#and dream has responded to situations in the past year in ways that are just. like straight up unsafe in some cases. and childish in others

[areus-in-a-little-cave]

To add to the previous part about Cat, Dream's choice to accuse her of being the burner has had insane negative impacts on her life. He genuinely, deeply harmed someone on a whim. Cat also does not want to be involved in this situation anymore, but just for clarity about Jaime's situation, I will be involving their tweets. I'd also like to add that Dream retracted his accusation against Cat of being the burner.

Also, to amend something, Jaime's situation was not reported to the police, it was reported to an agency for child exploitation.

From what I have seen of Dream's response, it's quite complicated and there are some issues worthy of noting.

Some notable things he did in the video:

He edited the video like it was a drama youtuber exposé on some fallen youtuber and not his response to multiple grooming allegations.

He compared him flirting (and possibly sexting) with his underage stans (as a 19 - 22 year old with 10 million+ subscribers to people 16/17 years old) to Phil and Kristin's relationship (a late 20s streamer with at most tens of viewers who held a platonic relationship with a viewer who was also in their late 20s for a least one year before beginning a romantic relationship). This is talked about my first post in this long post. It's a bad point.

He discussed many of his controversies, including his speedrunning, before the allegations against him (very strange to talk about how frequent of a liar he is before going on to say that he's not a liar).

*He admitted to having known Manatreed (accused domestic abuser who he added to the SMP for one day before Manatreed left when the allegations came out through doxxing) and apologized for how he reacted back then. (*I haven't seen much about this point, so take it with a grain of salt)

He talked about how several other CCs, like Ranboo and Wilbur, have had false allegations against them (which is interesting to me, as people like his close friend BBH, who has actively defended him, had false allegations as well, so I am curious why he chose Ranboo and Wilbur, but nevertheless).

He made up controversial messages between him and Pokimane, and him and XQC to show how easily you can fake messages without asking Pokimane or XQC for permission to do so or warning them about it? Essentially dragging them into the controversy for no reason, as the messages spread online, even though Dream did state they were fake (or at least implied heavily).

He included tweets against him which showed people's usernames, which reportedly lead to doxxing, in the same video where he apologizes for his previous statement about how doxxing didn't matter.

He talked about Jaime/burner22 and Amanda with a brief mention of Anastasia and no mention of Jay (even if Jay does not consider themselves a victim).

He apologized to Quackity, and reportedly admitted to the fact that he had been accusing Quackity of stealing the idea for USMP.

I would like to add that I have not watched the video in its entirety, but I believe that I have most of the key information from the portions I have seen.

When it comes to the allegations from Amanda, he showed the JSON chat logs from Snapchat. Except, he didn't show all of it. He showed snippets, specifically right before the supposed messages of him flirting with Amanda that we saw in Amanda's videos.

I don't personally use Snapchat, so here is the entire problem explained by someone who does. I've summarized it below.

Looking at the Snapchat logs he showed, they're out of order. The dates are inconsistent, when Snapchat data is chronological. Dream would have had to manually edit them to rearrange the order they're in.

There are also missing messages that exist in Amanda's videos that are not flirtatious or sexual, meaning that Amanda would have faked sending innocent, short messages with Dream when they in no way would benefit her narrative unless she was trying to build their platonic relationship? So either she added those in for that reason, or Dream removed them without realizing.

Amanda was recording her phone screen with another phone, and Dream confirmed that some of the Snapchat messages are real.

Dream's logs also fail to include any sort of reference to a media file, when it's confirmed that there are instances where pictures or other files were shared. It is very odd that these are missing.

Also, this thread showed yet another instance of Dream acting inappropriate towards Amanda that I had never seen.

[Image ID: a screenshot of a camera role that is showing a photo of a phone. The phone is open to Snapchat and shows Dream responding to a bikini photo of Amanda. He wrote "baddd bitch", "fine as HELL", "beach day?". End ID]

When asked about this photo and response, he deflected and talked about when he called her 'gorgeous as fuck'.

I'd also like to add that he once again says that Amanda messaged him from her personal and he didn't know any fan accounts of hers, but it was obvious that she was a devoted fan, as she said so in her first message to him on Instagram.

When it comes to Jaime, the situation is very complicated. Dream apparently had Keemstar helping him behind the scenes, which I just wanted to note due to arguments about the validity of the previous time Keemstar was involved.

There's a message sent to Keemstar from Jaime on Snapchat saying that Jaime did not release the information behind shared, and that it was shared without her consent. She does not consider herself groomed or a victim in any way, and also does not want to be involved.

Regardless of this, there was a large document released that showed evidence that Jaime was 16 and a fan at the time of Dream messaging them. Whether or not Jaime was groomed, it's very inappropriate for a 20 year old to be sending sexual messages with a 16 year old fan.

However, the allegations and their validity are being called into question.

In the video, Dream includes a person by the name of Sam (the previously blurred person in Cat's discord messages), who was the person who sent Jaime's messages to the burner. In the video, they talked very differently about the messages sent to Jaime than they did in screenshots of the conversation between them and the burner.

Most of this information is coming from these threads from Cat, who does not believe Dream to be a groomer. By their own words, they're not 100% sure about Amanda and Anastasia, but they've received personal information about the situation with Jaime that they cannot share. They believe that the burner did not lie about Jaime, but they were purposefully mislead.

It's unclear why Sam has lied repeatedly, but reportedly, they left out several key details when informing the burner of the situation. After the burner responded by saying they did not understand who Sam had lied to (Dream or them), the burner deactivated their account.

Really, I think the best thing to be said about this is what Pyrocynical said, which is that this video probably will not change anyone's minds whether they're a fan of him or not. I doubt this post will either, but I am trying to document the situation for information purposes.

Remember you really don't have to have an opinion on everything, do whatever is safe for you and if this is stressing you, try to step back.

I feel that regardless of what you think of whether he groomed, sexted, or flirted with anyone underage or otherwise, his responses to this situation and the many other situations he has been in definitely show a pattern of behaviour in how he acts in his position. I still personally believe that he was acting inappropriately in messaging his fans and flirting with them (by his own words in his original response) and I still believe he should not have a platform.

I am so fucking angry about Dream stans (mostly on Twitter, though they are here) being like “can you BELIEVE people are upset that a minor 😱😱😱 was messaging with an ADULT!! LMAOO wait until they get into the real world and find out that 17 year olds can be friends with 25 year olds. Next they’re gonna call Tommy messaging Schlatt dangerous!!”

It was not that she was 17 and Dream was 20. The age gap was not the issue.

It was that Dream had a position of power over her and abused it. 

He knew he had this position from the very start, as she was a fan of his and their first messages with each other was her telling him how much his content had helped her through depression.

[Image ID: a screenshot of an Instagram direct message to Dream that reads “Hi, the chances of you seeing this are very slim, but I wanted to let you know that your content makes me sooo happy. Ive been really depressed lately, all thats going on in the world and in my life and your videos give me one more reason to stay. You know how people type “LMAO” and dont actually laugh? I actually sit in bed laughing when im watching you. That means a lot [Unclear emoji]. Love you Dream!❤️ -Amanda”. Dream replied and wrote “aw thank you for the kind words :)”. End ID]

This means that he knew full well that her wellbeing was somewhat dependant on his content. She says that his videos gave her one more reason to stay alive.

He confirmed that the Instagram messages are real. 

[Image ID: a screenshot of Dream’s twitlonger regarding the allegations that reads “The second thread had instagram dms from me, again, having friendly normal conversation and nothing inappropriate. I believe these message are real as well. Once”. End ID]

Thusly, the Snapchat messages that haven’t been deleted are, without a doubt, real, because he tells her the name of his private Snapchat in the Instagram messages. They cannot be ignored.

It is incredibly inappropriate for Dream to message her on Snapchat knowing that she was 17 and a fan at the time and that messages can easily be erased. That on its own would be uncomfortable, but he was talking to her in a flirtatious manner.

[Image ID: a screenshot of a Snapchat message by Dream/Clay that is a reply to a video sent by Amanda that reads “ur gorgeous as fuck”. End ID]

This is not normal, friendly behavior. Especially with a fan who is underage and has said that she is emotionally invested in his content.

This is predatory. Several girls have come forward. This proves that Dream not only has more than once, but likely will again, use his platform and power to engage in sexual relationships with underage girls.

He cannot have a platform anymore.

Please, read this post about the Snapchat messages, this post about why Tommy messaging Schlatt and other CCs was completely different, and these two threads about his response to the situation (thread one) (thread two) and how it was manipulative and more focused on his audience rather than adressing the allegations. 

This thread includes most of the information regarding the situation.

[lemonlover1110]

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬

Satoru Gojo

[Chapter 17] Father and Son

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Pairing: Satoru Gojo x f!Reader

Discord +18 - Twitter - Ko-Fi

Satoru tries to make up for the past four years of Ren’s life in a matter of weeks. His focus drastically changes, from his work to his son. He ignores the matter of so many people knowing before him, he avoids his mother and his so-called friends. His main and only priority is his son.

You both wish you could say that your relationship has gotten better, but you don’t really speak to each other unless it’s about the son you share. You’re hopeless that it’ll progress past what you have. Neither of you have the courage to bring up the situation, either way, your attention should be on Ren. 

Ren is finally meeting the man that he’s been dreaming of, and he’s getting to know his father after four years. You’re mostly excited for your son, while also regretting hiding it when you had the chance to tell him. Your relationship is the last thing on your mind– It’s certainly the last thing in Satoru’s mind.

He visits daily, bearing many gifts for his son. Satoru has become a regular at the toy store, buying something each day for his son, something that he thinks Ren would like. He hopes that material stuff will make up for the time wasted. Sometimes he brings some candy, but he doesn’t do it often. Satoru is still his father, he can’t just spoil him rotten, he also has to care for Ren’s wellbeing. He’s slowly growing accustomed to becoming a parent.

“What’s this, Ren?” Satoru holds up a cute white cat plush, one that Satoru always finds on the bed. He wonders if that’s the toy his son has had ever since he was a baby, he guesses it is since Satoru feels like he’s seen it in the background of a picture before.

“It’s whiskers.” Ren answers, taking the plush from his father and putting it back on the bed. That’s before he turns to other matters. Ren doesn’t mind sharing his toys (because you’ve been the one raising him), but whiskers is someone that Ren doesn’t like anyone touching. Anyone and anything can get the toy dirty, and when that happens, you refuse to let the toy on the bed, at least not before you wash it and get it clean again.

Satoru doesn’t bother to ask if that’s the plush that he sleeps with, because that’s most certainly a yes. Ren wants to talk about other important matters though so Satoru gives his undivided attention to his son. Ren then asks, “Are you sleeping over?”

“Uhm… No.” Satoru answers. You most certainly wouldn’t want that. Plus, Satoru has a wife at home who has her suspicions that something is going on. He doubts that she’ll care too much, but he wants to keep Ren protected from the world. If Sayo finds out, so does her family, and if her family knows, the whole world will know. “But I’ll stay until you fall asleep, Ren.”

“I want you to stay.” Ren sticks out his bottom lip, obviously disappointed that his father isn’t staying for the night. You let him on your bed all the time and you sleep together, why can’t he do the same thing with his father? Satoru can’t help but feel bad, so he thinks of how to respond to cheer him up.

You commented how you had plans of going on a small trip with Ren before summer ended, but summer evidently has come to an end. It’s colder now and the leaves are changing color. Satoru finally decides, “We can go on a trip soon, and we’ll be together all day every day.”

“Really?” The little boy’s eyes light up, making the biggest smile come to Satoru’s lips. Satoru now wonders how he was ever happy without him– Well, with you… But that memory slowly fades away since your relationship is now filled with awkwardness. Satoru nods his head in response. He can lie and make it a business trip, it’s not an issue for him really.

“We’ll have to talk to your mommy first, honey. Then we can plan it all.” Satoru answers, and Ren turns around to go look for you. Satoru feels awkward sitting alone on a bed that’s far too low and small for him. He stands up and follows Ren. They both look for you around the apartment until they land in your bedroom. The bathroom door is closed, and Ren immediately knows what to do.

Ren opens the door to the bathroom, and you immediately make eye contact with Satoru. Your face grows hot of embarrassment, and obviously Ren doesn’t see an issue with it. Ren’s issue is when he actually steps into the bathroom, and he just has to comment, “It stinks.”

“Yeah, I wonder why. Get out, Ren, and close the door!” You raise your voice, your embarrassment getting the best of you. Ren closes the door, leaving you to it, and Satoru chuckles. He ruffles Ren’s hair as both walk out of your bedroom.

“You gotta learn how to knock, baby. Give your mommy some privacy.” Satoru says, but it goes one ear out the other. Ren isn’t going to knock, you’re his mommy. If you want your privacy you better lock the door. They take a seat in the living room, where Ren grabs the remote to put on a movie. He knows how to get the movie he wants, even when he’s just learning how to read and spell.

“Where do you want to go?” Satoru asks, wondering where his son wants to go. Ren drops the remote on the couch, putting his tiny index finger on his chin, humming and tilting his head to the side as he thinks of the answer. 

“The beach.” Ren answers, but it’s cold. They can go out of the country though, go somewhere warm. He needs to talk to you first, of course. When you finally walk out of your bedroom (after mentally cursing your son for not having any manners when others are around), you go to the living room to see what they needed.

“What did you need, Ren?” You ask, and he looks excitedly at you. Satoru is the one that speaks up for him though,

“We want to go on a trip, can we?” You almost laugh since Satoru sounds like a hopeful child.

“Where are you two going?” You respond. You can’t really say no because Satoru is supposed to have equal authority as Ren’s father.

“Ren wants to go to the beach.” Satoru answers, Ren nodding in agreement. You cross your arms, your brows furrowing.

“It’s too cold to go to the beach, do you not have any other place in mind?” You point out, making Ren pout. The pout doesn’t last long though since Satoru says,

“We can go to another country. Somewhere warm with better beaches.” You’re certainly not convinced since you doubt you’re part of the plan. You’re not letting your baby boy in another country without you– Well, technically he’d be with his father, but you’re still not convinced. Until Satoru says, “Of course, you’re included! I doubt Ren would go anywhere without you.”

“I wouldn’t.” Ren affirms, and you laugh. 

“If you plan everything, then sure. We can go on a trip. You need to give me time off though– Paid time.” You say, and Satoru nods in response. He does pretty much everything you ask of him, and you certainly can’t complain about it. Ren focuses on putting on one of his favorite movies, and you begin to walk to the kitchen, asking, “Are you staying for dinner, Satoru?”

“Yeah.” Satoru answers. He’d definitely rather eat here with his son and you than dine alone at home. He helps Ren put the movie on, and they both begin to watch the movie. He’s watched this movie around five times the past week, and to be honest, Satoru is sick of it. But he’ll watch it because Ren loves it. 

He’s grateful when you call his name, and he has to tell Ren that you need him, so he can’t stay to watch the movie. Satoru walks to the kitchen, and he finds you trying to reach something that’s far too high for you. Satoru’s eyes land on the white bowl and he reaches for it before handing it to you. You mutter a thank you, and you expect him to go back to Ren, but he doesn’t. You then tell him, “That’s all I need from you, you can go.”

“Do you need help with anything else? You know I love Ren but… I’m sick of that movie.” Satoru answers, earning a chuckle from you. You think about what he can do for a moment, and he patiently waits for you to answer.

