#and being unable to beat the ED keeping me from taking the two steps that I DO know exist

[void-tiger]

Actually…? No. Tell me the odds. I need the likelihood of success and got nothing else to lose might as well try even if extremely unlikely. Because I need help sustaining the hope that everything’s gonna be okay and motivation to get there that I just can’t do for myself without burning out almost completely.

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

[gayhotpriests]

been here all along [fic]

Or; there are traces of Buck all over the Diaz household. 1.8 k

Read on ao3

The coffee maker beeps in the kitchen, the sound carrying all the way into the bedroom the second after Eddie turns off his alarm. A cool breeze comes in through the window Eddie left open last night by mistake, and in the couple steps it takes to go from the bed to the door, Eddie has picked up at least six different clothing items, not even all his, from the floor and the chair in the corner that soon gets tossed into the laundry basket. He stops briefly by Christopher’s room to make sure his son is awake (he’s not, and a cranky five more minutes is heard from under the covers) before going into the bathroom to start his own morning routine.

The bright, red firetruck print that greets him has never failed to make him smile, not once ever since one particular Thursday, maybe two years ago now, when Christopher and Buck spent a couple of hours in the mall looking for a birthday present for one of Chris’s friends but bought a very much not needed set of shower curtains instead, along with matching firetruck soap dispenser and cup. They even have little firefighters painted in the tiny plastic windows, and Christopher might be almost twelve now, but the day he gets tired of his Buck’s gift is yet to come.

A month into the school year, the Diaz family’s mornings have looked mostly the same every day, and this fine Monday proves not to be the exception, as Eddie finds out a few minutes later. A certain blond man is still asleep on Eddie’s couch, and instead of doing his workout, Christopher is sprawled on top of him, snoring lightly. Buck’s legs are twisted in an awkward angle to fit in the couch and one of his hands brushes the fluffy carpet beneath the sofa (the one he picked in an attempt to convince Eddie that his house needed personality), the other holding onto Chris, whose face is completely smushed against the other’s shoulder. Bright blue crutches that Chris has started to grow out of lay in a disorganized pile next to them.

(If Eddie’s heart beats a little bit faster- if his hands itch to hold them too and join the sleepy pile, well. They don’t need to know.)

“Alright, sleepy heads, school starts in an hour! Get up!”

-

Eddie owns a perfectly functional coffee maker, a classic machine with only one button and no special features, that makes his coffee the same way every day, and has done so for almost five years without signs of obsolescence. He’s a simple man with simple tastes, but Eddie’s perfect, simple coffee maker, is currently collecting dust inside a box in the attic.

A steaming cup of coffee, however, is waiting for him on the counter when he steps into the kitchen, complete with milk foam, a shot of caramel, and two sugars: the product of the stupidly expensive machine Buck and Chris had plotted to get him, with all the smart features and Starbucks level settings that Eddie did not need. Using the machine is extremely complicated, too, so once Eddie found out how to input the settings for his drink of choice, he stopped allowing anyone to mess with it. Eddie drinks the sweet concoction religiously every morning, without a fault.

He sips on his sugar bomb slowly as Buck cooks breakfast, eggs, and sausages with toast, fruit salad, and a cup of warm milk for the only kid in the house. The sound of the sizzling pan and the knife hitting the cutting board fills the room along with the smell of homemade breakfast, something that screams of home and family, uninterrupted until Christopher shows up fresh from the shower and in clean clothes, with his restless morning energy and promptly sets to chatting their ears off. Buck keeps the conversation alive and gets the boy to help with mixing the fruit salad while he recounts the last episode of their favorite cartoon they had seen together the previous night. Buck makes surprised sounds at the right times, throwing a few "No way! Tell me more!" for good measure, even though Eddie’s pretty sure he remembers the episode perfectly as he asks the right questions to launch Christopher off in another direction at least three times.

Eddie finishes his coffee, leaves the cup in the sink, and turns to the cupboard to start setting the table.

Three days before school started, Christopher told Eddie that he’s big enough to use big people knives and after a long phone call with his son’s Occupational Therapist, and another with his own therapist, they had gone to the store to get him a cutlery set that could allow him more independence while still on the safer side, and Buck had found the perfect one: the knife has a blunt tip and slightly serrated edge, and a round plastic handle decorated with tiny green and blue dinosaurs.

“Daddy, don’t forget the dinosaurs, please,” Christopher asks politely, just like every day, because he refuses to eat with any other fork or knife. Luckily the set came with six of each, so everyone can use them during breakfast as Christopher prefers.

“Yeah, and don’t forget the big spoon for the fruit salad,” Buck chips in, pointedly looking at Eddie. Clearly, he still hasn’t let go of the last few times he has forgotten the big spoon for the fruit salad. In less than five minutes, they’re seated around the table eating, Christopher’s feet kicking excitedly against Eddie’s when they congratulate him for the A he got in his latest science assignment.

Both his son and best friend clear their plates first, smiles on their faces accompanied by crinkled eyes as they laugh. Eddie has to scold Chris on talking with his mouth full only once- a new record, and Buck only twice, tapping him on the hand with the spoon, reminding him to lead by example and not be a terrible influence on the kid. Buck mumbles a sheepish sorry every time, ducking his head in embarrassment, and Eddie just rolls his eyes and shoots him a fond look. He watches them, joins the laughter when Buck teases him, or when Christopher tells a story from school, warmth filling him up from the inside out.

Soon enough, the time’s up and Christopher goes to brush his teeth and get ready to leave while Eddie and Buck load the dishwasher and wipe the countertops, barely any words exchanged as they move around the kitchen. Eddie checks the calendar by the fridge, next to Christopher’s old artwork and the polaroids held up by fruit magnets. PT at 11 am, Frank’s at 3 pm, reads in the bold block letters of Buck’s handwriting, under Eddie’s own scribble of C’s swimming lessons at 3.30 pm. Eddie makes a face at the overlapping schedule, chews on the inside of his cheek. He’s too late to ask Carla to take Christopher for him, as he gave her the week off a few days ago so she could go to DC for a certification. The last few therapy sessions had been at noon, but PT was pushed up to eleven and so his entire schedule was unexpectedly messed up, and Eddie will have to run from the clinic to Christopher’s school and then take him to the pool, but he’s not cleared to drive yet so he has to account for cab ride expenses and a whole new timeframe now, too. God, he should have gotten this figured out yesterday.

Back in El Paso, when Eddie had worked three jobs, he had once forgotten to pick Christopher up at school because his shift ran longer than usual, his phone died and the teachers were unable to reach him at the construction site. His parents had been called instead, being the second emergency contacts, and they had stared him down later at night while they told him all the reasons he was a bad dad and Christopher should live with them. Don’t drag him down with you, Eddie.

A hand lands on his healthy shoulder, right next to the base of his neck, and Eddie looks away from the calendar to meet a pair of bright blue eyes next to him. Buck watches him for a second before opening his mouth, careful.

“Hey, Eds, I noticed today looks a bit tight and I was thinking I could ask Bobby to let me out for an hour so I can go pick Chris up and drive him to his lessons, or maybe ask Maddie if I’m on a call,” he says, and the knots in his throat slowly start to dissolve, as he stares up to his friend’s calm face. His shoulders slowly start to relax, the injured one pulses with pain. The warmth of Buck's fingers makes the little hairs on his nape stand up as he swipes his thumb twice over the patch of uncovered skin in a comforting gesture.

“Yeah, thanks, man,” Eddie chokes out.

Buck smiles, and it’s all it takes. The fog lifts.

“Sure, I’ll text you in case I can’t make it so you can let the school know Mads is going to get him,” Buck continues, but he’s not touching Eddie anymore. Eddie takes a small step back, fidgets with the dishrag he still had in his hands as Buck starts to make his way to the living room, picking up his jacket, “you get to pick him up after, and already I left you guys some leftover stew for tonight's dinner in the fridge," Eddie keeps his eyes on Buck while he talks, takes a few steps closer to his friend, but not close enough. "I have a sixteen-hour today, so you tell Christopher goodnight for me, alright?”

“Of course,” his voice is too tight, and it must show because Buck bites his lip and reaches out his hand again, but doesn’t touch. At that moment Christopher burst back into the living room and yells out as if Buck isn’t right there to hear him.

“I’m ready, Buck!”

With a last smile, Buck turns to the door, putting on his shoes quickly and pulling his bag out of the hallway closet. Eddie leans down to place a smooch on his son’s cheek, which makes him laugh, and throw his head back with a loud “Bye, dad!” in his ear.

“Alright buddy, let’s go, let’s go!” Buck exclaims and Christopher bolts out the door, followed by his Buck, and Eddie stays at the threshold until he can’t see the Jeep past the corner of the street.

It’s barely eight o’clock and he still has chores to get done before PT, but Eddie just drops facefirst into the heap of blankets on top of the couch, drowning in the smell of his family and he aches for the picture he saw earlier that morning, sleep falling slowly over him like another blanket. A short nap is calling his name from the dream world, and the last thing he sees before going under is his pillbox for the pain meds next to a bottle of water, a pink post-it note stuck on the tag, big bold letters were carefully written on it. I know you forget but please take these before leaving home! xx. Buck.

Eddie falls.

[lluvguts]

all better // reddie

pairing: teen!richie tozier / eddie kaspbrak

genre/warnings: fluff and angst, trauma, h/c

word count: 2111

summary:  Eddie has a bad day and Richie does his best to cheer him up.

check out my ao3

It’s just Richie’s front door.  

But no amount of convincing worked for Eddie’s mind as the sight of it warped into the small door in the sewer...With the grotesque face of the leper staring back at him. As he stared at the Tozier’s oak door he swore he saw a thick trickle of blood seep from the threshold and hear the sound of sickly, rasping breath from inside the hollow door. Just a few more moments and he’d be face to face with It..

It’s dark out, he told himself. That’s why I’m seeing things. But I’m here, Richie’s here. I’m safe. No need to be scared.

But that didn’t stop the nightmares that assailed him all night long—ever since they defeated It—keeping Eddie wide awake and strangled in worry for what could be lurking in the murky blackness outside. Eddie’s mother had caught on to his insomnia since the first week, making him take all sorts of supplements and medicine claiming to be a “sleep aid.” They did nothing to keep the images at bay. The noises. He only slept well on nights when Richie snuck over, or when Eddie drove to his house.

Richie could never know.

Eddie shook his head and knocked again. His eyes searched the window with its drawn curtains. I did tell him I’m coming, right?

But then the lock swung back and the door opened, showing the face that soothed all his worries. Richie grabbed Eddie’s arm and brought him in for a hug. He was suddenly pulled into Richie’s open chest and the familiar stink of cigarettes and black tea consumed him. It was a bold and comforting smell, one that Eddie loved. It made his nerves settle and for Eddie was unmistakably Richie Tozier.

“You look like shit, Eds,” Richie held him tightly, “On the phone you said it was a bad day, right?”

Eddie nodded against his shirt and they pulled away. I’m not entirely wrong. It was a bad day. He just doesn’t need to know exactly why. And that was the great thing about Richie: he didn’t need an explanation. He was more than happy to let his boyfriend curl up in his arms, his face still burning from fearful tears while Richie whispered little jokes or Voices in his ear until Eddie wiped his eyes and laughed. Most of the time they weren’t even funny.

“That’s alright, Eds. I’ll fix us some dinner, yeah?”

“You can cook?” Eddie followed Richie into the kitchen and sat on an island chair.

Richie pouted at him, his lower lip sticking out. “Don’t be hateful, sweetheart. Of course the Trashmouth can cook.”

“What’s on the menu then, Chef Tozier?”

“You’ll see.” Richie laughed and rummaged through the pantry.

Eddie glanced around the empty kitchen, not a single sound filled the house—except of course for Richie banging around looking for a stove pot.

“No parents?"

"Nope. My folks are out of town for the weekend, some family thing.” Richie said, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand.

“And they left you alone?” Eddie asked, unable to help the smile that drifted into his voice.

“I’m seventeen. I don’t need constant supervision.” Richie growled.

Eddie pointed to him. “Yet you were about to pour marinara sauce into a pasta strainer.”  

“Okay, scratch that. I’ll always need you, Eddie my love...Plus I promised them I wouldn’t burn the house down.”

“What on Earth are you doing with all that?” Eddie caught sight of two boxes of macaroni, lettuce, and red sauce.

He tried to stifle his giggling, but it was useless. “Rich, are you trying to make spaghetti?”

“Maybe.” He replied defiantly with an embarrassed blush.

“With iceberg lettuce?”  

Richie inspected his ingredients again with his eyebrows raised, his eyes looked more doubtful now from beneath his glasses. “..That’s a thing, right?”

Eddie sighed and joined him at the counter. “You’re hopeless, Richie. Give me that ladle,” He loosely gestured to the wooden spoon next to him while putting back the lettuce.

“This is the wrong type of noodle.” Eddie held up the box of pasta while the marinara sauce simmered on the stove—the one thing Richie had done correctly.

Richie snorted and put his hands on his hips. “Not everything can be perfect like you.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and let Richie’s arms snake around his waist. “Okay, fine. Macaroni it is.”

He waddled over to the sink—with Richie still attached from behind—to pour water into the pot. As he let the faucet run Richie bent down and kissed his bare neck softly, his glasses poking into his skin.

Eddie stiffened. “What was that for?”

“For helping me with dinner. For being cute. Why, can’t I kiss you just because?”

“Of course you can. You’re just..distracting.”

“Oh? You mean like this?” Richie laughed and placed a trail of teasing kisses up his neck, making Eddie grip the handles of the pot tighter while he fought to breathe. He knows just where to kiss me.

“Am I distracting you now?” His mouth rested just above the space between Eddie’s jaw and earlobe, his warm lips and breath tickling him. One of Richie’s hands drifted down toward his pants and Eddie stepped on his bare foot.

“Cut it out Richie,” Eddie gasped. He realized in his daze that the pot of water was about to overflow and quickly shut it off. He carried it to the stove and set it to boil, then poured in the macaroni noodles.

He turned to him. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack one of these days.”

Richie returned his hands to his sides and smirked. “Awe, shucks. To think I have that effect on people.”

“Only me, dipshit.”

“And that’s just fine,” Richie pecked his cheek and hugged him again.

“Feeling any better, Eds?”

“After some dinner I will be.” Eddie replied while wrestling out of the bear hug to set two plates on the tile counter. Richie drained the pasta and Eddie turned off the burners.

“Like mother, like son.” Richie said philosophically at the sink.

“Be quiet,” Eddie gave his chest a playful shove and handed him the food. They sat at the table on opposite sides, and just as he was about to eat Richie stuck his fork at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Letting you try some!” Richie pushed the fork further towards Eddie’s mouth.

“I have some right here,” He gestured to his own full plate, “And you’ve been eating off that already.”

Before he could pull his fork away a few stray pieces of macaroni slipped off the fork and fell across Eddie’s shirt, staining the front with oily red sauce. Richie’s eyes widened, and he drew the fork back guiltily.

“Gross!”

“Oh, shit. Sorry Eddie! I’ll go get one of mine!” He hopped off the chair and dashed up the stairs. Eddie took the chance to eat some of the “spaghetti” before Richie returned with a fresh shirt.

“I am not wearing that,” Eddie said firmly, picking the noodles off his lap and into his empty plate.

“Just take that off and put on mine. It’s mostly clean, don’t worry. I’ll wash yours.” Richie held his shirt out to him, waiting with closed eyes for the dirty one. Eddie diverted his eyes and pulled his shirt up over his head. He threw Richie’s on hurriedly, his face was red the whole time. God, it smells just like him.

“Okay, you’re good.” Eddie told him and he opened his eyes. Richie examined him wearing his own clothes then flashed a grin.

“Why do my clothes look better on you? And the Cutie Award goes to..”

Eddie thrust the stained shirt at him. “My ass.”

“He’s not wrong, folks!” Richie shouted into the empty hallway as he went back upstairs to the laundry room.

“You want me to clean this up?” Eddie called. Richie had left a trail of dirty dishes and stray pasta noodles in his wake as they had cooked, not caring to pick up.

“Just come up here! We’ll do it later.” came his reply. By “later,” Eddie knew he meant “tomorrow.”

Eddie headed up the stairs and sat on Richie’s bed, waiting for him. Even without him there—just for a few seconds—the thoughts came racing back, like a flip of a switch, no matter if things were happy and easygoing minutes before.

He was no longer in Richie’s room. He was on the burning asphalt with a broken arm, he was running through the yard of the Neibolt house, desperate and out of breath. He was staring directly in the face of Henry Bowers, his entire arm engulfed in flames as searing as a hot iron with Patrick’s spit stuck in his eyes. He was reliving every memory.

“...Eds? What is it? What happened?” Richie appeared in the doorway but Eddie could hardly see him through the haze; he only heard his footsteps thundering in his head as he came to his side, taking his face and forcing him to look into his chocolate brown eyes.

“Eddie? Talk to me, please,” Richie was pleading, sitting down next to Eddie and keeping his hands placed firmly on his shoulders, helping to relieve his staggered breathing.

“It hurts,” Eddie said weakly but his words got choked up in a fresh wave of tears.

“Where, baby? Where does it hurt?” He searched his face and scanned his body frantically.

“God, Richie. My head..the memories, it hurts so much. They never went away,” He cried, truly feeling every ounce of that childhood pain. Richie grabbed his sides and pulled him into his lap, his face set into a hard, serious frown that left Eddie startled.

He’s always been there for me.

“N-no,” Eddie tried moving away, “I’ve been crying..It’s gross, Rich. Let me go wash my face or something.” He sniffed loudly.

“Shhh,” Richie shook his head and held him more fiercely, Eddie could feel the beating of their hearts together against his chest. He closed his eyes and counted each rhythmic thump of Richie’s heartbeat until he could breathe again.

He brought his face to Eddie’s cheek, wet with tears, and kissed him.

“Let me make it better,” Richie whispered. He moved his lips to tenderly kiss every spot on Eddie’s face: each tear, his pink nose, his eyelids.

“It’s gone, we killed It, everything’s alright now,” He kept his lips pressed to Eddie’s temple, and as he did the ache there subsided, “You’re safe with me, Eds.”

Eddie let out a shaky laugh. “You’re such a sap, Richie.”

“Only for you.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes with Richie running his hands through Eddie’s hair. He loved when Richie did this, when his gentle fingers sent shivers down his spine. His comforting touch made different tears slide down Eddie’s face.

“Is it still there? Did the nightmares go away?” Richie asked with another twinge of concern when he felt Eddie crying quietly again into his shoulder.

Eddie tucked his face into the crook of his neck to hide the embarrassment and mumbled, “No, they w-went away.”

“What’s wrong? Why are you still crying, Eddie?” Richie leaned against the headboard so he could see the smaller boy’s face and he cradled the back of his hair.

“I’ve never had someone be so..kind to me before. Not like this. No one would ever do the things you’re always doing for me. I-I don’t think I deserve it.”

Richie lifted Eddie’s legs up higher so he was more comfortable and the smaller boy snuggled in. He spoke with his chin resting on top of his head, “I know I’m kind of an ass most of the time, but I don’t mean to be. I’m always looking out for you Eds, even when you think I’m not...It’s cause I love you.”

Those three words silenced everything and left Eddie blissfully calm—despite his frantic heart.

He loves me?  

Eddie questioned it as soon as he said it, but after thinking it over he knew Richie wasn’t lying.

Who else would clean me up after a panic attack, or wake me from a nightmare, even if I was covered in sweat and tears and who knows what else? Who else would hold me the rest of the night, even if it meant he didn’t sleep?  

“I love you too,” Eddie said against his neck. And then, after a thoughtful pause,

“But don’t call me Eds.”  

[hogarthwrites]

the three of us [request]

pairing: young sam drake/reader (m/f), 28 year old sam drake/reader (m/f)

genre: angst, fluff, found family

warnings: teen pregnancy, child birth, menstruation/period mention

words: 3,337

summary:

An unexpected announcement, a future suddenly so unsure. Your relationship with Sam is tested as you’re at a crossroads between enjoying the last year of your adolescence or taking on responsibility.

note:

this was a request by @profoundapricotclodopera <3 i hope you like it!! 

