I really want to go. Even if I have to spend my entire pay check on the ticket, I want to go.”

The door swung open and Keith walked in, looking tired.

“You’re back early. I thought you had lab?” Lance asked, watching Keith drop his bag on the end of his bed and drop down on it.

“Fire alarm went off because in another lab, someone set something on fire, so we have to reschedule. I’m really tired.” He answered, running his hands through his hair.

“You sleep. I can go to Hunk’s room.” Lance said.

“Oh, uh I actually need to start on an essay. Sorry.” Lance felt like Hunk really wasn’t. Something told him Hunk was trying to be sly and keep Lance and Keith in the same room.

Hunk gave him a look as he headed out the door, while Keith flopped down on his bed looking close to sleep. Lance sighed; Hunk really knew how to push it.

“Come on Keith, at least take you shoes off.” He instructed, approaching the half asleep young man. He unzipped Keith’s boots and pulled them off for him, tugging at the blanket Keith was on top of. Keith ached enough for Lance to pull it from under him and cover him. “Good?”

Keith hummed, already slipping off into dreamland. Lance knew he should just go back to his side of the room and do something, but it wasn’t often he got to see Keith asleep. Lance usually passed out first or Keith would be in Shiro’s room. Lance wanted that, to fall asleep next to them. Lance was a hug fan of cuddles piles and napping with other people and he had to be honest, both Keith and Shiro were the perfect cuddling partners, well except for Hunk. It was Hunk, nothing could beat him.

Lance wanted the chance to snuggle close with them, happy and safe in their arms, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t theirs and they weren’t his. They couldn’t be, why would they want him?

Lance was curled up against the door of Hunk’s bedroom, waiting for him to come back. He needed help. He heard voiced and looked up to see Hunk and Allura turning the corner.

“Lance? Hello, how are you? I haven’t seen you for a while.” Allura greeted. She wasn’t wrong, her workload and other obligations had made her too busy to hang out with him and Hunk. He guessed she was finally free if she could help Hunk bake, judging from the baking items in their hands. He could smell the lemon berry cake from where he was sitting.

“You ok? You look kinda, I don’t know, stunned I guess? What’s wrong?” Hunk asked.

“Can you open the door? I need to sit down.”

Hunk let them all in, resting the cake on his desk and focused on putting his stuff away, while Allura sat next to Lance on Hunk’s bed. Lance pulled something out of his bag and handed it to Allura.

“These are tickets to the screening of the Alice in Wonderland performance. Lance you got tickets? That’s amazing. But, there are three?”

Lance wasn’t even looking at Allura, more interested in his sleeves. “That’s because I didn’t buy them. Shiro and Keith got them for me, as a date. Because apparently, I’ve been their boyfriend and I didn’t even know.”

“Wait, what?” Hunk abandoned putting away his baking items and sat down next to Lance. “What do you mean?”

“You know how I’ve been complaining about how they’re really extra, flirty and I was sure they knew and were trying to get me to admit it? I confronted them about it after they gave me the tickets and they looked so confused. They were under the impression that I agreed to date them like 2 months ago. Except, you know how I feel about them. If they asked me to date them I’d be screaming it from the rooftops. So how, ugg, how did they come to that conclusion? Were they joking and just messing with me? Did it actually happen and I somehow forgot? What?”

“Ok, first calm down. I’m the only one who gets panicky here. And second, I know it’s not something you want to hear, cause I know it’ll confuse you, but I don’t think they’d trick you. You know those two, they’d never to that to you.” Hunk said

“That should make me feel better, but I just feel confused. How, when did this happen? Not only that, after they told me that and just looked at me, like they couldn’t understand why I didn’t know this, I just took off. Now they’ll never like me.” Lance moaned, hiding his face in his hands.

“Lance, come on. They did so much for you. They genuinely like you, I know it.” Allura tried comforting, but Lance just continued making wounded noises in his hands. “I will call Shiro and find out what happened ok? I think they also deserve an explanation.”

“No! You can’t call him please. I don’t want them…I can’t…”

“Lance, you deserve an explanation as to what happened, why did they even think this and they deserve to know what you’ve been going through. Hunk, stay with him.” Allura got up, already dialling a number.

“Hunk.” Lance whined, but Hunk just rubbed Lance’s back, trying to be the smallest amount comforting as he could be, while wondering if he was going to have to throw punches. “What if it was all a mistake? How am I going to face them? I room with Keith!”

“You can room in here. Rolo is never here so he won’t mind.” Hunk was quick to say. Lance let out another wounded noise and dropped to hide his face in Hunk’s lap.

“Ok, they’re coming here.” Allura said after getting off the phone.

“Wh-Here?”

“Yes here. Lance needs a place where he feels like he has control and he can’t do that at his or Shiro’s room, so he can do it here. Now, Lance I know you haven’t really calmed down much so do you want us to stay here when they come or do you want to face them yourself?”

“I don’t know. Are they really coming here?”

“If they don’t want me to go start yelling at them without getting the whole story, yes. Don’t choose now. Shiro has to collect tests from the class that he’s TAing so once he’s done with that, they’ll be right over. Now Lance, deep breaths please.”

“Do you want a slice of the lemon berry cake? I was gonna give you half anyway since Shay likes it more than Pidge so I knew she wouldn’t try to devour it when Shay turned her back.” Hunk asked

“Please.”

Lance had almost devoured his half when someone knocked on the door. He was more put together than he had been when he first entered the room.

“Do you want us to stay?” Allura asked, getting up.

“Can you stay outside the door?”

“Of course.” She opened the door where both Shiro and Keith looked uncomfortable and apologetic. “We’ll be outside the door, so don’t give me a reason to storm back in here, got it?”

“Yes princess.” Shiro answered

“Excellent. Hunk, come on.”

Hunk gave Lance shoulder another pat on the shoulder and followed Allura out the door, the low click closing Lance in with the two guys he still felt in love with, even with all the confusion. The quiet felt so awkward though. Lance wasn’t used to this, with them silence didn’t feel weird or suffocating. Somehow it always felt fine, even during the times Lance felt like he had to hold a much tighter grip on his feelings.

“Lance, um…” Shiro started. Shiro never seemed unsure of himself like he did standing in front of Lance. “Allura told us that, you never knew that we asked you out.”

“Trust me if I did, I would know.”

“I see. Can we tell you when we asked you out, and see if you remember? Maybe we weren’t as clear as we thought.”

How would he not remember? He was more than certain that the day Shiro and Keith ever asked him, he would never forget. Nothing could make him forget it.

“Remember the Harry Potter dance a few months ago?” Keith asked.

Dance? Oh the family and friends weekend dance. They had the theme of Harry Potter that weekend and he and his friends went wearing house cardigans and ties over their outfits. He remembered he switched Shiro’s Hufflepuff tie with his Ravenclaw one. Though, he was sure when he woke up still in his clothes from the night before, he was wearing a Gryffindor one.

“You slipped between us on the dance floor and were being your usual self and I think that’s when it hit us. We’ve liked you for a while and we had been wondering we were ready to add someone else to our relationship.” Keith continued.

“The last time wasn’t the best. Keith and I almost completely lost each other, so we’ve been really careful in this, that decision. But I don’t know, just watching you dance between us both, it kinda clicked for us that we wanted to ask you out.”

Lance remembered that. He remembered the small burst of courage that made him slid between the two of them, keeping their attention on him. He was quick to disappear once embarrassment caught up with him.

“We talked it over once more, to make sure we were both in agreement and then went to look for you. You were on one of the couches, resting I guess. You seemed a bit tired but you answering clearly so…”

That he didn’t remember. After he danced, he went over to the refreshment table and…

“This is gonna sound strange, but was I drinking anything when you came over?”

The two black haired guys look at each other confused at the question but Keith answered anyway. “Um, I think you had a cup. Why?”

The two stared at Lance as he burst into an entire string of curse words and muffled screams. They could hear something banging just outside the door. Keith decided to check on the two outside while Shiro kneeled in front of Lance.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Lance didn’t say anything except moan and groan even more, hiding his face in his hands. “Lance, please tell me what’s wrong. If we did something wrong, we want to know.”

“I was drunk. I’m a sleepy drunk.”

“What? Drunk? Lance, I swear we didn’t do anything except ask you out.”

“I know. I know you wouldn’t. I know you guys would never do that. I just…uggg!”

“Lance doesn’t remember anything once he’s drunk. He might say or do anything but he has no memory of it. Whether it’s because he’s tired or blacked out, well…” Allura filled in for Lance.

“So when we asked Lance out and if he’d wanted to be our boyfriend and he said yes…?” Keith started.

“Lance had no clue what he agreed to the next day. But hey, at least the mystery of the necktie is solved. It must have been Keith’s.” Hunk said

“Um, yeah, you said, ‘I’ll be your boyfriend, but I want Keith’s tie.’ Then after you got it, you said, ‘I never thought you would ever be interested in me’.” Keith explained.

Lance sounded like a wounded animal making Shiro hit Keith in the leg.

“Obviously there has been a lot of miscommunication. Lance, we’re really sorry we’ve cause you all this trouble. We never meant for you to feel confused or anything. We should have made sure to check with you the next day instead of just assuming.”

“I need time to process everything.” Lance said, sounding out of breath.

“Of course. We can go. We are sorry Lance. Trust me, we never wanted a relationship with you to start out so misleading.”

Lance appreciated how understanding they were being. Now he had to figure out just what he was gonna do now.

Lance thought long and hard. He still wanted to be with Keith and Shiro. While he wasn’t in the know about being their boyfriend, they still treated him so well. He had Allura act like a bridge between them and according to what she heard from them, the reason they hadn’t moved for more romantic moves was because they knew Lance liked to move slow with his relationships. He wanted the first kisses to be special and they wanted to give Lance the kiss he wished for.

“They really care about you. Poor Shiro looks like he did something horrible. I think he think he disrespected you assuming you were all going out without checking with you.”

“I want to give it a real chance with them. I just don’t know if it should approach them or wait for them. What if they lose interest?”

“Lance, trust me. They aren’t losing interest. They just don’t want to rush you.” He knew she was right. Didn’t mean he still didn’t worry.

He was heading back to his room. Rolo got into a fight with his own girlfriend and decided to take advantage of the empty room that Hunk left after his classes. He knew Shiro had made Keith room with him to give Lance space, so he was sure the space to relax and try and decompress. However he was surprised at the sight of Shiro and Keith leaning against the wall to his door. Why Keith was waiting outside made no sense, he never forgot his keys. Lance was guilty of that more than he cared to admit. He also noticed a big bouquet of tulips in Shiro’s hand. Tulips were his mom’s favourite flower and he loved the sight of them.

“Lance.”

“Hey guys.”

Shiro handed him bouquet of flowers. “These are for you. We wanted to ask you something, if you’re willing to hear us out?”

“Uh, yeah?” What was going on?

“Keith and I have feelings for you and we’ve talked about it a lot and we want you to be with us, if you wanted.”