“You can make the salad, and then set the table.” You respond, and you think you’ll regret it for a moment. Satoru has had everything done for him, he probably doesn’t know how to cut a cucumber; but then you remember that he lived alone for some time, he had to cook for himself for a while. Satoru immediately gets to work, opening the fridge to get all the vegetables that he needs. He looks around the cabinets and drawers for the cutting board and knife, and he quietly begins to cut the vegetables.

“Have you talked to Shoko?” Satoru asks, washing the lettuce throughout. Pretty much everything is wrong between the two of you, but you can’t just stand in awkward silence every single day. You have to talk to each other, after all, you doubt you’ll stop seeing each other.

“I haven’t. I’m not going to for a while.” You reply. In Satoru’s eyes, she did nothing wrong. He’s glad that Shoko told him, otherwise, he probably wouldn’t be with Ren. But in a sense, he understands why you don’t want to talk to her. “Tell her to stop calling my phone because I’m not going to answer. I’ll call her when I’m ready.”

“I’m not really talking to her either.” He responds.

“Is it because she has the hots for your wife?” You blurt out, and you bite your tongue the moment the words leave your lips. Satoru’s brows raise, definitely surprised by your words. You can’t be serious, can you? Before he can ask more questions about it, you change the topic, “Speaking of… When are you going to tell Sayo about Ren? She’s your wife, she has to find out eventually.”

“Maybe after our trip… I’m not sure how to tell her.” Satoru shares, and you understand that it’s a tough situation. He has to figure out a way to tell his wife of almost five years that he had a kid that’s almost five– And he never cheated, he just found out about him. This was all before their marriage. It’s definitely hard. Satoru clears his throat, mustering up the courage to ask about Suguru, someone else that he has been ignoring. “So… How are you and Suguru? Are you still seeing each other?”

“We’ve been busy, but we’re still… Talking.” You answer. You won’t lie and say that you don’t feel nauseous every time you talk to him, your heart nearly beating out of your chest for the simple fact that you lied to him. He has to find out that you lied eventually. “Have you talked to him?”

“I’m not talking to him. I’ve been ignoring him. I’ve been ignoring everyone.” Satoru responds. He puts the knife down, watching you as you begin to cook. He bites down his lip, holding back on saying a couple of things that are on his mind. About this situation, about you and Suguru, maybe an apology. Satoru has been a complete mess with so many things going in his mind, but not voicing any of them. He does have to ask one question though, “Is Ren the reason why you quit school?”

“Yeah…” You feel embarrassed to say it. “I couldn’t afford both. It was either my baby or school, and that was an easy choice.”

“Sorry…” He mutters, and it’s barely audible but you hear it. You don’t really pay attention to it, in the end it was your decision. Given the option, you’d do it all over again. 

[g0dlyunsub]

hey!!! Ugh I just love your account! I have a request for Spencer Reid x fem reader!! Can you do one where he is always working and it makes the reader upset bc he is cancelling dates and coming home late and kinda neglects her feelings and doesn't really notice how much it affects her and how sad she gets and then he misses their anniversary dinner and she breaks and tells him that it makes her upset when he's gone all the time and he just feels so awful bc he's so in love with her and never wants her to feel that way because of him and apologizes and reassures her and makes sure she feels loved!!

ty for the request and i loved the idea for this one!

wishful thinking.

pairing :: spencer x fem!reader

warnings :: angst with a fluffy ending; very mild makeout session at the end :3

word count :: 2.4k

author’s note :: i kind of giggled at the ending as i was writing it, but i’m pretty proud of how this one turned out!

accompanying song :: neverthere by xander

spencer’s phone is quite literally the bane of your existence.

you know what to expect whenever it rings, so you hate when it actually does – its earthquaking vibrations and trilled beeps tear the happiness straight out of you.

it’s the second date in a row that he’s had to pass, and you wonder if you should just stop trying so hard. was it selfish to want to have him all to yourself, to have him seated right across from you, sharing your laughter as you pass him his plated pasta? were you expecting too much, imagining a serene life with him ten years down the road, perhaps with kids or pets of your own? was it unfair to think that you could craft a lie, telling him your stomach hurt really bad, so bad that you would have to curl up on the floor and pray he’d stay by your side just this once to comfort you?

all you ever wanted was spencer. more specifically, you wanted spencer during your first three dates, when he’d silence all of his phone calls, and wave them off like nothing even though you insisted he take them. maybe if you didn’t bring up the importance of taking work calls, none of this would have ever happened. maybe it was all coming back to bite you for your non-confrontational nature, since you could never plead him to actually stay.

but he’s your boyfriend… and that’s all that matters, right? after all, he has lives to save – people whose names are called out during prayers day and night by their loved ones as they cling on to the sliver of hope that your boyfriend and his team promise during the darkest hours. granted, spencer would drop everything if you were in a similar situation, but none of your problems have actually been life-threatening. but a girl can dream, can’t she? your first anniversary date was when spencer promised to make amends, a formal compensation for all of the past dates that he missed and left you feeling empty on your shared bed, stains of mascara chalked up on your dry cheeks.

“i’m so sorry, honey, i’ve just been… called in for work,” spencer stands, dusting the napkin that was folded nicely on his lap. you watch as he takes a sip of his glass of water, then walks over to you to plant a kiss on your forehead.

he runs his fingers along the velvety texture of the sleeves of your dress, and you offer him a weak smile.

“it’s okay, duty calls, right?” you feel the tears surfacing and you have to fight yourself to not blink. it’s too early to cry.

“i-it’s a really bad one this time, and i hate to do this on such an important day-” spencer begins to apologize frantically, and his face marks an expression of genuine concern with his brows furrowing and lips twitching.

“it’s okay. you need to go, i understand.” you state plainly, and you immediately feel shameful – your words are too assertive and snarly for how you normally respond.

spencer pauses briefly, fidgeting with his fingers, before he gives a slight nod in your direction. he then walks over to the couch, grabs a book, and tightens the clasps on his bag. 

“i’ll be back as fast as i can,” spencer utters quietly and walks out of the door. when the apartment door locks with a click, you break down immediately.

at first, the tears fall one by one. but then, a salty stream evident of pure emotional wreckage makes its way into the slight gap of your lips, and it’s an unstoppable domino effect. your shoulders shudder and heave as you struggle to catch breaths in between, and you splutter cries of your boyfriend’s name. 

maybe it would’ve been better to just stay as conversational partners, to exchange updates once in a while when he’d actually commit to a time. it was your fault for getting your hopes up high, and all of this – fanciful dinner and dressing your best for the occasion – was wishful thinking. you just didn’t want to admit it.

“y/n?” 

you look up to see spencer in front of the doorway, and his bag that was barely holding on to his shoulder drops to the floor with a thud.

you quickly look away, brushing the tears away with one arm and sniffle before choking out a response.

“i thought you left already, why are you here?” again, your words come out icier than you had hoped and hit you with a sharp pang of guilt.

spencer narrows his eyes ever so slightly as if he’s scrutinizing you, observing your body language. it doesn’t take a genius to know that you’re upset.

“i was going to. realized i forgot-,”

he clears his throat when you raise your eyebrows and proceeds, "i misplaced my wallet."

he slips out of his loafers, shoving aside his pair of converses that lie adjacent to your pretty pair of heels. he walks over to you, and you realize that you’re still seated at the dining table. you must look so stupid right now, waiting as if he’d just be returning from a bathroom break.

“i need to head out, but i promise… i promise we’ll talk about this really soon. we’ll have the anniversary dinner and-”

“did you even try?” you blurt out, and you look up at him with your puffy eyes glazed with tears.

a deathly silence clouds over the entire apartment, and you’re thinking of two options: leave the apartment and go run to a friend’s place, or confront him and see whether making amends – again, wishful thinking – would be possible.

“y/n. please believe me when i say that i’ve tried to, i’ve tried-”

you slam a hand to the table before standing up, your face twisting into an expression of outrage.

“no, because then you would’ve silenced it. you would’ve cut the call, just like you used to.” you fire your words at him as your hair sticks to the drying tears on your cheeks, and you begrudgingly wipe at your face. 

a slow sigh escapes from spencer’s lips, and he looks at you with those eyes – the eyes that seemingly warn you, saying you don’t want to go there. not right now.

but you double down on him, the rage fueling your words as you lash out. 

“it was just this one time. i only wanted you to stay for dinner just this one time.” you helplessly drop your hands to your sides, the tears landing on the floor with soft plops.

“i know. and i’m terribly sorry.” spencer bites his bottom lip and takes a step toward you. but you take a step back, and maybe that pulls a string between the two of you, because you can see how his shoulders tense up.

“look, can we talk about this when i get back? i’ll make it up to you, i swear.” he combs through his hair, the stress almost palpable as it leaks from his shaking fingers.

while you know he has to head out again, the way he so easily brushes off the conversation like it’s something he doesn’t even want to think about feeds into your disbelief. soon, however, your anger subsides into a tired frown. 

“i don’t know, you might come home late… when i’m asleep or something.” you look at the wall where a photo of the two of you is framed, and you weakly smile at how happy you seemed then. 

“i’ll give you a call, is that okay?” he searches your face for any signs of approval, but you’re zoned out thinking about the past, of how everything used to be.

“whatever, just go.” you wave him off and walk to the couch, where you lie down and turn against him to face the plush fabric.

spencer sighs, and his hand looms over your head momentarily before he grabs his wallet from the table. you hear a faint sorry trail from behind as he leaves the room, and your nails claw at the arms of the couch before the darkness cradles you once again.

it’s 10:30 pm, and you hear the doorknob click again. you had just cleaned up the dishes after eating dinner alone and left his portion in the fridge. you were now changed into your pajamas and getting ready for your night routine.

you peep out of your bedroom door to see spencer, his suit all wet. he looks at you as he takes off his shoes, and a sullen expression paints his face. did it start raining after he left? you realize that you were mostly cooped up in the bedroom since his departure, so you wouldn’t have known.

bravely looking up at him in the eye, you state: “you came back early.” you hate how unwelcoming you sound in his own home.

he pauses before he sets his wet bag on the floor and removes his blazer jacket to throw over a chair. 

he approaches you, hands in his pockets and hair twisted in matted curls. 

“hm.” he grabs a towel from the closet and makes his way to the shower, brushing past your shoulder. you feel an icy shudder spread through your spine after he closes the bathroom door.

was he giving you the silent treatment right now? 

you hear the water start from the bathroom and you sink into your bed while turning to twist the lamp lights on.

after all that torturous waiting you went through, he was giving you the silent treatment?

fifteen minutes later, a knock reverberates from the other side of the bedroom door, and even though you don’t respond, spencer steps in. he’s changed into a t-shirt and black pajama pants, and he drops next to you on the bed.

“i’m taking the week off.” 

the sentence startles you, and it’s something so unexpected you choke on your own saliva.

“what, what do you mean you’re taking the week off?” you ask him, finally turning to face him in the eyes. his brown irises blaze into your own.

“i’ve been pushing off everything you wanted to do with me — things that I wanted to do with you — and i’ve just been…” he turns away to play with the wrinkles on his pants as he speaks, picking out the dust that lies embedded between the folds.

he pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a deep sigh. he continues, “i don’t know if it’s all worth it.”

silence casts a blanket over the two of you.

“spence,” you say after a while, and hesitantly lay a hand on his thigh.

“nothing’s more important in the world to me than you. you and your happiness. i know you love this job and i know you love helping people. you’re such a kind hearted man, and it’s why i fell in love with you in the first place.”

when spencer gives you no response, you confess: “spence, i get jealous sometimes.”

this time his eyes widen, and he looks at you.

“you do?” he asks softly, peering into your eyes and you cave instantly. 

“of course i do. it’s… everybody wants you, spencer. we all need you, whether we realize it or not.”

he scoffs.

“but i only want you.”

his voice is raspy yet mellow at the same time, the smoothest stream of sweetness seeping through your eardrums. god. you can never stay mad at this gorgeous man, the same man that made you cry on numerous occasions just counting the past week.

“you need to do more than that, if you… you know.” you quietly murmur as you fidget with the hem of your nightgown.

“i know,” he speaks with a hushed tone. “i told hotch, and i told him it was going to happen whether he liked it or not. the demands of this job are… tough, but i don’t want to miss out on all the things we planned together. i won’t.”

you start bawling right when he delivers the last word, and all the tears that you were holding back spill over your flushed cheeks. your boyfriend immediately leans in to console you, pulling you into a tight embrace as his chin rests on top of your head. 

it’s okay, he murmurs reassuringly. you ease into his touch, and you realize how much you missed this. how much you missed spending time with him.

his left hand tugs lightly at your soft hair while his right rubs your back in smooth circles. 

“i missed you,” you speak with a hushed voice, looking up into his eyes as a glassy coat of tears blur your vision. 

he cups your face with his hands before whispering, “i missed you too.”

you continue to blabber words of love-stained anguish but he cuts you off short, pulling you in for a short kiss on your lips, which are now tainted with your tears.

“you taste… salty,” he whispers, giving you a slight smile as he brushes off the rest of your tears that weigh down on your eyelashes.

“it’s because of you, silly,” you drawl as you taste the salty residue of your tears.

yeah, spencer responds hesitantly. but he’s wearing a small smile, tilting his head to one side as his eyes emit a glint of tranquilizing peace.

he reaches into his pajama pocket and takes out a piece of candy. you curiously watch as his fingers quickly remove the wrapper, revealing a glazed cherry-flavored sphere. 

“may i?” he asks, and his faint voice is a gravitational force that you can’t resist.

you briefly respond with a lazy hm? before he plops the candy into your mouth and kisses you again. the sweetness explodes like fireworks with his warm breath, and the sticky layer of sugar melts like acid on your intertwined tongues. you let out a satisfied hum when you pull back, and it’s undeniably attractive the way spencer licks the corner of his lips.

a tear falls from your eye again, and this time, it’s not out of sorrow.

[bleue-flora]

[original post]

@marshymashers hope it's okay to respond to you in a post, my answer was getting too long, so here we are. :)

First off, Tubbo isn't autistic. He has stated on multiple occasions [clip] [clip] that he isn't and it is none of our business to question him or diagnose him. That is incredibly disrespectful to Tubbo and anyone actually diagnosed with autism. He has stated that all the way back in 2022 that he is not, so please refrain from going around diagnosing people in real life and spreading false information. It is none of our business what diagnosis someone does or does not have unless they want to come forward and tell us.

Yes, Tubbo is dyslexic, as am I, which does mean he is neurodivergent, however dyslexia and autism are not the same.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): "Autism spectrum disorder is a neurological and developmental disorder that affects how people interact with others, communicate, learn, and behave." [link]

According to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NIH): "Some of the most common learning disabilities are the following: Dyslexia. People with dyslexia have problems with reading words accurately and with ease (sometimes called “fluency”) and may have a hard time spelling, understanding sentences, and recognizing words they already know." [link]

In my post, notice I am not talking about neurodivergence as a whole, but specifically autism and the effect it has on communication and behavior. I also did not and have not said that autism excuses behavior nor is any type of shield to be used to paint Dream as innocent. Again, my point here was not about the wrongdoings, but about the communication I have seen over the past few days that speaks to a pattern that I have experienced over and over for 20 years that only after my diagnosis and people willing to hear me out as a result has subsided. I am talking about a 3 hour stream where Tubbo and Dream repeated the same things to each other over and over and couldn't seem to understand each other no matter how many times they said it. That is what I am talking about. Because I believe not that autism should be used as a shield but as a lens to view the situation more clearly.