You couldn’t remember the last time you had your period. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for you to miss some months and the school nurse had told you it was normal for an eighteen year old to skip every now and then. 

The bathroom tiles were cold as you sat on the floor, waiting for the test tube on the sink counter to give you your result. It wasn’t hard to convince your mom you weren’t feeling well so she could let you stay home. As soon as she left, you took out the pregnancy test you bought after school the day before.

Your heart beat loudly as the timer went off and you shakily stood up. There it was: the solution mixed with your urine had turned a sinister red. Positive.

No, no, no, no. You couldn’t be pregnant, you told yourself. You and Sam did everything right, you were careful, but still…

The test was still red. Maybe it was wrong? It’s not like you had any other symptoms like morning sickness or cravings. You chucked the water into the toilet and threw out the test. 

What would you tell Sam? How would he even react? You haven’t even been together for a year, and it frightened you to think that a kid will just scare him off. You didn’t want to think about what your mother would say.

Sam looked exhausted when he climbed through your window that night. He gave you a hug before flopping down on the bed.

“I waited for you at the school,” he mumbled. “Jeanie said you were sick.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t call. I really wasn’t feeling too great,” you sat on the bed next to him and stroked his hair. “I’m feeling better now, though. I promise.”

“I’m glad,” he took your hand in his, sleepily kissing your fingertips.

“Tired?”

Sam simply nodded. He worked two jobs, and sometimes he’d come by to see you just to fall asleep then leave early enough not to get caught by your mother.

“Sam…”

“What is it?” He mumbled into the pillow.

“I haven’t had my period yet.”

He sat up and raised an eyebrow at you. “That’s happened before, though.”

“Yeah, but not for six months.”

“What are you trying to say?” He sat up now, sleep gone from his mind.

“I don’t know, Sam!” You buried your face in your knees. 

“You don’t think…?” His voice quivered. “But I was so careful.”

“I took a test, Sam,” you looked up at him, feeling the hot tears stream down your cheeks.

“No.” Sam stood up, backing away from the bed. “No. It’s probably a broken test.”

You started sobbing, maybe a little too loud that Sam moved back to you to calm you down, also worried your mother might wake up.

“Hey, hey, don’t cry,” he wiped your cheeks. “Say, why don’t we go to the clinic tomorrow? I’m sure they can tell you if you actually are…”

“Pregnant?” You sniffed.

Sam pursed his lips and nodded.

“I-I’m here, alright?” He pulled you into his arms and kissed your forehead. You simply buried your face in his chest as he lay you both down on the bed until you fell asleep.

Sam didn’t know how to feel as he took out the money he’s been saving up from the jar he usually hid under his desk to help pay for your check up that day. He didn’t want to believe what you were saying last night, telling himself that the people at the clinic will say otherwise.

Don’t worry. It’s nothing. He was always so careful with you and you swore you were on the pill, so it was probably just a terrible mistake. Unless…

“Sam?” You stood at the doorway of his room. He was still staring at the bills in his hand, unable to speak. “Um, I’m ready to go.”

He held your hand as you walked up to the front desk, where an older woman sympathetically looked at the both of you. You knew what she was thinking. So young…

He held your hand as you sat at the waiting area, glancing at other couples who were much older. They looked happy, but you sat there with Sam wanting to disappear. Time seemed to crawl ever so slowly as you waited for your name to get called, the clock ticking loudly, or was that your heart beating loudly?

You placed a hand on your tummy, wondering if there was an actual baby inside. If there was, would you want to keep it? After all, it was yours and Sam’s.

Sam gave your hand a squeeze, breaking you out of your trance and you looked into his brown eyes, just as nervous as yours.

“They’re calling you,” his voice cracked as he spoke.

“Okay,” you nodded. 

You stood up, knees shaking, feeling Sam’s fingers slip from yours as you followed the nurse. He kept his eyes on you as you walked away.

Sam couldn’t take it. He couldn’t sit in a waiting lobby surrounded by happy couples while he felt like he was waiting for a death sentence. No, that was a little too much. Having a kid isn’t the end of the world, is it? Maybe it is when you’ve just turned nineteen.

He went out in the cold Boston air and took out his pack of Lucky Strike’s and smoked a cigarette. Then another. Then another. Why the hell was it taking so long?

A couple came out of the clinic, the woman was rubbing her swollen stomach and happily smiled at the man she was with. For a second, he let himself imagine being that happy with you and it felt nice until he remembered he could barely support himself.

The doctor asked you so many questions: Are you sexually active? When was your last period? When was the last time you had sex? Did you use protection? Have you taken a pregnancy test?

She asked you to get an ultrasound, much to your dismay. You were sure she was wrong. I’m a good kid, you told yourself. This doesn’t happen to good kids.

As soon as the cold gel hit your stomach, you felt like you blacked out. You felt the doctor move the contraption around your stomach, but you could barely hear what she was saying.  Something about fingers? Fingers?

You looked at the monitor, and almost as if your soul fell back into your body, you regained your senses. There it was: a whole baby inside your stomach. The doctor pointed out the fingers and the toes said you were six months pregnant.

“Hey, baby,” you whispered, feeling overwhelmed.

“Do you wanna know the sex?” The doctor asked.

You thought to yourself, still unsure if you still wanted to keep the child, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to know what sex it was.

“Sure,” you nodded.

“It’s a girl.”

Sam took your hand as you stepped out of the clinic, still dazed. The bad feeling at the pit of his stomach grew as he watched you reach into your jacket pocket and pull out a photograph.

“Girl,” was simply what you said as you handed it to him.

He felt numb as he looked at the black and white image in his hand. There it was. The end of his life as he knew it. He thought about the three jobs he was working just to make ends meet, then about Nathan who was still in the orphanage. How the fuck was he going to take care of you, his brother, and now a baby?

“Are… Are you keeping it?” He gave you back the photo. “Um, I mean her.”

“I don’t know,” you pocketed it again and pushed past him. “I don’t even know if I’m going to pass my midterms, Sam, what more this?”

“I can’t be a dad yet!” He said out loud, starting after you.

“I can’t be a parent yet either, but here we are!”

You stopped dead in your tracks and sat on the ground, burying your face in your knees. You sniffled again and again as tears rolled down your cheeks.

“Let’s talk about this,” you felt Sam’s hand on your back.

“Take me home,” you muttered.

“Are you sure?”

“Please.”

You decided not to tell your mother until you had decided what you wanted. You went to school the next day as if nothing was wrong, but making sure you got a nurse’s note for phys ed. PMS cramps, you had said. A whole lie.

Sam was respectful when you told him you needed time, just at least for the weekend where you spent a lot of time in bed just thinking. Just a year ago you went to watch For Keeps with your mom, thinking that could never happen to me. After all, you knew what you were doing. What went wrong?

Pills aren't always effective. That's what the doctor said. It made you angry to think no one ever talked to you about the precautions. How were you supposed to know that?

You looked at the ultrasound photo whenever you were alone and let your mind wander, imagining raising the child with Sam. It would be hard, sure, but in your mind, as long as he was by your side, you could do anything. But then…

I can’t be a dad yet!

It was selfish of you to choose for him. After all, it was still his kid too. It hurt to imagine, but even if Sam didn’t stay, you still wanted to keep the child.

Sam smoked more and more. The first few puffs always felt so good, so right, but he felt disgusted whenever he was done with a cigarette. Life has always been rough for him, but this was the most stressful thing he's been through.

He couldn’t imagine being a dad. He’s never had a father figure in his life, not when his own father was never home and when he was, he always came home drunk and barely spoke to his wife and sons. No fucking way he was going to be like that asshole. However...

He thought about you. He didn’t understand what it was, but he’s never felt that way with anyone else before and he’s dated so many others before. It was weird, but the thought of having a kid that was half you, half him tickled him. Was that what you wanted too, he wondered.

“I’m keeping the baby,” you announced the next time you met at an empty playground after Sam’s last shift of the day.

“I had a feeling you were going to say that,” he dug his sneakers into the sand. 

“I know…” You sighed. “I know you don’t want to be a parent, but with or without you, I’m raising this child.”

Sam stared at you for a moment, catching you off-guard as he grabbed you by the waist and pulled you in to kiss you. You melted into his arms, realising you haven’t kissed him in a while, and you missed it.

He rested his forehead on yours, cupping your cheek. 

“I’m not going anywhere, alright?” He whispered.

“Sam,” you started to cry again, feeling like a tonne of bricks was lifted off your shoulder. You'd expected him to get mad, to run away, but instead he stayed.

He put his hands on your stomach. “It’s going to be hell, but I’m willing to go through it with you.”

Hell was an understatement. Your legs, hips, and your back hurt, and you were just so done with being pregnant. All you wanted was for the baby to pop out already, but the last few weeks just seemed to drag on. 

It wasn’t any easier for Sam. He worked longer just to make ends meet despite moving in with you and your mother, he still felt like he was responsible to help pay for your check ups. He only got to see his little brother once since you found out you were pregnant, and even though Nathan was excited to be an uncle, Sam felt a bit different.

Dad. He was going to be a dad and it scared the hell out of him. He didn’t want to be like his old man, but he knew next to nothing about being a parent. He didn’t even feel comfortable with moving in with you until your stomach started swelling larger by the day.

“We haven’t picked out a name,” you mentioned one night as you sat in bed, playing with plastic dinosaurs on your tummy. Sam lay on his stomach, reading a book but he looked up in thought.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” he mumbled. “Did you have anything in mind?”

“Catherine?”

Sam made a face. “That’s a nun’s name.”

“Okay,” you laughed. “What did you have in mind?”

“I think I’ll leave the baby names to you.”

He took your hand and buried his face in the pillow, tired from the day’s work. He sleepily rubbed your hand with his thumb until he fell asleep. You watched him sleep, finally deciding on a name.

You’ve read enough books to know childbirth was painful, and at first, it felt like normal cramps. So far so good, right? You tried to tell yourself it was going to be fine, but as the hours passed and you were staring up at the fluorescent light in your hospital room, the pain just kept getting worse. 

Deep breaths, that’s what the nurses, the doctors, your mother said. You didn’t know how many breaths you’ve taken already, but it wasn’t helping at all. Contraction, rest, contraction, you were tired and all you wanted was to be done with the whole ordeal.

Sam wasn’t faring any better, pacing back and forth and constantly asking if you needed anything. He stayed by your side when you started pushing, trying to hold back terrified tears as he heard you cry and scream in pain, meanwhile holding onto his hand so hard that it hurt. 

“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he softly said as you took deep breaths between pushing. 

“Okay?” You looked at him angrily. “I’m in so much fucking pain, Samuel. This isn’t okay.”

“Just a little more,” the doctor announced. “Push!”

You felt like you were gonna black out as you gave one last push, and the first thing you saw was Sam’s relieved face and he smiled softly.

“You did it,” he cupped your cheek, brushing away your tears. “She’s beautiful.”

“What?” You whispered, confused. You heard a baby crying and soon a warm bundle was placed in your arms.

She had Sam’s eyes and nose, and was at a perfect 7 lbs. When she cried, you cried. 

“What are you going to name her?” The nurse approached you.

Sam didn’t know how to feel as he stood by, watching you bond with your newborn. He wanted to hold her, but he was scared at the thought of accidentally hurting her. He was officially a parent.

“Sam… Samantha…” He heard you say and he looked up to meet your eyes. 

“I want to name her Samantha,” you smiled up at him.

Samantha was more like her father in more ways than one. Not only did she look so much like him, she was just as rambunctious and adventurous as Sam, climbing everything she could even at the young age of ten. 

“That’s normal,” Sam would say. “I taught Nathan to climb at that age. She’ll be fine.”

It took a lot of convincing, but you eventually gave in, knowing that she was happy running around looking for treasure that Sam left around the house before going to work. 

Sam was terrified when Samantha was born, always so scared about making ends meet. Your mother was more than welcoming to let you all stay with her, but he kept thinking about Nathan, still stuck at the orphanage. It was hard the first few years; a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of fighting, a lot of making up, but ten years down the line, he was just glad it worked out. 

His mind lingered to his mother, Cassandra. He’d lost her when he was around Samantha’s age and he always wondered what it would’ve been like if Cassandra had stayed and took him and Nathan on adventures with her. Seeing his own kid have the same spirit that she had made him wonder and it led him to Cassandra’s journal that he kept in a box in his closet for years.

Cassandra’s journal had so many mysteries that were left unsolved, so many that he’d wanted to chase after but were put on hold so he could raise Samantha with you. Maybe it was time…

“Panama?!” You looked at Sam in disbelief when he told you what was on his mind. “And in a prison too. Sam, that’s dangerous!”

“It’ll just be me and Nathan in the prison. And I swear if I can find this treasure, we’d be able to have our own home and everything, Samantha can go to a better school...” he tried to explain but you shook your head.

“And if anything happened to you?”

He took a few steps towards you and took your hands in his. “Look, I’ll come back. We made it this far, nothing bad’s going to happen.”

“What are we going to tell Samantha?” You sighed.

“The truth,” he shrugged.

“I don’t know, Sam,” you turned away. “This might be too much.”

“She’s so smart and adventurous. I know she’s going to understand.”

You sighed again. He made a few points. You needed the money and you didn’t want to lie to Samantha, especially if Sam left for a few months. You hoped and prayed to God it would be just a few months.

“Okay,” you turned back to see Sam looking relieved. “I trust you, Samuel.”

“We’re going to find long lost pirate treasure?” Samantha’s eyes lit up at Sam’s story.

“Sure, kid,” Sam chuckled as he ruffled her hair. “But I have to go find the first clue with Uncle Nathan first, alright?”

“Then you’ll take me?” She pouted.

“As long as you promise you’ll be good while I’m gone.”

“I pinky promise and I cross my heart and hope to die,” Samantha held up her pinky to cross with Sam’s. “Where do you think we’ll go, Sam?”

“Hmm,” he looked up in thought. “I don’t know, but probably somewhere far away.”

“The loot of a thousand worlds!” She dramatically said, flopping down on her pillow. “You’re the coolest.”

“No, you are,” Sam laughed as he tucked her in. He brushed back her curly brown locks, similar to his. He was going to miss her, but he knew he wouldn’t be at peace with himself if he didn’t start looking for Avery’s treasure soon. 

“Good night, Sam,” Samantha yawned.

“Good night, peanut,” Sam kissed her forehead. “I love you.”

You were grinning at him as he closed the door to her room, proud of the person he’s become. 

“What’s the verdict?” He asked as he placed his hands on your waist and pulled you in. “Are you in on the treasure hunt?”

“Well,” you sighed. “As much as I want to, you know I could never say ‘no’ to you, Sam.”

“Do I know it,” he winked and leaned in to kiss you but you placed a finger on his lips.

“You better come back,” you gave him a stern look.

“Come on, baby, you know I will.”

“Pinky promise,” you held up your pinky and Sam laughed.

“Boy, do I have a lot of promises to keep.”

You held your pinky up higher. “Promise me, Sam.”

He had a smug smirk as he crossed his pinky with yours. “I pinky promise I’ll come home.”

“Or else.”

“Or else,” he chuckled. “Now, can I get a kiss?”

“I could never say no to that” you pulled him in for a kiss

[sweet-sammy-kisses]

Once in a Blue Moon

Written for @tropetember day one: Friends to Lovers Fandom: 911 Pairing: Eddie x Buck Rating: Teen  Warnings: Alive Shannon, background Shannon/Taylor Word Count: 1,471 Summary: Love like the one between Eddie and Buck was rare and only came around once in a blue moon. You can also read it on AO3

It was inevitable that the two of them would end up like this. From the moment Evan "Buck" Buckley had laid eyes on Eddie Diaz he knew he was in trouble. The man was handsome and just Buck's type and Buck 1.0 would have been flirting with him in an instance but he was still in love with Abby, she had played a role in changing him into the man he was now, who wanted something more than a fling and one night stand and it scared him that this new man at the 118 could cause such a reaction in him so he fell back on his asshole behaviour and tried to keep Eddie at a distance but that didn't work because Eddie was determined in making friends with him.

Eddie is like a thunderstorm that comes out of nowhere bringing him gusting winds, flashes of lightning that lit up the sky and cool rain that is welcome on a warm day. He also brings with him the son in the form of his son Christopher.

The moment Buck met Christopher he fell in love with the little boy that was pure sunshine and he met dad Eddie and if he wasn't gone on Eddie already watching him be the best dad for his son he whatever fight that was left in him was gone. He was crushing on his best friend and he didn't know what to do about that.

Eddie and Christopher became what Buck had been looking for a family and Buck was so afraid that he might lose him that they would leave him behind. So as his love grew for Eddie his fear of losing them had him staying quiet, he was just happy to be a part of their lives.

+******+

"You are an idiot."

A sigh escaped Eddie at his ex-wife's helpful comment. "Yes, you have told me this several times." He reminded her as he turned to face her.

A sigh escaped Shannon as she crossed her arms over her chest, "Eddie, Buck is in love with you just as you are in love with him, don't you think it is about time that you two did something about it. Hell Christopher is days away from starting to plan your wedding and Athena has agreed to help him."

Eddie could only stare at her in shock, "Athena?" Athena Grant is without a doubt one of the scariest women he has ever met and he knew that she wasn't playing around.

"Yes, Athena who is Buck's mom has decided that she is tired of watching you two pine and mope around one another. Not to mention the rest of us. Christopher wants Buck to be his papa, his second father. He knows that you love his Bucky and that Buck loves you and he can't understand why the two of you are taking forever in getting together. We both know that it is you who is going to have to take the first step because Buck is afraid of losing you and Christopher and he won't tell you how he feels he will put on a smile and pretend that he is happy with the way things are, just like he did when you tried to date Ana."

Eddie winced at the reminder of his ill-fated and thankfully short romance with Chris' former teacher. She was pretty and smart but she saw Christopher's limits and didn't want him to find his own way to do things and she had a deep dislike of Buck, which Eddie couldn't understand Buck is a puppy in human form and he had been nothing but welcoming to Ana, even when Ana started crashing their movie nights and inviting herself on their outings with Christopher.

It had been Christopher who spoke up and said enough was enough, he wanted time with his Buck and his dad not his Buck, his dad and Ana. When Ana had suggested that Buck needed to take a step back and let Christopher get used to her being in Buck's place Eddie had been horrified he couldn't do that, he couldn't picture his life without Buck and he knew that their relationship was going nowhere, that Ana didn't fit with them.

Eddie couldn't deny that he felt happier with Ana gone and he could see that Christopher was and even though he wouldn't say it out loud so was Buck.

"Eddie, you deserve to be happy and so does Buck. Think about it." Shannon told her ex. She had found her second chance of happiness with Taylor Kelly of all people now it was time for Eddie to find his happiness. Love like the one between Eddie and Buck was rare and only came around once in a blue moon she hated for them to miss out on it.

+*****+

The thing is Eddie couldn't remember what it was like not to love Buck. The younger man came into his life when he was struggling to stay afloat being in a new city, starting a new job and being a single father to the world's greatest kid he was drowning and then along came this ray of sunshine who offered him a life raft, who had supported him since, who told him what an amazing dad he was every time he began to doubt himself, who introduced him to Carla and who loves his son as much as Eddie does.

Buck was everything to Eddie and Christopher. The three of them had made themselves into a family and even his parents approved of Buck, they love and adore him and his dad kept dropping hints of when Buck would become a part of their family.  

Eddie will also admit that he is a possessive and jealous man when it comes to Buck. He felt that jealous the first time Buck talked about Abby, he could see how loyal he was to her even though she had left him behind and when she came back with a fiancé after ghosting Buck for so long and used Buck's former feelings for her as a way to guilt him into making him promise to save Sam Eddie had been jealous that Abby still had such a hold on Buck and angry on Buck's behalf because once again Buck had been left behind by someone he loved.