“Ok?” why were they telling him this? He knew this already. Wait, hang on. Where they? Could they be? Were they asking him out, like it was the first time, because he had been in a drunken mind space he didn’t remember the first?

“At the Harry Potter dance, it kinda hit us how much we wanted to be with you. And we’re really sorry it took us so long to come and ask you this. I don’t think I could take waiting anymore. We want to be with you. Like take you to the movies.”

“Feed you Cinnabuns when you’re focused on shopping.” Keith said, making Lance smile.

“Take you to a cat café when you’re missing your own cat.”

Their dates, or what had been dates without Lance’s knowledge. They wanted to do that stuff all over again, with him with the knowledge of knowing now.

“We want you to be our boyfriend Lance, and possibly go out with us this weekend?” Keith asked

“Where to?”

“Well, I heard that you really wanted to go see the screening of the Royal Ballet’s Alice in Wonderland, so we got tickets.” Keith answered, pulling out three familiar tickets from his back pocket. “And before you ask, these aren’t the one we gave you. We got other copies from the theatre. We wanted to do this from scratch.”

Ooh, how could Lance say no? He didn’t think anyone would ever go through such effort. His past relationships didn’t.

“Sure. I would love to.” Before he lost his nerve, he did what he had been dying to do forever and quickly pressed kisses to their cheeks. He was glad to see they were turning about as red as he felt. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while.”

“Oh well, it’s taken everything to keep Keith from shoving you in a corner and kissing the daylights out of you, so we understand.” Shiro explained

“You only say that because once I start, you’ll want to join in.” Keith was quick to snap back.

Lance stifled his giggles, watching his boyfriends argue in front of him. Boyfriends, Lance could get used to that word very quickly.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I promised I would keep things less heady this morning which is always a challenge.  I still wake up every morning at around four or five out of routine.  Most of what I’ve been doing since August has been reorganizing money and untangling things from my previous life.  I had both a severance and a payout on a pension from my previous job.  It was a hard cutoff and probably the most diplomatic time to get rid of me.  I spent a lot of time feeling like a failure.  Then I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was going to do.  When Monday rolls around the city fully expects us all to do nothing for another thirty days.  I’m not really one to complain although you hear me grumble every Saturday morning like clockwork.  I save most of my emotional output for this blog.  I can say with good faith nobody talks to me this deeply at all.  I’m not on Facebook or Instagram anymore.  I am on LinkedIn more than I’d care to be but nobody ever reaches out other than Bitcoin scammers trying to get me to divest from Nio.  The last one being Andre Bobby.  They introduced themselves as Bobby Andre.  I greeted Andre and subsequently blocked them.  I’m often invited to the same discussions from the news team.  Always about the future of Higher Education and online learning.  Sometimes to the same thread.  I’ve long since ignored everything except jobs posted I’d be interested in over there in China.  From everything I have had to read into, I’ve learned that March is probably the soonest anyone of worth would be hiring.  This is reinforced by conversations with my dad who is admittedly just as much as a workaholic as myself.  I spent twenty years working for something I thought I was part of.  And it just seems like my work was never valued at all.  And the less depressed I got about it, the more I started to explore the reasons why.  I had a thick ass book delivered to me annotating the various financial holdings of what consisted of my share of a pension.  A pension these days is like an ancient relic.  One that many companies find too heavy on their books along with other benefits like health insurance or other basic needs for human survival.  When I started at an art school, the benefits were what were lauded the most.  I had over thirty days of paid vacation.  I spent a period of seven years from 2011 travelling by myself to Korea.  Towards the end of my travel, I had been itching to network for something else.  I felt stagnant in my job.  I spent over twelve years in the same job title drowning in the responsibilities of middle management.  My boss often never showed up to work.  Towards the end, they’d never show up to meetings.  They’d be offsite with an employee of mine making music in a garage.  When the news hit me the Thursday before the fourth of July holiday, it felt targeted and mean.  There was a great alibi, a piece of paper to sign absolving all wrongdoing in exchange for a severance and a health insurance extension and a lot of hurt.  A recruiter reached out the day before my health insurance responsibilities switched over.  My payments per month are about as much as my rent.  I had accepted the highest level insurance through open enrollment about a month before I was let go.  It’s all been pretty heady ever since.  Mostly because somehow I still managed to act like it didn’t even affect me.  Although nobody ever reached out an acknowledged how bad it looks in retrospect.  Nobody reaches out at all other than to punk me into selling stocks while I walk to the grocery store.  I did own a car once.  Now I’m just a target by activist investors and their Qanon buddies.  A step up from the Proud Boys I guess.  But who am I really after all of this?  

Nobody can tell for sure.  I’ve shared everything I could ever possibly feel in my writing week after week.  I’ve had bits and pieces of it lifted and used as actionable intelligence to bully me in public.  Everybody seems to know my business and sometimes I wonder if it really fucking matters.  You can bare your soul to people and they’ll stare right through the gaping hole and laugh.  Mostly because they see how empty they are themselves.  It’s an uncanny valley effect to look in my eyes these days.  People can talk all the shit they want about what theories they have but they’re afraid to face the truth.  That I’ve never really been anything other than genuine.  And America is so desperate to prove you wrong.  To prove how much better it is at everything.  I noticed this a lot with gaming particularly when I would play magic in public with people.  I always build decks at my kitchen table alone for fun.  I love the logic.  I will try unorthodox strategies just to learn through failure.  And I would fail year after year playing against people who literally would define their decks by a monetary value other than a strategic one.  I used to read the Tarot.  I love the idea of randomness.  You buy a pack and you have to work with what you have.  If you’ve ever gone to a prerelease, you know the feeling.  You get a box and you have thirty minutes to draft a deck on the fly with what you have.  You learn the economy of the cards and the existence of rules.  When you win, it’s a special feeling of accomplishment.  You did it yourself and the playing field was level and fair.  And then you sit around with a bunch of loud mouth know it all’s who crush you and laugh about it.  All the while the game’s fun fades into a lecture of mansplaining.  Nowhere does this tendency reel it’s ugly head than in the pundits and the stock markets.  Men telling you what’s best to do with your money.  Men with agendas so blatant it bleeds through the semi annual reports I sift through looking at investment ecosystems of days gone by.  Real estate is a pretty funny one to look at in COVID-19 times.  Nobody feels safe in the office.  Deutschbank recently turned heads saying that people working from home making a paltry sum of 55,000 should pay a tax.  The same week Ken Grfifin spent millions of dollars assaulting a fair tax amendment which died a quiet death.  Real estate sits empty in large droves downtown these days.  Chicago enters another stay at home order Monday which is somewhat of a relief for me.  It’s basically thirty days of respite from people wondering what I’m doing with my time.  Meanwhile we are lectured that we are supposed to save the economy by spending our money eating out instead of enjoying cooking your own meal in the kitchen.  This is incidentally why I like going to to grocery store.  Nobody ever asked but I was anorexic in high school.  I loved coca cola when i was little.  I used to drink too much of it and got a small belly.  When I was twelve American kids used to make fun of my weight.  I was a harsh critic.  I still am.  And I tried to fix it by starving myself.  I promised I wouldn’t get heavy.  I never promised I wouldn’t stay real.  No one would ever know these intimate secrets about me if they didn’t read.  And yet there’s people out there who will lift those very words to figure out a new attack on me.  You’ve got to wonder if I’m so transparent what other people are hiding under the surface if they’re so much more successful than I.

The truth is that I stay down here and write because I’ve found friends to connect with.  It may have not always been the most obvious or personal way to maintain contact.  But nowadays what else do we really have?  A bunch of people who speak through money instead of emotion.  People who assign value and compare each other based on speculation rather than connection.  I often feel like nobody knows what I’m worth.  This is perverse to watch as my bank reports my net worth rising when I spent so many years in debt.  And yet every day I go out in society people follow me around and talk so much about me but never to my face.  Are they scared to find out who I really am?  Are they trying to figure out what makes me so special?  Do they ever succeed?  No.  Things just end up sucking even more.  When the rules change and cheating doesn’t pan out anymore, they figure out more ways to be corrupt.  New ways to target you and intimidate.  New ways to control who you think you are.  All the while advertising this country as the freest place on Earth.  I don’t feel free.  I feel trapped, isolated and caged.  Mostly now for my protection granted.  Which is important to note that the only one keeping me safe is myself.  Nobody really has done me any favors.  It’s been a fucking insult to live out since the summer.  And yet, I still have to keep my shit together.  I have to be there for myself emotionally.  I need to feed ecosystems that I feel a part of.  And we all do this in varying ways seeking connection.  When I come to Tumblr, there isn’t some huge expectation that any of this does anything other than share my feelings.  Are my feelings valued?  Here, yes they are.  Sometimes they are valued in ways that I cannot betray or explain.  And there’s a sort of sacred intimacy to that I have never experienced in my life.  I wonder sometimes how people think they’ll ever fall in love if they can’t feel it.  Love is much more complex than the sum of it’s parts we’ve melted it down to to market back and sell at a cut rate.  Love is supposed to transcend, renew and replenish the soul to keep on existing.  Love isn’t a dividend in your stock portfolio or a cadre of late night trysts that haunt you and demand attention.  Love is a lingering spirit in the dark leading you towards a light.  Sometimes you fear being hurt again.  Sometimes you fear the change.  Sometimes you are excited and afraid.  But love never rushes.  Love never is easy.  Love is never right out there in front of your face demanding affirmation every moment of the day without anything in return.  Love doesn’t forget you and leave you alone in the dark crying for some sort of purpose.  Love isn’t a waste of fucking time.  Patience isn’t either.  And you will never feel the depth of love if you force it.  Love will come to you when it’s time for it to blossom.  Love is part of an ecosystem of connections and kindness you nurture with nothing in return.  But love doesn’t come for free.  There is a cost to love beyond dollars, yen, yuan, won or bitcoin.  You can’t speculate on something you don’t control.  And love is free, chaotic, and most of all nurturing.  Love isn’t a competition.  It’s not something you can quantify and bottle up.  Love is about as heavy as it gets for Saturday morning.  So if anything just remember I love you all.  One person more than most as always.  That’s about as free as I can be.  And if you fuck with my love I will leave you cold in the shadows where you belong not I.  It’s nothing personal.  It’s all love. <3 Tim

[monkey-network]

Good Stuff: “Best Animated Feature”

WARNING: Men that went to college can be gross, so watch out. Thank you, take care out there, enjoy.

From Snubs to Ticket Stubs

The Academy Awards is bullshit. Nothing but high quality gaslighting to make people believe that having a 1st place participation trophy will make you think the material was as good as might not have thought, allowing manipulative power plays to fool you into thinking that people in charge know what’s best for a pageant style multiple choice test. That being said, I just wanted to share my opinions on the nominees for this year’s Best Animated Flic because they are interesting, not only for ripping off the Golden Globes, but seeing these movies myself unlike the shitewats at the academy, I wanted to weigh my two cents in just for kicks. And with that, we have...