All I'm saying is if people went into the discussion with the mindset that this could be a moment of autism misunderstanding not malicious or manipulative intent, then it would be more productive. Instead over and over the assumption is that Dream has ill intent so everything that is rumored and hinted at or said is viewed under that lens.

For example, it is a very common characteristic of an autistic person (or person with adhd) to mix up names. So, on one hand, people could see Dream calling Tubbo "Tommy" multiple times in that stream as Dream not seeing them as separate people and only seeing Tubbo as Tommy's best friend, and using Tubbo as a way to talk to Tommy, or whatever. But in reality, I can say with absolute certainty that Dream just screwed up the names on accident, as is common place for autistic people. There was no ill intent behind it in the slightest, it was simply an accident. That's all. Do you see the difference? By constantly viewing Dream under a lens of malicious intention we are mistaking what could just be a more innocent moment of autistic difference for wrongdoing. And all I'm saying is that until people give Dream the benefit of the doubt or grace that it could be an autism miscommunication, things will never resolve or change.

And yes, execution is at the end of the day the result and it doesn't matter whether you meant to hurt someone or not, you still did. But knowing intention is the difference between Dream being an imperfect autistic guy versus a movie villain. And whether rumors about him should be taken at face value to be true or whether we should give Dream the benefit of the doubt first.

In addition, if we don't take into consideration that Dream sees a situation differently because he's autistic and therefore an explanation of his wrongdoing may not make sense to him, then we are going to just assume he isn't taking accountabilty when in fact, he really just doesn't understand. In the same way, that Tubbo doesn't understand his reasoning.

For example, with the perception that Dream and his friends are misongynistic and sexist:

Tubbo's reasoning:

there are multiple accusations you haven't refuted of you calling a woman a whore + you singled out Aimsey and Hannahrose in your stream + you disrespected Caiti in that situation by getting involved and sending hateful fans after her + downplayed your involvement and the situation's point by not including it in your vid => you are sexist and misongynistic and need to clean up your act with how you treat woman.

Dream's reasoning:

there are multiple accusations you don't refute of you calling a woman a whore there is one accusation that I don't remember but don't want to call someone a liar, from awhile ago when I used whore more in my joking slang with my close friends + you singled out Aimsey and Hannahrose in your stream in my stream I mentioned many creators, including Aimsey and Hannahrose, to highlight my points about rumors, misconceptions and mispeaking + you disrespected Caiti in that situation by getteing involved and sending hate after her I provided information as I was a witness of a situation involving my best friend + downplayed your involvement and the situation's point by not including it in your vid I didn't include it in the video as Tommy didn't call me out for doing something in it and the situation is George's and Caiti's to discuss not mine => you are sexist and misgynistic and need to clean up your act with how you treat woman contrary to Tommy's statement I am not sexist or misogynistic, nor are my friends as there is no proof.

I don't think Dream is trying to dodge accountability, because (unlike some creators) over and over we have seen him own up, apologize and admit he was wrong or out of line and try to make things right in a reasonable manner. He has proven that he can and does take accountability, in this instance he just simply doesn't see why he needs to as he doesn't follow Tubbo's train of thought and reaches a different conclusion, in the same way Tubbo isn't following Dream's train of thought... anyways I really hope that makes sense or clears things up for at least someone lol. :)

[kiarastromboli]

I missed u (Matt Sturniolo x Y/n)

Masterlist.

Warning: Smut content, don’t like it = don’t read it :)

Summary: You and your boyfriend Matt haven't seen each other for two weeks, and it's becoming unbearable for both of you.

•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•

Matt and I have been a couple for over a year now. Since the beginning of our relationship, we've always been very close, to the point where I don't think we've ever gone more than 2 days without seeing each other until last week.

I didn't think his absence would affect me so much. This week, Matt has been particularly busy with his YouTube channel, and he and his brothers have had quite a few projects to manage lately. As for me, I've been swamped with work; we're entering the Christmas season, so my job is busier than the rest of the year.

Anyway, it's been more than two weeks now since I've had the chance to see my boyfriend, and I feel like I'm going crazy. I have trouble sleeping without him, and I won't lie about the fact that I really want him right now. I know he feels the same way. The only times we've had the chance to call each other in the past two weeks were for him to relieve some pressure because, according to him, he "can't do it alone."

This leaves me desperate in the situation. I've tried to distract myself by masturbating several times, but it doesn't help. I'm incredibly horny, and the only thing that could help me right now is Matt.

I was quietly in bed at 1 a.m., unable to sleep as usual, when I was alerted by a message from my boyfriend on my phone.

I knew teasing Matt wasn't a very good idea, firstly because he's been just as horny as me lately, so I knew it would frustrate him. Secondly, it would end up frustrating me too...

I could see Matt starting to type and then stopping, as if he was hesitant to send me a message. After waiting for several minutes, I decided to put my phone down when I realized he wouldn't respond.

Well, at least that's what I thought before receiving another notification on my phone...

I got up from my bed to walk over to my wardrobe. I pulled out an assortment of lingerie I had bought a few days ago for this special occasion, especially for Matt. It was a blue lace set, Matt's favorite color. I knew it would drive him crazy to see me in it. The garter belt gave me a goddess-like figure, and the bra held my chest perfectly, although I knew Matt wouldn't waste a second to tear it off. I was already completely wet at the thought.

Barely finishing tidying up my room, he was already there knocking on my door. I hurried to run and open it for him in my little outfit.

"Hi-" he began to say before I cut him off, pulling him towards me by his collar and kissing him as I opened the door for him to enter.

"So eager," he said, disconnecting our lips with a smirk.

He took a step back to observe me in more detail when he saw what I was wearing. I could see his pupils dilate. I spun around to give him a better view, and he grabbed me by the waist after running his hand over his face to make sure he wasn't dreaming.

"Do you like what you see?" I asked, smiling.

His grip on my waist tightened as I locked eyes with him. He licked his lips and bit them, continuing to look me up and down.

"Do you remember your safe word?" he asked, bringing his hand to my throat to force me to look him in the eyes.

"Ketchup," I said, chuckling to tease him. He tightened his hand around my throat, eliciting a soft moan from my lips.

"I'm serious, y/n. What's your safe word?" he said in an intimidating voice, bringing his lips close to mine.

"Hmm, red," I said in a tiny voice, biting my lips. I could feel a warmth building between my legs just from his voice.

His eyes left mine to gaze at my slightly swollen, rosy lips from our previous kiss. A smile played on the corner of his face before he started advancing towards my bedroom, not letting go of my throat.

"Kiss me," I begged when we reached my room, and the back of my legs touched the side of my bed.

"What did you say? I think I misheard," he replied, amused by my impatience and desire.

"Please, Matt, kiss me," I pleaded, frustrated that he wouldn't press his lips against mine again. I looked pathetic, and he loved it.

He took off his t-shirt. "Show me that you deserve it," he said, chuckling before pushing me onto the bed so that I sat right in front of him.

I raised my eyes to him, giving him an innocent doe-eyed look. He looked at me as if he were a predator, and I was his prey. My eyes drifted to the bulge in his gray sweatpants in front of me before returning my gaze to him.

"Don't play shy with me, baby. I know you're dying for it. Take it," he said in an authoritative tone, grabbing my hair in a ponytail to clear my face while licking his lips.

I brought both of my hands to the elastic of his sweatpants, pulling them down to his ankles, leaving him in his boxers. He was bulging in his boxers; I had almost forgotten how sizable it was. Not too big to be unmanageable, but just big enough to fill me where I needed it. However, it had been a while since we had been intimate, and I already dreaded the pain I would likely feel when he penetrates me.

"Stop looking at it like that, suck it before I shove it down your throat, y/n. Don't make me wait," he said, abruptly pulling on my hair, making me sigh in surprise.

I started to palm him through his boxers, looking him straight in the eyes. I could see the intense desire burning in his eyes, making me smile in the moment.

"This is the last time I'm warning you, y/n. Stop teasing me, take it," he said, trying to hold back a frustrated moan when I removed his boxers.

"Or what?" I said, smiling playfully. I wanted to push him to the edge; I knew he wouldn't be gentle with me, and that's what I wanted.

He smiled, licking his lips to suppress a chuckle.

"You want to play like that, huh?" he said, running his thumb over my lips. I quickly took it between my teeth and nodded, looking him in the eyes.

"Fuck, I missed you so much," he said, removing his thumb from my mouth to grasp his member and press it against my lips, signaling me to open my mouth, which I eventually did.

Without warning, he immediately thrust it deep into my throat, catching me off guard and making me cough around his cock.

He chuckled but didn't stop his momentum. He began guiding my head back and forth faster and faster. I tried my best not to choke and to suppress my gag reflex every time he hit the back of my throat.

"I missed fucking your pretty little mouth like this, princess," he said, breathing rapidly. "You're so good with your tongue," he added, throwing his head back, making me moan around his cock.

Tears started to flow down my cheeks due to his constant abuse on the back of my throat, and he quickly noticed, coming to wipe my tears away with his thumb.

"Look at you crying like a baby when you were acting all tough just a few minutes ago," he said with a smirk. I furrowed my brows, unable to help but moan every time he opened his mouth to say something.

I was completely at his mercy, and I loved it. He let go of my hair to grasp my face with both hands before thrusting into me at an inhuman speed. He released moans and groans, and it only excited me even more.

He pulled out of my mouth suddenly, causing me to let out a sigh of relief and frustration. "Why did you stop?" I asked, breathless.

He leaned in to kiss me fiercely. "I'm not done with you, baby, don't worry," he said, smiling against my lips before pushing me to move back towards my headboard. He was now positioned above me, his lips glued to mine without any struggle for dominance; his tongue didn't have to fight for control.

His hand moved from my cheek to my neck, then to my chest, where he paused for a moment to play with my nipples through my delicate lace bra, making me moan again, this time into our kiss. I felt completely intoxicated, drugged by him, by his lips on mine, and his hands on my body. I was on fire, completely consumed by him. I wanted him to do unimaginable things to me.

His hand left my chest to roam my waist, where he sank his fingers before descending to my lower abdomen.

My breathing quickened; he was getting closer and closer to where I needed him. I couldn't take it anymore; I only dreamed of one thing: him touching me.

He started playing with the lace of my panties, frustrating me at the moment. I wanted him to go further, but I knew he was punishing me for my previous behavior. "Matt, please," I said, moaning and closing my eyes. I needed him to touch me; I was dying for it.

"Please what, baby? You're a big girl; formulate a proper sentence, princess," he said with a big smile. He knew exactly what I wanted; he just wanted me to say it. He enjoyed seeing me beg; he loved it.

"Please touch me, I need you. Stop making me wait. I promise to behave like a good girl. Please, touch me, Matt," I pleaded, moaning pathetically. He directed his lips to my neck before finally touching me through my panties.

I let out a sigh of relief when I finally felt his fingers apply pressure to my clit. He made agonizingly slow circular motions, and I began to squirm against the mattress, frustrated because I wanted more. I needed more.

"Matt," I said in a frustrated moan, feeling him smile against the skin of my neck. He slipped his hand into my panties this time, letting out a surprised moan in my ear when he felt how wet I was for him.

"Soaked like a little slut," he said before coming to suck marks on my neck.

"Yes, your slut, and only yours," I replied, moaning when he started massaging my clit harder and faster. I couldn't help but moan at this point; it was stronger than me. I could feel that familiar knot tightening in my stomach; I had been waiting for days to finally climax properly.

But suddenly, and without warning, as I dangerously approached my orgasm, he removed his hand from my panties. I raised my head with a frustrated moan once again. He sat up to look me in the eyes with a satisfied smile. "What's wrong? Were you about to come? Did I stop at the wrong moment?" he said, chuckling.

"Matt," I told him, looking at him with frustration for what he had just inflicted on me. He took me by the waist to switch our positions this time, him below and me just above him.

"You're lucky it's been two weeks since we've done anything. If it weren't the case, I would have left you hanging to punish you for how you behaved with me," he said, grabbing me by the throat before giving me a hip thrust, rubbing his erection against my still clothed pussy.

I let out another moan before leaning slightly forward to rest on my arm placed on his chest. "Take off your panties before I tear them off," he said, smiling.

I moved off him to remove my panties and then straddled him. He directed me towards his face. "Ride my face, baby," he said authoritatively.

I hesitated for a moment before giving in and positioning myself just above his face. His arms wrapped around my thighs as if to prevent me from escaping his grasp. I slowly let myself fall onto his face, and when I felt his tongue on my pussy, I thought I was going to go completely insane.

He began to lick my clit going progressively faster and humping against me which sent vibrations directly against my clit, I hadn't put my weight on his face for fear of smothering him but I could feel my thighs weakening as the minutes passed. He began to lick my hole assiduously, his nose rubbing against my clit which pushed me even further towards my orgasm, his fingers were planted in my thighs when he felt them trembling because they were weakening, he came to press on them to force me to put all my weight on his face.

I tried to resist but I was so obsessed by the effect he was having on me that I finally cracked, leaving all my weight on his face, which caused the pressure of his nose on my clit to increase, making me moan louder than the previous ones.

I started rubbing back and forth on his face controlled by my pleasure it was all just too much for me the sensation in my lower belly started to become unbearable "M-matt- oh my- fuckkkk" I said closing my eyes feeling my orgasm approaching.

I raised my pelvis because I felt that all this stimulation was too much for me, the orgasm that was dangerously close was driving me crazy but Matt had another plan in mind with the help of his arms he came to press again on my thighs to force me to stay in place, he started to eat me with more passion I threw my head back when I felt my orgasm coming "fuck- I'm going to cum. "I groaned, almost screaming, at the pleasure he was giving me, and suddenly the pressure was off again. I came all over his face, shouting his names and a few insults along the way, before letting myself fall onto the bed next to him.

My eyes were closed, I was out of breath and Matt came to stand beside me, kissing my cheek before whispering in my ear "I'm still not done with you", I could hear his smirk in the tone of his sentence.

He straightened up and turned me against the mattress, now on my stomach. "Matt, wait, I'm too sensitive," I said, turning my head slightly towards him. He grabbed me by the hips and arched me so that I was level with his pelvis.

"I don't care you can take it I know you can." he said in my ear before straightening up and rubbing his member against my hole. His free hand caressed the length of my back before grabbing the back of my neck and pressing my head against his pillow.

He knew it'd been a while so he gently pushed inside me and I let out a moan of pain at the burning and stretching sensation, he stopped halfway through to ask me "Are you all right princess?" and I couldn't help but smile at his concern, it was so paradoxical that he should ask me that after fucking my throat like a monster and giving me one of the most powerful orgasms I'd ever had.

"Yes, baby, you can move, I just need to get back to your size," I said, moaning softly. He moved forward again until he hit bottom and let out a beautiful moan.

"I can't believe this pussy is mine." he said as he caressed my ass before starting to stroke back and forth.

"Fuck you're really tight I'm not going to last very long." he moaned clutching my hips as if his life depended on it.

I felt like I'd gone completely stupid because of his cock, it was going exactly where I needed it to go, the only sounds coming out of my mouth were moans and my boyfriend's name, as if my memory had been wiped and those were the things left out of my vocabulary.

He started to speed up the movement and he brought his hand to my clit to play with it was still super sensitive so I couldn't help gesticulating when he did that.