Then there was Ali and she had been sweet and even though it burned him up to see Buck moving on with someone other than him he kept quiet as he was dealing with Shannon being back and them divorcing and figuring out how to be co-parents to their amazing son and making sure that Christopher knew that while they were no longer married they will always love him.

Then the bombing and Buck's leg being crushed and Eddie could see nothing else but Buck in pain and him unable to help him. Eddie remembers holding Buck's hand as the truck was lifted off of him, he remembers wanting to take the pain away from Buck.

He remembers Buck calling him and telling him that Ali had broken up with him because she couldn't handle it. Eddie had hated her for hurting her friend, in some ways Ana reminded him of Ali they both wanted the hot fireman boyfriend, the hero they could brag about but had no understanding about the danger they went into every day.

"Eds? What has gotten you thinking so hard?" Buck was looking at him, they were on truck cleaning duty and the sun was hitting Buck just right that made him glow and Eddie felt his heart skip a beat, Buck was like his own personal sunshine.

"I'm in love with you." Eddie couldn't control the words that escaped him.

Buck blinked at him as if he was taking in the words before a shy smile appeared on his face, "I'm in love with you too."

"Great now kiss." Hen shouted from above where she, Bobby and Chimney were watching and listening with interest.

"Come on Eddie we know you want to," Chimney added, a grin on his face.

"I will allow it this one time," Bobby added.

"Well, how can we say no to that?" Having Bobby's permission Eddie moved and pulled Buck into his arms, the other man melted into him as if he was made to fit in Eddie's arms. The kiss was soft and sweet but full of emotions.

"Later when we are alone I will give you kisses that will make your toes curl," Eddie whispered in Buck's ears as their teammates cheered above them.

Buck's smile was soft and sweet, "Does that mean I should tell Athena and Maddie to hold off planning our wedding?"

A teasing grin appeared on Eddie's face, "At least for a few more months."

[whump-town]

It’s A Wonderful Life

Part Two

I don’t know how I feel about this chapter but I’m putting it up and dealing with it later. I need to go study for my sociology test and get some coffee-- so, now it’s your problem

Warning: tw for suicide, major character death (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK AT ALL)

Part One here

“Aaron!”

He’s flat on his back, a rickety old ceiling fan wobbling above him. The base sways back and forth as the blades turn. That has to be a hazard...

Two cold hands press to his cheeks, blonde strands of hair falling into his face. “Aaron,” his name comes out more urgently from her mouth. Those cold fingers tapping at his cheek, trying to rouse some sort of reaction out of him. He can’t. Can’t think of what to say. He just looks up at her. Haley. “Baby--”

He coughs, weakly craning his neck as the pain of his fall registers throughout the rest of his body. “Ah!” rolling onto his side, pulling his knees up, he groans at the sharp stabs of pain up his back. He clenches his jaw, a moment of sheer panic blinding him as he fails to recover from the feeling of having the wind knocked out of him. Unable to draw air into his shocked lungs.

Haley leans over him, moving to compensate for his pained struggle. Her fingers probe along the back of his head wincing in sympathy when she finds blood and he whimpers, weakly pulling from her touch. “What were you doing?” she asks, smoothing down the hair on the back of his neck. Trying to offer some comfort.

He can’t remember anything before the fan.

“Maybe--” she smiles down at him but he can see she’s just trying to look assured. His head is turned into her palm, Aaron having slowly curled into her. Trying to compress himself, needing to feel that she’s really here. “Maybe you should go to the hospital? You’re bleeding--”

He aims to shake his head but ends up grunting, blinded by the pain that mistake shoots up the base of his neck. “No,” he whispers, trembling hand coming up to blindly touch her. She catches his hand, folding his fingers within her own and pressing them down. Holding him still. “No,” he manages, a little more assured. “I’m--I’m okay.”

Blinking, a cold sweat breaking out across his face he shifts a numb arm underneath him. Biting down to keep himself from making a sound as he eases him up. Attempting to sit up quickly dispels what he thought was a fact for fiction. His eyes roll back, white cold pain eating up his skin.

“Aaron,” she calls frantically.

The color of his naturally pale cheeks drains and sways for a moment, the color drained from his body. “I’m-- I’m--” he squeezes his eyes shut, forcing his breathing to calm. He’s taken far worse hits than this. This is nothing. Fingernails digging sharp pain into his palms is grounding and slowly he opens his eyes and the living doesn’t spin. Everything is still, if not hazy.

“I’m okay,” he breathes.

I’m okay.

smoke burns his nose, his vision too poor to see past the steering wheel, past the spiderwebbed glass right in front of him

crying, strained screaming-- he can’t tell where the sound is coming from

his chest aches, stomach twisting with each pitched, nearly choked inhale of--

Jack.

Jack is screaming, little feet kicking hard and solidly as his chair

he has to get to--

“Aaron?”

He’s looking down at the carpet, confused but… It’s gone. The vision, his vision, is swimming dangerously and he weakly manages to place a hand on the carpet beneath him. Leaning onto it, as he tries to ground himself. “Sorry,” he rasps, swallowing down the fear that itches at the back of his throat. “Sorry, I just…” he went somewhere else. He’s not sure what happened but something feels incredibly wrong about this, about here.

Haley’s hand comes to rest between his shoulder blades, gently rubbing. “Let me make you some tea,” she offers.

Tea. No one can make tea like Haley. “Yeah,” he agrees. Just thinking about it calms him. “Please?”

She nods, pressing a kiss to his temple. As she steps around him she pulls a blanket off the couch, settling it over his shoulders. “Stay here,” she asks, brushing the back of her hand across his cheek. “I don’t want you to fall again.” He can feel her hesitancy, she doesn’t want to leave him by himself.

He doesn’t get up, he’s not even sure his legs will hold him, but he does manage to scoot himself across the carpet until he can lean against the couch behind him. The cushions are old, they give easily against him but he loves this old couch. Haley’s parents had given it to them when they moved away. It had been his bed many a night in their tiny hometown. This old couch has cured many of his ailments.

It sat in the spare room of Haley’s childhood home. An off to the side, usually shut room full of old but loved things from Haley and Jessica’s childhood. Including the beat-to-hell sofa her parents didn’t have the heart to throw out-- plus they’re southern and the couch wasn’t falling apart so it still had a use.

Every night he crawled home to them, he’d find himself lovingly tucked in on it.

He finds himself nodding off, head leaning into the sunken cushions. The whistle of the kettle startling him slightly. It makes his pulse jump, vision swimming. “Haley?”

sirens

a hand, padded by thick gloves wrap around the base of his neck

“easy, just hold still. you’re okay”

he glances as far as he can to his left, out the door to asphalt

he can see Jack, his happy little hands, rocking back and forth on his feet

“J…” his tongue heavy, body sinking

“stay with me”

“Aaron?” Haley’s squatting down over him, her cold hands cupping his head. “Baby, you’re scaring me.”

He’s scaring himself.

She slides down next to him, throwing her legs over his so she can sit close. “Are you sure we shouldn’t go to the hospital?” Pulling the edges of the blanket back around him, she frowns when he leans against her. Tiredly just deflating until he’s limply laying with his head under her chin.

“I’m okay,” he whispers. His head is really starting to hurt. “I just… I think I need to lay down.”

Haley looks unconvinced but caves, nodding her. “Please let me help you?”

He’s not sure he can do it otherwise.

His feet drag on the carpet, nearly unable to lift them to move properly. There’s this chill he can’t fight, leaving him shaking as Haley holds them welded together. The bed, impossibly soft, as he sinks down is cold with their absence. He goes limply down, not fighting Haley as she tucks the thick comforter around him.

She crawls in after him.

He finally relaxes. The comfort of familiarity soothing his nerves. Haley’s arm over his chest, head on his shoulder is just as things should be. Closing his eyes, he lets sleep consume him. He needs it so badly. He can’t get warm, squirming, and trying to curl into himself to get some sort of warmth. No matter how hard he tries, he just can’t rest.

He turns over searching the nightstand for a clock but there are none. He frowns, sitting up. Tossing the blanket off his legs he gets up. Unable to see the time, he needs to go figure it out. He has to make oatmeal, get the day going. His every day revolves around a strictly held schedule. A maybe concussion doesn’t warrant straying from that.

“What are you doing?”

“I was looking for--” Jack. Aaron realizes where he is. He feels sick. There is no Jack. Not yet. This fantasy of his has no Jack. He swallows thickly and turns back around, shaking his head. He goes back to the bed. “Most have been dreaming,” he whispers, fighting to keep his emotions from getting the best of him.

He can’t remember having Jack. This boy, a whole child that he can visualize, is nothing more than a concept. They have no children.

He can’t sleep after that.

-----

“Let’s got out.”

He wakes, startles, alone in bed. Painful goosebumps have raised over his skin, shivering he squints up at her. She’s in the same clothes as yesterday, a fast that strikes him as odd. He can’t remember her changing her clothes yesterday either before they’d gone to bed. Yet, her hair is clean and swept back into a low ponytail. She looks happy.

“Out?” he asks. Sitting up, he self-consciously runs his hand through his hair. Taming what he knows is a rat’s nest. “Out-- Out where?” He tries so hard to rub the sleep from his eyes, aware of the fact that he’s gotten just enough sleep to wear him down more. Pulling himself out from under the sheets he glares down at his own body, he’s dressed too. They’d gone to bed in their clothes…

She sits down on the edge with him, taking his left hand. “For coffee,” she says with a smile. “You know that little bookshop just downtown? They put in a coffee bar! It’ll be fun. Come on, we can get a coffee and search the shelves. I know you finished the last one you got.” She smiles assuredly, rubbing at his arm but she’s so cold that she does nothing to abate his shivering.

“Coffee,” he repeats. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Yeah, coffee sounds good.”

His stomach aches as they go. Twisted and acidic, he feels like he’s going to be sick but it’s not nausea. Disenfranchisement. Like he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be.

“The normal?” Haley asks as they step into the shop. He nods, regardless of not being able to conjure up what his “normal” is. She lets go of his hand and he drifts, ghosting across the old, dust-caked carpet. He doesn’t know where he’s going, he’s just guided by the undertoned scent of the old books.

The crime section-- novels covered in deeps seas of black highlighted to catch the eye with the harrowing shifts to crimson-- is where he finds himself. Deja vu. Ted Bundy. Ed Gein. He knows these men far more intimately than he feels the novels he briefly skims through do. He slides one of the books back, grimacing at the tone. The baroque, vulgarity of it unsettling him. Some people just don’t have any business dealing with sensitive things like this.

He hovers over a copy of a book--

FBI Novelist David Rossi

The words are crimson, meant to catch your eyes.

He looks over his shoulder, stomach twisting like he’s afraid to be caught doing something he’d convinced maybe he shouldn’t be doing. He opens the first page, swallowing thickly at the dedication. To the footnote for the author Agent Rossi and his untimely demise--

Haley appears to his left, smiling when she sees him. “Whatcha got?”

He takes the coffee she offers out to him-- he glares at the cup but doesn’t comment. He can’t feel the warmth that should be pouring out of it. “Uhm…” he shows her the back. To the picture of the agent, unsure of how to ask what’s on his mind. Hotch turns the book over in his hand, an immense pressure building in his chest. Anxiety making him jittery. “I-- I thought… I thought he was--” he looks to Haley, mouth parted as he fails to draw these connections that he knows, intuitively, that he should have the knowledge to understand.

Haley turns the book, manipulating his hold to face the book to her so she can really see what it is that he’d got. “Oh God,” she whispers, sadly. “Don’t you remember that bombing?” She shakes her head, “it killed all those agents. You were furious, I’m surprised you don’t remember.”

But, suddenly, he does. It’s such a graphic memory that it feels more like… it feels fake with its intensity. He knows, though. His face hot, knees anxiously drumming as he sat precariously on the edge of the couch. Watching on hesitant, nervous breathes as the news spread steady, if not a bit misleading information on a bombing. He’d seen them. Sat there all day watching them add people’s names to a growing list of the dead.

“It’s written by that David Rossi guy,” Haley says. “You’d probably like it.”

He nods, dejectedly opening the cover. The book is dedicated to Rossi, a small note thanking him for his service to the country and his insights with the FBI. He thumbs through it a little more, nearly morbidly curious for what he might find. Scanning the words, waiting for something to strike him.

He nearly drops it, unable to breathe as he takes in something he can’t imagine.

In the months after the bombing, I reached out to the remaining members of the elite Behavior Analysis Unit (Behavioral Science when I founded it some nearly thirty years earlier with my now deceased ex-partner Jason Gideon). Derek Morgan, now the only profiler left of Jason’s team, was hesitant to continue any prolonged contact with me. I suspected his reliance having to do with the perseverance of Jason’s memory. After Agent Spencer Reid’s suicide, only a matter of weeks after the bombing, any contact I had with Agent Morgan ended. The Bureau has no comment on what lead the young genius to suicide.

“Oh,” Haley whispers sadly. “That’s so sad.”

He can’t breathe.

“Do you think he had PTSD?”

He roughly pushes the book back where he found it. His left hand coming to rub at his head.

“Aaron?”

That’s not how that ends. That’s not how any of that happened.

The day that Jason Gideon made that call in Boston Aaron been standing right beside him. Reid had been sent back to a local precinct with busywork to calm down. He was a new recruit and, rightfully, had no business even being in the field with them let alone in a situation like that. It had been him, his decision to pull Reid.

He remembers the feeling of the heat hitting his body.

The shrapnel wounds impeding his ability to stand so he’d dragged himself ten feet to safety where he’d passed out. Having no memory of what happened a week later and years after the fact he still can’t actually tell you what happened other than to repeat back what he’s been told.

“Let’s go home,” Haley slips her hand into his.

He nods, eyes unfocused as he follows blankly where she guides him. Chest tight, hands trembling weakly he realizes this must be some fucked joke. Revenge? A test? He’s done. He doesn’t want to play this game anymore. It’s tantalizing and demeaning and so overwhelming. Is this within his control and if it is can he stop?

He wants to stay here with Haley.

“What--What about--” he’s worked himself into such a state that he’s shaking. Unable to speak properly as finds himself desperately asking, “what about kids?”

Haley winces, shaking her head. “No,” she says. “I don’t think I can do it. I don’t want any.”

No Jack.

“I think,” his voice is rasped whisper. “I think I need to lie down.”

Haley’s face falls, “ok. I’ll come with you.”

She holds his hand, whispering soft questions but he’s… gone. Hardly there at all, unable to even focus on the worried tone of her words. Asking if his head hurts or if he’d like some tea or something to eat. He just needs to lay down and eventually, she gives up and lets him.

Somberly, she lays down beside him. The bed sinks with her weight but she already feels too far away.

He can feel the weight of his chest deepening, each inhales a little shorter. “Haley,” he calls, hand searching blindly across their bedsheet for her. He finds her, skin chilled, but there. “I’m sorry.” Though she curls around him, wrapping an arm up around his back and pressing their hips close-- her contact does not abate his shivering. She can not comfort him.

“You have nothing to apologize for, darling.”

[justanotherwriter-fangirl]

Confessions (C. R.)

Words: 2,389 words

Warnings: Not that I can think of

Request:  Hey there! I noticed that you write for connor rhodes? I loved the latest story you posted, so i was wondering if you could write him confessing his feelings? Maybe the reader is another doctor or something, it's up to You, i know I'll love it regardless. Keep the good work💞 already loving your blog as it is.

A/N: Hi!!! I'm so sorry for taking so long to the anon who made this request :( but it's finally here!! I hope you like it and it's what you expected it 😅 As you can see I got a little bit carried away, hope you enjoy it!!!

Gif obtained from Google. All credits to its owner.

Thanks for reading

_______________________

Monday morning and the emergency room was already madness. A huge accident, a collapsed office building, was the cause of the rush in the ED having every doctor in the hospital working extra hard to attend the wounded.

You could hear Maggie and Mrs. Goodwin yelling orders outside Trauma 2 where you were examining a teen, probably an intern.

He was awake and responsive but you knew better so just to make sure he was really okay you ordered some X-rays and a CT Scan.

Leaving the room to treat someone else while the results came back, you quickly stepped out of the way of a gurney that almost ran over you, Connor and a bunch of nurses behind it heading to Trauma 1 to attend a woman not much older than you who didn't look good.

Behind them all there was a young man trying to catch up with them so you stepped on his way to stop him.

"Hi, sir. I'm Dr. (Y/L/N), are you okay? How can I help you?" you said as you raised your hands to calm him a little bit.

"How is she? Where are you taking her? Will she be okay?" he quickly asked, his full attention on the woman who was now disappearing behind some glass doors.

"Sir, I need you to look at me, please" you mentioned firmly, once his eyes settled on yours you added "Right now Dr. Rhodes is going to diagnose her to learn the severity of her injuries and treat her, but if you are not wounded you need to be on the waiting room, we have a lot of patients to treat and barely enough space considering the situation so please, wait outside and I promise you that as soon as I hear something about her I'll go out myself to keep you posted"

"You promise?"

"I do, I promise" you said escorting him to the waiting room "But let me tell you, your girlfriend is in really good hands, Dr. Rhodes is the best cardiothoracic surgeon we have on the hospital"

"Yeah, okay, thank you doctor" he finished barely listening to you and sitting on a chair, worried because needing a cardiothoracic surgeon couldn't be good, didn't it?

Once he was out of your way you passed to your next patient, a passerby who luckily only needed some stitches.

Your whole day went by in a blur, being pulled from one patient to another with barely time to breath in between.

Nevertheless, you had made a promise earlier so when you managed to get 5 free minutes you went straight to Maggie at the nurse station.

"Hey, Maggie. Have a minute?"

"Ummm... yeah, real quick. What do you need?"

"I just want to know about the status of a patient, Connor was the main doctor. Brunette woman, not much older than me, her face was bruised and she had a nasty cut on her leg, she was sent to Trauma 1"

"Oh, yeah she went almost immediately to surgery, she was in really bad shape, internal bleeding"

"Okay, thank you. Please let me know when they came out, her boyfriend is in the waiting room"

As you glanced at the waiting room, you could still see him on the same chair you left him, his leg bouncing up and down, probably scared that you wouldn't find him if he moved.

Getting closer to him you felt bad because her girl was really bad and he was so worried and you couldn't do anything about it.

"Sir?" You said when you were standing next to him.

"Dr. (Y/L/N)" he quickly stood up "You can call me Danny"

"Danny, I have news. I just talk with the charge nurse and she told me that..."

"Amy"

"Amy, yeah, she's on surgery, she was suffering of serious internal bleeding but she was immediately treated. Right now I don't have anything else for you but I'll let you know when she gets out so you can go see her."

“Yeah, thanks doctor”

A couple hours later you were making some coffee on the break room when you heard the door being open, Connor walking in.

"Hey, out of surgery already?" You said remembering Danny and his very worried state, while handing him a cup of coffee. It really looked like he needed it.

"Thanks (Y/N). Yeah, it was difficult but we made it, we manage to control all the bleeding, we had to remove her spleen though" he informed you taking a seat on the couch.

"So she's stable?"

"For now, she will be sedated for a while too but everything seems fine"

"It's so good to hear it Connor, I met her boyfriend. He's worried sick and I promised I'd let him know when she got out of surgery" you said heading towards the door.

"Wait..." he said quickly standing up and grabbing your hand to stop you, your heart starting to beat a little faster "I'll let him know, it's my job and you probably are tired, stay here and rest a bit"

Looking up to see him in the eyes, you realized how close you two were. You had always had a thing for Connor, him being the first person who welcomed you into the hospital when you first got here.

Since then he became a really good friend, problem was that you didn't want him just to be your friend. He was sweet and funny and handsome and so smart, it wasn't really a surprise when you figured you had feelings for him.

Unfortunately, you couldn't do anything about it, you didn't want to ruin your friendship. It was just too special.

“Sure?” 

“Sure, you have nothing to worry about” he said slowly letting your hand go.