The Breadwinner

Truth be told, even if it was made by the same studio, I found this story to not be as gripping as Song of the Sea. Then again, that had magic, cool colors, and selkies to behold, so note my bias. Though, that doesn’t excuse this from being a good film. Even with it being a 18 year old story, I honestly thought of this as Persepolis meets Arabian Nights with the art style reminiscient of grainy looking yet picturesque folk tales, especially when they cut to sequences reminiscent of pop up books, and the story being a character study of those in war torn territory, like Persepolis except not as broad in its world to story narrative.

Boss Baby

Whoops, wrong Boss Baby, but doesn’t matter. Now, I kinda understand why it was nominated. It’s certainly one of the best distractions you could ever give your kids because it lacks any major sense and A L E C B A L D W I N being A L E C B A L D W I N baby is the highlight of the film, to me I say. There is competence and more jokes in it than just having a grown man voice a baby, not saying those jokes were good in the first case. They really stretched a book the size of your toe nail to a pointlessly clever degree, and I gotta respect that. Doesn’t change the fact it had questionable choices for their “story”, references that wouldn’t even make sense to adults, and butt jokes so blatant, Captain Underpants would say “Do better”. OH WAIT it can’t, because Dreamworks, who made both of these BTW, promoted the BOSS BABY more and seek to have the BOSS BABY nominated than an actually respected and well known children’s book. Again, I understand why they’d choose this, but Dreamworks need to understand that Baby Herman is not as marketable as they’d believe and that this was a pity coin thrown their way.

Loving Vincent

Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this animated medium before, because Mob Psycho 100 did it two years ago and it was one of the best fucking things I’ll ever see.

I guess sometimes Anime is (not) a mistake

But that was less than two minutes of animation. Imagine watching something like for an hour and a half movie, on a luckily gorgeous HD screen, that took four years and 125 hands to fully complete. I mean, fuck man, even if you didn’t watch it, you gotta give this some respect. Though, the art is one thing, the story is a faulty other. While I was intrigued by the incredible colors and imagery, the story was a bit of a snooze cruise, meaning you could fall asleep to if you weren’t paying attention to the artwork. It was moving to see a man who didn’t see Van Gogh as much slowly make his way to earning his devotion, but I can’t deny that I nodded off my first watch because it was just so damn peaceful. The animation’s nice and slow, the music is easy to dream to, can’t help but feel comfort in its atmosphere. But, the whole way through, it just felt satisfying to watch. I’ll say this is the Cuphead of animated films, one you didn’t know you wanted but can’t help but feel glad and blessed that you got it.

Blue Sky’s Ferdinand

I’ll say it, whoever thought this movie earned the nomination must’ve thought the The Emoji Movie was a great kids film. All this movie has going for it is a tight beginning, ending, and John Cena himself. The middle was WEAK, just a slog sitting through comic relief that add up to killing the humor and moments that’ll make you say, “That happened.” That’s all Ferdinand was, a good beginning, the setup, middle part, and a good ending. If a small fraction of a movie is all you got in terms of actual quality, does it really qualify? The Peanuts Movie couldn’t be nominated, but this did? I’m sorry, but I gotta call this the weakest entry out of everything. This is honest BULLshit.

Coco

Coco was a great movie. A charming, heart clenching narrative, a fantastic world, and a check to “the Dead” on Pixar’s list of bringing things to animated life. However, singing its praises feels predictable now. It doesn’t feel special to me because Disney almost always wins nowadays, like they’re rigging the choices to make sure Disney/Pixar gets it without feeling like a cheat. Hell, there are only five times where they didn’t win, half of which was because of Disney didn’t bring their usual A game. Five, out of 16 times? I remember reading this one post, and it does bear repeating: DISNEY IS UNDERCUTTING QUALITY ANIMATED FILMS! I can’t expect something like Loving Vincent or the Breadwinner to win this trophy of achievement because I bet a good third of my soul that Coco’s gonna win w/o hesitation. This feels like a manipulative front to sway people towards companies like Disney that always set to bring the faithful family friendly stuff while the diverse animations get shafted to generally good mentions. Disney’s worked for years to continuously perfect their craft, but they’ve gotten too good and it doesn’t help that now their releases are yearly and in spades. So while I can say Coco has earned its spot for a nomination, I can’t help but feel that no matter how much effort others have put into their films, companies like Disney can shut any chance for major recognition without even trying.

Man, I can’t even care who’s gonna win (Coco) but I will say this. As I have enjoyed 3 out of the five films on this check, unlike the fucklenuts at “the Academy”, I hope to be more open with what I watch, movies or animations in general. Like shoot, I got

The Isle of Dogs, I got

LEGO Batman to watch again, I got

The Spiderverse to look forward to, I got

YOUR NAME?!

Do you know how much regret and flogging I have for not watching Your Name? I feel like a disgrace. So I can only hope that as I will go watch Your Name in the most stable condition I can obtain, more people will learn from the bullshit Oscars, especially those who love animated features as much as any other film, that there is more out here than just the ones that earn big Hollywood branded awards, that those movies can provide some of the greatest visuals your eyes could never imagine, and that a trophy shouldn’t/won’t define actual greatness. So, with the Monkey Network seal of approval, I give you...

#OscarsSoBland!

Because if we can learn anything from this, it’s that the biggest events like these are typically the least inviting or investing. Seriously, why do people care about this show again?

[hysterialevi]

In the Smoke pt. 17 (Cobblebats)

From Falcone��s POV

LATER THAT WEEK

Picking up a glass of champagne from one of the tables, I took a short sip before turning to greet the flood of guests filling up my manor, their chatter starting to drown out the eloquent music in the background. It was a fine evening tonight, and most of Gotham had seemed to calm down just a little ever since old Ham’s death. Though, they were still worried about the dire threat of Penguin and his men.

I had to admit, a lot more people showed up than I expected. Even though Penguin had been somewhat quiet recently, most of the city was still on edge ever since the horrific debate, and lived in a constant state of worry, hiding in their homes for the majority of the day. I saw no reason for them to break that routine, but perhaps they saw this banquet as a chance to forget all about it.

Normally, I wouldn’t have chosen to throw a banquet in a time such as this, but with Ham dead, it was important that I made new allies. I trusted Tommy with my life, sure, but he was just one man. And one man wasn’t enough to watch my back. Not to mention that he was on the verge of losing his own company and being dragged through the dirt by the press. I needed someone else to help carry the weight. Someone with a bit more muscle. The only question right now, was who?

“Carmine.” A familiar voice said from behind me. I smiled to myself.

“Well,” I spun around and opened my arms in a welcoming manner. “Speak of the devil. You know, Tommy, I was just thinking about you.”

The other man didn’t return the smile. Instead, he only scanned the crowds with narrowed, suspicious eyes before approaching me and lowering his voice to the point where it was almost inaudible.

“Something wrong, old friend?” I questioned. “You look a bit...troubled.”

Tommy leaned in and whispered. “Carmine, you need to get out of here. Now. You’re in serious danger tonight.”

I chuckled. “Whoa, relax, Tommy. Just take a step back. What are you talkin’ about?”

“I’ve been studying the Children of Arkham’s moves,” he continued, “tried to figure out what they want--and I have reason to believe that you could be their next target.”

“Wait, what? Children of Arkham?” I asked, confused. “Who the hell are they?”

Tommy sighed. “In short, they’re a terrorist organization. Penguin’s with them. I’ll explain more later, I promise. But right now, you need to leave. This banquet’s just begging for them to attack you. Look how many people there are! They could be hiding in plain sight, and you wouldn’t even know it.”

“I appreciate the concern,” I replied, unconvinced, “but I’ve got bodyguards at every entrance--every corner. Eyes all over the place. If anything happens, they’ll let me know.”

I turned to walk away, but Tommy grabbed me by the arm, holding me in place.

“You’re not listening to me,” he persisted. “I am trying to save your life here. Penguin’s already gone after you once--in your own club, no less. What makes you think he won’t try again?

“Security’s tight, and I’ve got multiple cars waiting just outside in case I need to bail. I’ll be fine, Tommy. Don’t worry.”

He finally decided to drop the subject and let out a breath, crossing his arms. 

“Say, where’s Bruce?” I asked him. “He’s not with you?” That didn’t seem to make Tommy any happier.

“Bruce has been...busy...lately,” he answered. “Always in and out of the manor. Constantly working. On what, I don’t know. But it’s been hard to get even a single word in with him. I thought it’d be best to leave him alone for now. Give him some space.” Tommy suddenly threw a glare. “And besides, I’m not too fond of the idea of bringing my son to a banquet full of assassins.”

I shook my head, holding a casual hand up in defense. “All right, all right. I’ll have my guards sweep the perimeter. See if they can find anything shady. Will that make you feel better?”

“I’d rather have you leave entirely, but I suppose that’ll have to do. For now.”

Pressing the button on my earpiece, I took another sip of my champagne.

“Do a brief check around the manor, would you?” I said. “Make sure no one...unfriendly’s skulking nearby.”

“Right away, sir.” The guard replied.

“There,” I looked at Tommy. “Done and done. If they spot anyone suspicious, we’ll be the first to know.”

Tommy still didn’t look completely satisfied, but said nothing further and instead, only stayed by my side for the rest of the banquet, insisting to keep an eye on me, no matter how unnecessary I thought it was. Though, despite the absence of any obvious threats, a part of me couldn’t help but wonder if Tommy was right. He was known for his strong instincts, and to go as far as to say that my life was at risk...it was unsettling, to say the least. 

Oh, well. It was too late to back out now. If the Children of Arkham, whoever they were, really did end up coming after me tonight, I was going to show them what it meant to screw with the king of Gotham.

From Bruce’s POV

Softly laughing to myself, I turned to the multiple, tied-up security guards who had been shoved in some secluded room, all of them trying to struggle out of their restraints as I turned off the earpiece.

“Naive, isn’t he?” I taunted, referring to Falcone. “Or perhaps just in denial. Looks like Falcone’s not as smart as I thought. Not that I’m complaining though. Every bit of help counts.”

I switched the line over to Oz. 

“Penguin, Falcone’s just asked his ‘guards’ to check around the manor. I think he might know we’re here. Or at least, he suspects it.”

“Then let’s get to work before he decides to flee,” Oz replied. “All right. Let’s get this show on the road. Wait for my signal, then carry on with the rest of the plan, just like we discussed. And remember what Lady Arkham said: our masks never come off. Got it?”

“Got it.” I confirmed.

“I knew you would. Just try to stay safe. Okay, mate? As much as I love seein’ you in action, I love seein’ you not get hurt more.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I reassured. “I can handle myself.”

“Of that, I have no doubt. Well, anyways, let’s get this party started, shall we? I’d hate to keep the audience waiting. Falcone dies tonight.”