"I'm gonna fucking cum y/n" he said in an animalistic moan his movements had become severely fast he was slapping the bottom like I'd never been able to feel it in my belly.

"Cum with me princess." he said as he felt my pussy clench around him I didn't need to speak he knew my body by heart he knew I was about to cum.

And after a few more thrusts I came for the second time, my vagina convulsing around his cock, pushing it to the edge before he cum inside me.

We stayed in that position for a moment, just long enough to catch our breath, before he pulled out of me and lay down beside me.

With what little strength I had left, I snuggled up to him, "I love you, baby," he said, running his hand through my hair.

"I love you too," I replied in a tired voice with my eyes closed.

"I'm going to run you a bath, my princess, and I'll drop you off at work in the morning, don't worry." he said with a smile before standing up.

Masterlist.

[surftrips]

nervous

pairing: jj maybank x reader

word count: 2.5k

summary: what happens when jj maybank develops a crush on the class valedictorian?

a/n: i haven’t written for jj in soo long so here’s this opposites attract oneshot for y’all. set before sarah and john b get together, it’s the pogue’s senior year of high school. lmk if you want more of this dynamic!

"You have a crush on Y/N? She's like the complete opposite of you..." Pope was saying to his best friend JJ.

"Dude, I know. But maybe that's why I like her so much." Maybank replied.

"What do you guys even have in common?"

"Uhhh... well. She likes to read and I- I can read. I just choose not to."

"We're off to a great start here," Pope said sarcastically, "What else?"

JJ thought for a second. "Oh! Her favorite color is green! I like green."

"Whose favorite color is green?" Kiara asked as she and John B. joined the rest of the Pogues at the lunch table.

"This girl JJ has a crush on," Pope explained.

"Ooooh, JJ has a crush? Who is it?" John B. nudged JJ's arm.

"I'm not telling you guys. You're gonna make fun of me," JJ refused.

"Oh, come on! Pope knows!" Kiara reasoned.

"Yeah, no keeping secrets from each other," John B. reminded them.

JJ sighed, "Fine. But only if y'all promise not to laugh or anything."

"Yeah, whatever, just tell us," Kie was dying to know.

"It's Y/N," JJ announced.

Silence. Then, all at once...

"Wait a minute..." from Kie.

"Y/N Y/L/N?" from John B.

and "That's what I'm saying!" from Pope.

"Guys, come on. You said you would be chill about it," JJ was starting to regret sharing his secret.

"Sorry, it's just... isn't she... like smart and responsible and stuff?" John B was saying.

"Literally... the opposite of you, JJ. No offense," Kiara added.

"None taken. But yeah, she is all those things, John B. That's why I like her. I think she would be good for me. Plus she's pretty," JJ replied.

"And you think you can pull her?" John B. asked.

"Come on, who can resist my charm?" JJ said, smiling.

—

For the past week, JJ had been working on a plan to get Y/N's attention. Which was hard considering the two ran in different circles and shared no classes.

So it must have been fate when JJ ran into her in the main office the following Monday. He was no stranger to the receptionist sitting at the desk, used to running late or being called into the principal's office for skipping class. It was for this reason that he almost missed the girl he had been dreaming about all week who happened to rush in right after him.

JJ wondered why a perfect straight-A student like her would be here, but the sounds of her trying to catch her breath and her frantic state answered his question. Little miss perfect was late, just like him.

He couldn't help but smile to himself, finally, they had something in common. Something he could work with.

But before he could turn around to spark up a conversation, the receptionist called him forward. "JJ, how many times has it been this month?"

"Uhhh.. I lost track after the fifth time," JJ shrugged.

"You know I'm only asking because I want to see you graduate, the disciplinary committee is not going to be as nice," she said.

"I know, I know miss. I'll be better next month."

"How about starting tomorrow? You're all set."

JJ turned around, trying to come up with an excuse to hang around the office, but he knew that he was already pushing his limits.

On his way out, he grinned at Y/N. “Fancy seeing you here,” and left before she could respond.

-

"Dude, you said what to her?" Pope asked, incredulous. It seemed like every conversation JJ had with his best friend these days elicited disbelief.

"Come on! That line is a classic, works every time."

"Name one time," Pope challenged him.

"Uhh that one time with Stacy, or Sasha, I forget what her name was."

"Yeah, great example."

"What's wrong with that line anyway?"

"It's less what's wrong with the line itself and more the situation in which you said it. You probably embarrassed her," Pope said matter-of-factly, chewing on his apple.

"What? How's that embarrassing? I'm clearly hitting on her."

"Because, she was late and probably already stressed out. Y/N is never late, and you just pointed out the obvious to her."

"Shit. I didn't think about it like that," JJ admitted.

"Think about what like what?" Kiara asked, coming over to their unspoken designated lunch room table with John B. JJ was starting to get deja vu.

"JJ saw Y/N this morning," Pope started to explain. "They were both late and checking in at the main office and on the way out he said, 'Fancy seeing you here.'"

Both Kiara and John B. winced. "Why would you say that man?" the latter asked.

JJ groaned. "I wasn't thinking okay! I didn't mean to embarrass or upset her or anything. You think she's mad at me?"

"I mean, you guys barely know each other. There's a chance she might have forgotten already," Kiara tried to reason.

"Somehow that's even worse," JJ said.

"It's alright, buddy. Better luck next time," JB tried to comfort him.

"If there even is a next time," JJ grumbled.

With his luck, there was a next time. This time JJ was in Y/N's territory.

When his teacher asked for a volunteer to run to Ms. Scheer's classroom, JJ's hand immediately shot up. He didn't care what the errand was, all that mattered was that Y/N would be in that room. He knew as much from watching her intently, but from a safe distance in the hallways.

He seemed to catch her attention the second he walked in. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Once again, he was wishing that the circumstances were more ideal. His usual charm seem to dissipate in the presence of teachers.

After handing Ms. Scheer the construction paper she needed, JJ turned to look at Y/N, settling for a wave this time.

To his relief, she softly smiled back at him. He rushed out of the classroom and quickly pulled out his phone to text the groupchat.

JJ himself could not believe it, that someone as beautiful, smart, and amazing as Y/N noticed him. That line has yet to fail me, he thought to himself.

Since it was the end of senior year, there was word of quite a few parties happening that weekend. However, JJ only cared about one. And that was whatever one Y/N decided to grace her presence with.

In order to find out this information, JJ employed Kie to ask around in her circle of kook friends if anyone happened to know where his recent infatuation would be.

It just so happened that John B. was also crushing on a certain kook during this time as well, Sarah Cameron. The two boys hoped that their respective crushes would be at the same place Friday night and waited anxiously by their phones the entire day for a text from Kie.

Click images to see full messages.

Still, JJ found himself looking in the mirror for longer than usual getting ready for Sarah's party. Even just the chance of seeing Y/N there was enough for him to go. Plus, John B needed a wing man because he knew Pope and Kie would just spend the whole time there together.

After taking one last look at his outfit: gray muscle tee, shorts, and his signature baseball cap, he headed out the front door and into Kiara's Jeep.

As they pulled up to the Tanny Hill mansion, JJ started to get a little nervous. Or excited. He wasn't sure which, the nerves and butterflies inside his stomach seemed to be dancing the tango.

Of course he had been to kook parties before, the kooks vs pogues thing had mostly died down by the time they got to high school, but he couldn't help but feel out of place amongst the drunk rich kids of Kildare.

"Are you coming or not?" Kiara asked, already out of her car.

She quickly rushed to meet up with Sarah and some other girls, Pope tagging along as JJ and John B. looked around in search of some liquid courage.

Kie had agreed to put in a good word for John B. after he practically begged her, so all he had to do was sit back and wait. However, JJ would have to be on edge for the next few hours, unsure if Y/N was going to show up or not.

"Dude, you should still have fun, regardless if she shows or not. It's our senior year!" Pope said to him later in the night, seeming more buzzed than usual. That's when JJ realized how sober he was, he was so anxious about Y/N's presence or lack of, that he was only on his second bottle of beer.

He pulled out his phone to check the time, not expecting to see 5 texts from Kiara.

Realizing that the last text was from one minute ago, he left the group of boys he was standing with and ran inside the mansion, making a beeline toward the kitchen.

He slowed down once he was close enough to hear Y/N's voice talking to Kie.

It's now or never, he thought. Entering the kitchen, his eyes immediately caught Y/N's and he swore he saw them light up. Noticing Y/N’s change in expression, Kiara turned around.

"Ah! Just the guy I was looking for!" she said.

"Uh, hey. What's up?" JJ said, trying his best to seem nonchalant.

"Y/N, this is JJ, the guy I was just telling you about."

"Oh, hey! I think I've seen you around," Y/N said, smiling at JJ. His heart melted. Was this real life?

"Kiara, Y/N and I go way back. Remember we were both late that one day?" JJ hoped that he wasn't bringing up a sensitive topic, Pope's words echoing in his mind.

"Oh my god, yeah! That was you!" Y/N responded.

He let out a sigh of relief, "Yeah, I hope I didn't catch you off guard or anything."

"Oh, no worries, it wasn't the first time I've been late."

"Good, I don't know why I thought I made you upset or something," JJ said, scratching his head.

"Why would you think that?"

"My friends, Pope and John B. They said that what I said was stupid and I could've embarrassed you."

"You told your friends about our 30-second interaction?" JJ could see her lips pulling into a smirk and his heart started to race. It was at this point that Kiara slowly began to back up, giving him a thumbs up and a grin when she was out of Y/N's eyesight.

"Well, I only tell them about the pretty girls."

"And how many have you told them about lately?" JJ knew what game she was playing and gladly played along.

"Just the one," he grinned.

"Good, I told my friends about you too," she admitted.

"Y-you did?"

"Yeah, I mean I didn't think much of the day in the office honestly, but after you came into Ms. Scheer's and waved at me, I felt like there was something more going on."

"Well, you would be right."

"I usually am," she said, shrugging.

"What else did you tell your friends?"

"Hmmmm..." she pretended to think, tapping your index finger to her chin. "I told them that there was this super cute guy stalking me and asking around about what party I was going to."

The boy could feel his face growing hot, unsure if it was from her calling him cute or the fact that she knew he was asking about her.

"Aww, no reason to be embarrassed. Guys ask about me all the time," she said.

JJ balked, unsure how to respond to Y/N's candor. She was entirely different from how he imagined her, even better somehow.

"I'm kidding," she laughed. "The truth is most guys are too intimidated by me to even try anymore."

"What? Really?" Sure, Y/N could be perceived as intimidating because of all her accomplishments and positions, but for JJ, that just made her more attractive. He wasn't sure how any single guy on the island could refrain from being pulled in by Y/N's magnetic pull.

"Yeah," she took another sip out of her red solo cup. "But it's whatever, half of the guys on this island are assholes."

"Cheers to that?" he lifted up his half-drunken beer to her cup.

"Haha, cheers to that Maybank," she smiled, downing the rest of her drink. "Wanna get out of here?"

"I was wondering when you were going to say that," he grinned, following her to the backyard.

She led him past the pool where people were throwing each other in, careful to avoid getting splashed, to the edge of the premises where a rock wall surrounded the lawn.

Y/N easily climbed up, taking a seat at the top, JJ following suit.

"I've never been up here before," he said.

"It's kinda like my hiding spot, consider yourself lucky I’m showing it to you."

"Oh, trust me, I do."

"Stop," she gently pushed JJ away. "You cannot possibly like me that much." Though she said it in a joking manner, he could tell that a part of her meant it.

"Oh yeah? Try me," JJ said, desperate to prove himself.

"Okay, name 5 things you like about me. Non-physical things."

"Easy. You're smart. You're ambitious. I like it when you get competitive like at Pep Rally and football games, and I like your sense of humor. Also, your smile."

"Hey! I said non-physical things."

"Yeah, but you don't just smile for anyone. That's what I like about you. Every time you smile, it feels special. Like you meant it for that one person only."

Y/N was blushing now, "You're kidding me."

"Nope, I'm being 100% serious right now. Look, Y/N, in case you haven't noticed, I really, really like you, and even though I just named five things about you, I want to get to know you more." JJ reached out to grab Y/N's hands.

"JJ, you're shaking."

"Shit. Sorry, I just get a little bit nervous around you. I'm usually not like this." Y/N had him acting like he had never done this before, and though he had been with plenty of girls, he had never felt this strongly about them before.

"It's okay," she smiled. JJ thought he would never get sick of seeing that. "I like you too."

"Really?"

"No, I just smile at everyone like this," she laughed.

"So what do you say? You and me on a proper date?"

"Hmmm, where would you take me?"

"Anywhere you want, as long as it's not on school grounds or a fundraiser."

"JJ!" she playfully swatted at him, unable to control her grinning from ear to ear. In the process, JJ was finally able to grasp on her hand and pulled her closer to him.

"Still need verbal confirmation, pretty girl. Do we have a deal?"

"Deal," she whispered, close enough to JJ that only he could hear.

[wilbraley]

I’m not an active part of the Mouthwashing fandom (I hardly interact with it tbh) but I’ve been thinking about an AU for a while. Is this a Good End AU, or a Bad End AU? Who fucking knows, but I think its fun!

Summary under the cut bc it’s a bit long!

Concept: at the point where Curly is surprised for his birthday, he goes to tell the crew that they’ve been laid off by the company, but they’re interrupted by a warning over the ship’s intercom: there is a damaged ship, one from their company’s fleet, nearby. Daisuke and Anya are interested in exploring it, perhaps saving any survivors, yada yada. Most negatives are reasoned with and they securely dock to the ship.

(Logistically, is this possible? IDK! Their ship might not be one that can dock to others, it might just have an entrance, but it has a docking port for this AU!)

Once inside, they see that it is a TOTAL WRECK. Everything is in disarray and decay, there’s foam everywhere (but thank god the Pony Express ships are so uniform, this ship’s layout is so close to theirs they can figure out where to go.) and half the ship is covered in empty bottles of mouthwash they find in the cargo bay. (“Damn,” they think, “these poor chumps got this beat up toting mouthwash of all things.”) Then, they find the bodies, though by this point they’re little more than bones and detritus. Unrecognizable, but with wounds that suggest crew in-fighting. (They’re set around the table in a horrific display. They cannot figure out why.)

Most of the ship is abandoned. There are seemingly no survivors. And yet, they find someone in the cryo-pod! Still alive! And it is the most injured, fucked-up person they’ve ever seen. But hey, they’re alive, so they can keep them that way. They get back in their ship and continue their journey. Perhaps they even recover the corpses of the crew in an effort to bring someone closure. Who knows, authorities ought to be able to DNA ID the bones, at least.

Of course, the ship is the Tulpar, and thats them they found. Post-game, after years of decay, but still them. By whatever means, they’ve been sent back to the past to be dealt with. (I like the idea of a wormhole, simply because thats such a time-travel cliche when it comes to space).

And because they interrupted the birthday event, none of the crew know that they’re being laid off. Curly knows about Anya, but she hasn’t told Jimmy. Jimmy is woefully in the dark, and thus doesn’t crash-out in a couple days when they pass the meteor. Speaking of, Curly and Anya are a bit busy with the injured person and the corpses (and hey! If that gives Anya a reason to stay in the medbay, well, she isn’t complaining.) Curly feels guilty he’s keeping the layoff from his crew, but they’re in a pretty odd, stressful situation right now and they don’t need that info on top of it.