“Ok, thanks. His name is Danny, black shirt, jeans and a red jacket”

“Got it, now go back and enjoy your coffee, you deserve some rest”

In his way to the wait room he couldn’t stop thinking about how your hand felt in his, if he had to be really honest, every time you’d step into the room his eyes immediately would fell over you, you were like a magnet and he could barely focus on anything else.

Since the first time you took a step on the ED he felt attracted to you but with the pass of time he started to get to know you and his feelings eventually grew. It actually made him feel kinda helpless, having feelings for you but unable to let you know in case you wouldn’t feel the same, it hurt him a little bit more each day.

You were so sweet, always caring for the patients, even if they weren’t directly under your care, you were so full of life and happy most of the times, babies loved you and you were one of the best doctors he had ever met, so intelligent and beautiful yet somehow unaware of the effect you had in others.

He immediately spotted Danny, impossible to miss the red jacket he was wearing and stood right in front of him.

“Danny? You’re Amy’s boyfriend? Dr. (Y/L/N) send me, I’m Dr. Rhodes”

“Well, she’s technically not my girlfriend, not yet at least, soon I hope but yes, I’m here with her”

He raised an eyebrow, a little bit amused with his rambling

“Not yet? Dr. (Y/L/N) says otherwise”

“She never gave me the chance to correct her” he said sheepishly scratching the back of his neck “but as soon as you tell me Amy is okay I’m ready to tell her. I never wanted to scare her away or lose her friendship but I almost lost her today, for good, and I realized I’m not ready to let her go without her knowing how I really feel, without her knowing that I love her and I want to spend the rest of my days with her if she lets me. Even if she says no at least she'll know the truth and I'll feel so much better, lighter than carrying my secret for life. If she knows I might have a chance with her, she might say yes, but if she doesn't it's already impossible. Sometimes life’s too short, don’t you think. Dr. Rhodes?”

"I guess you're right Danny, I'm glad you're ready because things are looking good. We manage to stop her internal bleeding and she's now unconscious due to the anesthesia but you can go see her now."

"Really? Oh my God, doctor, thank you so much"

"Good luck" he said before telling him her room and walk away. 

Throughout the rest of the week he couldn't take Danny's words out of his head, he knew he was right. If he wanted a chance to be with you, because he was sure he wanted just that, to call you his, he had to come clean, tell you how he felt and wait for the best before it was too late. 

It was friday night already, his shift almost ending and he was trying to gather all his confidence to ask you out tonight. He promised himself he would do it before the night ended but it was really hard to find the right words and the right moment, you were always hurrying around from one patient to another, barely having a free couple minutes to talk. He didn't want to rush it, he wanted to tell you everything and the fact that he could see Danny everyday coming to the hospital with flowers wasn't helping at all, it was just a constantly reminder of how he was unable to let you know about his feelings. 

Letting a sigh escape his lips he leaned against the nurse bay, he wasn't ready to give up, his mind already made up, but you weren't doing it easy. 

Just as he was about to call it night, the clock marking already 10 pm, he saw entering the break room. This was his chance. 

Sneaking in behind you he closed the door and locked it, he didn't want any interruptions. 

"(Y/N), I need to talk to you for a minute" he firmly stated. 

"Oh, hey Connor. Sure, tell me" you said grabbing a mug to pour some coffee on it, not really paying much attention to his nervous state. 

"It's important so please let me finish first and then you can say whatever you want to say" he said grabbing your shoulder to make you turn around. standing directly in front of you for the first time you realized how on edge he was. 

"Okay… yeah, of course. You know you can tell me anything, Connor. I'm here for you, no matter what"

"I hope you really mean that" he mumbled letting a nervous laugh out. "Okay so, I've been wanted to tell you this for a while and it might be a little shocking but recently someone made me realize that life's short and we need to take action in order to make things happen and I'm ready to tell you this because I don't want to live any longer without you knowing the truth. This could go either one of two ways and I hope this ends the good way, I really do but anyway I can't keep it a secret anymore.” he let out a sigh before grabbing your hands, his eyes bearing into your soul. “(Y/N), this might come as a surprise but I really like you, I’ve liked you for a long time and I’d like to go out with you, as more than a friend. Being completely honest with you, I’m quite sure I feel so much more than just that but I really don’t want to scare you off, it’s just that you are such a beautiful human being and you make me so happy, even if you are not with me the mere thought of you makes me smile. So, what do you say? Would you go out with me? On a date?”

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing, was he really asking you out? 

“Why?” was the first thing that left your mouth

“Why? Why do I want to date you? (Y/N), did you listen all I just said?”

“Yes, I did but this seems to good to be truth, why would you want to date me? There are so many doctors and nurses and even patients who would love to go out with you, doctors and nurses and patients way more beautiful and successful and smarter than me”

“I don’t care about others, I only want to date you, call you mine. I wish you could see yourself the way I do because you are such an amazing person, you are beautiful and sweet and way more intelligent than anyone here, you are independent and strong and you don’t take no for an answer, you do all you can and more for your patients and you always try your best to let them leave with their families safe and sound. You are all I could ever ask for, the woman of my dreams and even then I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve you, so it’s all your decision now”

“Are you kidding me? Of course I would love to go out with you Connor, that’s the nicest someone have ever told me and I’m just so lucky that the guy I really like was the one who said it”

“Wait, what?”

“I like you too, Connor, like a lot and this just feels like out of one of my dreams”

“It’s not a dream” he whispered grabbing your chin with his right hand, his eyes silently asking for permission and only after you nodded slightly he leaned down to press his lips against yours, a sweet and slow kiss confirming it, this was not a dream, this was real and it was a hundred times better.

As you separated to look at each other you heard Will celebrating and shouting from the outside breaking your little bubble.

“Yes! Hey guys, they finally did it. Nat, I told you they wouldn’t last any longer, you owe me 20 bucks” he said walking away, making you both laugh, of course there was no privacy in this hospital.

_______________________

Masterlist

[megatronswaifu]

wrote a fanfiction and wanted to draw something to go with it!!

if you want to read some sickeningly sweet ooc overlord with nightlight please take a look under the cut. i’m happy with how it turned out because i really didn’t take it seriously like i’ve tried in the past.

“Nightlight’s Shadow” <2k words rating: GEN tw: mild canon-typical violence

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

“What’s wrong?”

Overlord peered through the door, hunching over significantly. The phase-sixer was incredibly bored, having killed everyone he felt like and no missions assigned to him for a long while. When Overlord was bored and without those to maim, he went to go bother Nightlight.

The minibot sat in the shape of a ball on her berth. Her helm was tucked between her knees, and her little horns poked out, the only thing clueing Overlord in that “Oh, that part of the purple dot is her head.” When she looked up at Overlord, he thought to himself that this was the most pitiful face she had made to-date. 

The towering bot squeezed into the room, scraping the doorframe with his shoulders as he stomped in (he wasn’t stomping on purpose, it was simply a feature of his size), his pillar audials threatening to pierce the ceiling. Nightlight’s accommodations were definitely made with efficiency and budget in mind. Why would anyone waste shanix and space on the ship just in case someone larger than a pea wanted to visit this room? Overlord thought he should carve out the wall and ceiling so his visits weren’t so difficult.

“What’s wrong?” Overlord asked again, and Nightlight turned to face away, “Why the long face?” 

“I’m not a good Decepticon,” the tiny bot started. Her voice was quivering and hoarse, like she had been crying. Little cheekplates having subtle remnant streaks of tears confirmed this. “I’m not scary. Everyone keeps being mean to me. The bigger bots push me and call me names, even when I don’t do anything to them.” 

“Why don’t you kill them?” replied Overlord like it was obvious. He had slithered onto the berth, laying sideways lazily behind Nightlight, his legs curled so he could fit. Luckily the slab was medium size, having not been made specifically for Nightlight, but it still creaked horribly under Overlord’s weight.

“I can’t do that! I’m not strong enough like everyone else. I’m not big. I can’t beat them up....I...every time I try to fight back,” her face scrunched up and her voice became even higher pitched and even wobblier, “I...I get my- my tailpipe kicked!”

Nightlight choked and whined, stifling a staticky sob in her forearms. She clearly felt so strongly about these simple tussles that it pained her enough to cry. The poor thing. The blue mech brought her into his chest with his big servo like a hockey stick to a puck.

“Don’t cry,” Overlord cooed, “I’ll give you advice.” Nightlight peeked at him from her arms. “You can’t beat them up and you can’t grow any. But that doesn't have to stop you.” 

“When I walk around, everyone moves. As if I have a force field. Nobody gets in my way.” He gestured to Nightlight with his chin. “Why do you think that happens?” She looked away again, not in an attempt to hide her tears, but in thought.

“Um….because you’re really tough,” the moped said, “And, um, you’ll, maybe you’ll beat them up if they’re mean to you.” Nightlight always said things like “maybe” when talking about if Overlord would do something violent or not. Like she wasn’t sure if he was a bad mech, or she didn’t want to accuse him of anything. How kind.

“Yes, that’s true. I’m very tough.”

“But I’m not...it wouldn’t work for me. I’m not really-”

“Yes it would.”

Nightlight stuttered a few syllables of denial before resorting to looking at Overlord with a tipped helm in confusion. Overlord couldn’t help but laugh.

“When I walk around places where nobody knows me,” he said, “Where nobody knows I could mash them to a slurry, my force field still works. That is because I hold myself a certain way. I hold myself with an expectation that everyone fears me,” the duocon puffed out his chest plating a little, and it made a “clink” sound when it tapped his tiny companion, “With confidence. Confidence in myself and that the force field will work no matter what.” He smiled triumphantly. “Lo and behold, the seas part.”

Nightlight looked at him like he was the coolest mech on Cybertron. She had uncurled and instead was facing him, sitting with her knees forward and her pedes behind her. “So,” she spoke with a bit more pep in her voice, “they don’t know you’re strong...but they still kind of know you’re strong because you walk so confident.”

“Exactly.”

“But...but I don’t think I could do that.”

“Why not?”

“Cause what if I pretend to be strong and then they figure out I’m not and they beat me up?”

“If you walk with enough confidence, they won’t challenge you. And if they do, you threaten them. Then they run off like little glitchmice, with not a finger lifted.” Overlord waved his free servo as he talked, and Nightlight rubbed her fists on her optics and cheeks as he spoke, scooting closer to him.

“If I was injured in a way that left me unable to fight, but able to use my words, I would still win. In that moment, when I threaten them, it is not pain they are afraid of,” he explained, half-lying. Overlord loved to taunt, but he rarely threatened. If someone challenged him, most of the time he smashed their head in immediately. “I’m not touching them. They aren’t experiencing it. What they fear is the prospect of pain. All you have to do if you want to scare them off is make them believe you’ll rip them apart.”

Overlord had a feeling he was losing her, given her big optics staring at him. Or maybe that’s just how she looked. He poked her in the chest with acquired gentleness. “I can teach you. I can make you like me,” he said, “You can be intimidating. And nobody will ever bother you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

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

Nightlight had such a tall stack of datapads in her arms that the top of the pile concealed her face. She had to stumble slowly in the hall and occasionally, carefully glance to the side of the stack to see that there was nobody in front of her, and issue out “excuse me”s and “I’m sorry”s accordingly.

Overlord’s lessons on being braver and more intimidating had not yet been put into practice. Fortunately so, in Nightlight’s optics. The two wheeler hadn’t come across anybody who felt like bullying her for a whole week, and she was hoping her lucky streak would last forever. She didn’t want to try out what she had learned from the phase-sixer, even though out of everybody on the ship, he was probably the best person equipped to teach it. Nightlight didn’t want to mess up.

Turning a corner like an old bot driving slow on the highway, she scooted forward on her pedes and shifted her grip on the datapads. She felt the datapads sliding, and she “eep!”ed as she steadied them, and they settled back in place. “Whew,” she whispered.

Despite her dearest wishes on shooting stars, Nightlight didn’t get much time to be relieved. Just as she found her footing again, some mecha decided to sneak up beside her and stick their pede out. The minibot made a brief yelping sound before landing on her front, some of the datapads breaking her fall, layered like a deck of cards. The rest scattered and clattered around them. The floor and the pointy edges of the datapads poked and scraped her chassis and hands.

“Oops,” said the bot above her, laughing. She recognized him from his voice. She didn’t know his name. “Heh, watch where you’re going, squirt.”

Nightlight stayed on the floor for a moment, facing down, steeling herself and her urges to cry. It was action time. She got up, pushing herself with her tiny servos, whipping herself around with gusto and pointed her finger right in the mech’s face. 

“How about YOU watch where YOU’RE putting your STINKY PEDES, BUSTER!!”

The Decepticon stood with his mouth agape. He stared at Nightlight like she had grown another helm. Her being any bit of aggressive was pretty equivalent, really. “Wha-” he snorted, before barking out laughter that scraped Nightlight’s audials from being too loud. “What’s your problem, Autobot model? You think you can just waltz up in here and get sharp with me? You lookin’ to get pummeled?”

“You’re the one asking for a beating, stupidhead!” Nightlight yelled back with surprising volume, looking up at the considerably taller mech, even stepping towards him with gritted teeth. She stomped at him and almost jumped towards him doing so, looking like a dog trying to chomp at a chewtoy placed above it. “Get out of my way or pick these up,” she pointed at the datapads now, “and take them to room L2400! Or I’ll rearrange your face so much you’ll have to get your whole head replaced!!”

Nightlight, venting hard, felt equal amounts proud and equal amounts terrified. She had used the strategies Overlord taught her! Nightlight had tried her hardest and her best, put on her scariest face with her scariest voice. Hours of practice with Overlord, of him showing her how to be unabashed and angry, were coming to fruition.

The mech looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he froze up, his expression contorting into a wide-eyed frown. He frantically vented, taking a few quick breaths before letting out what Nightlight could only describe as a “squawk���. His helm darted between facing forward and towards the datapads. He was shivering so hard his chassis rattled. Was it working?

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it, I’ll pick up the datapads!” he threw himself at them, scooping them up like they were shards of his spark. Nightlight couldn’t help but look on with her mouth in the shape of an O. “Just leave me alone, okay?! I don’t want any trouble anymore!”

“Really?!” asked the purple minibot, “I, I mean, yeah! And I don’t wanna ever see your dumb ugly face ever again, got it?!” She shook her fist at him, throwing in a growl to her intimidation tactics. It sounded like a baby cyberwolf.

Taking no time to look back or even respond, the mech rushed off with the datapads in his hands. He screamed and practically jumped in the air when Nightlight yelled “L2400!” to remind him of where he was supposed to be going.

When the bot disappeared in the hallway, Nightlight stood still. She seemed to start to gradually vibrate, before exploding in excitement, jumping around the hallway, squealing and screaming, dancing and throwing her fists all around. She did it! She did it! She was intimidating! She could stand up for herself! She didn’t have to be bullied anymore! She was a real Decepticon! 

Nightlight then felt a little guilty. She put her servo to her mouth and thought. The mech looked so scared. Had she been too mean? 

No, she hadn’t been. Overlord told her that she should stand her ground, go full force, and dish back exactly what her bullies were doing to her. There was nothing wrong with that. An optic for an optic, and then some. The moped bounced in place. Overlord would be so proud of her!

“...I have to tell him!” she said, out of breath. She dashed down the hallway despite this, giggling and cheering, back in the direction she came from.

As Nightlight skipped away, Overlord stood at the other end of the corridor, in direct line of sight of where her bully had been standing. He backed away into the darkness with a wicked smile.

[thatwhumplife]

Promise

Whumptober 2020 Prompt 10: They look so pretty when they bleed...

Fandom: Chicago Med/PD

Summary: Someone uses Will to send a message to Jay.

Words: 1662

Will parted ways with everyone at Molly’s a little earlier than usual. He was tired. It had been one of those days in the ED.

He only had about three quarters of a beer before he decided that it was best to head back to Jay’s to get some sleep.

Jay and Ruzek razzed him a bit for it but Will brushed it off. He had another 12 hour shift in the morning and he’d gotten better at knowing when his body needed rest.

Will got outside and cursed the Chicago wind and the fact that he had to park three blocks away. He pulled his jacket tighter, wishing his scrubs were better at holding in the heat, and picked up his pace.

As he approached an alley where the streetlight had gone out, he felt someone yank his jacket. Within seconds he was pushed up against a brick wall by two pairs of strong arms, his face scraping across the rough surface.

“What’s up, doc? Where you going this fine night?”

Will didn’t waste any time. “My wallet is in my back pocket, cell phone and keys are in my jacket pocket, right side.”

“Well aren’t we compliant?” one of the men sneered. “If only that was what we were here for.”

Will was flipped onto his back and finally the suspects came into view. All three were outfitted in balaclavas and dark clothing. Of the two restraining him, one was large, both in weight and stature. The other was smaller but appeared equally as strong. The third man stood back, watching Will squirm in his men’s tight grip.

“The great Dr. Halstead. Funny running into you here.”

“How do you know who I am?” Will asked cautiously, after glancing down and seeing that his jacket fully covered his name stitched into his scrub top.

The man standing back sent his knee flying into Will’s abdomen. Will attempted to curl in on himself but was unable to due to the tightness with which he was restrained.

“Courtesy of your brother of course. Detective Halstead.”

The man stepped forward again and Will resisted the urge to flinch.

“You see, that brother of yours has been sniffing around places he has no business sniffing around. He’s causing some problems for me. I need you to bring him a message.”

Will bit back a laugh. “Oh yeah? Who do I say it’s from?”

The man laughed. A deep, unsettling chuckle. “Oh, he’ll know.”

Without any further conversation, the man let loose on Will. Punching him repeatedly in the head, the stomach, any place that was exposed with his position pinned against the wall. It felt like the assault went on for an eternity.

Will was left unable to defend himself. By the time the blows stopped and the hands released him, he didn’t have enough strength in his legs to support the rest of his body. He crumpled to the ground and reflexively covered his head with his arms.

He heard laughs above him before the man leaned down and patted his shoulder. Will jumped back like he had been shocked. “You make sure that message gets to him now, you got it?”

Will grunted in response.

The men left Will in the alley, bleeding and cold.

Will waited, trying to inventory his injuries and gather the strength to move.

He managed to move a shaking hand to his pocket and get a hand around his cell phone. He pulled it out but lost his grip the phone clattering to the pavement about a foot further away. He sighed and again gathered the strength the reach for it.

He grabbed it tightly and quickly unlocked it, finding Jay in his ‘favorites’ list and tapping to call.

The phone rang once, twice, three times before going to voicemail. Will groaned and hung up, then immediately redialed him.

This time an answer came in the middle of the first ring.

“What’s up, Will? You change your mind?” Molly’s was loud. Jay was shouting into the phone.

“Jay,” he gasped out. “Need your help.”

“What?”

Will swallowed a mix of blood and saliva and repeated himself. “Need. Help.”

Will heard Jay curse and after a few seconds, it was quieter. He assumed Jay had stepped outside.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Two blocks south. In the alley.”

“Hold on, Will, I’m coming. Stay on the phone.”

Will breathed a sigh of relief. Jay was coming. Will began to shiver, the adrenaline falling away and shock setting in.

Jay reached the alley and raced over to the figure laying on the ground.

“What the hell happened?! Who did this to you?!”

Will’s face was cut up and bleeding, one eye beginning to swell severely. He had a trail of blood coming out of the side of his mouth. Jay worried about the injuries he couldn’t see.

“Need to get to Med,” he choked out between breaths. “Pretty…sure…I broke a…rib or two.”

“Can you walk? Should I call an ambulance?”

“I’ll be fine… just help me up.”

Jay helped pull Will into a sitting position and Will tried his best to hold in a groan as his body was jostled.

“You ready to try and stand?”

Will nodded, wanting to conserve his breath and energy.

Jay heaved him up, taking on most of his weight. Will pointed him in the direction of his car and together they slowly hobbled over.

Jay fished the keys out of Will’s pocket and unlocked the doors, settling his brother into the passenger seat.

Jay sped off for Med, making it there in record time.