From Falcone’s POV

Conversing with the more prominent guests at the banquet, I swiftly made my way around the manor with Tommy in tow, exchanging words with anyone who looked like they could be a potential ally. Tommy still hadn’t let down his guard at all ever since our talk, and in fact, he only seemed to grow more cautious as the minutes passed by, refusing to say more than a “hello” and “goodbye” to the people I spoke to. If paranoia were a person, it’d be standing right next to me right now.

“Enjoy yourself,” I told him. “Tonight isn’t supposed to be a kidney stone. And I know you’re not exactly a social butterfly, but at least have some wine. It’s expensive.”

He bit his lip. “They’re here. I know they are, and I really don’t feel comfortable allowing you to just stick around. This isn’t a goddamn gala, Carmine--it’s an assassination attempt.”

“Okay, now you’re startin’ to sound crazy.”

“Better crazy than dead.”

I sighed. “I’ve said it a million times before, and I’ll say it again. We’ll be all right. Trust me. This place is locked up tight. Now go get some food and have a good time.”

Just then, before our conversation could carry on, the distant sound of someone clinking their spoon against a glass reached our ears, and out of nowhere, a random man suddenly stood aloft one of the tables, making sure everyone could see him.

“Hey!” I called out. “Get down from there!” He ignored me. I guessed someone had a little too much wine.

I opened my mouth to say something else to him, but before I could even utter a single syllable, Tommy had yanked me backwards, his eyes nailed onto the man’s face.

“What?” I snapped at him. He pointed in the man’s direction.

“The mark that’s painted on that his mask,” Tommy thought aloud, “I recognize it.” He turned to me in realization, his eyes widening with fear. “It’s the Children of Arkham. They’re here. We gotta get you out of here. Immediately.”

“Sorry to interrupt this fabulous banquet,” the unknown man announced sarcastically. “Really, it’s so, so wonderful to see this many people still able to laugh and have a good time with their friends, even with Gotham on such high alert these days, but I’m afraid that a few adjustments have been made to tonight’s agenda that you may not all be aware of.”

A bodyguard approached him. “Hey, circus freak, no one cares. Now get down from the table--”

Before any of us could even blink, the masked man had already whipped out a gun and shot the bodyguard straight through the head with a violent bang, splattering his blood all over a marble pillar and causing everyone to shriek in panic and freeze in place.

“Carmine,” Tommy whispered to me in terror, “that man’s voice...I think...oh, god...I think I know it.”

“You do?” I exclaimed back. “Well, who the hell is it?”

“I think it’s--”

“Carmine Falcone!” 

Interrupting Tommy, the masked man began to walk towards me with open arms as everyone watched him, his eyes lit up with excitement as he strolled in my direction.

“There he is. In the flesh. Apologies for the abrupt announcement. I hate to spoil your evening in such a blatant manner--I really do.” He looked around. “After all, it’s such a perfect night to meet with your fellow gangsters, isn’t it? Also a good opportunity for people to relieve a little stress. But there’s something urgent I think you should know.” He placed a gestural hand on his chest. “I’m the new host of this party.”

I scoffed. “Listen, kid, I don’t know who you think you are, but you’ve got two seconds to scram before my men mount your head on the wall.”

The man let out a cackle. “It would add some spice to this place, at least. Though, I’m afraid your men are pretty useless at the moment. I mean, the dead can’t really do much, can they? That’s what makes them so easy to work with. Oh, well. You’ll see for yourself, soon enough.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw even more men in masks emerging from the shadows as they joined the crowds with assault rifles in their hands, surrounding the entire manor so that there was no escape. They all had the same uniform as the criminals from the debate, and the one that the man wore appeared to be more ornate. It was obvious that he was a leader of some sort. Though, he had yet to introduce himself.

With the raise of a hand, the other Children of Arkham followed his signal and suddenly fired a storm of bullets into the air, shattering the chandelier’s glass above them as guests dropped to the floor in a cowering fashion, attempting to run away before they could be taken hostage. 

What remained of my pathetic security hastily started to fight back with mere handguns, easily being throttled by the brute strength of the infiltrators as the rest of them surrendered, joining my guests in restraints at gunpoint .

I gaped at the masked man in front of me. He flicked his eyes towards a nearby door.

“I’d start running if I were you.”

Without a second thought, I bolted away from my pursuer, shoving guests out of the way as I ran for my life, still able to hear the man’s nightmarish cackle behind me. Tommy was nowhere to be seen at the moment, and with most of the lights out, it was hard to see where I was going, causing me to stumble over my feet multiple times. Occasionally, I glanced over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of the masked man, only to be greeted with a maniacal laugh as he gained on me, practically in-sync with my shadow. I had no clue who this lunatic was, or what he wanted, but I had to get away...and fast. Goddammit, why didn’t I listen to Tommy? Where the hell even was he?

From Thomas’ POV

Pulling my cowl on once I finished gearing up, I hurriedly contacted Alfred before jumping back into the pandemonium of the banquet as Batman, taking on multiple of the Children of Arkham as guests flailed around in mindless horror, tripping over bodies of the ones who had already been killed.

“Alfred,” I exclaimed between punches, “I need you to get Gordon on the line.”

“Of course, sir. Switching now.”

After a short period of sharp static, the lieutenant’s voice came through, a bit broken at first.

“Batman,” he greeted casually. “What’s the situation?”

“Gordon, There’s a group of terrorists attacking Falcone’s manor as we speak, and as for the man himself, I haven’t seen him ever since the culprits went guns-blazing. They’ve also taken a number of hostages. Some of them are already dead.”

“Christ. I sit down for two minutes, and the city’s already in chaos. The crime never sleeps in Gotham, does it? All right. I’ll gather a squad and head down there immediately. Thanks for the heads-up, Batman. Do whatever it takes to protect the remaining hostages.”

I nodded. “Already on it.”

“And what about Falcone? Any idea how he’s doing?”

From Falcone’s POV

Darting into my office, I slammed the door shut and barricaded it with a tall bookshelf, frantically trying to open my safe as I fumbled with the lock, a heavy thump aggressively pounding against the door.

“Hide all you want, Falcone!” The masked man outside threatened in a sing-song tone. “I’m still here!”

Snatching my machine gun from the safe, I fired an array of bullets through the wall in hopes of killing the unknown culprit on the other side, splintering the wood as broken chips soared through the air.

“You got no goddamn right to be here!” I shouted. “I run Gotham. And if you think you can take the throne from under me pal, you’ve already lost the game.”

After a few minutes of fighting blindly with my opponent, the ruckus outside seemed to calm down for a second until suddenly, with a thunderous boom, one of the walls blasted open and sent me flying backwards into my desk, bruising my back as the masked man sauntered inside, gun in hand.

“Heh, you think that’s gonna work?” I teased, sitting up. “I’m gonna light up this whole goddamn place--”

Ferociously grabbing me by the neck, the smaller man managed to lift me off the floor without any visible strain, glaring at me dead in the eye.

“Get your hands off my suit! Do you know who my lawyers...my lawyers are!? I’m a respectable businessman! You can’t do this to me!”

A light chuckle escaped him. “You’ve certainly got much more fight than my two previous victims,” he commented. “I like that. There’s just something about your fire that drives me, and who am I to resist it?”

Without hesitation, he hurled me into the office’s fireplace, setting my sleeve aflame before continuing to prowl towards me, but I still didn’t quit.

“You got a lot to learn, kid.” I warned, activating another, bigger machine gun installed into the ceiling as it aimed at him, preparing to fire.

Before it could shoot out a single bullet however, the man had taken out some sort of device--similar-looking to Batman’s gear--and tossed it onto the floor as a blue, digital sphere surrounded the room and killed all the electronics, small sparks erupting from them.

“Oh, I think I’ve learned enough,” he countered, retrieving the EMP device. “It’s why I’m here.”

I groaned in pain. “And why are you here!? What do you want?”

He cocked his own pistol. “Your time in Gotham’s run out, Falcone. Every king’s reign has to come to an end at some point, and I’m afraid yours ends tonight.”

As one last, desperate attempt to fight back, I threw a random punch at the man and managed to take him by surprise, staggering him for a moment and knocking his mask off in the process. Though, once I saw the face hiding behind it, I kind of wished it had stayed on.

“The hell!?” I exclaimed in shock, unable to move. “...B...Bruce Wayne? Tommy’s son!?”

Not even bothering to put his mask back on, Bruce simply glared at me with an unfamiliar thirst for blood, acting nothing like his usual self as he kept walking towards me, eyeing me in the same way a predator watched its prey. There was a frightening vibe surrounding him, and it was clear that the drug had started to take complete control of him, rendering him all but defenseless against it, just like the new mayor. What the hell had happened to this boy?

“I’m not...his son,” Bruce growled at me sadistically, almost sounding offended. “And I’m no longer a Wayne.”

He aimed the gun directly at my head, inching his finger towards the trigger as he took a deep breath.

“I’m the new king of Gotham.”

[accountingfortaste]

The Biggest Logic Hole in the History of Cinema

by Clay Keller

I wish it didn’t have to be like this. Generally speaking, there’s nothing wrong with Clark Johnson’s S.W.A.T. (2003); it’s a relatively diverting LAPD action thriller with a surprisingly solid, “in-their-prime,” cast.* Under different circumstances, producer Neal H. Moritz’s 2 Fast 2 Furious follow-up could be remembered for any number of things. It could be remembered for the cracker jack airplane paintball training sequence, or for LL Cool J’s preposterous abdominal muscles, or perhaps even for Gamble, Jeremy Renner’s emo ex-S.W.A.T. villain, who definitely looks like this:

But that would be under different circumstances. As things are, all of the positive aspects of the fourth of five (!) Colin Farrell movies released in 2003 are overshadowed by the fact that this film contains the single most inexplicable logic hole / paradox in the history of movies.

At this point, you might be saying to yourself, “I don’t remember those parts of the movie that are supposedly ‘overshadowed’ by that other part of the movie that I don’t remember.” And you’d be right, because you don’t care about S.W.A.T., no one does.

But you’re about to.

Part One: The Theme Song

S.W.A.T was not the first time that a television show was adapted into a feature film. In fact, without doing any research, I’d venture to guess that S.W.A.T. isn’t even the second or third time this happened. And when a television show is adapted for the big screen, it is commonplace to include some kind of winking, self aware, moment that lets the audience know that the filmmakers are aware that the story they are telling is derived from a different story that was previously told on a different medium. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson sharing a scene with the actors who played the original Starsky and Hutch in Starsky and Hutch (2004) comes to mind, or the “does she always look like she’s in slow-motion?” joke from the trailer for Baywatch (2017). There are many more examples, but since those are the only ones that immediately came to mind, they must be the best.

Considering that long, proud tradition, it isn’t unreasonable that the people behind S.W.A.T. wanted to throw in a reference or two to the ol’ TV show. In fact, the fans would expect no less! And the references begin subtly enough, with the famous theme song from the show, originally composed by Barry De Vorzon, woven into the fabric of the score of the film, composed by Elliot Goldenthal. This is great, a nice little nod to the TV show that instantly evokes jaunty 70’s police fun without being too on-the-nose or distracting. Plus, since the characters in movies cannot hear the score music, having the original theme song present there doesn’t create any irreparable tears in the foundational logic of the world of the movie.