Post-game Curly is having a very bad time. He’s pretty convinced, for the first good few days he’s conscious, that he’s dreaming or hallucinating. Perhaps the cryo-pod failed, and he’s slowly dying? Perhaps he’s in hell for his sins? Either way, the people he sees are figments in his eyes, and he’s falling off the deep end. After a bit, and with some coaxing, he begins to believe that it is real, but it confuses him about what is true. It isn’t until he gets confirmation that the Curly he sees is real, that the Jimmy he sees is real, that he realizes what is happening, and he tries to communicate with the crew, to warn them about the future.

(I don’t have much in mind after this point because of how open it becomes. Literally anything is possible)

Many things could happen. Maybe Anya is still nauseous about giving Curly his pills, so she has someone - Jimmy, in the worst situation - do it for her when she’s ill (he isn’t kind to the injured man, and the injured man does not respond well to him. He gets replaced by Curly, and no matter how kind Curly is the injured man seems more upset.) Maybe someone finds the layoff notice before Curly can explain to the crew. Maybe Jimmy tries something with Anya in the medbay, but Curly stops him (finally, finally doing something for her.) Maybe Jimmy tries to tell his Curly that he really doesn’t like the injured guy, that there’s something wrong with the way he looks at him, they need to do something about that. Maybe Curly can tell Anya who he is, get her to warn her Curly to beware Jimmy, to do something about him before he does something. Maybe Anya reaches out to the others before the crash. Maybe Swansea, or Daisuke figure out who the bodies are, finally realizing that there were far too many similarities in that wrecked ship to write off. Maybe Jimmy finally snaps and attempts to sabotage the ship.

Maybe it works, and the crew are once again stuck in hell, waiting for death. Maybe the crew are ready, and he fails and is dealt with.

At least Curly can try to atone for his mistakes. At least they have an opportunity to survive.

[natriae]

Heyyy I wanted to ask if u have any WIPs ? If not can I pls request a smutty make out session with ushi gushi College au where and reader have dated for a while but not gonna more than kissing and he expresses he wants more and reader is kjke omg me too I was just waiting for u lol idk if that makes sense ahaha

A/N: Ushijima is so comfort man

"I want to kiss you," he states like that's something that comes up in normal conversation...especially in the library.

Since you began dating Ushijima times like these weren't uncommon, but they still catch you off guard. For example, when he took you to meet his highschool friends he straight up told them that the two of you have yet to have sex...with a straight face and no blushing. Then he was shocked that you began choking on your water.

At the beginning of your relationship you thought he was doing these things on purpose. A way for him to make you nervous and blush (not that it was hard for him to do that anyway... have you seen him), but it didn't take you long to realize that he has a hard time in social situations. He doesn't realize what is to honest, but you wouldn't change him for the world because he was right 'honesty is the best policy'. It was cute how he would say these child like phrases without batting an eye all because Tendou told him.

Never have you dated a man like Ushijima Wakatoshi, and you doubt another man like him exists. You assumed he was like a wall you would never be able to climb, but oh were you wrong. He says it exactly how he means it, so last night when he told you how happy he was to be with you, you felt a little zap in your heart. You really trusted with man with the world.

~last night~

The best part about college, getting to sleep in your boyfriend's dorm. Ushijima's volleyball scholarship allowed him to get his own room with a private bathroom all to himself. Every college kid's dream, and he got it for free :). So you were welcome anytime Ushijima allowed it. No worries about a roommate which allowed the two of you the alone time most college relationships didn't get. Even though you told everyone you wouldn't date till after college, a year and a half later here you are snuggled up next to your life size teddy bear. Ushijima laid on his back while you laid on your side with your leg hooked over his. Your right hand rested on his chest as you listened to his heart beat to lull you to sleep.

However, tonight you felt the rumble in his chest as he began speaking. He never spoke when it was time for bed, so you perked up to listen.

"y/n," he rumbled, looking at the ceiling.

"jima," you responded, watching his face to see any slight movement. Bingo. The corner of his lip twitched upwards. He may be stotic, but he wasn't allergic to happiness.

You feel his right arm tighten around your back before he continues, "Thank you for dating me," 'thank you for seeing past my mannerisms' he wanted to say, "and I really love you." i want to spend the rest of my life with you in my arms. You watched his eyes flicker down to yours before looked back up at the ceiling. He was nervous, so cute.