He carefully got Will out of the car and through the ED doors. “I need help here!”

“Will!” It was Connor. “What happened to you?”

Jay shook his head. “I found him like this. Someone beat the shit out of him. I have no idea who or why yet.”

Connor ushered them into a trauma room. Monique, one of the ED nurses appeared quickly to assist.

Jay helped Will out of his jacket and onto the gurney. Will continued breathing heavily before he started coughing. Thick red blood sprayed from his mouth.

Connor cut off Will’s scrub top and found an irritated chest covered in red splotches.

“Monique, start a line and I need a CBC, ABG, chest x-ray, and a CT c-spine, chest, and pelvis. And someone get me the fast scanner!”

“Connor,” Will gasped out, “my chest is killing me. Pretty sure it’s a hemothorax.”

Connor nodded reassuringly. “Just let me do the diagnosing, Will. I got you.”

Jay had no idea what any of that meant. He stood off to the side, frozen, as he watched the Med staff move around his brother at a rapid pace, inserting needles and taking samples.

A portable x-ray was brought to the room and Jay was made to step out for a few moments. This was not supposed to happen. Will was supposed to work in the hospital, not be a patient in it.

“Yup, a sizeable hemothorax. Looks like one of those broken ribs did some damage. Set me up for a 28 french. Will, I’m gonna put a chest tube in and drain that blood to get you breathing better. Then we’ll work on the rest.”

Will nodded and tried to bring as much air into his lungs as possible. He put in chest tubes all the time. He knew it was no big deal. But being on the receiving end of one made him uncomfortable.

Connor lifted Will’s arm up over his head which caused him to groan loudly.

“I know, buddy, we’re gonna work on getting that pain under control too.”

Connor splashed some betadine over the side of his chest and readied a needle with Lidocaine. Will winced as the numbing agent was injected in various locations around his ribs.

Connor made a deep incision and inserted a Kelly clamp to create a path through the muscle and other tissues. Connor then breached the chest cavity and replaced the clamp with his finger before picking up the large tube to be placed in Will’s chest.

Will’s breathing continued to be labored and was broken by the occasional groan of pain.

“I know, I know, almost there,” Connor said calmly. “Tube going in,” he warned.

“Agh!” Will shouted, trying his best to remain still.

Within seconds, blood began to drain and Will’s breathing eased.

“Better?” Connor inquired, checking his breath sounds to ensure proper placement.

Will nodded, still catching his breath.

“Gonna do a quick scan to check your belly and then we need to get you upstairs to take care of that displaced rib.”

Connor grabbed the wand, which had been prepped with jelly, and began probing Will’s stomach. Will winced.

“I don’t see any free fluid so I’m going to guess you’re in the clear. But we’ll keep an eye on it just in case,” he responds, nodding to Will. “Call upstairs and tell them to prep an OR.”

Connor turned and acknowledged Jay. “He’s gonna be fine. I’m gonna take care of those ribs and get him resting in a room as soon as possible.”

“Jay,” Will called from the bed.

Jay moved at lightning speed to stand next to his brother.

“There were three guys. Said it was a message to you. Something about not sniffing around where you’re not supposed to. Said you would know who they were.”

Realization dawned on him. This was not a mugging or a random attack. Someone hurt Will to hurt Jay. And he knew exactly who.

Tears sprang to his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Will. I’m so sorry. I had no idea it would get out of hand like this.”

Will shook his head. “No, no, no. I don’t blame you. This isn’t your fault. Just wanted you to know. So you can go get the bastards.”

Jay smiled. “I will, I promise. Just get better.”

Will grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Promise.”

[doctordiscord123]

Madness

The Host goes without being able to speak for far too long. The results are...not pretty.

Based off the chaos that is currently happening, centered around the Actor kidnapping most of the other egos save Dr. Iplier and Wilford and keeping Eric as a pet.

Tags: @demon-dark-666 @devon-rever-860 @smash-ash26 @bender-of-life @verse2wo @vociferous-chaos

Warnings: Attempted Suicide, Blood, Mental Conditioning, Vomiting, Murder Characters: The Host, Dr. Iplier, Wilford Warfstache, Eric Derekson, The Actor Word Count: 1944 words

Too long.

Far too long, too long kept muzzled, too long kept unable to speak. 

The Actor had realized quickly that the Host was dangerous. Perhaps moreso than Dark and Wilford. He’d had a Hell of a time trying to figure out where the Host’s power was coming from. But once he realized it was in the Host’s words, the Actor had grinned in a way the Host will never forget, and he was promptly muzzled. A thick leather muzzle, that folded under his chin with strong straps that buckled around the back of his head, over his ears, and the back of his neck. Forcing his jaw shut, pressing his lips tight together. His hands were kept in big mitten-type things that prevented him from undoing the straps himself. Though, his wrists bound tightly behind him helped with that as well.

And it was fine.

For a few hours.

And then the build-up began to press at the Host’s skull.

He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t summon his aura, not in the cage layered in magic that kept it stifled. He had no way of getting his narrations out, his visions out of his head. He screamed and writhed as the pressure grew worse, blood soaking into his bandages, legs kicking out wildly. But it did nothing to ease the agony in his skull. Too many words swimming in his head with no way to escape, too many realities swirling together. Realities shouldn’t swirl, it was the Host’s job to keep them straight, keep them organized, but there was too many, too many to handle with no escape --

The Host had tried to bash his own skull in after the first day. Smashing his head into the bars of the cage, muffled, desperate cries escaping him. He could hear the screams of the others, kept prisoner in other cages around him like animals, but he didn’t care. It hurt. He couldn’t take it. Blood washed across the bottom of his cage, but still he kept bashing and bashing and bashing --

It was only when Eric -- sweet, kind Eric, unfortunately having caught the Actor’s eye as such a darling little pet to break -- came to feed the people he once knew as family was the Host stopped. 

The Actor didn’t want his new toys hurt in any way he didn’t inflict himself. A thick, padded helmet had been fitted over the Host’s skull after his wounds had been bandaged. It covered his ears, blocking all sound. The Host couldn’t see, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t hear -- all he had was the swirling, churning, storm inside his head.

The Host’s mind shattered under the pressure after only a week.

He was kept like that -- padded, muzzled, bound -- for months.

The Host was lethargic. He didn’t to anything. The Actor had been forced to give him a constant IV for nutrient and a blood transfusion to keep him from bleeding to death from his eyes. The bottom of his cage was covered in an inch pool of blood, soaking into the Host’s skin and dirty clothes as he lay limp. Though...something else crept into the blood, leaking from his eyes, as the months went on. 

Black. 

Swirling with his blood.

Forming...odd patterns that looked almost like words.

Almost like...

A vision crashed over the Host -- the twentieth within the hour, too many too many -- and he convulsed like he was having a seizure, blood splashing through the bars of his cage, spreading out in the ever-growing pool that Eric cleaned every day. 

He Saw the room. The cages. The egos all sitting huddled in the corners, like beat, broken dogs. Some were angry. Some were beginning to break, lethargic, just like him. He could See his blood spreading across the cold tile.

Two egos were missing. Had since the beginning. They’d somehow escaped the Actor’s grasp. Biding their time to take back the manor, break the others out. The Host watched Dr. Iplier creep into the room, and he lifted his head slightly, the first time he’d moved since trying to kill himself so many months ago.

He watched the horror spread across Dr. Iplier’s face, watched Wilford creep around the room, picking the locks on the nearest cage -- the Jims.

“Host!”

Dr. Iplier rushed to his cage, footsteps splashing in the blood. He reached through the bars of the cage, pulling off the padded helmet, running his fingers through the Host’s hair. “Hey, hey, it’s me. I’m -- so sorry, we left you for so long. But we’re gonna get you out, gonna get all of you --”

“Hey!”

Dr. Iplier and Wilford’s heads whipped to the doorway. Eric stood there, eyes wide as he scanned the attempted prison break. Wilford grinned. “Hey kid! It’s good to see you, God, we’re so glad you’re okay!”

He took a step towards Eric, and Eric took that step backwards, breath heavily. “Wh-wh-who are you?! What are you doing?! Why are you in this house?!”

Wilford’s brow furrowed. Dr. Iplier shrunk back towards the Host. “...Eric? Are you --”

“MASTER!” Eric sprinted back out of room, screaming for the Actor. “MASTER, there’s someone in the pet room!”

Dr. Iplier’s eyes shot wide. “Oh no no no no -- we gotta go, we gotta go now, come on, Host, can you get up for me? Can you --”

He never finished his sentence. His head jerked sharply to the side, and he collapsed, dead, to the floor. The Actor lorded above him, adjusted his robe, eyes black as tar.

The Host screamed.

The Host screamed.

He was moving again for the first time in months, kicking at the bars of his cage. He accidentally ripped out his IV and the transfusion, blood spraying everywhere as he screamed. Dr. Iplier was going to die, no, was he dead? The Host couldn’t tell, realities so blurred together, he couldn’t tell what had happened and what hasn’t. Did he just live through Dr. Iplier’s death? Was he lying limp on the ground right now? The Host couldn’t See, he was grieving, crying bandages having dissolved ages ago in the ever present pool of blood.

“Hey! Host, shhh, calm down, you’re okay, you’re okay...”

Someone was pulling away the padded helmet, carding their fingers through his hair, and the Host sobbed, leaning desperately into the touch. His mind was playing tricks on him, he knew it was, Dr. Iplier had just died, this wasn’t him, the was the Actor, this was a vision, another reality, not his, Dr. Iplier, Dr. Iplier...

“Wilford! Get this door open!”

“On it, doc!”

The Host whimpered, struggling a bit as he was pulled out of the cage, and into Dr. Iplier’s lap. He didn’t care if this was the Actor now or not, he’d missed his beloved doctor, he didn’t want him to be dead, and he buried his face in Dr. Iplier’s stomach, sobbing into his shirt. Black as well as red stained every inch of him, Dr. Iplier muttering soothing words as he unbound the Host’s wrists, pulling off the mittens and letting the Host’s hands free. “Shhh, you’re okay now, you’re okay...”

The Host shook his head, pointing in the vague direction of the door.

“Hey!”

And just like that, Wilford was poofing to the door, slamming a hand over Eric’s mouth and dragging him inside. Eric made a terrified sound, struggling against Wilford, but Wilford just pet his hair, soothing him as pink mist swarmed off his hands. Eric unavoidably breathed it in, and before long, he was asleep, slumped against Ed’s cage.

Dr. Iplier shuddered, skin crawling with the uncomfortable realization they’d almost been caught. He and Wilford had been watching for months. They knew how broken Eric was by now. They knew how the Actor had been treating him and Dark -- the only two who hadn’t been shoved in cages in this room. Dr. Iplier picked at the straps to the Host’s muzzle, having a difficult time as congealed blood acted effectively like glue. But, he got it eventually, gently pulling it away. “There we g --”

The Host immediately threw up.

Black spewed from his mouth in a never-ending flow, ink pouring out like a fountain with each violent retch, each painful convulsion of his chest. It ran in rivulets across the floor, but...the rivulets took odd patterns, like...words...sentences...

The Host’s build-up of narrations were pouring out of him, not giving him a chance to breathe, it was violent, and loud, and the Host was gagging as ink hit the back of his throat over and over and over --

It took ten minutes for the flow to begin to slow. Another ten for it to taper off completely. Wilford had freed the other egos by then, and was off to sneak through the manor to grab Dark. Ink had overtaken the blood that covered the floor.

The Host laughed. He laughed, pressing his shaking hands to his temples, marvelling the absence of pressure in his skull. He could think, he could talk --

And he talked.

“Dr. Iplier!” His words were slurred, raspy, hoarse from disuse and ink. “Dr. Iplier Dr. Ipler Dr. Iplier is alive, he’s alive, you’re alive!” He laughed again, first person mixing into his speech, and Dr. Iplier flinched back. “You’re alive! The Host thought he was dead -- is Dr. Iplier dead? Perhaps this is the one with the ghosts -- no, wings!” He twists to press at his back, and frowned. “No wings, a shame, the Host liked having wings. The Host is happier Dr. Iplier isn’t dead though, that was sad, the Host grieved for -- how long was it? But you’re alive! Maybe the Host didn’t grieve at all and that was all in my head.”

Silence. Dr. Iplier laid a hand on his shoulder. “Host, are you...alright?”

The Host’s grin grew wider. “The Host can’t tell anymore! Which reality’s which, if he’s okay or not. Did you know there’s a reality where the Host is a god? Who would want to worship me, I’m a piece of shit!” He chuckled, full of mirth despite what he’d said. “The Host tried to kill himself. He can’t remember how many times. Did he even try in this reality? He can’t remember how many times he succeeded. Oh, those were sad days. The Host can’t remember if he cried. But Dr. Iplier’s alive! He deserves to be alive.”

Another hand. King maybe? It wasn’t Dr. Iplier. His voice was raspy, too. “Host --”

“Don’t touch the Host!” He screeched at the top of his lungs, scrambling to his feet, stumbling back through the ink. He gripped his skull harder. “No no no, this isn’t right, King’s dead! Bim -- no, the Author --” He gasped. “The Author! Am I the Author? No, I’m the Host! Or am I? I can’t quite tell. Things bleed after so long. Am I bleeding? Dr. Iplier, am I bleeding?!”

He rushed back forward, hauling Dr. Iplier to his feet, not noticing him stumbling back. “I-I-I um, I-I don’t know --”

“Oh that’s alright!” The Host spun away, pacing, words flowing faster and faster. “The Host’s paced through the inky pool, blood and magic and so many different worlds blending toge -- ah there you are! Narrations! The Host needed you before! You went missing! It’s hard stumbling through a library with a concussion -- no, wait, that didn’t happen, did it?”

There was a splash as someone took a step. “Host, please --”

“Stop! Saying! My name!” The Host stumbled back, breathing heavily. Hands sliding up to pull at his hair. “the Host is fine! He’s -- he’s...he’s...fine...”

The Host collapsed, falling forward into the ink, and passed out.

[buckleysjareau]

911 Week, Day 1 - “wanna bet?”

this is more crack then fluff, so sorry, but there is fluff! enjoy

Whoever thought a night of heavy drinking between Buck, Eddie and Chimney was a good idea, were out of their minds. 

When sober, they were idiots but shot after shot of tequila plus the couple of beers they each had before meeting up multiplied the absolute stupidity of the three men. 

Poor Maddie and Athena had to play babysitter. 

"I can't believe you knocked up my sister, man. The father of my niece or nephew is going to be you, Chim! You!" Buck's voice booms over at their end of the bar and even though Maddie technically wasn't associated with them right now, she can't help but hide her face in embarrassment. It's gonna be a long night, she thinks. 

"Gee, thanks, Buckaroo." Chimney crosses his arms and pouts, resembling a grumpy child after he's told to put his toys away. 

A gasp escapes Buck's mouth. "You're welcome, Chimney, because it's a good thing, okay? You're a good thing. I'm lucky my sister has you, you're just so cool! So cool. Hey Maddie, isn't he cool?" 

Other patrons in the bar look over at Maddie and Athena and Maddie once again finds herself hiding her face from the attention. 

"The coolest!" 

Eddie responds before Maddie can get herself to. 

Chimney's eyes shine with unshed tears. "You know who's cooler?" The voice comes out in a stage whisper and moves closer while Buck and Eddie wait in anticipation like it's the most interesting thing in the world. 

"You guys are cooler! The coolest of cools!" 

Chimney breaks off into a fit of drunken giggles, not noticing Eddie's eyes full of tears and Buck's hand over his heart like the sentiment of the drunken compliment warmed his whole heart. It probably had. 

Eddie's sniffling is what has Chimney looking up again and before he can say anything, Eddie has an armful of Chimney as he weeps. 

"I love you so much man," 

"I love him more!" Buck argues. 

"Wanna bet?" Eddie hiccups.

"If you want me to take all of your money, I won't deny it." Buck's smirking has Eddie distracted for a moment and he goes from weeping over Chimney to smiling warmly at the blonde. 

"A bet? Over me? I feel so loved," Chimney giggles. "Maddie! Guess what? Buck and Eddie bet on how much they love me, that's so funny." 

"Why is that funny, man?" 

"Because we have a bet-"  

"I'd be quiet now honey." Maddie's eyes widen. Athena can't hide her amusement any longer. 

"What bet?" Buck pouts that Maddie is trying to keep a bet from him. Did his sister not know him? He loved winning. 

"Doesn't matter what bet they have going on right now, Buckley. The only bet that matters is who loves our bestest friend Chimney more." 

When Eddie got drunk, he got competitive, sure, but when Buck was drunk, his whole body felt warm and full of more love than he felt possible. So really, Buck's got Eddie beat. 

"It's me." Buck steps forward. 

"Pretty sure it's me." 

Chimney is still a giggling mess as he watches this unfold. "I feel like I'm in romcom where the two different people are fighting for my honor. It's a dream come true." 

Athena keeps her voice down. "Pretty sure you, Maddie, would win this fight."

"I definitely would," Maddie grins at her drunk fiancé and Chimney wastes no time in kissing her, but not without his uncontrollable giggles breaking through the kiss. 

"Don't know how you think you'd win, Eds." 

"Tell me why you think you would." Eddie just lost this for himself without realizing it. 

"He's about to be my brother in law, he's the father of my future niece or nephew, he's there for my sister and I've known him far longer than you." Buck lists with a grin. "Ha! Beat that!" 

"He got Hayden out when I cut my line!" Eddie realizes he's playing with fire bringing that up, especially with how Buck reacted, but it's the truth and hey, he's really competitive. 

Buck gets quiet and he's tense for a second, but in the blink of an eye, his mask is already up. He's pouting and Eddie finds it to be the most endearing thing he's ever seen. 

"That's just rude, I can't argue with that." He sulks. 

"You guys both love me the same and I love you guys the same, alright? I also love Maddie the same but in a completely different way." Chimney tries not to laugh at Buck's disgusted expression at his innuendo. 

Five minutes of pointless conversation pass and Eddie feels like he's gonna boil from the inside out with overwhelming love for everyone at their table, but most importantly Buck. 

Little did he know that Buck was feeling the exact same way. 

"Wait, wait, wait, guys!" Buck almost shouts. "I'm sorry to cut you off but do you know who else I love?" 

"Who's that, Buckaroo?" Chimney grins. "We already know you love me." 

Buck beams. "Eddie Diaz!" 

"Yes?" Eddie takes another sip of his beer, faking nonchalance. 

"No, no, I was telling them who I love! I love you Eds, you are so good and cool and easy to talk to and supportive and-" 

"Get to the point, for the love of all that is holy. That's too many 'ands', I can't keep up," Chimney groans. 

Buck shoots Chimney a glare before continuing, "and a horrible cook but you still try for Chris and I love Chris so much too, man. You're such a good dad and oh my god, Maddie, I feel like a tea kettle when the water is done boiling where it makes that whistle sound because I'm so full of love!" 

Maddie chokes on the water she was drinking. 

Eddie wasn't having this, though. "I love you more, man! You do so much for my kid and you help all these people and I hate that you're a reckless idiot but you help people all the time and you're actually a good cook and you give me advice like all the time, you're such a good man Evan Buckley. I definitely love you more!" 

Buck's about to argue his point when Eddie cuts him off with a question to Maddie. "Isn't he awesome, Maddie? So awesome." 

"You're not gonna win this argument, Edmundo. I definitely love you more." 

Buck's starting to slump in his seat, alcohol making him unable to just sit up straight anymore, so while he says that in such confidence, he looks smaller than a man who's six foot three should. He’s leaning his head on his hand and- oh god, he has sweater paws!

"Wanna bet?"  

"A bet would be pointless because you're never gonna win it, Eds." He giggles.  

"I think I'd win." Eddie laughs. "I know I'd win." 

The way Eddie says it has Buck's whole face flushing and the others at the table to cover their mouths to not laugh at the blatant flirting. 

Maddie whispers to Athena, "Should we leave them?" 

Athena raises an eyebrow. "Oh, no, I'm staying to see how this works out. After all, I am winning the bet with the way things are looking." 