So far, so good. But then…

Midway through the movie, after successfully passing the aforementioned airplane paintball trial and officially becoming a S.W.A.T. unit, our heroes go out for a celebratory BBQ dinner. They laugh, drink, ogle Ladies Love Cool James’ abs, listen to a somber speech by Sam Jackson about the unacceptability of dying, and then begin singing the theme song from S.W.A.T. the TV show. All of them. In unison.

At first blush this may not seem like an issue. After all, the S.W.A.T. theme song is simple and catchy. Real-life S.W.A.T. teams probably sing it all the time, like how pilots are constantly humming the Wings theme, and you can’t walk past a fire station without hearing some firefighter jamming out Third Watch on an electric keyboard. The issue comes with the realization that this particular S.W.A.T. team is in a movie directly based on the TV show that this song originates from, sharing their names and characteristics with the characters from said show. If the TV show existed in the world of the movie, and they all know it well enough to spontaneously break out singing the theme, surely by now one or more of them would have had the existential meltdown that comes with noticing that you and your friends have the exact same names as a fictional S.W.A.T. team from a thirty year old television show. Surely.

But maybe not.

While this seems like a fairly egregious oversight, it isn’t completely damning, and, with a little bit of “deleted scene hypothesizing,” can be explained away. Perhaps in the world of S.W.A.T., that catchy theme song did not originate with Mr. De Vorzon and the Aaron Spelling-produced show, which of course couldn’t exist, but rather with our heroes themselves, composed at some point in the course of the narrative and adopted as a personal pump-up jam. As far as I know, such a scene does not exist, but easily could, and would make an excellent addition to one of the films myriad training montages:

For this theory to hold water, one needs to assume that Oscar-nominated composer Marc Shaiman would be friends with Samuel L. Jackson’s Sgt. Dan “Hondo” Harrelson, but Shaiman seems very likable, so I buy it.

Whew, that was close. Clark Johnson, screenwriter David Ayer, and company, almost obliterated the reality of their film for a tossed-off joke, but with a little creative thinking on the part of the audience, the movie can continue on, unabated. All they need to do now is avoid making any more references to…

Part Two: The Actual Goddamn Show

… oh come on.

Mere minutes after the movie’s first flirtation with smashing through the fourth wall like the Kool-Aid Man, we find our heroes enjoying a much-deserved day off.

Sgt. Hondo and Lt. Velasquez (Reg E. Cathy) are putting in some time on the links…

… while Deacon takes his kids shopping…

… TJ (Josh Charles) has a predictably douchey (lunch?) date at a French restaurant…

… Sanchez (Michelle Rodriguez) tests Street’s step-dad potential with a backyard water gun fight…

… and Boxer (Brian Van Holt) shirks his household chores…

… while kicking back on the couch with a lukewarm Dr. Pepper…

… and blithely watching everything he thought he knew about the universe be thrown into utter chaos.

Well, shit. So much for the airtight “personal team theme song composed for them by Oscar-nominated composer Marc Shaiman” theory. This scene confirms it: the TV show S.W.A.T., a spin-off of The Rookies that aired from 1975–1976, exists in the world of the movie. The reason everyone was able to sing the theme song during that scene in the BBQ restaurant is because they are all aware (and presumably fans) of the TV show, S.W.A.T., which, again, exists.

How is it possible, in light of this new information, that every single last goddamn fucking scene in this movie doesn’t play out like so:

It just doesn’t make sense! All things considered, the movie S.W.A.T. should be about regular blue collar cops who, after bearing witness to a glitch in the space-time continuum, slowly lose their minds as they become feverishly obsessed with figuring out how this is possible and if they can fix this broken reality. Not one drug lord should be apprehended from a flaming private jet, not one beach dramatically ran upon by a dripping-wet Colin Farrell. Who has time for that kinda crap in the midst of their psyche slowly cracking into a million pieces? S.W.A.T. should essentially be the same movie as Jake Gyllenhaal’s Enemy, but with significantly more hair gel and leather cuffs; there’s no reason it doesn’t end with every character either dead, in an institution, or facing down a spider the size of a bus.

Part Three: Theories

Honestly, the time for excuses is over. The stretch that was necessary to explain away the theme song gaffe was just barely short enough that I was willing to make it. This, however, is a bridge too far. By including a clip from the actual show, S.W.A.T. earned itself the dubious honor of having The Biggest Logic Hole In The History Of Cinema, full-stop.

However, in blatant defiance of the sentence immediately preceding this one, I am not going to stop, but rather press forward, with a collection of theories that attempt to bring sense to the nonsensical, and fill The Biggest Logic Hole In The History Of Cinema.

Each theory will be followed by points both for, and against.

Theory 1: The characters in the movie all love S.W.A.T. so much that they legally changed their names to those of the characters on the show.

Ok, maybe? But since none of the characters know each other at the beginning of the film, that means they all did this very weird thing independent of each other, and just coincidentally all picked different characters. Then to top it off, they were all recruited for the job that the fictional character that they named themselves after also had, and in the same unit, no less. And then they never spoke about it.

Actually, no. For the one, the probability of that happening is infinitesimal, and for two we know from the movie that Hondo didn’t recruit people based on their names, he recruited them based on their willingness to beat the hell out of suspects, and enjoy “good old fashioned American hot dogs.” Plus, if it was some pro-level “The Secret” shit, they would go on about it non-fucking-stop and they’d be on, like, The Talk, if that’s still a show.

Theory 2: It’s the holodeck, from Star Trek

“Whoa, these theories sure went off the rails quick, didn’t they?” Why yes, they did. The theories went off the rails with a quickness that is in direct proportion to the insanity of the hole.

S.W.A.T. officer Michael Boxer (the grinning layabout we see watching S.W.A.T. on his couch) is actually Lt. Mike Boxer, a security officer on a Galaxy Class starship that isn’t the Enterprise, I don’t know their names, but one of the other ones. Since nothing ever fucking happens out in space (remember, not the Enterprise), Lt. Boxer stares wistfully out at the stars, lost in nostalgic reveres about the good ol’ days of cops and international drug kingpins, until he remembers that there is a holodeck and he can just go and do the damn thing. So, not unlike Capt. Picard and his 40s private eye fantasies, Lt. Boxer wiles away the hours in his program set in 2003 Los Angeles, because really, was there ever a better place and moment in American history?

I’m still thinkin’ no. If this is Boxer’s program, which is assumed because he’s the one who is unequivocally aware of the show, why is he not the lead? Hell, he isn’t even on the poster! Who writes themselves into something as a supporting character who gets shot and has to sit out the entire climax of the story? Unless this is some sort of reverse- Lt. Barclay situation, where in real life Boxer is the cock of the walk and his secret fantasy is to be background bullet fodder… I don’t know. I’ll chalk this one up as a “possible.”

(You: “Wait, the author snarkily implies that, like all cool people, he knows the bare-minimum necessary about Star Trek, but then invokes occasional guest character Lt. Barclay as a reference? Just how much does he actually know about Star Trek: The Next Generation? Is he secretly a big The Talk fan as well?” Me: “Fuck you, that’s how much.”)

Theory 3: Michael Boxer is a bored immortal and/or interdimensional being

This theory is similar to the holodeck theory, but with a less proprietary mythology. Basically, Boxer is an ancient, and possibly interdimensional, being who loved the television show S.W.A.T. so much that he decided his late-20th century game would be organically recreating the program, with real people and real situations. He Marty McFly-ed all of the heroes’ parents (“You know a name I’ve always liked? Hondo...”) then took up some sort of mentorship role during their youths (a teacher, coach, surprisingly wise vagrant, etc) to subtly nudge them in the direction of law enforcement. Boxer has had millennia of practice with human Rube Goldberg puzzles like this, so he’s really fucking good at it and it works like a charm.

“If he was an influential part of their young adulthoods, why doesn’t anyone recognize him as such?” Easy, the mustache. Next.

“Why does he allow himself to be shot at the end of the second act?” Because he needs to take himself out of the situation in order for his little baby birds to fly on their own. Next.

“What about the continued existence of the show? And knowledge of the theme song?” In his capacity as wise vagrant, he indoctrinated his pupils with the idea that television is evil and should be avoided at all costs. As for the song? Welcome back to the game, Clay’s Perfect Marc Shaiman Theory From Earlier!

Holy shit, you guys. I think we did it. We patched the biggest logic hole in the history of cinema. Congrats, Brian Van Holt! Here you’ve been for the last fifteen years thinking you played seventh banana in a moderately successful PG-13 franchise non-starter, when you were actually playing omniscient god-like banana in a moderately successful PG-13 franchise non-starter. I’m glad we were able to do you this service. You can now be at peace.

Part Four: What Come Next?

As you are no doubt already aware, the S.W.A.T. legacy is far from concluded. A new version of the series, from The Shield creator Shawn Ryan and Fast Five director Justin Lin, is premiering this fall on CBS. Oddly, it is an adaptation of both the TV show and the movie, since it incorporates the Chris Sanchez character that was originated by Michelle Rodriguez in the film.

This begs the question, will ageless interdimensional trickster god Michael Boxer also appear in the new series? According to imdb it would seem that he does not show up in the pilot, but that doesn’t mean much. Scripts can be rewritten. Pilots can be re-shot. Just imagine the narrative possibilities of adding a TV-obsessed, all-powerful, immortal character to a gritty LA police / social drama. I’m not saying that it will be better, because that is obvious, and I am not in the habit of redundantly pointing out the obvious.

Do with this information what you will, Shawn Ryan. I know you’ll make the correct choice.

In Conclusion:

*S.W.A.T. is actually a pretty damn good time. Underrated. Check it out. 

[vapaus-ystavyys-tasaarvo]

Revenge Sandwich week four (part 2)

XXXIV An Apparition

I do like the early 19th century tourism stuff just for how both similar and different it is to now.

And OF COURSE Franz runs into Edmond AGAIN.

‘Pardieu!’ said the man in the cloak, in French.

Yeah, you always end up slipping back into your native language every now and then... (Okay I actually don’t know if Edmond’s native language IS French though. But I’m guessing that if not then he learned French early enough that it counts?)

it did not prevent Albert from dressing up outrageously every time he went to the opera with Franz -- a wasted effort; for, it must be admitted to the shame of one of the most deserving representatives of French fashion, in the four months during which he had travelled the length and breadth of Italy, Albert had not had a single romantic adventure.

He sometimes tried to joke about this, but underneath he was deeply mortified.

Pffft. Oh, Albert

- New nobility -- another thing to note. I mean, I think I already mentioned how this book is very tied to this specific point in time? This is July Monarchy era, France had a “bourgeois king”. It’s that weird intersection between the ancien régime and capitalism.