"I love you to 'Jima. More than you'd ever know."

~~~

"you wanna kiss me 'Jima," you responded with a small smirk, trying to hide the blush that consumed your face. All he did in response was nod his head once and began packing up his things. "wait where are you going," you questioned.

"I will not kiss you in public," He responded in a way that if you were any other person you would feel stupid, but you know Ushijima doesn't mean it in that way. He just prefers his privacy. Packing up your things you follow him to his dorm.

You place your things down and go to rest on his bed with the thought in the back of your mind of when will he kiss you. The two of you haven't done anything more than just a peck, but something feels different. There's a thick tension in the air as Ushijima slips off his shoes and puts on his slippers. Walking over to his bed he leans down and leaves a light peck on your lips.

Was that all?

Seemingly unphased by your confused face he sits on the bed next to you and takes a deep breath before pulling you onto his lap. Now strattling him his face softens before speaking. But you can tell by the small twitch in his lip that he's nervous, but he doesn't want to scare you.

Your hands hold his face as your thumb caresses his cheekbone. "'Jima you can tell me anything," you whispered, even though it was just the two of you.

He blinks softly before speaking. "can i kiss you more?" I know you weren't exactly comfortable woth it before, He grunts out. Your lips turn up in a smile at how he says it so monotone, but his eyes and heart tell another story. He's freaking out inside.

Nodding your head you lean in till your noses are touching. Waiting for Ushijima to close the gap. He leaves a small peck on your lips one more time before kissing you deeper. Kissing your bottom lip then your top. Both of you turn your heads opposite directions to kiss deeper. Your hands fall to the back of his head and rake their way into his hair.

You feel his strong, manly hands hover over your waist not sure if he's allowed to touch. To him you're his most prized possession. Something expensive that he doesn't want to leave finger prints on. Something he doesn't want to break with his excitement.

You bring one hand down to his and press it on to your waist telling him it's okay and smile into the kiss.

Through the wet sounds of your lips colliding, the deep breaths, and quiet moans it was clear this wasn't just two college students making out. It was two quiet lovers who were trying to pour all their love into a kiss.

[shadowqueenjude]

HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR ME FINALLY!!!

I joined Tumblr October 2023, so this is my first whole year on Tumblr! I’ve made so many friends; to each of my mutuals, I love you so much!

Special shout outs:

1) @sonics-atelier my wife my queen, who is the perfect combination of sweet and sassy, you may have literally saved my life this year. It wasn’t a good year for me, but I survived because I had someone like you for a friend. You always indulge all my headcanons and were the first fan of my writing ❤️ily always

2) @decadentpostnacho the last part of our trio, you are absolutely incredible and your snarkiness and support has given me life this past year. I am still in awe of the art you made me for my birthday, and I love love LOVE your Lucien takes❤️❤️

3) @positivelyruined my bestie, my incredible author friend, I’m so glad I discovered you this year! Your ability to calm me down in any situation and your support through my various breakdowns about my father warmed my heart. I was unbelievably touched that you offered to drive all the way to Texas to pick me up🥹 Your writing is chef’s kiss, and you’re doing ACOTAR justice!

4) @kateprincessofbluewhales my first mutual on tumblr, my tumblr aunt, she is so iconic. She has some of the strangest takes, which made me a lot more comfortable sharing my own takes. Don’t let her pessimism or snarkiness fool you: she is very kind and her words of advice have given me the courage to keep going.

5) @yennas-stuff you’re so precious! and such a chill guy haha. When I was hella bored after my exam, I dmed yenna and she responded immediately (even though she probably should’ve been sleeping) and we roasted Azriel together for an hour! She’s so approachable and a breath of fresh air in an incredibly toxic fandom :)

6) @littlefireling my secret santa, I cannot express enough how happy your gift made me. The moodboard was EVERYTHING i had dreamed, and I can’t believe you commissioned art just for me!!

7) @acourtofthought I’ve always loved your amazing in-depth analyses of SJM books, and your posts single-handedly inspired me to become a hardcore Elucien! People always come after you, yet you’re always so classy yet so savage with your comebacks! On top of that, you’re such a great person to talk to! I’m glad this fandom brought us together:)

[no-psi-nan]

[Context]

Ok @fluffydice, sorry for the lateness on this one but as anyone following this blog for over 5 minutes probably knows, I think Aiura x Saiki x Akechi makes so much sense and it is insanely compelling to me. I've posted so much fanfic about it already and that's only like 20% of the Thoughts™ I've had about them tbh.

But when you're doing an analysis of a triad, you have to breakdown 3 different ships and also how they would work simultaneously, so I needed time to write it all up. Buckle in!

Let's talk about Saiki x Aiura first since they had the most screen time together and they're the most "canon". I was genuinely shocked to see how rare this pairing is in fandom when they're literally canonically soulmates and also actually prove it on their every interaction.

From their very first meeting, Aiura and Saiki work together flawlessly to save Yumehara's life many times in a row + the life of the truck driver. Aiura then figures out how to hang out with Saiki without having to deal with his tsundere rejection, which he can leave at any time (unlike with Teruhashi) because she knows about his powers and won't stir up trouble if he leaves. Saiki keeps allowing her to schedule 1:1 dates and is basically like "don't bother asking me, you know I'll go" about the dessert buffet date lol.

Even when they disagree and neither of them will back down, they still work wonderfully together and they both end up learning and growing from it. Saiki trusts Aiura to help him, and Aiura always agrees to help him just because she cares. That's HUGE considering how hard it is for Saiki to ask for literally anything!!

Aiura also respects Saiki's boundaries more than anyone else imo. She only joins him when he's out in public, she tries her usual heavy-handed flirting at first but quickly adjusts when she realizes he's not into it, she puts her clothes back on immediately after realizing that she misunderstood the situation, she starts asking him out instead of just joining him, she asks for a kiss and respects his "no", and she hugs him anyways because they both really need it after the stress of the day.

And Saiki responds to that, opening up more with Aiura than he has with anyone else in way less time. Aiura had under 2 years with Saiki while Saiki's core friend group had like 6 years, and yeah, she benefited some from his character growth over the past 4 years. But still, the way he banters with her shows how comfortable he is– he's more open with her than with anybody else, and not just with his annoyance like he is with Toritsuka lmao.

Also, come ON, there's just no one more deserving of an epic husband/wife local god with transformation powers than Aiura. She works so hard with her powers to help everyone and convinces Saiki to help others more and she helps him get the best outcomes for everyone. Let her get her hands on her soulmate who can make her bi dreams come true, who can give her third eye a break from constantly seeing auras and death marks, who can grow big fluffy wings to hug her with, etc etc etc!!!!! LET HER HAVE SOME FUN FFS!!

There's wayyyy more people forcing Aiura into the platonic bucket with Saiki than I've seen with Teruhashi (even though Aiura has way better chemistry with Saiki), which forces me to wonder whether it's because Aiura is more overtly sexual and "lowbrow" than Teruhashi, showing more cleavage, getting bad grades, putting stickers on her face because they're cute, showing pride in her sexual escapades. None of those make her a bad person, but a lot of people seem to think it does.

Some people more reasonably point out that if Saiki is very asexual and Aiura has a high libido then that could cause trouble for them. Well, first of all, while Saiki is pretty much obviously somewhere in the asexual and aromantic spectrum, his belief that boyfriend is the next level after best friend shows that demiromantic / demisexual is a strong possibility for him. And honestly I'd argue that whatever he has going on with Satou is at least partially sexual, though I'm not going to get into that in this already long-ass post lol.

But basically, I think there's a lot of room for a demiromantic and graysexual interpretation of Saiki and considering that Aiura has apparently stopped going out with other men for at least 2 years with no ill effects that we can see, it's quite possible that they'll be very compatible in bed after all. And if not, that's where consensual non-monogamy comes in lol. But genuinely I think that the fact that they're soulmates means that there probably aren't any major incompatibilities between them, otherwise the term would be meaningless.

So yeah, makes sense and really compelling because there's so much room for stories on how they actually got together, how they work together as their powers continue growing, and what their future looks like!

OKAY, now it's time for the Saikechi essay lol.

Actually, I don't think Saikechi needs a ton of justification, because it's kinda standard extrovert x introvert childhood friends to lovers lol. Saikechi only isn't more popular because Akechi appears for like 5 whole minutes in the undubbed second season of the anime and he was annoying for 90% of that time hsfjdlshfks rip.

But yeah, Akechi and Saiki are quite perfect together, as shown by the horse gambling episode. Akechi can see right through Saiki's tsundere facade and Akechi is extremely open about his wants and needs, which is important since Saiki can't properly understand his thoughts most of the time and is very bad at figuring that stuff out even with telepathy.

They're both some flavor of ace. Akechi offu's at Teruhashi and comments that she's the most beautiful women he's ever seen, but does not express wanting to date her, which is big ace vibes, plus he's one of the few characters that doesn't have anything to say about Aiura's boobs lol (even Teruhashi can't shut up about them). They're also similar flavors of highly intelligent + neurodivergent. Consider Akechi's analysis skills vs Saiki's ability to come up with dozens, if not hundreds of plans in extremely short notice.

Akechi is also great at making accommodations for Saiki's powers, even without knowing about all of them, and coming up with activities they can do together that will be equally fun and challenging for both of them! And I still love that it was Akechi showing Saiki what a fun low-stakes game can be like that basically repaired Kusuo's relationship with his brother (see: manga, as this was cut from the anime 😩).

It's a very nice and straightforward ship that still leaves a lot of room for fun stories. I've been dying to write a Saikechi frogboil (plotted but needs writing) just because Akechi would be so perfect at it and he would be very likely to approach Saiki that way to get around all the tsundere bullshit lol.

OKAY, now for the third leg of the triangle lol, Aiura and Akechi!!

(couldn't find an anime gif of this moment which is SO SAD)

Let's be real, Akechi and Aiura only share 5 moments on screen: the intro with all the chibis, when Aiura checks out his aura, when Aiura & Toritsuka kidnap him, the competition to find Saiki's hanky, and Akechi pestering Aiura about dress code violations in the every-character-appears episode. And 3 of those scenes are from the same chapter lmao.

Actually I think this ⬆️ scene is kinda cute because Akechi's teasing Aiura lol, I think he's being friendly in his little freak way <3

HOWEVER, if shipping was only about what we saw on screen, then it would be way more boring. So let's think about it!

Aiura and Akechi actually share a lot of similarities: they're both extroverts, they're both incomprehensible, they are both almost immune to lies, they have both have a drive to help other people including strangers, and they're both seeking someone who will love and understand them as they are.

They would just make a really great fit! Akechi could help with Aiura's fortune-telling by prompting better questions for her to ask, and Aiura might actually make Akechi's mystery-solving TOO easy, so she probably holds back on that one lol. Akechi would throw himself wholeheartedly into working against a death mark on a stranger.

They're so fun to think about too because neither of them is embarrassed easily at all and they're both completely in touch with their own feelings so they are going to be SO lovey-dovey, no matter how cringe it seems on the outside lmao.

Akechi seems like he'd love doing traditional courtship if given half the chance, and Aiura seems like she's mostly had one-night-stand kind of situations until now, so what a perfect opportunity to indulge! What a change for Aiura to date someone who respects her and isn't just after her body! What a change for Akechi to date someone who actually wants to hear what he has to say and isn't put off by his frankness around taboo topics!

They'd pick up phrases from each other and develop so many ridiculous in-jokes that become their own sort of language, which makes them both even more incomprehensible.

We do also run into the allosexual x asexual problem here but Akechi is so unbothered by bodily functions and so quick to find compromises and enrichment that I genuinely think he'd kind of turn that into a game lmao.

And I think Akechi would be down to start a family and give his kid(s) the kind of loving home he never really got to enjoy with his parents' ongoing domestic turmoil. And their kid(s) would be sooooooooo incomprehensible, bless. 🙏🏾 Raised by 1.5 psychic parents and sprinkling both terminally online lingo and academia-level terminology into their speech from day 1. Imagine...

So Aikechi definitely gets the A+ on making sense and being compelling here!

Which FINALLY brings us back around to the main question... Does Aiura x Saiki x Akechi make sense, and is it compelling?

Well, obviously I think so, since I've posted so much about it lol.

I think the main question for the viability of this ship is whether Saiki would be comfortable with polyamory, since Aiura and Akechi are unconcerned enough with social norms that they'd probably have no problem with it.

After some time getting used to the thought that he will never have the veneer of normal he's always wanted to project and that the pleasures of living authentically far outweigh the pains of being different, I think Saiki would actually love having his best friends as lovers and not having to choose only one person.

After all, most of his struggle is about lack of connection and his alienation from humanity. Well, here are Akechi and Aiura, who respectively mirror his lonely childhood and growing up with uncontrollable powers. They're both clever enough to see through his tsundere bullshit, they're both happy and able to help him with his powers & duties to save others, and they will both stand up to him if he's wrong or letting something slide to avoid conflict.

They're both perfect for him! And Akechi and Aiura would be much happier sharing him than trying to make him choose between them since they also get along so well. And let's be real, Saiki definitely deserves to be loved by the two people who know him the best. 💜

There's also a lot of story potential for how this ends up happening. In Extra Love Stories of Psychics, Saikechi and Saiura are basically happening in parallel and the Aikechi will close in the loop in a few chapters. But in Didn't see this one coming, I wanted to focus on Aikechi, so they get together and are basically ready for Saiki to finish his character growth and join whenever lmao.

You could also have them as like a hero team of lovers if you want more action-y plots, though tbh it's really hard to come up with situations they wouldn't immediately solve lol rip.

Another nice thing about Aiura, Akechi and Saiki being together is that Aiura and Akechi get a chance to help each other overcome some of Saiki's limitations, and the stuff they can't work around, Akechi and Aiura can do together.

An easy example is hand-holding. Changing Saiki's gloves to another texture is all well and good but sometimes you want to touch skin to skin, and it's much more overwhelming than calming for Saiki to do that. Akechi and Aiura can hold each other's hands without gloves though, and while it's not the same as holding Saiki's, it helps a lot to fulfill that desire.

Also, it's almost impossible for Aiura to surprise Saiki because he can read her thoughts, but while Akechi can probably figure out that she's planning something in general, she would have a much easier time surprising him. And similarly, since Saiki can't properly read Akechi's mind and doesn't have too much emotional intelligence, Akechi has to openly communicate his needs with Saiki all the time, which isn't a problem for him. But it's really nice when Aiura can tell from his aura or from her own emotional intelligence what Akechi wants/needs without having to explain himself. And even if Saiki can literally hear Aiura's thoughts, Akechi is still better at responding to her feelings because he's not tsundere and he actually understands feelings and what to do about them.

Additionally, Aiura has said she wants to be a mother, and while Saiki's affection for kids indicates to me that he wouldn't mind having kids, I think that he would be VERY opposed to passing on his genes due to how much trouble his powers have caused him. And Aiura's genes also are probably loaded with psychic powers! But if Akechi is there, then he can knock up Aiura no problem since he doesn't seem to have any psychic powers, and then the three of them can have their own family <3 Plus all the shenanigans that comes with having 2.5 psychics (and maybe more!) under one roof!

In conclusion, they're perfect, your honor!!

Also I probably should've been writing more fic of them instead of writing this novel XD XD

Thanks for the ask!!

[estrellayluna]

Devotion Nanami Kento

Synopsis : Dreaming of your late father, you realized visiting his grave shouldn’t feel like chore nor burden. You change the way you view visiting his grave with the simple pleasures of a bakery that’s right next door to the flower shop.

(This is a bit long, please bear with me)

-

To say you had been woken up due to the early sun beaming through your blinds would be an understatement. Unfortunately this morning you were woken up due to a cold sweat, seeming to gasp for air at the same time.

It has been 5 months since the day you lost your father. And just in 7 days, it’ll be the 6th month mark. The thought of another month since his passing caused you to drown yourself in the comfort of your blankets, trying to block the sun from bothering you anymore along with the rest of your problems.

Hoping to rest just a while longer was cut short to your phone ringing somewhere alongside you. Desperately trying to find the device to put an end to the loud disturbance you answered the phone while mustering the strength to get out of bed.

“Hello?”

“(Y/N) sweetie, how are you?” It was the soothing voice of your mother on the other end.

“Hi mom, I just woke up not long ago actually. If it weren’t for your call right now I would still be rotting in bed.” Your mom let out a soft laugh, causing you to smile.

“Well I’m glad I was of help this early in the morning my love, I just wanted to call you and check up. It doesn’t seem to get any easier for me to make it non awkward for us.” You sighed just lightly hoping your mom didn’t catch.

“6 months soon and I still can’t seem to get it right can I, (Y/N)?” You hum in response to your mom.

“It’s nothing to worry about mom, I’m an adult now. If I were a child I think fathers whole passing would have been a whole different story for us.” You respond calmly while making your way to the kitchen.

Your parents divorced when you were a child. Being raised by a single mother and only seeing your father on the weekends growing up. Most young kids tended to favor the father more but seeing your mother struggle to make ends meet made you see things differently at a young age. Especially once you were understanding of the situation was when your mother told you the truth. Your father was unfaithful to your mother.

“Plan on doing anything special this time around (Y/N)?” Your mother asks as you pour yourself a cup of tea. You paused. ‘Should I tell her?’

Since your fathers passing, you couldn’t really make out what to think about it. Of course you were sad. But ultimately each time you actually sat down and thought about it, you felt nothing. Like a void that was not empty nor full. In the beginning your mother was concerned, causing her to have her own doubts if she had done the right thing years ago in opening up to you about the truth.

But you had reassured her multiple times in the past that even before being revealed to the truth that your relationship with your father was strained. Something you also couldn’t pinpoint as to why. So there was no need to worry she failed to protect you and your relationship with your father.

“I dreamt about him last night mom.” You replied in a hushed tone while sitting down on your small circular wooden table.

“It was a short dream. Though it felt so real. I couldn’t make him out in the beginning but once I realized it was him I broke down. He was two other little kids alongside with him. They were both girls. One at least two years old and another eleven years old,” you started to feel hot tears forming in your eyes “it felt so real mom. I don’t know where people go once they pass but if that was a sign that he’s doing alright I’ll go along with that.” Tears started to stream down your face, your left hand holding your phone up to your ear and your right clutching your chest.

“Well it’s a possibility that could be true my love. When your father passed I liked to think he’s with your older sister sometimes too.”

Your mothers response made you smile, wiping away your tears you let out a small laugh.

“Do you think the younger child must be another’s lovers child?” You respond with a witty tone that makes the both of you laugh.

“Sometimes I wonder how serious and unserious you can be at times (Y/N)” you mother says while calming down.