Chimney sighs dramatically. "Why do you always win, 'Athena?" 

Before Athena could answer, she's cut off be an exasperated noise from Buck.  

"You making me feel things is not gonna get me to let you win this. I'm gonna win." He pouts. 

"Christopher loves and adores you, too. Chris and I are a team, therefore I love you more. How does that not get me the win?" 

"Because Chris once told me that we were a team too so if we're going based on that, I love you more because Chris can't love anyone more than he loves his dad. Beat that!" 

"We can do this all night, Evan. I win." 

Athena groans. "Oh no you don't. Just agree to disagree, you idiots." 

"Why would I agree to disagree when I can win because I definitely love him more than he loves me?" Eddie is still boiling with over pouring love and needs to let everyone know. 

"What are you even winning?" Maddie raises an eyebrow. 

Buck and Eddie try to stutter out a response but when they can't think of anything, they fall silent and Maddie grins. 

"Know it all." Buck mumbles under his breath, reminding Maddie of all of the times in their childhood when Buck would do the exact thing. The only difference was that he was twenty eight, not eight. 

"If you guys agree to disagree you can win each other." Chimney sleepily points out. 

Buck and Eddie make eye contact before Buck's eyes start watering. Eddie has no control over his feet as he stands up off the chair, watches as Buck does the same and the two meet in the middle with a hug. 

"So we all agree this is not platonic hugging, right?" Chimney whispers. 

"Pay up." Athena smirks. 

"You haven't won yet, Athena. They're still idiots so you never know." As Chimney says this, Eddie pulls away enough to look at Buck's face, puts both hands on each side of his face, and kisses him just by the lips. 

Chimney groans and pulls out a twenty, handing it to the woman, while Maddie did the same. A text is sent to the group chat to pay up the next day and the chat explodes with surprise, excitement and sore losers. 

All of the alcohol leaving their systems is starting to take its toll on the men and they're fighting the urge to fall asleep in the back of Athena's car. Every time Buck closes his eyes, his world spins, and Chimney has been hiccuping for the last hour. 

"Alright, boys, into Chimney's you all go." 

"Are we having a sleepover?" Buck mumbles. 

"Yes. We don't trust any of you being alone, so sleepover it is." 

"My first sleepover." He's grinning from ear to ear with his eyes shut and Maddie can't help but find it adorable. Their parents never let him have or go to sleepovers because studying was always way more important than having a life. 

She doesn't point out that it definitely was not his first sleepover, seeing as he pretty much always stayed the night on Eddie's couch to the point where he wasn't a guest at Eddie's home. It was his home too.  

As soon as the three men enter the apartment, they simultaneously fall onto Chimney's couch and groan tiredly. 

"I'm gonna feel horrible tomorrow." Chimney groans.

"I had more than you so forgive me if I'm not sympathetic because I'm gonna feel worse." Buck whispers. 

"Wanna bet?" 

Exasperated groans erupt from the kitchen. 

Idiots. 

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Undercover Lover prt 10

10

Hannes wasn’t as Levi expected. Much older than Eren, the man seemed like a father figure to the now mostly unconscious Eren in the front of Levi’s car. Calling the number listed online for him, he’d had to start snapping at the receptionist before she’d take him seriously and put him through to Hannes. In his mind he didn’t quite sure what he’d conjured up about the man’s possible appearance, yet it wasn’t greying blond hair with a thin moustache, and the kind of aura you’d find radiating off the local drunk. Explaining he was in the car park with Eren Kruger, and giving a basic symptom rundown, Hannes seemed to have dropped everything to come to them, huffing and red faced as he gripped his chest.

Standing by the passenger door, Levi itched to do something. He’d held back smoking, as it seemed rude to smoke while Eren sat slumped in the seat beside him

“Levi... I assume... I’m Hannes...”

Hannes didn’t hold his hand out, Levi hadn’t wanted to shake it anyway

“He didn’t want to go to hospital. He’s been denying he’s sick”

Hannes nodded, squatting down to start examining Eren. Levi cringing in sympathy over the way Hannes’s knees cracked

“I did see him the other day. I have a fair idea what this is. He was supposed to come back and see me. You said he’s been vomiting?”

“Blood nose. Dizziness. Vomiting. Fever”

“Right. Help me get him up. Stupid damn fool. Always been a headstrong idiot”

So Hannes had known Eren for some time. Levi didn’t want to admit his alpha felt a little insulted. He nearly growled when Hannes helped him manoeuvre Eren out of the car to be supported by the two of them. He shouldn’t pry...

“You’ve known him for a while?”

“You could say that. You work for Rod?”

“Yeah. That’s how I know him”

“Ah! You must be the new hire. He mentioned he might have made a new friend. He could use a friend or two these days”

Levi’s heart went funny. The weird beat hard as his alpha puffed itself up with pride at being mentioned

“He mentioned me?”

“In passing. He mentioned it was nice not to be the newbie anymore”

Oh... was that all? Levi didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. Eren called him a friend, but he was hardly winning any awards. The brat probably trying to be polite

“Someone’s gotta be saddled with the shitty jobs. Where are we taking him?”

“I left the wheelchair at the door. I’ll take him through once we get there”

With Eren wheeled away from him, Levi was left in the emergency department. Hannes might be his... primary physician? but the man had no sway in the ED. Wearing a mask, like everyone else waiting, Levi supposed it was best they all were given he could smell the anger rolling off him at the situation. Masks were mandatory seeing so many people passed through and not everyone used products to cancel their scent. He’d been in too many emergency departments, seen too many shitty things. The place always bring up bad memories he wished time would hurry up and eradicate from his mind. The sooner Hannes came back to him, the better he’d feel about the situation. Erwin still hadn’t messaged him back, Levi staring at the phone screen half hoping he wouldn’t. He should have trusted Eren to tell him in his own time...

Left in the waiting room until his phone was barely hanging on at 3 percent, Hannes finally came out through the door seperate by the emergency department from the waiting room. The man scrubbing his face tiredly. Levi jumping to his feet, before correcting himself, trying not to look too worried for a man he barely knew. The last time he’d been this worried and worked up was when Farlan and Isabel had rolled their piece of shit car just after Isabel got her licence

“How is he?”

Sighing heavily, Hannes rubbed his face again. Levi semi wanting to shake him for sighing and not answering immediately. Obviously the man cared a lot for Eren

“He’ll be out this afternoon. Refuses to take time off work...”

That was fine and all, but that didn’t tell him what was wrong with Eren

“And?! He’s been sick for weeks”

Hannes chuckled. Levi supposed he had sounded a little whiny

“He’ll be fine. A bacterial infection, nothing antibiotics won’t knock on the head. We’ll monitor him for a few hours and if he’s doing better, he’ll be released. He’s been avoiding come back in since his medical. Now, do you have a few moments? I’d like to ask you more about how Eren is doing these days”

Unable to cast a glance back past Hannes without either leaning sideways or standing tip toe, Levi guessed he wouldn’t be seeing Eren again for the day

“I... don’t know if should”

“Humour an old man? I’ve known Eren since he was born, but he doesn’t open up much. Won’t talk about work or what he’s gotten himself into now”

Levi didn’t want to invade Eren’s privacy, buuuuut, he also wanted to know more about him, and not just what Erwin found out

“I suppose I can spare a little more time”

“Excellent. I had assumed you’d be the one taking Eren home, but not to worry. Thankfully I had a mostly clear schedule this afternoon, I’ll show you through to my office”

Great. He didn’t mind taking Eren home. Eren would probably protest and snark. At least the infection had been found and he’d be treated for it... Provided the kid could look after himself enough to take the shitty medication prescribed.

“Lead the way”

*

Hannes’s office suit was modest. A few drooping plants sat between blue waiting chairs. The walls decorated with outdated inspirational quotes. Waving at his rising receptionist, the woman dropped back down as Levi trailed after Hannes

“Just through here, it’s a bit of a walk. No one practices out of hospitals these days like they used to”

The alpha had no response for that. He had the feeling Hannes wasn’t an ordinary GP, which was confirmed when he stepped into the examination room and was confronted with all sorts of posters about beta dynamics

“Take a seat. Scotch or... scotch?”

Frowning heavily, Levi knew for a fact doctors weren’t supposed to be drinking at work. Hannes laughing at his expression

“Late nights can get pretty boring. I take it that’s a no?”

“I’m alright, thank you”

“You can take your mask off. We’ve got scent cancellers in the room”

He’d rather keep his mask on. The place might be organised, but who knew how many germs were slithering across the surfaces in the room. Still, he was the one that’d followed Hannes, he should at least be civil. Taking the mask off, he stuffed it in his pocket, the air indeed devoid of most scents, but he was struck by how strongly his own scent was flowing off him. He smelt worried, setting off his alpha despite the fact it was own scent.

Pouring himself a shot of scotch, Hannes quickly downed it before placing the bottle and glass away in the bottom drawer of his desk

“That’s better. Now, Levi, tell me how you know Eren”

“I met him at the garage. He was stuck babysitting me”

The pout in his tone was clear, Hannes chuckling

“You’re the new hire. He said as much. Does he do a good job?”

“He takes pride in what he does. No one works as much, or as hard, as he does”

Levi felt pride in how hard Eren worked. He could slack off, but instead he put everything he had into the garage

“He’s always been like that. He was never the best and brightest, but what he lacked he made up for in determination. Has he spoken of his past?”

“He tends not to”

Eren was a mystery in so many ways. For instance why he was drawn to the man who was ridiculously fucking tall in comparison

“Ah. Well. I suppose with a past like his... He’s not one to open up about what he wants. Hell, we’ve all tried to support him, but he insists on going it alone...”

Levi nodded

“Yeah. He’s been fucking sick for weeks. Wouldn’t listen to anyone about it”

“Hmmm... And the garage?”

“He’s been coming to work, if that’s what you mean?”

“I mean does he get along with the alphas there?”

What kind of a question was that?

“You’re always going to have a pissing match when you’ve got a group of alphas. I wouldn’t say he’s close to anyone”

“He’s close to you”

“That’s because he got stuck showing me the ropes”

“And did those ropes involve the two of you ending up in bed?”

Levi spluttered. How the fuck did Hannes know about that?!

“I suspected it was you. I caught your scent on him when he came in for his medical”

Fucking sprung

“That was a drunken accident. Neither of us know how it happened”

A strange expression crossed Hannes’s face, the man turning his attention to his computer. If he had something to say, he should just spit it out rather than pussyfooting around

“Look, you dragged me here to ask me about Eren, knowing as much as you did. Isn’t it about time you told me what was going on!?”

“I’m afraid that’s for Eren to explain. I will tel you there’s been a shift in his dynamic since meeting you. That’s to be expected when a dominant alpha comes into the workplace. Do you mind if I take a swab of your glands?”

“Do you mind if I tell you to fuck off if you’re going to keep evading my questions?”

Most people would have been upset, Hannes laughing almost merrily

“Oh, I can see why you two get along. Look, Eren has a complicated past. He’s not one to get close to anyone anymore. He’s been dumped and cheated on, been accused of some pretty serious stuff. I’d like to know more about the man he’s gotten close to”

Levi felt instant anger. If you weren’t happy in a relationship then the only logical thing to do was leave, not fucking sleep around

“There isn’t romantic there, if that’s what you’re reply”

“I’m hoping for his happiness. I know the garage isn’t exactly legal. I know the kinds of people Rod employees, and I know Eren keeps saying he only needs to stick it out a few more months, but I care about him like he was a son. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“You don’t want a ruffian like me fucking him up”

“There’s that. For a beta, Eren has an unusual constitution. He’ll never ask for anything, leaving him to be fucked over when things go wrong. I’m honestly relieved he’s found someone to be there”

Eren was a beta? That made no sense. Beta’s didn’t hiss or growl. Nor did they leak scent... He must be a beta-alpha who’d slid closer towards beta on the scale. Without scent cancellers, the slide in dynamics was pretty common until people became bonded with their partner

“So this change in dynamic, is it physically affecting him?

“More so than I’ve ever seen...”

Levi’s stomach dropped. His presence clearly making Eren ill, and Eren hadn’t said a damn thing. Hannes continuing

“... that’s why I’d like to swab your scent glands, with permission”

Levi had had no clue. No clue he was making Eren sick... Did Eren know? Was there more to this than a claimed “infection”? Like the change in dynamic had left his immune system weakened? Levi had always been a dominant alpha since he’d presented, not that people could usually tell from his short stature. Normally he wouldn’t be so ruffled, yet this was the first time he’d known his presence to make anyone physically ill. His alpha felt stricken to the point of near dramatics over this turn in events

“I didn’t... I didn’t know. I use cancellers...”

“I’m sure you do, but they can also be rendered ineffective on some dominant alphas”

“Uh. Yeah. I mean, if it’ll help him out...”

“Excellent. Now, this won’t hurt a bit. I’ll get it out the way and send it off for processing, then we can kick back until they let me know it’s time for Eren to be released”

Wait? How was being around him going to make Eren feel any better?

“Should... I really be around him if I make him ill?”

“I can’t let him go home alone. He’ll need rest and plenty of fluids. I’ll also need to give you a letter to hand to Rod to explain Eren’s absence. Rod might think him violent, but I’m sure there’s more to the story than what meets the eye”

“Is that something to do with Eren’s past?”

Hannes seemed flustered at Levi pulling him up

“Ah, I’ve said too much. You’re best off talking to him, but don’t be to surprised if he brushes it off. He seems to be the only one who knows anything about what actually happened, and tabloids always blow things out of proportion. You can’t always rely on what’s reported. Think of it as doing this old man a favour”

He didn’t owe Hannes anything. Nor was he about to do him a favour. Having Eren now pushed onto him, that’d mean taking Eren back to his apartment as there was no way the beta was handling stairs in his condition. No. He’d do Eren the favour and repay his kindness that first night, but Hannes had nothing to do with it. As it was, he really shouldn’t be consenting to anything

“Tch. Fine. Let’s just get this shitty test out the way”

[twoidiotwriters1]

Home- Chapter 11 (Kylo Ren/ Ben Solo x F!Oc)

Words: 2,490

Warnings: Sexual mention...ish, not a big deal.

Masterlist:

Chapter 10 // Chapter 12

On that night Kylo Ren had difficulty sleeping. Despite having the most comfortable and largest bed of all, it doesn’t stop tossing on the mattress.

He’d long since become accustomed to the constant nightmares that haunted him and with the use of force, he could chase them away and simply not dream. But tonight is different, he can't stop thinking about everything that has happened since he found Kiara, at first he couldn't believe it, he thought it was a ghost, but then it all made sense, although he doesn't know exactly what he did to survive. Then there was the fact that both have been saved from falling to their deaths, although what happened at the previous base wasn’t planned.

Kylo had felt something that weakened him and so he couldn't stop his fall, but he didn't expect her to save him. And her words, his heart doesn’t stop beating every time he remembers them, but he refuses to believe her.

Finally, he gives up and sits on the bed, trying to distract himself with anything: preparations, arrangements, reading a book, ordering food, trying everything, but nothing works. Until an idea comes to mind through a different voice than his. He decides to ignore the owner or owners of the voice.

Regardless that he's only in his pajamas, he walks through the halls, ignoring the soldiers, until he reaches Kiara's room. He opens the door and when he enters, he closes it behind him.

The new room is smaller, but has everything she needs. Kylo walks, slowly observing his surroundings until his sight falls on the bed at the end. Kiara is asleep, the sheets are tangled on her body, which is face down, her head on her side, her mouth slightly open causing slight snoring and her hair scattered on the pillow.

She seems at peace, he understands that she must be tired, after all she’s been through and also because of the memories they shared the other night, which remain a mystery. Kylo can't help but get closer and slowly he gets to his knees at the foot of the bed, his hand running fearfully over her cheek, pushing aside the locks and again the memory of that dance comes to his mind.

So innocent, pure, full of joy. The details arrive and he remembers what happened after she entered the room, the food and alcohol, the laughter, family gossip and the stars. For a moment, Kylo wants to go back to those moments when being with her was his only concern.

“You've always been a creep. Now you’re watching me sleep…” A whisper startles him, but when she opens her eyes they relax him and embarrass him a little. Kiara adjusts herself to see him better.

“It's never been my intention,” He answers, and she smiles.

“Can't sleep?" Her voice is still hoarse from sleep. He shakes his head.

Kiara sits on the bed. They both look each other in the eye.

“Nightmares?"

"Thoughts," he replies.

"Do you want to talk about that?" He frowns.

"How can you act so calm after everything that's happened?" She shrugs.

"I guess for a few minutes… we could pretend."

Kiara was confused, the sleep and weariness are taking a tool on her, or she just says that to justify herself.

"What did you do to survive?" He blurts out and she sighs.

"Even I don't fully understand it…”

"Show me,” Kylo offers his hands and she takes them. They both close their eyes controlling the memories.

“Ben! What’s happening?" she asks in horror as she sees everything around her being destroyed

"Come with me, we must run away!" He takes Kiara's hand, but she lets go quickly.

"Not until you explain what happened!” Ben tries not to release his power against her.

"I'll explain everything to you-"

"Now!" she demands.

Ben growls and guides her to a secluded spot, looking around for signs of Luke or anyone who might stop him.

"Luke wanted to kill me.”

"What?"

"He felt my power, it’s greater than all of yours, and he couldn’t cope with it. Kiara, he came into my cabin and tried to kill me. We must get out of here!”

“Did you do all this? ” She asks, unable to believe it.

"I had to... Luke made me do this!” Kiara notices the darkness in his eyes, she steps back in fear.

“The voices, Snoke. You keep listening to them…”

"Kiara–"

“You’re making a serious mistake, Ben. Leave all of this behind. Don't listen to them, they just want to hurt you…”

“WHO SAYS IT? Luke?” Now he’s approaching quickly, causing fear in her, she moves away until she hits the rock behind her. “He’s only told us lies, Kiara. The dark side has more power, it has many things to teach us, I have seen it…”

“Ben…” Her cheeks are covered with tears. "No, do not do this…”

Kiara doesn’t know what else to say, she doesn’t understand the sudden change. She thinks of all that he has hidden from her. "No, listen to me, we will solve this, the others–“

"They are all dead!"

Her breathing is shaky.

“Stop!" She uses force and manage to throw him a few meters.

The body hits the ground and Ben's anger increases, it doesn't take him long to get up. Kiara takes this opportunity to ignite her lightsaber.

"Don't make me do this, Ben…”

He watches her in surprise, he didn't count on her trying to stop him.

‘Kill her, if she's not on your side, she just gets in the way’ the voices tell him.

Ben lights his saber and they both start a fight they never thought they'd had. Her movements are agile and fast and his movements are strong and determined.

Kiara dodges the attacks and defends herself with great skill. They both know that this is no longer part of their training. The confrontation goes as far as being close to a rock cave, the one in which both sometimes hid from others.

The sabers collide, the bodies cover themselves with ashes and dirt.

"Please, Ben,” She says with difficulty, that’s when the boy notices her weakness. Ben walks away a little and she looks confused.

The boy offers his hand "Let's not do this, my star…” Her breath stops when she hears the nickname. "Come with me ... be my partner…”

The voices try to enter her head, but their power is stronger.

"No," She says firmly. Ben's hand clenches into fists, he looks up and notices the cave, he knows what to do.

"Then you're just on my way," He uses force and pushes her away. She falls at the entrance to the cave. Ben gets a little closer.

"We would have made a good team, my love…” with that, he uses force again and causes the rocks to collapse against Kiara's body.

Everything turned black, the last thing Ben could see was the arm of his beloved from under the rocks. After that, he returned to his destruction. At that moment, Ben Solo died and Kylo Ren took his place.

–————————————————————

"R2, who is it?” It is the first thing she hears among the rocks, the earth fills her lungs. She moves with difficulty, but stops when she feels an enormous weight on her right leg.

The beeps are closer.

“Help," She tries.

"Kiara?" Luke yells from the other side.