- Also it’s becoming pretty clear that Albert is very used to getting his way and he’s just not going to give up on the carriage thing. His parents might have been poor fishermen from a small village but he’s been raised as a viscount in Paris...

- I love how the theatre audience basically watch the opera like a lot of people watch TV. Just keep talking and only occasionally pay attention when something interesting happens.

- More exotization but this time with Italian women... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

‘On the occasion of a walk in the Colosseum very much like the one we took together.’

‘By moonlight?’

‘Yes.’

‘Alone?’

‘Almost.’

‘And you spoke of...’

‘The dead.’

Very Romantic.

‘I don’t like brunettes who sing blonde.’

.... okay???

Albert what

- We have the text itself compare Edmond to a vampire! x) Now he’s basically a horror story monster as far as the narrative is concerned.

- I got confused as to where Franz managed to leave Albert in the middle of the discussion with the countess tho. I mean... wasn’t the whole point to introduce Albert to the countess?? Buuuut then they just sort of forget about him?

- Also Albert should maybe shut up about women please.

‘(...) a little pale, admittedly, but of course pallor is a mark of distinction.’

Franz smiled. Albert had pretensions to looking pale.

Aww. :p

Of course he noticed nothing weird about Edmond though. He’s clearly playing the role of the clueless friend in the horror story... even though ironically the monster is after his father but it’s Franz who’s the one getting the ominous premonitions.

‘Well, I’ve had a wonderful idea.’

Franz gave Albert the look of someone who did not have much confidence in his ideas.

These two are going to be endlessly entertaining aren’t they?

‘No, Excellency. I have an understanding with the bill-poster and he brings these to me as he does the advertisements for entertainments, so that if any of my guests wish to watch the execution, they can be fully informed.’

‘How very thoughtful!’ Franz exclaimed.

Dx

UNSURPRISINGLY I’m really not a fan of the executions as entertainment shit... I mean I don’t know what Dumas’s own view on this was although I kind of get the feeling that he wasn’t a fan either? 

Oh well, finally we get a proper meeting with the Count though!

At this point I made a note about how Edmond insists on all this opulence and exotism. I mean compare this to Valjean... Okay Valjean didn’t have this much money, yes, but he did have enough that he could have lived more comfortably than he did in Montreuil-sur-Mer.

The man who had just entered was none other than the cloaked figure in the Colosseum, the stranger in the box at the theatre and his mysterious host on the island of Monte Cristo.

Of course.

[thanksillpass]

Holehearted [OtaYuri]

read on ao3 here

commission info here 

Otabek Altin woke up with a hole in his chest one morning. It just appeared suddenly, slightly to the left, where it definitely hadn’t been before. Just a hole the size of a fist, or maybe a large apple. Its unobtrusive presence didn’t hurt or bother him in the slightest, not physically anyway. It wasn’t ripped out of his chest; shaped like a perfect circle and smooth around the edges, it looked and felt quite cartoonish, really, almost too abstract to believe it was actually there, if Otabek weren’t able to put a fist and an apple through it.

He got used to it rather quickly, and he carried on with his otherwise unremarkable life as always. He woke up every morning and fed his boring cat, went to his average university, then to his dull part-time job in a coffee shop, fed his cat again, put ordinary effort into his homework, and went to sleep in his bed that was too standard to be properly uncomfortable and give him any reason to be unsatisfied with it. Everything in Otabek’s life was plain, and an inexplicable hole in his chest wasn’t any different.

There wasn’t anyone he could talk to about it anyway, even if talking was something he enjoyed doing.

His boss had to have a soft spot for him, because Otabek’s customer service left a lot to be desired, but he still had a job to go to every afternoon, and he was grateful for it. There weren’t many things in life that Otabek actively enjoyed, but riding a motorcycle was one of them, and a bike wasn’t a cheap thing to maintain. He didn’t begrudge it - the irreplaceable feeling of sweet freedom and almost overwhelming limitlessness riding gave him was compensation enough. During winter, when the bike was safely stowed away in the shed, Otabek skated. It was the closest thing to flying a person could experience, in his opinion, with nothing but planes of cold, unforgiving ice surrounding him, sliding through air that filled his lungs with invigorating ice shards, similar to the chilly breeze against his face when he balanced on the edge of the speed limit on the highway at night.

“You look more moody than usual,” chirped Chris, pulling Otabek away from his thoughts. “Something wrong?”

“There is a hole in my chest,” replied Otabek truthfully, not expecting to be believed.

Chris frowned. “Did you not sleep again, Otabek? I don’t want you to be embarrassed later for actually talking about your feelings to me.”

Otabek let out a soft sigh and turned away from his coworker without another word. He regretted saying anything already, remembering that Chris was the kind of person who would go around the coffee shop and tell everyone who cared to listen (or didn’t) that Otabek had feelings that needed to be addressed immediately because he had just admitted there was something missing in his life. Otabek didn’t come up with this “theory” on his own - he literally heard Chris say that to Phichit just then - but it gave him a pause. Was there something missing in his life? Was there a hole in his chest because there was an empty, shrivelled shell barely pumping blood to his brain where his heart was supposed to be? If so, what was he supposed to fill it with, if skating and riding a bike hadn’t already?

“I’m sure Chris is exaggerating a bit, as usual, but if you need a friend to talk to, I’m here.”

Otabek lifted his eyes to stare at Phichit, who looked undeterred by Otabek’s impassive expression, smiling gently like he always did. Phichit was a warm, kind guy, and Otabek didn’t like him very much. He didn’t really like anyone, to be honest, and it never affected him in any way - he enjoyed being alone, didn’t feel the need for company other than an unresponsive cat who didn’t require anything from Otabek except for food and a lap to sit on, very occasionally. People puzzled him, mostly, and seemed to be too much effort than they were worth in general. Still, that did seem to be only thing that was missing in Otabek’s life, even if he wasn’t aware it was a bad thing that warranted the universe to carve a hole in his chest to make him realise it.

“Maybe I do need a friend,” he admitted blandly, and promptly turned away from Phichit, just in time to see his bright happy smile slip when he realised Otabek didn’t mean him in particular.

Like with many things, Otabek didn’t bother following through with actually finding a friend. Testing a flaky theory was not incentive enough to turn his life upside down and let a random person in, and for what? To fix an issue that didn’t even cause him any discomfort? Otabek always believed that friendship was something that should happen naturally, so he decided to wait his current situation out - if someone came along to fill the literal hole in his chest, great, but Otabek wasn’t going to go out of his way to make it happen.

“You do need to create an opportunity, though.”

Otabek admittedly wondered how a customer was aware of his predicament and his thought process, but didn’t question it out loud, wanting to limit their interaction as much as possible. Yuuri Katsuki reminded Otabek of a shaking leaf hanging on the branch by sheer power of determination and fear of falling. He was an odd and complicated person, perhaps not much more than any other, but still too much for Otabek’s taste. He seemed shy and insecure in one moment, and resolved and larger-than-life in the next. He was five years older than Otabek, but seemed like a fragile child in comparison, naive and easily excitable, prone to sudden mood changes; Otabek sometimes had to wonder which one of them was the weird one. He was willing to entertain the thought that he was the oddball, considering Yuuri was a highly functioning member of society, with a husband and a dog, and a house he wasn’t renting from shifty Russians.

“Like, I was crushing on Victor for forever, but I was always too afraid to do anything about it, and if he hadn’t approached me, I’d die alone pining after him instead of getting married to him.”

Otabek quickly decided against that idea. “Please stop talking to me.”

“My point is—”

“I get your point. Here’s your order. Good day.”

Dejected, Yuuri moved away from the counter and sat at one of the tables, presumably to wait for Victor to come pick him up. It wasn’t that Otabek paid attention to the daily routine of the married couple, it was just that Yuuri seemed like someone who’d be afraid to go anywhere alone, lest a natural disaster or, say, a squirrel happened to end his life, ridding him of a chance to spend his last moments with the person he loved. Otabek felt a little bit sick, and he was glad his facial expression wasn’t reflecting that when the man in question finally entered the cafe. Surprisingly, there was a sample sized blond kid with peculiar fashion sense in his tow that instantly made Otabek think of his grumpy cat. The kid was visibly unwilling to hang around the couple any longer than necessary, and he was eyeing Otabek with petulant suspicion. Otabek could definitely sympathise - if there was anything more difficult than being around people, it was being around people in love.

“What can I get you, kid?” he droned when the boy approached the counter.

The kid tensed, his expression momentarily vulnerable before clouding again. “Strong black coffee, no sugar.”

Otabek shrugged, pleased with the simplicity of the order. “And what name should I put on the cup?”

“I’m the only customer here,” replied the boy as he looked around the place with a bored expression. “I think we will manage without me disclosing my personal information to a complete stranger, thanks.”

Otabek couldn’t help but smile to himself at the kid’s quite obviously forced nonchalance, but he was at least able to hold back until he turned away to prepare the coffee. They didn’t speak to each other again, and Victor soon called his young friend over (Yurio, so Yuri, like his husband, and why was Otabek even paying attention?). They stayed a bit longer, enough for Otabek to notice Yurio grimace in disgust as he sipped his black coffee a few times before leaving a basically full cup on the table and trailing behind Victor and Yuuri. Otabek would have been offended if he cared about the quality of his coffee-making skills. Or doubted it.

Yurio quickly became a regular customer, sometimes coming by with Victor, sometimes alone, and always ordered the same thing, always making the same disgusted face as he tasted the coffee, and always leaving without finishing his drink. Otabek had to admit it was rather amusing, almost as much as his blatant dislike for Yuuri. He always shouted at him, getting all up in his face, leaving him a shaking and teary-eyed mess, naturally gravitating towards Victor’s comforting open arms, which only seemed to enrage Yurio more. The kid couldn’t have been older than eighteen, and Otabek had to be in awe of his potential for emotional destruction at such a young age. He occasionally wondered where all that pent-up rage was coming from, but never for long - he was always good at accepting reality as it was and leaving it be.

Still, he felt himself drawn to that new and unexpected addition to his daily life, a little stormy cloud in a flashy t-shirt coming and going before Otabek could decide if he minded that it rained on him. People-watching wasn’t something he’s ever tried before, so he wasn’t sure if Yurio was a particularly entertaining subject or if it was always this engaging. Otabek was almost positive it was the former, so he kept watching, and he never got bored, learning something new every day and greedily storing all the information. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but Yurio had hard eyes of a soldier, which contrasted with his almost angelic look and the natural grace of his movements. If he had to guess, Otabek would say he was a dancer, and he found himself wishing there was a way to confirm his suspicions without seeming like he cared.

But he did care, and it was unsettling.

“You should just talk to him,” offered Phichit, as usual unprompted, just so Otabek remembered that he cared. Otabek seriously disliked him. “I think you’d make good friends. You’ve got so much in common!”