“You should visit him more often (Y/N).”

Walking back towards your room, leaving the forgotten tea you had make earlier and walking towards your bedroom window to open and let fresh mourning air in you hum in response, “I’ll try my best mom.”

“I forgave your father a long time ago (Y/N), I hope you can as well someday.” Looking over at your clock,

9:35am

“Thank you mom, for everything.” You knew your smile could be felt on the other end for your mother, “I love you so much (Y/N) I’ll try my best to visit you soon, try to have a productive day today!”

After ending the call with your mom, you promised her you would. Starting with making your bed.

-

11:40am

Locking your apartment door behind you and putting your keys in your bag you walked down towards the entrance of your apartment building.

The sunny weather felt like a warm blanket as you walk down the street while soft breezes pass you. You don’t live far from the city’s downtown where all the restaurants, shops and livelihood are.

After the phone call with your mother you had a moment thinking of what she had told you.

I forgave your father a long time ago

The feeling of guilt almost entirely overcame you until you had promised your mother you’d have a productive day.

And you knew deep down inside your father wouldn’t want you rotting away in bed and be a lazy person ignoring their problems.

With almost nothing to do on your day off you decided to visit your fathers grave while the weather is still warm.

You almost never visit your fathers grave, and if you do it always been less than shamelessly 15 minutes.

Shaking away your thoughts as you come closer to the flower shop, the smell of freshly baked goods seem to get closer. Looking past the flower shop, you see an entrance to what seemed to be a small tucked away bakery. You hadn’t noticed until now that there was such a place.

Granted when you stop by the flower shop it was always a swift stop as you tend to always wish to get visiting his grave over as quickly as possible.

Looking down at the time,

12:02pm

It was still early in the day, plus being eager to get about your day you forgot to bring a water bottle with you, you couldn’t see why not stopping for a quick refreshment at the bakery.

-

Walking inside, you were immediately greeted by the smell of the warm sweet treats and the friendly atmosphere. Not too busy but just a little tight for your liking.

Perhaps next time I can plan to take some baked goods with me to the gravesite

Walking up to the counter you order a cup of lemonade and requested a small cup of water to accompany.

Deciding to enjoy and bask in the smell of the bakery you sat down in the nearest small table in front of the window, sipping on your refreshments as well as just looking out the bakery’s window watching as life goes by.

The bakery’s peace was at a mellow stance until your thoughts were interrupted by the doors bell ding, and steady footsteps being heard ushering towards the front.

You looked over to see a tall frame in a dark mocha colored suit sort of frantically trying to get his order in as fast as possible.

Not wanting to seem so curious you look back towards the window, unbeknownst in looking at the man’s reflection.

Tall, blond, fit, nice looking suit. He must be a businessman.

As the man turns around to wait for his order to be ready at the other end of the counter, he slightly leaned back checking his watch in haste, sighed in what seemed of exhaustion, quickly looked up while still waiting

His eyes met yours in the reflection of the window.

Caught, you felt your ears get hot and you looked away from the reflection of his eyes. Looking down, anywhere but back at his.

Trying to smoothly drink quickly the remainder of your beverages left, you got up and quickly thanked the staff before heading out.

As you walked past the window you were looking out of just now you tried your best to not look back in again to see if the tall man was still there. Filled with blush and embarrassment you quickly opened the door to the flower shop.

-

“Yes those are beautiful, I’ll take just a small bouquet of those daisies please.” Smiling at the older lady, and as she starts to make her way towards the back to prepare the bouquet your steps head towards the display of all the other flowers the shop had displayed.

Nothing it was just yourself in the shop you noticed how quiet it was inside, the faint sounds of the scissors being put to work in trimming your bouquet.

Deep in thought of the beautiful colors the flowers came in you hadn’t notice that another person walked into the shop.

“Tiger flowers, vibrant as can be around this time around,” the soft voice of a man says behind you.

Taken out of your thoughts, you look up quickly seeing the reflection of the green tinted windows of the flower shop you see the man from the bakery behind you.

Swiftly turning around to meet the man’s eyes you could feel your whole face feel hot, unsure to smile or apologize for earlier at the bakery.

Looking at him closer, you note his features. His strong facial expressions, his circler metal glasses, and his lips.

Does this man have a permanent frown? He’d be totally more inviting if he didn’t..

Pushing your thoughts away you smiled at the man, agreeing with him.

“Yeah, the vibrant colors are beautiful.” You responded, not sure on how this conversation would go.

Before more words can be said the flower shop employee had just finished your bouquet of flowers you requested.

“Miss (L/N), I got your bouquet all nice and ready!”

In the beginning of the your fathers passing, you had frequent here at the flower shop, and you explained as to why you were buying flowers in the first place to the elderly worker. She didn’t pry but she had vaguely mentioned how certain flowers have different meanings. You can recall how generous she was and how she took care into making your bouquets.

Looking back at the counter you smiled back at her and headed towards her, ready to make your purchase. Not before giving one last smile towards the man.

As you pull out your wallet, you hear the lady greet the man.

“Oh Kento! It is nice to see you again! How are you? Looking at different flowers today? I can assure you those Tiger Flowers can last up to two weeks!”

The man’s footsteps can be heard walking towards the both of you.

“Thank you Mrs. Ua, but I intend to buy white roses this time.” The man now standing next to you stands tall and firm, so tall he’s looking down at the elderly lady.

“Oh well Kento, I’ll just have to keep hoping both of your two’s healing journey will show you how other flowers can look just as lovely placed onto headstones!”

Slightly shocked at her response, you looked up at the man

So he’s visiting someone too? I figured he was probably coming in to buy his significant other flowers

“I’m sure soon enough we can Mrs. Ua,” Kento responded whilst looking down at your bouquet that was placed gently on the counter, “Mrs. Ua, actually I’ll go ahead and change the white roses to daisies as well. And you can go ahead and allow me to pay for this woman’s bouquet as well.”

How many times am I going to keep being heating up because of this man?

Trying to calm yourself down, you quickly object.

“Oh! Oh no, please it’s totally fine! You don’t have to!”Blushing furiously now the man looks down at you, slightly smiling.

“Please, allow me to. It would certainly brighten up my day.”

An excited coo can be heard from Mrs. Ua

-

Had you ever think that you’d be walking now alongside a man you had just met less than 30 minutes ago. No.

Whilst Mrs. Ua was preparing his bouquet small talk had to ensue. If it hadn’t been for the man you had learned name was Kento, he was the first to start.

“Are you headed to visit a love one as well?” He asked you while leaning on the flower shops counter this time, whilst you still faced towards the back. Once again the faint hearing the faint scissors at work.

“Yes, I am. I am planning to visit my late father today,” your heard turns toward the man, slight tilting your head up to look at him, “are you doing the same?”

The blonde man looks down at you quickly before looking away again, facing the shops display of flowers.

“Yes I am, except I plan to visit my friend.” Smiling at him, “as sad as the circumstances may be, it’s nice to meet you-,” before you could say his name, he then finally introduced himself.

“Kento Nanami.” He looked down at you once again.

“(L/N) (Y/N),” you smiled at him, “it’s nice to meet you Kento Nanami,” with a beaming smile.

—

I honestly have no idea where this is going. I started at 1 am, I’m pausing at almost 4 am. Please forgive me!! Also this blog is so old. I am no longer 19 anymore but 21. I hope to get back into writing.

I would love to hear feedback and suggestions to continue this little plot!

[presleyhearted]

Yours Truly - Chapter 14: Jump Then Fall.

・❥・pairing: Elvis x original female character

・❥・genre: slow burn, mystery, angst, fluff.

・❥・wc: 7427 words (grab some popcorn, this is a long chapter aha).

・❥・summary: In which a 21-year-old girl suddenly finds herself having consecutive dreams of a particular rock ‘n’ roll star whom she has never met and who died 45 years ago.

・❥・ Ratings & warnings: descriptions of fears of drowning.

❥・a/n: Finally on chapter 14! so, so much happens in this chapter. Thank you all for your patience. If you have not read this fic before, please refer to my masterlist as this is a multi-chaptered series. Thank you. happy reading :)

dividers by @cafekitsune

chapter index | prev | chapter 15

“Oh be my once in a lifetime. Lying on your chest, in my party dress.” Lana Del Rey, Love Song.

NOVA

The hammering of the downpour painted the apartment's windows with its presence for the past hour or so. Some might say that weather like this gives the perfect ambiance to study. But instead of pursuing academic tasks at the moment, my mind somehow can't find the willingness to do those. The side of my body leaned against the couch of our living room, as I observed the rain bleed through everything outside. 

I've seen heavy rain a million times, but this is the only time that I am so transfixed by it. There is nothing particularly special about it, except that, my mind flashes images through like scenes of a movie; A Warm Cafe. heavy rain. the pull of my hand. laughing. his laugh. dark hair. my dress sticking to my skin.  dancing. 

"I'm me when I'm with you." 

"Do you trust me?"

His words are so clear and always seem to take the forefront of my mind, his voice being a lingering tune. It's like if I opened the window right now, and let my hand feel the drop of the precipitation - I could almost feel like I am back in that moment.  For some reason, a reason that I still don't know, it is the easiest thing in the world for me to lay my trust in the palm of his hand. I am certain that I am a practical person, and being logical has always been something that takes over me in everything. 

But for the first time in so long, I'm not quite sure about that. 

What makes it so easy for me to keep going with this, going with him, even with all the uncertainty? With no answers to the meaning behind it all? 

"What are you thinking about, bestie?" Luke's voice pulled me out of my reverie. I just then realize that he is standing right beside me, placing a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. 

"Huh?"

"Or who?" He mused, elbowing me playfully, with a curious smirk on his lips. 

well.

I shook my head, "Nothing."

He plops down beside me on the couch, "You have that thinking face on, and with that frown on your lips - it gives me heartbreak vibes." 

I laughed at his response, "Luke, I'm not even seeing anyone."

"And? I'm not seeing Henry Cavill and he still broke my heart."

I playfully throw him the cushion, which he easily catches and dramatically responds, "It's the truth!"

"Whoever you were daydreaming about, heartbreaker or not, he had you in your own world there." He said in a sing-song voice. 

I don't respond and throw him a simple smile. 

I never realized that I was so deep in my thoughts that I failed to notice that Luke walked up to me. He was right in the fact that I was in my own world. But he was wrong about the heartbreaker part, because no, Elvis didn't break my heart. It's something else. It's this feeling I get whenever I am with him. It's thrilling, but so terrifying, but so fun at the same time. And I am certain that I have never felt that way before. 

I just hope that when my mind finally stops spinning for answers, that feeling will remain. It has to. 

But then again, I have never been one to cling to hope. Not that I am a pessimistic person, but if you didn't know all the angles of a situation, how could you ever put your all into hope? It's like unknowingly walking through active flames and arriving on the other side with imprints of ashes. 

Hope is not immune to turning into hurt. 

As much as my love for literature and the art of reading, I do love movies as well. Sometimes there is a particular nostalgia to them, especially those movies from the 90s and early 2000s. Luke and I try to have a movie night once a month. Back when we first became friends at the start of college, we would have movie nights every Saturday. But that was before we found out how unpredictable and laborious the schedule is as a college student, therefore it was hard to keep up with that. So, we decided to just have a movie night each month, whenever there is a free day. We normally take turns in picking which movie to watch, but it is Luke's turn this time. 

Due to my momentary 'daydream' as Luke described it, it is only now that I fully become aware of the movie of his choice. His Netflix account is open and put on pause.  I turned to him in sheer surprise, "Really? The Great Gatsby?"

He shrugged, "I wanna know what the hype is."

I gave him a look. 

"Listen, everyone and their mother watched this, except me." He said dramatically as if it was competition.

I watched the movie a while ago. The cinematography is insane. But of course, now that I have to analyze the story through the literature piece, it's a whole different experience from watching. Luke doesn't fail in doing his usual commentary about the costumes, the acting, and his hatred for so and so's character. One thing about my best friend, he might not be a reader, but he will not hesitate to yell at a television screen when he has this passionate hatred for a particular character in a film or TV show. 

He calmed down for a while and paused the film, "I mean, I know Gatsby be lying through his teeth. But the commitment is immaculate." He dramatically clapped. 

"Definitely. I can't lie to save my life." 

"No, bestie. I'm not on about that." He chuckled, taking a handful of popcorn from the bowl.

I raised my eyebrow at him.

"Oooh, you are Miss Daydreamer today, aren't you?" He said with a smirk.

I scoffed at him and laughed, "What? I'm simply asking a question."

He nodded at me, seemingly unconvinced. 

"Hm, right. Well, whoever he is, he better not give me the ick." 

"There is no one."

"You just said you can't lie to save your life, point proven."

"I am not lying."

Once he saw that I was no longer saying anything more, Luke sighed and simply said, "Yeah, right. "

I snapped my fingers, "But really, what did you mean about Gatsby's commitment?" If I didn't navigate it back to the topic at hand, there is no doubt that even Luke himself would forget what he was talking about in the first place.

"I was saying that about how he is with Daisy. Homeboy really hosted all those parties in case the girl he is in love with showed up all of a sudden. Even if Daisy never showed up that quickly, I think Homeboy still be throwing those parties until she does. And I can't even get a text back for fuck's sake." Luke said, sighing dramatically. 

I can't help but chuckle at him, "It's fiction."  

He shrugged, "Yeah, but what if there are some people out there that do keep waiting and waiting for the love they lost all those years ago?"

I squinted my eyes at him in surprise and amusement, as I playfully elbowed him on the side, "Aw, didn't know I'm friends with Cupid."

Luke scoffed, "You aren't. But you ever see him around, tell him he is long overdue to fix my shit of a love life."

I laughed, "Will do."

It's becoming easier and easier to know that I've slipped into the land of dreams. Before, I would find myself taking a second to make sure that I was in fact dreaming. But now, it feels all second nature to me now. I am definite in knowing that I have been whisked away into my dreams, and are no longer in the real world. So, the only question that I really ask is, "Where am I now?" which I didn't realize I said out loud, but the only indication that I blurted my question out loud is there is someone who answered. 

"Are you lost, Ma'am?" A familiar voice. It seems like the only voice I expect and hope for, whenever I awake in these dreams. 

I turned my head to the source and direction, and there he was. Elvis was standing on the tree branch, the very tree that I was standing under it seemed. He crouches down, both feet still on the branch, and my heart cannot help but leap out of my chest at the sight of the possibility of an imbalance occurring. But the man before me is the picture of anything but fear.  His hair appears to be meticulously oiled back, and with that hint of youthful appearance in his face, and the same striking pair of blue eyes. It appears to be 1950s Elvis. His clothes seem to also confirm my guess; He wears a Cuban collar shirt, wide-legged pleated black trousers, a black jacket, and black loafers with striking pink-colored socks. He also appears to be holding a jacket over his shoulder, as he shoots me a grin. 

I cannot help but chuckle, "What in the world are you doing up there?" 

He bites his bottom lip and shakes his head, strands of his dark hair falling over his face. 

"Oh," He shrugged, "Nothin' unusual, just searchin' for a damsel in distress."

"The way you trust that branch so much is putting me in distress." 

He tilted his head in amusement, "You worry for me, honey?"

"Solid ground here. Stable. Safe. You should try it." I said, smiling at him. 

It's a dream, which means technically he won't be hurt, but that still doesn't mean I'm not my usual worried self. I mean, if this is my dream, then I can control it. But dreams and control have never been two things that agreed with each other in my case. And not to forget, the raven-haired man before me's unpredictable tendencies, to say the least. 

He sighed calmly, "I would. But I'm likin' the view from up here." He shoots me one of his infamous grins, his gaze fleeting through me from head to toe unabashedly. An action that made my face grow hot all of a sudden, as I averted my gaze from him quickly. 

In my previous dream, we were walking under the night sky and I remember vividly that he told me he wanted to show me something. But that never happened because my body jolted me back awake. Back into reality. 

"Didn't you say you were going to show me something?" I questioned him, hoping that it would throw him off from him noticing my reaction to his comment. Hoping that it distracts me from feeling that familiar warm sensation that sits in the depth of my chest. For if I don't distract myself, and I start to think about all the other times - all our previous encounters - I might be forced to turn my back on him, and only face him again once I can fix my flustered state. I am no stranger to his flirtatious nature, but I am a stranger to who I am when I am with him. 

And I am not sure how to connect those puzzle pieces. Not right now, at least. 

Elvis nodded, stood up from his crouched position, and jumped off from the tree branch - an action that happened in the blink of an eye, and made me shut my eyes in fright. He thankfully lands safely and stands right in front of me.

"Yeah. Before you disappeared." He said teasingly. 

I shrugged, my smile dissipating into a picture of guilt, "I can't control it, you know?"

I hope he knows. When these dreams first started to happen, I was directly asking him all those questions about the reason behind it all. I still don't have all the answers. But I believe that he is real. Based on all of these small hints that happened, and how he answered that he said yes, even if he didn't verbally confirm it. When I woke up in Graceland and apologized to him for being late, he jokingly said he thought he got stood up. That was the closest exchange of words between us that touched on the topic of the control of my dreams, and how I wake up out of nowhere and there is no real sign right before it happens. But this is the first time I am telling him that I did wake up all of a sudden, and I think he knows. But I say this as a question, in case he doesn't. Even if I think he does. 

Elvis nodded, "Course. Doesn't mean it hurts me less." He said, his voice so soft. 

He bites his bottom lip and releases a deep breath. There is a breeze in the air, a deep contrast to the chilling winter air of the real world. The leaves of the trees sway to the effect of the wind,  the blooming of the flowers that decorate the lush green grass, and the shine of the sunlight - all the elements that immediately make it known to me that it is Spring that greet me in this dream. The sunlight that shines from behind me is the perfect tool that magnifies the azure of his eyes. The glint of playfulness is not harbored within them, instead, it makes me see that there is a pool of tears that paint his eyes and look into mine. Elvis has seen me multiple times by now, all of these dreams, all these encounters - and yet, he studies my face now. As if it is the first and last time he ever will lay his eyes on me. His eyes moved from each inch of my face, like what people do when they try to memorize something. 

It's an action that would otherwise make me feel uncomfortable if it were someone else, but instead, all I feel is shreds of pain that poke at my heart and a haze of confusion that clouds my mind. And with those both combined? I feel a sudden lump in my throat, it's that feeling that builds up when someone is about to break into tears. And I am at a loss of words on why that is. Why my body, my heart, and my mind are reacting this way?

"I'm sorry," I said, surprising myself by the break in my voice. the instability. 

The rational part of my brain believes that Elvis is acting this way because of how abruptly I leave him in the world of dreams. 

Elvis shook his head. 

A loose strand of my hair blows in the spring wind, Elvis brings his hand up and tucks this behind my ear. All whilst never leaving his gaze from mine, "Nova. . . it's never not you." He said softly. 

I looked at him quizzically, "Elvis. . . "

Elvis looked down and shook his head, and when he faced me again there was that bright smile on his face. As if the tense nature and hurt in his face, and how words a second ago didn't happen. He takes the jacket off his shoulder and drapes it over my shoulders, "C'mon." He naturally intertwined our fingers and tugged me along in a direction. 