The sobs hurt her. After a few minutes, she stops feeling the weight on her body. Luke uses force to save her. Picking her up gently, Kiara can tell he’s crying too.

“Easy, little one. You're safe…” She passed out after that again.

————————————————————

"I don't understand how I could survive the collapse," She says, barely above a whisper. Their hands are intertwined. Kylo is sitting next to her on the bed. “Luke took me with Han and Leia. He told them everything, they couldn't believe it, I remember her crying while I recovered in the hospital. My broken leg, ribs and arm…”

They’re silent for a few minutes. Kylo knows that apologizing is not enough and she doesn't expect it.

"H-how did you end up with Han?" He asks fearfully. She smiles at the memory.

“Leia invited me to all the resistance meetings, important things, she didn’t leave me alone. At first I appreciated it, but everything that was happening overwhelmed me too much. I was afraid of…” She looks him in the eye.“If you discovered that I was alive, you would've done whatever it took to finish what you had started. I wanted to get away from everything. Your parents weren’t in a good situation after the news. I heard that Han was going back to his old job and I begged him to take me with him."

Suddenly Kylo's hand touches her cheek and he caresses her gently. Kiara sighs at the touch and her eyes water.

The man, for the first time since he saw her again, noticed the passage of time in her, her features are still thin, but now they’re different, firm, her hair is longer. He runs his other hand through it.

"Why does the force want to show us our memories?"

"I don’t know.”

"The dance... you, I didn't remember how beautiful you looked that day,” He says surprised at his sincerity.

"You were so nervous," She says, laughing a little.

Kylo’s hand goes from the cheek towards her neck and little by little both get closer. Kiara closes her eyes and Kylo doesn’t miss the opportunity to kiss her.

The kiss begins slow and delicate, but they don’t wait long to become needy. Kiara runs her hands through his hair and pulls it lightly, causing a groan from Kylo, while the black-haired man grips her waist. Without noticing, Kiara ends up lying against the mattress with Kylo on top of her. His lips part in search of air and then moves down to her neck.

Their minds are cloudy, they want to continue, feel each other. But this doesn’t last long, when they look at each other again, they come to their senses.

Suddenly she pushes him hard and he falls out of bed, but quickly gets up.

Neither knows what to do, they look like two children being discovered by their parents. They don't say anything.

Kylo leaves the room.

The last thing they share is the scream in their mind.

“NO!”

——————————————————

Kiara’s pov

It's been several days, he hasn't even asked me to go to training. I know that our situation is uncomfortable and I don't even know how to act now.

The kiss was… as if he was finally breathing after so long holding his breath.

My head is messed up.

Wasn't it ever?

I groan when I hear the voice in my head again.

Leave me alone.

It's not my fault that you think so loud.

Yeah right. Can you go for a few minutes? I am sinking into my misery.

Sure.

I sigh in relief once I don’t listen to her anymore.

Which gives me an opportunity to continue with my adolescent regrets.

I certainly don't know what I'm doing, really. First I tell him that I love him, when it's not true... almost. Then the kiss.

"AAAAAAAGGH!" What’s happening to me? I don’t get it. He did what he did and is doing horrible things and has no regrets.

You know it's not true, he's changing, thanks to you.

Dammit.

It's not because of me, he can't change, people don't change, I just... hate myself. I want to get out of here and run away as far as I can, that does work for me.

I walk around my room until I reach the door, I stop right in front.

"If only I could leave my room, so I could do a master plan…”

You had a chance before and decided to stay with him.

Not for him. No, no, no.

I lean against the wall and inadvertently touch the panel, causing the door to open. I look at everything totally confused.

“That’s what it takes?" I say offended.

What if you talk to him?

It's not a good idea.

Why? Surely he's in his room.

Well, good. Let him stay there.

Kiara…

Enough Rey, stop telling me what to do!

You know I'm not comfortable with this connection either, but we can't do anything about it.

I wish I had an alarm that would alert me when I had a new connection to someone.

Yes it wasn't nice to find out when you were bathing.

Noup.

Well, I already saw you naked and him shirtless, there won't be so many secrets.

What– you what?

Just go with him.

Since when do you want to help him? What do you mean you saw him shirtless?

I want to help you both and I can feel that you have more power over him, we can both change it, Kiara. Also, there’s no stormtrooper on guard.

I growl at her idea, especially since I also think the same, I peek at confirming what she says.

Okay, but this conversation is not over.

I walk the hallways very cautiously.

Any idea where his room might be?

Turn left here, you’re close.

I obey orders until I reach a door being watched by two soldiers.

And now?

Pretend he sent for you.

I approach the soldiers.

"I'm sorry lady. You can't walk in.”

They don't know that I'm a prisoner.

Brilliant.

"Kylo Ren called me, said it was important," Both soldiers share a look.

"I think you’re wrong,” before I could reply, the door opens and a woman comes out of it. She stops when she sees me, her hands hold her robe, she walks past me and gets lost in the corridors.

Oh no.

Everything connects.

He was shirtless, and a girl came out of her room.

Kiara–

"Oh my god," I say with a grimace. No no no. Him? No.

Ew!

I'm so distracted that I don't realize Kylo comes to the door and looks at me in surprise.

"Kiara" I look up and as Rey said, he's shirtless. I feel a pressure in my chest.

"I, I'm sorry, I didn't want to…” He suddenly frowns

"What are you doing here? How could you get out of the room?”

Does he care more about that than this?

Not that it's a bad thing– He’s a man… a single man. He can do whatever he wants, after all, and I can't claim anything from him.

"N-no one was–"

"Escort her to her room and keep her in," He says to a stormtrooper. And then turns back to me. "I don't want to see you out unless I need you.”

I look at him confused.

The soldier obey and lightly push me to walk. I don't say anything else.

I just let myself be guided without understanding very well what happened.

Taglist:

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@blackheartedspider

@fandomshit6000

@thewinterschildren178​

[boundtoyouphff]

Chapter 12: It’s Not All Glitz and Glamour

A/N: Sorry for not posting as regularly, but I am making up for it with TWO chapters being posted today. The first one now and in a few hours I will post the second one so make sure you READ THIS ONE FIRST! Enjoy xx --------------------------------------

I am sure you have heard of the saying… “It’s not all glitz and glamour.” Well, I wholeheartedly believe that. I believe that we often like to hide behind our material things as it masks our truer self. It makes people on the outside believe that just because we have all the glitzy material things in our life that it is glamorous, that we are purely happy in our lives. It is true to a point that it brings us a certain level of joy… but that joy in our lives is replaceable.

Material things are replaceable, but the people in our life are not and those are the things in life that brings us that irreplaceable joy.

As I sit here in this gorgeous ball gown and feel the strand of a diamond necklace being placed upon the delicate skin of my neck, these thoughts come to the forefront of my mind. I feel it trapping me in the false sense of belief that all of this matters. This State Banquet to show our kingdom's prowess matters.

But, it doesn’t.

I never cared about the material things that someone could give me like this sparkling diamond necklace my father gifted me. What I care about is the time I spend with my loved ones, the smiles on their faces and the joy sparkling in their eyes, not the sparkles sitting on my chest.

What matters in life is not about the glitz and glamour.

It’s about our hearts and who they beat for.

It’s about the way he makes my heart beat.

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

Harry tightened the strands of his bow tie, pulling it securely into place. Straightening his tuxedo suit coat, his hands smoothed over the soft fabric that lined his anxious body. Edward was behind him going over last minute details of the State Banquet that would be held for the royal visit on behalf of the British Monarchy. His words faded into the background as Harry replayed a conversation he had earlier with Emilia in his mind.

Flashback*

Emilia climbed out of the back seat with haste, afraid to look the prince in the eyes. Slamming the door shut she stepped forward with purpose towards Lexington Palace.

“Emilia!” Harry’s deep voice called from behind her to which she ignored and continued on her path. Hearing footsteps quicken to a run behind her, Emilia took in a deep breath knowing she would have to face him, but she surged forward.

She barely made it through the entrance before she felt his light grasp brush against her fingertips followed by the quiet whisper of her name. “Em....” His simple touch on her skin made her heart skip a beat. The way his deep voice quietly spoke her name almost made her give in to Harry in that moment, but a familiar voice cut through her thoughts.

“Ah! Harry, there you are!” Ed, Harry’s private press secretary had come around the corner to greet him and was quite in a hurry to take the prince away to prepare for the state banquet that evening. Urging him that he did not have time to waste.

“Not now, Ed.” Harry stepped around Edward to get to Emilia who had carried on with haste through the palace leaving Harry behind in her wake.

He watched her head turn slightly to the side and speak something to Tristan who turned immediately onto his heel and stepped in front of the prince, blocking him. Harry’s jaw clenched tightly, pursing his lips into a hard line. “Emilia is not ignoring you. Go to your suite, talk to Eddie or whatever his name is. Then come speak with her.” Tristan’s voice was calm yet commanding.

Fury coursed through the prince after hearing those words from Tristan. Who does she think she is telling him what to do? “Fuck that. Step out of my way.” Harry moved Tristan out of the way as the RPO he clenched his jaw disobeying Emilia’s orders to not let him by, but knowing that it was what was best for her at the moment. To have someone who cared about her after what she bore witness to today.

Emilia shut the door behind her and closed her eyes. Revelling in the silence that welcomed her home. She kicked off her heels and stepped barefoot on the cool marble flooring that soothed her aching feet. But, the silence did not last long as the door flew open and slammed powerfully shut. Emilia had wished he hadn’t come and listened to Tristan, but in all honesty she knew he would.

“Seriously Emilia? Shutting me out again?!” His voice rose in an angry tone. Her back remained turned to him while she glanced out the window in silence, not answering him. Emilia was afraid to speak, fearing that only her sobs would come out of her mouth while she attempted to hold herself together.

The deafening sound of silence fell between them.

Harry had taken a few deep breaths and calmed himself down knowing that anger and an argument was not what Emilia wanted nor could handle in that moment. He stepped towards the quiet princess carefully and broke the wall of silence down between them.

Both began their surrender to one another as Emilia was unable to evade the prince any longer. She turned slowly with a lowered head and arms crossed defensively, waiting for Harry to come the rest of the way to her. With each erratic breath, the prince closed in the space between them.

“Emilia, will you please look at me.” Harry was now nearly an arms length away. His tall figure towering over her, but not in an intimidating way. All she wanted to do was to run into him and feel security in the confines of his arms like she had earlier.  Swallowing the lump in her throat, she slowly lifted her head to find a concerned set of deep blue eyes glancing down at her with a furrowed brow.

But, what scared her the most was how Harry saw through her in that moment. The mask she still had on her face was there, but he saw through it and knew without a spoken word what Emilia wanted from him.

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms slowly around her, until the walls she had built around her willingly crumbled to her feet. Their gaze did not waver from each other until Emilia stepped into his chest and buried her head into the prince. His grasp of her frame tightened as he felt her body succumb to the feelings inside of her and to start to tremble as they outwardly escaped.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, soaking through his shirt. His hand cradled the back of her head gently holding it into him tighter attempting to stop her endless sobs that floated out of her being. Harry had heard the words that broke the princess in that moment. The reporter that questioned who her actual father was...it wasn’t the question itself, it was Emilia’s thoughts of the answer to it that broke her.

“I’m here.” Were the only two words that Emilia needed to hear as she allowed her body to feel the pain behind closed doors, in private with Harry. The princess clutched his shoulders tighter and held on to him.

Within a few minutes, her tears subsided as the release of emotion freed the princess. Emilia lifted her head off of Harry’s damp chest and gazed up at him with tear stained cheeks. He brought his hand to her cheek, cupping it tenderly and dried her cheeks with the smooth caress of his thumb.

“I am sorry that I hurt you...” He confessed with a furrowed brow while his thumb comfortingly stroked her cheek. Emilia closed her eyes and angled her head into his cupped hand, relishing his touch. “I was only trying to —“

“Protect me.” Emilia interrupted Harry and finally spoke to him. She breathed out deeply and sighed, offering him a smile. Her hand reached up and snaked around his neck, putting slight pressure on the back of it to bend it down and rest his forehead upon hers. “Thank you for protecting me. It’s more than most people have done... and thank you for being there with me today.”

A smile crept up on his lips as he stared fondly down into the depths of her icy blue eyes. “You can’t listen to them Em. You know in your heart that you are your father's daughter. They are only attacking what they know will hurt you, cut you deep because you have taken everything else in stride. They cannot break you, and that fucking irritates them to no end.”

Emilia could not look away from Harry as she hung onto every word his deep comforting voice spoke. He lifted his forehead off of hers briefly to lay a sweet soft kiss to her forehead. The princess grasped both of his forearms tightly and held them in place.

The two of them stood in an embrace for a while longer, relishing in the company of each other and knowing that no matter what happened between them, they would always be there for one another.

End Flashback*

A smile crept upon his lips at the memory of Emilia. But, it grew wider with anticipation of seeing her again tonight at the State Banquet.

———

Harry had arrived early to the reception room where he was to speak with the members of the Illyrian Royal Family prior to the start of the State Banquet. He was greeted by the Crown Princess, Elizabeth, Emilia’s mother and she thanked the prince for keeping her daughter safe after the outburst from the press after their engagement. It was clearly evident that she displayed a sense of concern for her daughter over what had transpired earlier in the day.

“Thank you for making sure Emilia got home safely.” Elizabeth’s soft eyes thanked him. “I know she must be feeling a bit mortified at what happened this afternoon.” The Crown Princess angled her head as a soft motherly expression morphed onto her face.

“There is no need to thank me, your highness.” The prince put on his charming smile. “I know the feeling of being hounded by the press as well, I can relate.” Harry nodded in understanding before seeing another woman from behind them approach.

The Duchess of Molvania greeted her sister in law with a swift kiss on the cheek. “Good evening, Elizabeth. I adore your gown, is it bespoke?” The Duchess marvelled over the gorgeous gown, taking a step back to admire its elegance.

“Hello there, Julianna.” Elizabeth smiled warmly to greet her. “Yes, it is!” The Crown Princess turned her attention back to the prince. “Harry, this is Julianna Duchess of Molvania.”

“Oh! I am so sorry your highness. I was enamoured by Liza’s dress and I apologize for my rudeness.” Julianna stepped forward and kissed the prince on the cheek twice. “I’m Julianna, George is my husband.” The Duchess glanced around to locate her husband, but simply could not find him. “He probably nipped out for a quick drink.” She chuckled nervously, but continued to glance around to locate his whereabouts.

“How are you finding Illyria?” The Crown Princess changed the subject, wanting to make Harry feel welcome here in her country.

The prince flashed a charming smile. “Illyria is a beautiful country from what I have seen. I cannot wait to experience more of what it has to offer. The people here are so friendly and welcoming.” Harry ensured Elizabeth that his trip was going well and was looking forward with great anticipation towards the next few days.

“I do hope that my daughter has not been causing too much problems for you here.” Elizabeth took a small dig at her own daughter, laughing at her expense.

Harry’s brow furrowed as he took offence to her comment. He was truly getting tired of hearing how difficult people thought Emilia was and it was time to set the record straight. “Not at all, your highness. Emilia has been an enthusiastic ambassador for your family and even the country itself. I even witnessed this when she attended the Invictus Games in London. Everyone seems to really love how well she connects with people. I saw it today, with the kids and families at the hospital. She has been not a problem at all, more of a breath of fresh air.” The prince felt like he had to defend Emilia.

Elizabeth nodded in agreement, feeling touched by the prince's words. “That is what I want everyone to feel about my daughter. But, sadly that is not the case.” The Crown Princess’s smile faded for a brief second before her eyes lit up.

“Harry, Frederick and I want to extend an invitation to you tomorrow night to attend our family getaway and dinner in the evening!” Emilia’s mother, Elizabeth and her aunt Julianna, Duchess of Molvania warmly invited the prince to join them on a planned traditional Illyrian evening out at one of their favourite resorts by the sea. Harry’s only engagement tomorrow was a memorial at Fort Lennox where the Illyrian Freedom Forces held off a German Invasion in WWII at the sacrifice of many lost. The memorial was held yearly and the majority of the Illyrian royal family would be in attendance. After tomorrow, the prince had a day break in his schedule.

“It is a private family event and we always have the best of fun! It would be an honour for you to join us!” The Duchess of Molvania further added wanting to ensure the prince would attend. “Plus we typically take a boat out on the water the next day and have some fun at the beach. Emilia always seems to start a beach bonfire!”

The prince hesitated for a brief second, but nodded his reply with a smile. “Yes, of course I would love to join your family.” Harry hoped that Emilia would be ok with it, but he really did not have much of a choice in refusing the invitation.

“It’s settled then! I will ensure that my son Edward will bring you to the resort tomorrow from Fort Lennox. It’s about an hours journey.” It was arranged that Emilia’s twin brother, Edward would be accompanying Harry on the next day of his engagements in Illyria before coming back to the capital.

Elizabeth searched the room for a clock, questioning what time it was and wondering where the rest of her family was. “Surely, we must be starting soon. I wonder where Frederick is...?” Her eyes glanced up at the grand staircase to find her husband dressed in his state banquet attire walking down the steps. “Ah, there he is. Always fashionably late.”

“It is quite the chore to get these military uniforms on.” Harry teased with Elizabeth.

“Evening dear.” Crown Prince Frederick placed a brief kiss on his wife’s cheek before shaking Harry’s hand. “Welcome to the festivities, Harry.” Emilia’s father joked lightly, easing the intensity of the situation.

“Thank you, Frederick.” The prince parted his lips about to make conversation with the Crown Prince when he caught a glimpse of Emilia at the top of the grand staircase. The room fell silent as the rest of the family turned to watch the third in line to the throne embark down the staircase in such a graceful manner. Harry felt the breath being completely knocked out of him at the mere sight of Princess Emilia.

Her head was lowered to the ground with one hand grasping the staircase rails for balance while the other held a handful of fabric from her gown. She was completely unaware that all eyes in the room had fallen on her. Emilia was the epitome of a true princess, dressed in a timeless ice blue floor length gown that draped her body beautifully. The light in the room captured the sparkle of the diamonds that eloquently decorated the bodice of the gown that flowed out from her hips with delicate tule. She chose a royal blue sash that hung her Royal Family Order.

“Oh my!” Emilia’s mother gasped and clasped her hands together in complete admiration of her daughter, emanating the love she held for Emilia through her smile.

The young princess glanced up from the ground feeling confident now that she would not miss a step, but she found everyone’s eyes had landed on her. Her lips spread into an embarrassed smile, feeling her cheeks become flushed. She searched for a certain prince and found him standing next to her parents with a mesmerized expression on his face. The beaming smile that greeted her caused Emilia to reflect the same smile in own her lips.

Harry simply could not take his eyes off of Emilia. The princess had such a presence about her that could literally make a whole room stop and want to admire her. His heart skipped a beat seeing her stepping closer and closer to him.

Emilia waved to a few members of her family as their conversations started to continue again. The first person she greeted was her father who enveloped her into a loose hug, careful not to displace her gown. Elizabeth was still gushing over how gorgeous her daughter was and the effort she had asked her to display in tonight’s banquet. “Emilia... you are so stunning in that gown honey and you chose your own tiara from granny?!”

Emilia nodded with her blue eyes shining bright. Her hand went up and delicately touched her Arendelle Bandeau Tiara. It was specifically made for Princess Emilia from the Queen on the occasion of her birth and felt it was a homage to Queen Eleanora for tonight. The diamond necklace that covered her near plunging neckline was a gift from her father when she had turned eighteen. It hung beautifully off of her neck and added that royal touch to the dress that put her whole ensemble together in a well thought out manner.

The princess took in a deep breath knowing that it was Harry she had to greet next. Turning her  attention to the silent prince she took a step in his direction and smiled once they made eye contact. It was then that Harry was able to get a good look at Emilia and was honestly quite taken back at her beauty, rendering him nearly speechless. He could tell she truly had no idea how beautiful she was.