Phichit was clearly getting excited, so Otabek decided to humour him, and raised his eyebrows in silent question, almost curious as to how Phichit was planning to talk his way out of that particular overstatement. He patiently watched Phichit close and open his mouth, raising his finger when he thought he did come up with something sensible to say, and flagging when he finally realised how absurd that would sound. Just before Otabek decided the conversation was pointless, Phichit tried again.

“You both… dislike… other people?”

Otabek let out a genuine chuckle. “Great foundation for friendship.”

“It’s a start! Friends who slay together, stay together! Or… something… You haven’t even had a proper conversation with him! Who knows what you will find out about him if you just talk to him. Come on, Otabek!”

“Why is it so important to you?”

Phichit looked embarrassed, and it was suddenly clear to Otabek that Yuuri must have put him up to this so that Yurio would get off his back, distracted by a new relationship that would hopefully consume a large portion of his free time - Otabek had never liked Phichit more. Of course, there were probably more reasons for Phichit to push, cheesy and nauseating reasons like wanting Otabek to be happy, but no one was perfect. Feeling generous and in a rather good mood, he ruffled Phichit’s hair before proceeding to ignore him for the rest of his shift. There was no avoiding noticing Phichit and Chris basically crying in each other’s arms, but Otabek refused to let that ruin his day. When Yurio came in, alone this time, there was a moment when Otabek felt confident he would talk to him and offer something more than an impassive expression and a cup of coffee Yurio obviously hated, until he realised he had no idea what to say.

“Why do you always order that? You always make weird faces as you sip it, and you never finish your drink. Are you trying to look mature because you’re so small?”

For the first time in his life, Otabek learned what mortification felt like. It took him that entire time to come up with possibly the most insulting thing he could have come up with, and he was afraid to meet Yurio’s eye. All he could see was Yurio’s hand shaking violently as it reached for the coffee, and worried it would end up splashed on his face, disfiguring him for the rest of his life, Otabek finally lifted his eyes, his breath catching in his throat. Yurio’s mouth was twisted in a furious snarl, his blue eyes aflame, an angry blush covering his cheeks, and underneath all of that was something like betrayal and embarrassment. The hole in Otabek’s chest throbbed. He nearly had forgotten it was there, and now it throbbed almost painfully, making Otabek dizzy. Before Yurio could react in any way to the affront, Otabek blurted out the first thing that came to his mind:

“Do you want to be my friend?”

Yurio visibly started, his features gradually smoothing into mild confusion, only slightly coloured with distrust. “Why?”

Otabek thought for a while about his answer. He considered telling him about a hole in his chest, but that would only make it sound like an experiment. He could tell the truth and admit he’d never really had any friends, but that would make him sound pathetic and unappealing as a future friend prospect. He could say he has been watching Yurio and took interest in him, that he was curious and wanted to get to know more about him, but even Otabek realised how creepy that was. He took a deep breath to keep panic and anxiety at bay, and finally shrugged.

“Why not?”

It had been a bit awkward at first. Well, it was very awkward at first, but it got considerably less awkward with time. They weren’t that compatible - where Otabek barely let anything affect him, Yurio probably had the shortest fuse of everyone Otabek had every come across. Where Otabek scared people away just by looking at them, Yurio had to beat them off with a stick, sometimes literally. It was weird to talk about themselves only to find out that the other was a complete opposite. They didn’t share any interest beyond skating, but to Otabek it was mostly a replacement for the bike, and for Yurio it was a part of his training regime for the ballet, so they quickly stopped talking about it too.The only thing they seemed to have in common was, actually, the general dislike for other people.

But they made it work. They’ve put effort into it. They had the kind of friendship that just didn’t make any sense, and you stayed friends just to spite other people. Unfortunately for both of them, the people in their lives were cartoon characters made of rainbows and sunshine, and they were beyond themselves with happiness for them. Otabek and Yurio tried their best not to let that taint their relationship. Instead, they focused on the benefits of finally having someone to complain about those people to, and simply standing by each other, on principle, occasionally rescuing a certain someone from fans in a dramatic fashion involving motorbikes, or verbally abusing a horrible customer when a different someone couldn’t be bothered to defend himself.

It took a lot of effort, but they made it work.

Otabek had to admit that he was pretty… content. Considering that neither of them had anything to compare it to, and that both of their expectations were somewhat different to most people, Otabek would say they’ve became pretty great friends. There was only one thing that slightly bothered him about Yurio. He wasn’t a jealous or a possessive person - for example, he didn’t mind that when Yurio visited his entire world was instantly shrunk down to Otabek’s cat and Otabek himself might as well not exist - but he definitely thought that Yurio was whining about Victor’s relationship with Yuuri too much.

“Are you in love with Victor?” he asked one day, and was relieved when Yurio looked mortally offended, but only for a brief moment. “Do you have a crush on Yuuri then?”

“What the hell?!” snarled Yurio, his face instantly going red. “It’s one thing to accuse me of having feelings for my cousin, really, honest mistake, but for you to even think I would want anything to do with that little piggy-”

“I think you have a crush on Yuuri,” interrupted Otabek, unable to hold back a smirk. “I think you like him, that’s why you’re so mean to him.”

Yurio spluttered. “You’re mean to him too! Does that mean you want to bone him too?!”

Otabek grinned, reminding Yurio that no one said anything about sex, and Yurio pointed out that it was what everybody thought, and that was the end of it. Otabek didn’t learn the answer to his question, but if Yurio wasn’t comfortable with sharing anything on that particular subject, Otabek was going to wait patiently until he was. It wasn’t as if it had any real effect on their relationship, or on Otabek himself. As much as he enjoyed being friends with Yurio, it didn’t change that much in his life - it didn’t even get rid of the gaping hole in his chest. His existence was still remarkably unremarkable, filled with basically the same ordinary routines, and still missing something that could only be his very heart. If Otabek was willing to ignore something of that magnitude, what did he care that his best (and only) friend was involved in a hopeless love triangle?

Only he did care, a little bit.

Ever since Otabek mentioned it, Yurio would grow distant, sometimes, watching Otabek warily, or snapping at him with seemingly no reason. Even if he was in a good mood, smiling and excitable, he would suddenly dim in the least expected moment, putting up his walls back again. Otabek suspected Yurio wanted to maybe talk about it, but neither of them was any good at discussing feelings, or even expressing them properly. As for Otabek, he wasn’t very good at even having them - he wasn’t sure he could relate to Yukio’s heart troubles. He’s never been in love, never really thought he could love. He’s barely made one friend at twenty-two, who was going through something Otabek had no control over, and he wasn’t sure what he could do to keep him.

“Am I a good friend?”

Yurio looked up at him, his hand freezing still in the cat’s fur, a scowl forming on his lips. Otabek regretted asking, but he couldn’t back out again. He wanted Yurio to know he cared, because he did, he valued him more than anyone else in his life, even if he didn’t fill the hole in him, he was still more important than all other people Otabek has ever known put together. He wished he could say it out loud. He wished he was enough for Yurio, just like Yurio was enough for him. He wished there was something, anything, he could do to make Yurio say yes.

“Yes,” said Yurio, simply and honestly, surprised it was even questioned. “Why do you ask? You need references? Are you suddenly planing to become a social butterfly or something? Come on, I want to go shopping for cat collars.”

Otabek exhaled, and smiled.

All things considered, their relationship progressed normally after that. They started talking more honestly, perhaps, learned to communicate with each other better. Put even more effort. They didn’t see each other every day, as the novelty of the friendship and anxiety to maintain it wore off. Some days were better and some worse. Sometimes Yurio shut him out and locked himself in the dancing studio, and sometimes Otabek chose the bike over Yurio. Sometimes they went skating together. Sometimes, they spent a whole day in bed - a lazy, tangled mess of boys and cat. It was normal, for them at least, and Otabek liked it. He continued to live his ordinary life with his cat, his friend, coworkers, and a hole in his chest.

People teased them sometimes, and he wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe they seemed too co-dependent, or too cold towards each other; Otabek didn’t care to know what others chose to focus on when it came to judging them. It didn’t matter anyway. How could it, when he had Yurio’s head in his lap, scrolling through one social media app or the other, scoffing and pushing the phone in Otabek’s face ever so often, half-heartedly swatting his hand away when Otabek tried playing with his hair. The cat came and went, the only indication of the time passing by. Otabek would be content staying like that forever.

“I don’t have a crush on Yuuri, you know,” said Yurio suddenly. “I was jealous. Victor has always been kind of my hero, and then the pig showed up and took him away. I was just acting like a child. I was jealous and lonely. I’m not anymore.”

He didn’t push Otabek’s hand away this time when it started gently stroking the soft blond strands of hair. Otabek didn’t think he needed to say anything, so they stayed like that until Yurio had to go back home. Otabek saw him to the door, and somehow sensed it wasn’t going to be the usual good-bye they shared. It was in the tense line of Yurio’s shoulders, in his skittish glances, as he hesitated between avoiding and meeting Otabek’s confused gaze. They stood in the doorstep, each on the other side, waiting. Finally, Yurio seemed to resolve himself, and took a step closer, stood on his toes, and kissed Otabek on the mouth. Blushing furiously, he turned away to flee, leaving Otabek with a cat rubbing itself on his calves, and a tingle on his lips.

Was he expecting that, even subconsciously? He wasn’t sure, but he felt calm, normal. He went back into the apartment, then back to bed, and tried asking himself countless questions, tried forcing himself to analyse the development and examine his feelings. But all he could feel was calm, and that peculiar brand of satisfaction you experienced when something long overdue finally happened even though you weren’t really waiting for it. He smiled to himself when he felt his phone vibrate, and his grin only widened as he read the text from Yurio, “Hope that wasn’t weird.” It was. It was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to Otabek Altin, hands down, and he’s never felt happier. “It wasn’t,” he replied.

When he woke up the next morning, the hole in his chest was gone.