Emilia out stretched her hand, offering it to the prince. Feeling her parents eyes steady on her, she felt it best to greet the prince in a formal manner. “Your highness.” Harry lightly held her hand and watched Emilia dip down into a perfect curtsy that was not particularly necessary for her to do, but it showed a level of respect towards the British Prince.

“Princess Emilia.” Harry addressed her formally and offered a slight bow of his head to return the level of respect back onto the princess. He reluctantly released her hand, but gained her icy blue eyed gaze in return. “How are you this evening?”

The princess’s lips stretched into a warm smile. “I am well, Harry. I do hope my family has been entertaining enough for you while we wait.” Emilia cheekily side eyed her parents who giggled at her comment then walked off towards Fredericks brother George and his wife Julianna.

“Hey you...” Harry gained Emilia’s attention again and smiled fondly down at the beautiful princess. “You look absolutely gorgeous Emilia.” The prince complimented he dark haired beauty.

Emilia tilted her head with her lips tugging into a smile. Her hand reached out and grasped his forearm giving it a light squeeze. “Thank you Henry. You look quite handsome as well.” She took in a shaky anxious breath and was able to let down her wall for a minute. Emilia’s head drifted towards the ground as Harry kept his eyes on her. “I am so nervous... everyone will be watching and I am really trying not to mess up tonight. I cannot embarrass my family even more today.” The princess confided in Harry, opening up to him.

“Hey...” He watched her blue eyes lift and lock in his gaze. “That was a perfect curtsy and you did not have to do that for me. You know this stuff like the back of your hand, there is no need for you to worry about it.” Harry tried his best to reassure Emilia and help her regain that confidence she always had that had apparently been misplaced.

Emilia nodded quietly as a look of doubt floated in her blue orbs. “My grandmother came and spoke to me after you left.” Her voice whispered, careful not to let other members of her family hear. “She’s so angry with me...” Emilia breathed out and almost started to sob right there. She bit down on her bottom lip that held the tears in her eyes at bay. “God, I am so emotional today.” The princess laughed it off.

The princess's confidence had been shaken and she was at an all time low in that moment. She was feeling defeated and everyone was coming at her from all sides of her life. Emilia did not know where to turn to, but to Harry. The one person who seemed to understand her life and not judge her.

“For you firing your press secretary?” Harry’s eyebrow raised in suspicion, but he could not deny the budding anger he felt towards Emilia’s family. The princess staring back at him was not the same one he had walked away from her last day in London. A thought that started to scare the prince.

Emilia was slowly breaking.

“That was a part of it.” Emilia confessed. “That I put your life at risk today...” Her voice grew into a somber tone. “All granny said was that there were going to be some major changes... she said it in a threatening way. I cannot mess up.” Her head angled up at him with fear in her eyes.

“Seriously?!” Harry’s jaw clenched tightly. “None of that and I mean none of it was your fault. You had absolutely no control over it.” He tried his best to assure the princess that it was all beyond her control.

“Henry…” Emilia’s features softened as she calmly spoke his name. “Don’t be angry this is my battle. Let’s just get through tonight.”

Prince Harry hesitated in his response to Emilia, but her blue pleading eyes begged him not to make things worse for her. “Ok.” He took in a deep sigh and flipped his internal switch to ‘prince mode.’

Emilia nearly leaned in to place a kiss onto his cheek, but stopped herself and took a step back from Harry. The prince could not help but chuckle at her. “You just can’t resist me…..” Harry leaned into whisper in her ear. “Can you, Emilia?”

He was intentionally trying to tease Emilia with his close proximity to her, causing the princess to become annoyed with him and find a source of her sassy feisty self. “Not in that ridiculous uniform Captain Wales.” The princess barked back and started to step away from him to create more distance between them.

“What can I say? It’s not all glitz and glamour.” The prince angled his head down at Emilia, fondly staring into her eyes.

“Now that is something that we can both agree on.” The two of them stood there silently across from each other as their gaze did not waver despite the room around them filling up with people ready for the evening's events.

Emilia’s lips parted to speak when the doors opened at the top of the staircase to reveal Queen Eleanora’s and the King Consort Francis’s arrival to the reception area. She turned her attention and expertly hid her emotions from the rest of her family and planted on that perfect smile she had learned to give. The royal family and esteemed guests had first arrived in the reception area first to sort their order of arrival to the state banquet that was to be filmed on national TV not only in Illyria, but in the UK as well.

————————————

The procession into the marvellous state room had begun with Prince Harry accompanying Queen Eleanora, escorting her to the monarch’s seats while the Illyrian national anthem played by Queen’s Illyrian Guard orchestra. Princess Emilia escorted the Illyrian Forces General Major and took her seat down the row from the prince. She lifted her head and caught a glimpse of Harry stealing a quick subtle glance her way. Remaining standing she peaked down at her dress and ensured everything was in proper placement.

Queen Eleanora leaned in and spoke a few words with the prince, waiting for the rest of the members to make it to their seats. “I trust that you are enjoying your time here in Illyria, Prince Harry.”

“It’s been a delightful visit so far, Your Majesty. I am eager to complete the rest of my engagements with members of your family and see what else your country has to offer.” Harry had flipped a switch, turning on his princely charm and manners in order to represent the Queen well.

Everyone had taken their respective seats as the Queen stood back up to address the room and conduct her speech to open the state banquet.

“Your Royal Highness, King Consort Francis and I are delighted to welcome you to Lexington Palace this evening. Through this state visit we celebrate the enduring friendship which has enabled our two nations to prosper and grow side by side. Over the many numbers of years of our shared history, there are few nations who are able to claim a closer bond. Through your highness’s visit and your acts of friendship, you have formed your own personal collection of the Illyrian people that were recently showcased in the Invictus Games you founded that embodied the true spirit of the unconquerable soul that directly embodied the spirit of the Illyrian people.

To this day, our close relationship greatly contributes to the economic and cultural life of Illyria. The United Kingdom is one of Illyria’s largest investors as we have a thriving British community that is developing across the nation, furthering our economical ties. Internationally, we have a strong shared commitment to the people we serve and who serve our country. Through our shared history of revolutions, our families have shared the battle field and to this day have fought side by side to ensure a better future for the next generations to live in peace and freedom.

I can recall the State visit of your grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, an admirable friend of mine that we are saddened to hear of her untimely illness preventing her from this visit. Her fondly remembered visit, accompanied by your grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh in 1993, I spoke of our nation's close understanding and relationship that would become increasingly important as a new configuration of Europe was emerging.  As we look towards a new partnership, it is our shared values and commitment to each other that are our greatest asset and demonstrate that even through change, our enduring alliance remains strong. As innovators, traders and internationalists we look with confidence to the future. As we continue to work together to ensure peace, prosperity and security, I am confident that this friendship between Illyria and the United Kingdom, which we greatly treasure, will continue to deepen and to prosper.

We hope that your visit to Illyria will broadcast the values we as a nation share with the British people and strengthen our ties to your country. Thank you all for attending this truly special evening as we welcome His Royal Highness, Prince Henry of Wales, to Illyria.” Queen Eleanora angled her body down towards Harry and offered a slight bow of the head in acknowledging him with an admirable smile. Taking her seat, Harry waited for a few seconds to stand to deliver his, as per protocol.

Emilia watched Harry stand and straighten his tuxedo along with his sash. She could not help but admire the military medals that decorated him as a British soldier. He stood up confidently and grabbed his speech by the palace aide behind him. The Illyrian General that was sat next to Emilia leaned in and whispered. “It’s a nice change to see a prince who has truly served his country the way Prince Harry has and continued to do so.” The General spoke fondly of the prince to which Emilia offered a slight nod in agreement as Harry’s speech began.

“Your Majesty, members of the Illyrian Monarchy and esteemed guests. Please allow me to begin by expressing my gratitude for the extraordinary honour of attending this state visit to Illyria on behalf of my grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen wished me to express her best wishes to you all and wished she could have attended herself as she holds an admirable love for the people of Illyria.” Harry delivered his speech with such confidence and touched on important aspects that his country valued. Being a military man, he spoke about fighting on the frontlines with the determined Illyrian forces and their military commitment to providing both peace abroad and in their home country.

The princess sat there completely enthralled listening to Harry speak even sometimes from the heart, adding in last minute remarks that were off script but added so much to his speech. His eyes locked with Emilia and saw her proud expression as she sat there in silence watching him. It gave him a boost of confidence to finish his speech strong and make his family proud of him.

“You have shown the people of this world what it means to be Illyrian and with the unwavering affection of the British people towards Illyria; we surely can say that we are your loyal friends and allies that affirm the common values that will unite this friendship long into the future. On behalf of all Britains, I offer a toast to the eternal friendship of our people, the vitality of our nations and to the long cherished and remarkable reign of Her Majesty, Queen Eleanora.”

Harry turned to the Queen and offered his assistance in aiding her stand to complete the toast. Everyone in the room stood in unison and grabbed their glasses, holding it up into the air.

“To Illyria... Long live the Queen!” Harry’s voice resonated throughout the banquet hall.

“Long live the Queen!” The guests repeated in unison

*Stay tuned for the next chapter soon!*

[moonlightrichie]

ok but, you should write the second part of the reddie meeting at a museum prompt where they see the stars. it's just so cute AAAAAA

Aah, sorry this took so long. I wasn’t really planning on writing a part 2, but then it happened oops heh. Hope you like it !! ♡ I also posted the entire thing on ao3!

READ PART 1 HERE

READ ON AO3 HERE

Eddie was nervously scrolling through the pictures on his phone, fingers sliding between the three most recent ones. Gorgeous photos of Jupiter that Richie had sent, all of them wonderfully detailed and undeniably beautiful.

His phone had dinged not even five minutes after he’d left the museum with Bill that day, a frantic text reading:

From: Starboy♡

I FORGOT 2 SHOW U THE PICS OF JUPITER!!!!

To: Starboy♡

Send them to me :)

So that was what Richie had done, and now Eddie was scrolling through them to calm himself down as he sat on the bus on his way to Richie’s apartment. There was no reason to be nervous, he knew. The two of them had texted constantly since that day at the museum, absolutely hitting it off, talking about everything and nothing. At some point, Eddie had lied awake until close to 4am, giggling at his phone screen when angry knocking from Bill’s room had snapped him out of it.

“It’s 4am, guh-go to sleep!” came Bill’s muffled yelling from the other side of the thin wall, and Eddie had sheepishly texted Richie that he’d had to go.

Eddie had felt bad keeping Bill up at night, but then again, could Bill really blame him? Knowing as well as Eddie that it had been a while since Eddie had dated anyone, Bill should really be more understanding. Eddie was enough of a giggler already when it came to crushes (he was really like a 12 year old school-girl at heart sometimes), but Richie was legitimately funny as well, leaving Eddie smiling so wide his face hurt for hours after. He’d even cried laughing once.

And now, the two were finally meeting up for their stargazing date. It had really only been three days since they’d met, but it was more than long enough to Eddie.

Richie was meeting him at the bus stop so they could walk to their destination together, and Eddie felt unprepared. When the bus speakers announced that Eddie’s stop was next, he started messing with his hair in the window reflection, the lack of light making it hard. His heart was beating with anticipation, his shaking fingers struggling to get his hair to look the way he wanted.

But then the bus stopped with a sudden halt, and a couple of seconds passed before he realized, scrambling out of his seat in a stressed hurry. He was halfway out the door when he noticed his bag missing, and with an unnecessarily loud “wait!” screamed at the driver, making several passengers jump in alarm, he sprinted back. Soon enough he was stumbling out the door of the bus, the handles of his tote bag tangled. He was struggling to get it over his shoulder when he heard laughter.

Eddie stopped in his tracks, already feeling the heat spreading across his cheeks as his eyes landed on Richie. Tall and mesmerizing with the telescope over his shoulder, he was smiling widely at Eddie.

“You…” Eddie shrank. “You saw that?”

“Uh huh”, Richie laughed.

“No, you didn’t”, Eddie argued.

“Oh, but I did.” Richie stepped in front of Eddie, staring down at him for just a moment.

“Damn it”, Eddie grumbled.

Richie just laughed before bending down to plant a soft kiss on Eddie’s cheek, hand gently placed on the side of Eddie’s neck. “Well, hi then.”

“Hi”, Eddie smiled as Richie pulled away.

“There’s a hill just past there.” He pointed towards some houses. “And I brought some light snacks and hot chocolate.”

They started walking, Richie leading the way.

“Sounds nice.”

“Also some blankets, and uh”, Richie rubbed the back of his neck, “I brought wine? Just in case you wanted that, although we’ll have to drink it from plastic cups.”

“Wine sounds great”, Eddie peaked a shy glance at Richie. “Do you need a hand with anything? I can carry your backpack.”

“No, I’m okay, I do this all the time.” They smiled at each other, hands brushing as they continued walking.

It wasn’t more than a ten-minute walk until they were standing on top of a small hill, away from all the houses, secluded and surrounded by stars.

Richie dumped his backpack on the grass, already starting to set up his telescope carefully. With a small glance up towards the sky, Eddie could feel all air leave his lungs. Never had he seen so many stars, thousands of glimmering dots decorating the sky.

“Wow”, he whispered.

“Beautiful, right?” Richie stepped up next to him. “The streetlights really ruin the sky on nights like this. When you get far enough away, it’s pretty amazing how many stars you can really see.”

“Yeah”, Eddie mumbled, eyes still locked on the black cover above, unable to stop staring. He could feel his heart slowing down into a steady beat, air filling his lungs in a way he hadn’t felt in a while. It was like finally being able to breathe, and he could feel tears well up in his eyes for a second, tranquility heavy in his chest. All at once it felt like he was pulled down to earth and flying at the same time, and it was all too much.  “I…” He stopped, speechless.

“I know the feeling.”

They stood looking up for a second, silence settling over them.

“I’ve set it up, if you wanna see?” Richie’s voice was quiet, softly pulling Eddie out of his daze.

Finally Eddie looked down to meet Richie’s eyes and was met with a nervous smile, crooked teeth biting down on the bottom lip. “Yeah.”

They walked up to the telescope, Richie pointing up the sky. “Do you see those stars over there? With the four stars like a square and three stars making a tail? Kinda looks like a wagon.”

Eddie followed Richie’s finger, and soon enough, he could see it. “Big dipper, right?”

“Oh, look at you having some knowledge on stars, huh?” Richie was nodding, impressed.

“I know some.” Eddie shrugged, a small smile forming on his lips.

“Well, the stars forming the Big Dipper are the seven brightest stars in Ursa Major, which you can also see if you look closely.” He pointed to the telescope for Eddie to peak into.

As Eddie looked closer, Richie talked, mentioning all the names of the stars, guiding Eddie all across the sky and its constellations for the next half hour.

With a careful hand placed on Eddie’s back, he pointed out the brightest stars, rambling about their history, how long they’d been burning, how long until they’d fade, why they had the names they did. And at some point, it all mushed together in Eddie’s brain, just like in the museum with Bill’s art. But the way Richie was waving his arms around, eyes lighting up just like the stars above was utterly endearing. Eddie was already falling in love.

“And now!” Richie clapped his hands together. “For the main entrée.”

Eddie giggled, a hand covering his mouth.

Richie’s excited smile faded into a softer one as he looked down at Eddie. “Holy shit you’re cute.”

Feeling a blush coming, Eddie looked away. “You’re the one who’s cute”, he mumbled.

“What?” Richie leaned closer. “Couldn’t hear ya there, Eds.”      

“I said…” Eddie sighed. “You’re the one who’s cute.”

Richie’s eyes widened, apparently not expecting that. For a few moments, he opened and closed his mouth, seeming to try to come up with a response. Then he ducked his head, a quick movement, but Eddie still caught the grin he was sprouting.

“The way you talk about the stars and all that, how passionate you are and wanting to show me, it’s really cute”, Eddie continued and smiled shyly when Richie looked back up.

“I’m”, Richie shrugged. “I, uhm, I don’t really know how to respond to that.”

“That’s okay”, Eddie turned back towards the telescope. “But at least now you know.”

“I guess.”

Eddie could still feel Richie’s gaze on him, eyes burning into the side of his face.

“So what was that you said about a main entrée?”

“Oh, right!” Richie started moving the telescope around and changing its direction, going between looking into it and up at the sky. After a couple of seconds, he stepped back. “There.”

He pointed out a swirly line of stars. “If you look into the telescope you can see them more clearly, but those are the stars forming Scorpio.”

“Like the star sign?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.”

After looking at the constellation for a few moments, Eddie felt a soft push on his bicep. He stepped away from the telescope, Richie taking over and once again moving it around, seeming to look for something specific.

“And then, if we just move it a little bit”, he mumbled to himself before pulling away with a satisfied smile. “Look now.”

Eddie peaked into the telescope again, met with a bright star in the center. It was the most prominent one he’d seen so far. Starting to get confused as to why exactly this star was more special than all the others, he almost pulled away when he realized that maybe this wasn’t even a star at all.

“Is that?”

“It is”, Richie chuckled.

“Wow.”

And with some focus and concentration, Eddie was sure he could see the brow-toned colors of Jupiter blending together. Or maybe he was just imagining things.

“You probably can’t see much right now, but hold on, I can try adjusting a bit.”

Eddie stepped away and as Richie tinkered with the telescope, he glanced up at the sky, eyes settling on the gleaming planet just above the Scorpio constellation. And with a sudden awareness that the glorious Jupiter, Richie’s favorite planet, was right there, he inhaled sharply. Massive and breathtaking yet oh so small from where they were standing, and it was right there; not just a picture anymore. It was real, and Eddie was looking right at it.

“There, you should be able to see it better now.”

Eddie took a look, and for sure there it was. And it was so obvious now; the planet beautiful even from this simple view.

“It’s right there”, Eddie whispered. “What the fuck.”

A bark of a laugh made Eddie pull away to look over at Richie.

“It’s crazy, right?”

Eddie nodded frantically, eyed wide. “Yes, holy shit, I don’t even know how to react to that.”

Richie put his hands in his pockets. “We can just lie down on the blanket and look at the stars from here? You want wine, right?”

“Yes, please.”

The two of them sat down, both turned towards the other with their knees touching. Eddie got to talk to Richie about what he did too, working as a mechanic and rambling about his love for cars with Richie chiming in whenever he could.

“Maybe you could show me how they work and all that sometime?” His smile was nervous, as if he wasn’t sure Eddie wanted to meet again.

“I’d love that”, Eddie put his arms around his knees, pulling them close to his chest. “Dunno if it’s gonna be very interesting, probably boring.”

“Eddie”, Richie interrupted, scooting closer, “you just let me ramble about stars and constellations for an hour straight. I’d love for you to show me cars and, uhm, motors and stuff.”

Eddie nodded, head tilted to the side. “Okay.”

“Yeah?” Richie was leaning in closer, eyes flickering down to look at Eddie’s lips.

“Yeah.”

Then Eddie closed the gap, their lips meeting in a soft kiss, Eddie catching Richie’s bottom lip between his. Butterflies erupted in his stomach, all of his focus on the wetness of Richie’s mouth, the two of them fitting together perfectly. A hand landed on Eddie’s waist, pulling him closer, and Eddie’s heart was beating faster and faster for each second passing.

Something wet poked at the underside of his upper lip, and Eddie opened up to meet Richie’s tongue with his own. Soon he was lying on his back, Richie hovering over him, fingers stroking at Eddie’s bare hip underneath his sweater.

Richie pulled away after a few more seconds, looking down at Eddie with warm eyes behind his glasses. Even in the dark, Eddie could spot the litter of freckles on his face, and could only imagine the freckles covering the rest of his body.

As Richie leaned down again, capturing Eddie’s lips once more, Eddie knew where the night was headed. And he couldn’t wait to get to know the stars on Richie’s body just like he’d gotten to know the stars scattered across the glittering sky they were lying underneath.

Taglist: @annoyingtozier, @spastuetheobsessedphylosopher, @constantreaderfool, @violetreddie, @rainbow-reddie, @tinyarmedtrex, @ripeddiekaspbrak, @fuzzylogik