[aristocraticundyne]

Things That Break - Wolf 359

Daniel Jacobi was, by definition, a pretty horrific person. By the age of 20 he was already responsible for thousands of deaths, isolated from whatever family he had left, and presumed dead himself by his 26th birthday. He was stoic and blunt, to a level of which usually much concern would be raised. But Jacobi was also talented at all the wrong things, chemistry, technology, clockwork. Bombs, explosives, tuning out the dying screams of thousands. Daniel Jacobi was trigger happy. Warren Kepler was also a pretty horrific person, for different reasons. He was successful, charming and mysterious. He was high up in the rankings of Goddard Futuristics business which meant he had authority and exercised it regularly. Kepler was a smart man, a professional man, but he lacked an army, he lacked tools, pawns to lead. Space travel was never a real consideration for him, he was paperwork and fountain pens and black ties. But there were some loose ends Cutter needed cleared up, and Kepler was more than happy to do the dirty work if it payed off for him in the long term. The Hephaestus station had been compromised, which wasn't really part of the plan, and Kepler had to go up there and take back control. Renée Minkowski, the only person up there that Kepler believed had any brain cells, had let her team slip. Goddard Futuristics favourite insane doctor Hillbert had completely ran off course, Escaped Convict Doug Eiffel was missing in action floating somewhere in the abyss of Wolf 359, Unit 214 kept breaking and Captain Isabella Lovelace had returned from the deep depths of literal death. This was one hell of a loose end. Warren Kepler compiled a team, his pawns. Super Scientist Alana Maxwell who was one hacked password away from the wrong side of the law and our dearest genocidal bomb expert, Daniel Jacobi. Skip to 4 months later, and it was the day before the Contact Event day. Where all Goddard Futuristics work built up to this moment, finalised proof of alien contact. Wolf 359 was unpredictable, no one knew what it would disperse out or what the effects would be on their ship or crew, but one thing was for sure; Kepler's ratings would go through the roof. He sat back in his leather chair, eyes closed and scotch in hand, dreaming of a life back on Earth. Dreaming of a reality where he could march into Cutter's office and show him he was worth it, worth the faked deaths and conspiracies and coverups, that it was worth breaking Doug Eiffel of all men out of prison, that it was worth letting Hillbert loose on the crew. He would be so proud of him. A small smile spread across his face at the thought. "Sir?" There was a crackled voice on the coms system, patched directly into Kepler's room, a private call. He recognised the voice. "Jacobi, it's late. What do you want?" Kepler's voice was smooth and calm like the midday sea. He always tried to deal with Jacobi kindly, he was a troubled boy but he meant well, and he was always loyal. "I think there's something we need to discuss, Sir, it's about the Contact Event" Kepler's smile faded a little and his mind switched to work-mode. There were so many things that could go wrong with the Contact Event that it barely warranted thinking about. "You can come in, Jacobi" Kepler said. After a few moments Jacobi was leaning on the side of Kepler's desk, thick boots to compensate for the weird gravity up here, Goddard Futuristics company blue overalls rolled down and tied at the waist, white tank top and grey slouchy hoodie. Jacobi didn't own and item of clothing that wasn't decorated with burn marks or oil stains or chemical stains, he was a scruffy kid, with barely any manners. "Sir..." Jacobi pointed upwards and stared at Kepler's disapproving expression. Unit 214 was always watching, listening, it was her job but it was also an inconvenience. Privacy was not an option on this ship. Kepler sighed and cleared his throat. "Hera...block out all sensory details you acquire from this room and regulate the oxygen and temperature levels. Jacobi and I need to have a private chat." Kepler always spoke like he was making a request, however everyone knew it was a blatant command. Hera, Unit 214, glitched slightly, she always did. Maxwell said they were working on it but everyone was aware that 'Working on it' simply isn't enough. "Yes Sir, removing all sensory system updates from your room" She said calmly and then the coms system went quiet. Jacobi visibly relaxed. "They are planning something" He said, staring at the wall. "We know they are, and we are on top of it. Right Jacobi?" Kepler raised an eyebrow. Jacobi nodded, his gaze falling to the floor. "Everything's covered Sir. If Lovelace or Hilbert try their secret room trick, all I have to do it click a button and-" He illustrated an explosion with his spread out palms and fingers. "And the others?" Kepler asked. "Maxwell has Hera sorted, Eiffel is harmless and Minkowski is nothing without her crew. Sorted" Jacobi turned to face Kepler, still not smiling. "Now now, I wouldn't say that Doug Eiffel is harmless, he is a convicted criminal" Kepler smiled wide as he reminded Jacobi of that, yet it was still a kind smile. Jacobi shrugged "Yeah well there's no children here for him to endanger so I think we will be okay" he looked back to the floor with a smirk. Kepler's smile lingered as he looked over Jacobi's features. "Jacobi, tomorrow is very important" The younger man tsked, a movement that bobbed his whole body a little "You told my family I was dead, perhaps I'll finally get to live up to their expectations after tomorrow." "Now now..." Kepler interrupted him "I don't want that negative attitude..." His hand landed on Jacobi's thigh. They had touched before, it was surprisingly rare to make any bodily contact up here because everyone was so busy and there simply wasn't any need for it. But a million miles away from Earth, the warmth of another human's skin was somewhat comfortable. Kepler often found himself with his arm around Jacobi's shoulders or waist, or with their hands touching, Jacobi's dirt clad, overworked hands tightly gripping Kepler's neatly cared for and large ones in times of stress. Not because Kepler needed the support, but because he felt Jacobi did. So it was no surprise when Jacobi didn't even flinch at the feeling of Kepler's heavy reassuring hand on his thigh. He was too caught up in his thoughts to notice it. "Jacobi-" "Do we get funerals out here, Sir? Or will you just throw my body into the atmosphere and let the star take it considering my family buried me 4 years ago" Jacobi stared at the wall as he spoke. Kepler smirked "Jacobi, you are over thinking things, tomorrow will be fine. Whatever happens, happens!" He smiled warmly and took a sip of his drink. Jacobi nodded slowly, and rested his hand ontop of Kepler's. "Tonight could be our last night alive, Sir" Kepler put his drink down "Technically it's always night time here, it's space..." Jacobi rolled his eyes and looked at Kepler "You know what I mean" He mumbled. The younger man stood up and walked around to sit on Kepler's desk right infront of him. Kepler leaned back with a chuckle as Jacobi looked him up and down. A full suit and tie, as always. "Sir, What do you miss about Earth?" Kepler noted how Jacobi's voice lilted like a school girl's as he spoke, asking a question to the only teacher and role model he had left. "Available booze, the order of it all, proper toilets, appropriately placed kitchen knives for me to stab you with when you get annoying" Kepler's lips curled into a smile and Jacobi chuckled, although they both knew that Kepler wouldn't hesitate to actually do so. "Did you have a wife? Kids?" Jacobi asked. Kepler shook his head and looked down to his own lap "Always too busy, I also despised the idea entirely. And you?" Jacobi laughed and smiled warmly "Can you imagine me meeting someone? 'So Daniel, what do you do for fun?' 'Oh I make explosives and I'm technically a terrorist, how's your meal?' Yeah no" Kepler chuckled deeply and looked to Jacobi "Isn't that how we met?" He reached both hands to explore Jacobi's thighs, he was a skinny boy, but Kepler still gained a sense of comfort and relaxation from slowly stroking knee to hip with open palms. Jacobi glanced at his hands "Yeah but you were recruiting me. It's different" he said shortly. Kepler sighed and dragged his hands away "Can I enjoy my scotch in peace now or is there something else you've thought of to say that's worth my time?" Jacobi thought for a moment "I guess I just wanna say that I'm thankful to be able to be part of this team. It's been an honour to serve under you Sir" He stood up and started to leave. Kepler had a ghost of a smile on his face "Sure...Jacobi, I'm not going to let you die alone tomorrow" His hand caught Jacobi's. Kepler needed something. A distraction, comfort, reassurance, he wasn't sure. Tomorrow was going to be hell. He would have to deal with the star freaking out, alien activity and half his crew turning against him. If he thought about it any longer he felt as though his composed and calm mind would split. Jacobi was scared. He was sure tomorrow's events would kill him, either the star or his fellow crew mates. And if he survived this, his friends might not, Kepler might not, and what would they do without a leader? He thought of his family and his mother, how they have already grieved for him. They wouldn't even notice his death now. Then he felt Kepler's firm hand in his, a contrast from the cold metal he was used to holding. He took a breath and slowly sat down again on his desk. Kepler stood up slowly, ending up between Jacobi's legs. He ran his hands up his thighs and to his hips and pressed their bodies together. Jacobi made a soft noise and melted against Kepler's strong frame, he closed his eyes and it was like being back in bed, his own bed at home in his quiet apartment surrounded by thick blankets and gentle heat. Kepler indulged himself in the feeling of another person's body in his arms, Jacobi was shorter and skinnier but the way his spine arched in to pressed against him, the way his hair smelt like chemicals and sweat and hard trustworthy work, and the way his breathing was soft and fragile in his ear but his heart pounded and fluttered in his chest, he was perfect. "Jacobi, I'm not going to let you die tomorrow" "You can't control that. We never know what the star is gonna do!" Jacobi's voice was low yet angry. "We know that something big is going to happen, we have everything ready and prepared. I trust that you have done what needs to be done. That being said...in the event that something does happen to you.." Kepler sighed with his whole body. For the first time, he fully considered losing Jacobi. It would be a loss to the team, he knew was to do in every situation, he was loyal and not always trouble. But Jacobi was also a pain in the ass, he was quick witted and opinionated. Kepler found his hands wandering up Jacobi's back, into his rough blonde hair, the younger male felt so right in his arms. "...If anything does happen to you, I'll hold you just like this..." Kepler finished. Jacobi's arms linked over Kepler's shoulders. He hid his head in the crook of Kepler's neck "Sir...is this uh, is this cuddle thing permanent?" Kepler pulled away a little, in order to see Jacobi properly. It was a long time since Jacobi had been held like this, since someone's body was this close to his own. The heat of Kepler's chest, the smell of his musky cologne, the way his arms wrapped around him so perfectly, it felt right to be this close. Jacobi felt Kepler pull away, his eyes fleeted over the elder's face and he felt a small pang in his heart at the loss of contact. Before he knew it, Jacobi was resting his lips against Kepler's. Kepler smiled and kissed back slowly, it had been years since contact like this for either of them. Space was lonely. Jacobi was impatient and sloppy, while Kepler, as always, was formal and calm. The two held eachother with wandering hands for what felt like a lifetime, yet it still wasn't enough time. Kepler pulled away with a gentle huff and Jacobi's casual smirk developed into a laugh. "Now now, Jacobi that was exceedingly unprofessional" Kepler smiled and stroked Jacobi's messy hair. "Hm, well in all fairness, Sir, we might die tomorrow and I'm not wanting to regret anything" Jacobi grinned. Kepler calmly slid Jacobi's hoodie off of his shoulders and gave him another soft kiss "So, crazy loose cannon Jacobi is afraid of dying, how...unexpected" "I'm not afraid!" Jacobi protested. "I just have so much left to work on. The Contact Point is kinda a big deal, and I might not get to work with the results after" "Whatever happens, happens. Don't let Eiffel, or the others, get in your way again. You're a smart kid" "You sound like Cutter" Jacobi snorted. "I'll take that as a compliment" Kepler smiled in a way that suggested he was up to something, he seemed to always smile like that. "Jacobi, would you do me the honours of spending your possibly last peaceful night, in here, with me?" Kepler sipped his scotch and smiled as he relaxed back into his chair, feet apart and legs spread. He was a devil of a man. And Jacobi was no angel. "Of course, Sir" Jacobi stood up off the desk with a smirk and lowered himself to straddle Kepler's wide lap. It was risky, and uncalled for and dangerous. In fact Jacobi was pretty certain that the folks back at Goddard Futuristics probably had this ship bugged, they were probably watching the whole thing. Kepler didn't care, he ran his hands down the sides of the kid who was known for breaking things and thought of a life beyond tomorrow, beyond the Contact Event. Everything would change.