"Here we are." 

I gasped in astonishment at the scene before me, "This is insane."

From the moment he pulled me along with him and the way we made our way through a forest, there was a rush of excitement and curiosity that filled me. The chirping of birds in high trees and canopies accompanied our journey, but that sound was added by something else and I could've never guessed that it would all lead to this. The source of the sound is the rush of water splashing against rocks. Bees buzzing, birds chirping, the splash of the water, and the rush of the wind rustling through the trees - all working to elevate the beautiful sight before us. 

A waterfall. 

An almost crystal-like paradise blue water spilled over the rocks and cascaded effortlessly into the gleaming pool. The water that left the ledge was not producing harsh, strong sounds. It was a rush, but a more gentle affair, which explains the white lines at the edges of it as it met the serenity of the pool at the bottom. The amber glow of the sunset peeks through the branches of a singular tree that hung over the water illuminating a radiating glow to the pool. The height of the waterfall itself was not extremely daunting, but it appeared steep and tall enough to create such a picturesque image. 

I turned to Elvis, who through my awestruck reaction, I didn't even realize was now in only a pair of swimming shorts. His bare upper body was a beautiful shade of tan, his stomach was slim and there was an undeniable air of confidence in the way he stood there beside me. Half-naked he was, - shit, half-naked. 

"Am I interruptin' you, honey?" His voice filled with amusement, as I snap my head back up to look at him. His hands are set on his hips, that familiar smirk on his lips, as he catches me checking him out. 

Well, shit. 

"I- well. .you-," I spluttered out pathetically, he raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. 

I sighed with my hands in my head in sheer embarrassment. Oh my God Nova, get it together. He isn't even naked. Well, only half-naked. 

"How did you change into shorts so fast?" I managed to say, thanking myself that I was able to contain my composture, despite the growing warmth in my cheeks. 

Elvis chuckled and tilted his head at me, "I'm glad that I impressed you, Miss Sinclair." 

I cannot help but feel the corners of my lips twitch up into a small smile. 

"Ocassionally." I teased him. 

He advanced in front of me and stopped and my heart found this the sign to beat erratically against my chest. Elvis leaned forward to the right side of my face until I swear I could feel his breathing tickle against my ear, "Darlin', I can be very impressive. " He pulled back and studied my face for a second, a smirk prominent on his lips. He fully stepped back and walked past me. I regained myself, for the second time in the conversation, and turned myself around. I was a statue for a second there, releasing a breath that I didn't know I was holding. I move my hands subtly, trying my best to get rid of the sweaty feeling of my palms. 

"W-Where are you going?" 

Damn it, Nova. Did you have to stutter?

He squinted his hypnotic blue eyes at me that were filled with mischief, "To cool off." He chuckled.

The meaning behind his words unmistakenly indicated my flustered state. 

He was walking backward, facing me while he neared the water. Elvis turned around and jumped into the water, making a splash in which I gasped. He appeared from the water not a second later with a grin on his lips, as he pushed his hair back with his one hand. 

He looked at me expectantly, "C'mon, honey." 

His invitation for me to join him in the water rendered my knees weak. Practically shaking. No matter how beautiful the entire atmosphere was and how ethereal the flow of the water seemed to be, I couldn't bring myself to step closer. My palms were welcomed with the familiar feeling of sweat, at such a speed that almost matched the the pulsing of my heart. A sound that I swear I can almost hear, matching the shallow breaths that escaped my lips. My lips felt very dry all of a sudden. 

"No. I-I-I can't. " I stepped back. 

He looked at me, his eyes a beautiful shade of blue. Full of empathy and gentleness. 

"Yeah, you can. C'mon, I've gotcha." He encouraged me, his voice was soft with his hand stretched out to me. 

"Elvis, n-no. I-I can't swim." I replied, feeling my breathing becoming more of a sport. An action that was natural now quickly becoming unnatural. 

"Darlin', I know that. Let me teach you." He offered me a small smile, and for a second I felt a sense of comfort. But that was quickly whisked away by the idea of the depth of the water and the sound of it splashing against each other, hitting the rocks nearby. 

I shook my head, "W-What if the water takes m-me? H-How deep is it? W-What if I drown?"

Elvis interrupts me, "Nova, breathe. Breathe." He repeated.

He instructed me, starting with closing my eyes and focusing on my breathing. I did this a few times until the only sounds that filled my ears were the soft swaying of the trees and the chirping of the birds. The sound of the water was barely present anymore. And so, I continued to do this until I could feel my heartbeat steady. Elvis' voice guided me. 

I regained the normal pattern of my breathing. 

"Okay, now what?" I asked, with my eyes still closed. 

Silence. 

"Elvis?" I repeated. 

No response. 

Just how fast dread seeps into one's chest in moments. 

I opened my eyes and everything was exactly how it was. Except that, the water before me did not house the familiar raven-haired man. 

"Elvis!" I yelled, my head snapping in each direction. 

Now, I am the most logical and risk-free person if one were to ask the people closest to me. I do not make any decisions, whether it be heavy ones or light ones, impulsively and in a 'spur of the moment.' Never. 

But such things as those require thinking. One thing that I can say for sure is that I do it all the time. 

Except this time I wasn't. I was being led by something else other than my brain. 

And so, I feel an energy-like force almost pulling me to glance at the water again. 

"Elvis!" I called out again. 

No response. 

Before my mind could register my actions, I slipped off the dress that I was wearing and found myself near the body of water - and I jumped. 

Shit. 

Oh god, I can't breathe. 

I tried to pull myself from the power of the water but felt my legs sinking down as well as the rest of my body. My eyes kept snapping shut due to the pressure and how I uncontrollably swallowed amounts of water as I tried to breathe. 

But I am sinking. 

and sinking. 

and-

"I've gotcha." That familiar voice rings in my ear, as I feel a pair of strong arms wrap around my waist and a body against my back. I turned my head to see him with that smirk on his lips, as I felt that I was no longer sinking. 

I furrowed my eyebrows at him once I relaxed, "You!" I turned around to hit his chest in anger. 

He groaned at the contact, "Ouch! Calm down, Nova." 

I scoffed, "Oh, I am not calming down Presley! Where the hell did you go? I thought you were with me and- and you just disappeared? I thought you were gone! I-"

I didn't realize it, but drops of tears escaped my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. 

Elvis interrupts me by pulling me closer with his arms tighter around me, and his forehead against mine. Gone was the mischievous smirk and instead, he breathed slowly, "I'm right here, baby. I'm here. I can never leave ya." He whispered, eyes looking into mine. He then grabbed hold of my hands that were against his chest and positioned them so that they were wrapped around his neck. 

"You better not," I muttered, which Elvis heard perfectly judging by the smile that crossed his lips.

I glanced down and like a shot of fear upon the realization of the depth of the water and the probability of me sinking again, as I only have my arms around Elvis. 

"Wrap your legs around me," Elvis instructed, quickly noticing the fear that struck my face. 

With no hesitation, I wrapped my legs around his waist. I must be a shade of crimson now, judging by the warmth I felt that flooded my cheeks. But who can blame me? The sheer proximity of our bodies - I have never been in a situation like this before. I only had my underwear and bra on, and Elvis was only in his shorts. And not to mention, I am in a body of water - something which I swore myself I would never do due to my intense fear of drowning. There it goes again - the beating of my heart, as I feel blood rushing from my veins to the very tip of my fingers that clung onto him. The pulse acted like a catalyst for hot waves of that beating against my chest. 

I looked at Elvis again, but his azure eyes were already on me. He was biting his bottom lip, as he groaned in what appeared to be pain. 

"Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm too heavy-" I started to profusely apologize. 

"No, darlin.' No." He said, his voice strained. 

"But-"

I started to detach myself from him slowly and move my body, feeling embarrassed about the way I practically clung onto him and put all my weight on him. 

"Nova, stop movin.'" He said, not in a harsh manner. But in a tone that was strained and I swore I heard him mutter under his breath, "Lord, help me."

"What is it? You look hurt, Elvis." I said, trying to find more of an explanation for his pained expression that adored his features. Sweat trickled down his forehead. 

He shook his head, "Keep close to me, I'm not hurt."

"You swear?" I questioned, still unsure of his words.

He nodded, "Yeah, yeah I swear."

I secured myself around him again, believing his words. 

I feel something hard against my thigh, I look down quizzically and gasped at the sight of a bulge from his shorts poking my thigh. I avert my gaze. I feel that sudden warmth in my cheeks and seems to travel to my neck as well. 

Elvis must've seen my reaction, "Aw, hell. I'm sorry, darlin.' I-" He sighed deeply, his head facing the sky above. 

To not further the obvious awkwardness that was surely rising between us, I pretended to clear my throat and said, "Were you talking about teaching me how to swim?" 

His chest seemed to relax as he breathed a sigh of relief and nodded, "Uh, yes, yeah okay." 

Swimming was a skill that my parents were not fond of me learning. Their protectiveness over my safety wins priority over learning a life skill. And so, I grew up with the fear of water as a result.

After that awkward moment between Elvis and me, slowly but surely he did exactly what he promised. He taught me how to swim. Well, almost did. My fear of drowning and losing control would creep up on me every now and again, which would make me stop and cling to him or the rocks nearby. But even with that, his patience never wavered. Nor did he make me feel embarrassed. No, I never felt any of those emotions. Only comfort and dare I say, some excitement when I feel like I am getting the hang of it. By the end of our swimming session, I was no expert in swimming, but I at least had less fear of the water and trusted myself more in gaining control of how I moved against the water. 

Not to mention, I became accustomed to the touch of his skin against mine and the closeness that was unavoidable in the situation. It was like the rapid changing of seasons - hot and cold. But in the end, no matter what, all I felt was familiarity. To the point that no contact of my skin against his was more unnatural than natural. 

Soon, the greeting of the amber glow of sunset alerted our tired bodies. Therefore, we made our way out of the body of water and back onto dry land. We dried ourselves with a towel that was nearby, one that I didn't question, for this was all a dream. And I learned now that questioning things in this world leads me to nowhere. I pulled my dress back on and Elvis put his clothes back on. However, albeit the warmer season in this dream compared to the real world, there was a chill in the air - the sign of the day nearly coming to a close. 

Elvis must've noticed my shivering state as I ran my hands up and down my crossed arms, he slipped his jacket off and draped it over my shoulders. 

I protested quickly, "What about you?"

He shrugged with that lopsided grin of his, "I'm fine, darlin'."

"Elvis-"

"Yes, Miss Sinclair?" He tilts his head at me and that's when I knew that there was no use in arguing with him. 

So I sighed and playfully rolled my eyes, "Alright, you win."

He chuckled and grasped my hand into his, the action more effortless than when I said my own name. We walked quickly beside each other in silence, in which I broke, " Thank you."

Elvis turned to me, "For what, darlin?" He asked, his thumb gently caressing my hand.  

"Well, teaching me how to swim even if I'm still not completely there yet. But thank you anyway for being so patient with me." 

"Of course, " He nodded, "You gotta believe in yourself more, honey." He said softly.

I sighed, "I know, but it's easier said than done." I cannot help but shrug. 

Elvis stopped walking and faced me, "The things that last, the most important things - they take time. Always do." He said to me, but somehow it felt as if the words were scattered notes across a broken piano - one that still plays beautifully, but long forgotten. One that remembers the melody of a beautiful thing. His tone of voice resembled one of a person who was recalling a memory of some kind before it faded away. The reminiscent kind. One that is mixed with the taste of nostalgia. 

"Very wise, who said that?" I mused. It was becoming harder and harder to find a way to ease the tension when he grew serious all of a sudden. It is not a tension that is negative by any means, but there is something in my chest. This feeling. And before I could even think more about it, I had to lean into a half-humored response. A light response, but sincerity and honesty all the same.

Elvis winked.

Before I could question more into his confusing response, he tugged my hand intertwined in his closer as he led me through more of the forest. Shortly after that, I find that we are somehow on the other side of the waterfall but perched on a hill. So, there was a distance from the water, but not too far. Just the right enough distance to take in the picturesque view. A red and white patterned picnic blanket was draped over the grass, and atop it was a picnic basket and a bouquet of flowers. 

Elvis tugged me along as we sat down on the picnic blanket. 

"You did all this?" I asked, more of a rhetorical question than most. 

"You like it?"

"This is incredible." I marveled. 

Elvis smiled, letting go of my hands and taking hold of the bouquet - presenting them to me. 

"For you, Nova." 

I gladly accept the bouquet and admire the flowers. These flowers were rare, only appearing in spring and summer. The sky blue color of the petals that surrounded the mild yellow centre - a flower that I had seen all my life, and I breathed it. It was a flower that always grew so abundantly all around my parents' house growing up. 

Which is why it so easily became my favorite flower in the entire world. 

"Elvis, thank you. These are beautiful."

"it's a. . . Forget Me Not."

"-Forget Me Not."

We ended up saying it simultaneously, and I burst out laughing at the way we said it in sync. Elvis is frozen, his eyes are wide as his mouth opens in an 'o' shape. He starts to say something, but mumbles and stopped himself. 

"Obviously, there is that clear meaning behind its name. But also for some reason, I don't why, but they always grew in the garden of my childhood house. My parents' home. My parents never raised them. I guess it came with the location of the property. That's how I happened to know what they are called. They then ended up being my favorite flower, I don't know if it was because it was the only flower that I saw constantly and thought I was a smart kid. But-"

I stopped my ramblings, as I noticed that Elvis has grown silent. His eyes are no longer looking into mine but instead appear to be looking far away out into the distance. But his removal from me wasn't what gravitated my interest, it was what was contained in his azure eyes. A build of tears seemed to be rising higher and higher in his eyes. I've only ever seen him in a state of tears like this once before, a while ago, when I asked him questions with one-word answers. 

The image makes me reach my hand out to him as I wrap it around his, "Elvis?" I said, my voice quiet, "Are you okay?" 

He doesn't respond. Instead, he shuts his eyes rapidly and those tears escape down his face. He keeps his eyes closed, appearing to be squeezing his eyelids shut. 

Oh god. What did I say? 

"Did I say something?"

My questions seemed to shake him out of his trance, and he opened his eyes, and the very moment he did - I felt my heart collapse. Like the earth-shattering quake that makes even the strongest buildings surrender to the ground. His eyes are swollen, evident by the droplets of tears that still cascade down his cheeks. He shook his head and with shaky hands, he brought his hands up to cup my cheeks, "Nova." 

"Tell me, did I say something wrong? I'm sor-"

"No, no, no." He said quickly, voice cracking. 

In that moment, there is something within me that reigns over the attitude of thinking over my decisions and choices. 

The space and distance between us suddenly felt wrong. 

I reached my hands out to push his hair out of his face and wipe the tears off his cheeks. I leave my hands resting on his shoulders, as I tuck my knees beneath me and feel myself pulling him close to me - enveloping him into a hug. The action caused the raven-haired man before me to erupt into sobs, his arms gripped around me grow tighter. I find myself running my hand through his hair in a soothing manner. Now is not the time for questions, sometimes in life, we have no choice but to speak and let words be spoken. But this time? Elvis does not need me pestering him with questions. 

"Shh, it's alright."

A while goes by, but I do not pull back until Elvis does. 

And when he does, I try to brush off that feeling of emptiness that rushes into my system - into the very corners of that organ that sits inside my chest, all too quickly. 

It took a while before the atmosphere between us goes back to lighteharted, and tear-free. Whatever it was that was on Elvis' mind that caused him to zone out like that - I hope he never delves into that again. It breaks me. He never tells me what it was, and I never ask. Instead, he apologises profusely and presents the food that was in the picnic blanket. We have the food and soon flow into happier topics of conversation. 

"No way, really?" I asked as Elvis retells a story of how he first started to learn guitar. All of my knowledge of Elvis was from the Elvis movie, and nothing further than that. 

Elvis nodded, "Yeah. I think I was eleven at the time and  I wanted a bicycle, but my mama didn't want it." 

"Why?"I asked, taking a sip out of the glass of wine. 

"Couldn't afford it," Elvis shrugged and continued, "But Mama also believed that a bicycle would end up hurtin' me. She feared for my safety all the time. "

"So, she instead opted for buying you a guitar instead? I guess, it makes sense. How protective your mother was. " This I knew of. How Elvis had a twin brother, but was lost at childbirth. A reasonable experience for the constant fear and protectiveness his mother had over his safety. 

Elvis chuckled, running his hand through his hair, "Yeah, I didn't know what I was doin'. Knew nothin' about playin' the instrument. Only learned from my Uncle Johnny and the pastor, Frank Smith from the church we would go to." He explained further. 

"That's why I never understood when people called me gifted. I was far from it, honey." He shook his head in embarrassment. 

"I disagree with you. Talent doesn't always mean waking up and being a prodigy at something, sometimes it takes learning on your own and then combining that with practice. I don't think anything is effortless. So, whatever you said, Elvis - I fully believe you were a talented one. A once in a lifetime." I said, not realizing that I was using my hands to speak. 

Elvis smiled at this, his cheeks a shade of crimson as he looked down whilst scratching his neck.

"Well, uh, thank you darlin."

The duality of him continues to amaze me. 

"Sorry, I rambled away like that. Saying so much in one sentence - I hope it wasn't annoying." I chuckled, as I admitted this to him. 

"I love listening to you speak." He said, with no hesitation. 

I feel myself blush at his gaze and turn to look at the scenery, that's when I realize that the landscape has been engulfed by the dark blue color of the night sky. A thousand stars dotted around it, looking down on us. 

I turned to face him again, "Oh gosh, I never even realized it was already dark. "

We must've been talking for hours and hours, getting lost in conversation and not realizing it was the sky's turn to rest. 

Elvis frowned, "Oh, do you want to go?"

I shook my head, "No, not yet."

He sighed in what appeared to be a relief, "Good. I'm not ready yet."

I tilted my head, "And why is that, Presley?"

His hand reaches out behind him, in which he extracts a guitar.

"Since when was that behind you?" I laughed. 

Elvis simply winked, "I told ya, Miss Sinclair. I can be very impressive."

I cannot help but smile, "Uh-huh."

His fingers strummed a few chords, "Any special requests?"

I thought for a moment, I don't know his discography that well. 

"Any song. Whatever comes to mind."

He nodded and started to strum the strings of the guitar, and when he began to sing - I swear I no longer felt the coldness of the evening air around me. Instead, there is the warmth that fills his voice and surrounds me. The first verse of the song is gentle and evokes the very definition of a peaceful night. But not one that makes one fall asleep, it makes you keep listening and hanging onto every word. I do end up closing my eyes very briefly, but open them again and when I do - he is already looking into mine with a smile on his lips. 

"Love me tender, 

love me true, 

all my dreams fulfilled

for my darlin' I love you 

and I always will." 

Elvis' voice was flying through the breeze of the evening air like a gentle companion walking through the vacant streets of a quaint town. One thing that the movie portrayed was how powerful of a performer Elvis was. Especially the era of the 70s. The extravagant jumpsuits, the international hotel ballroom. The way he moved on the stage. But they rarely captured how, even without all of that, there was the tenderness and sweetness to his voice that can mesmerize anyone just the same. 

"Love me tender, 

love me dear,

Tell me you are mine, 

I'll be yours through all the years, 

Till the end of time." He finished singing and holds onto that last line - almost speaks it, instead of singing it. 

And just as he stopped strumming the guitar, thoughts evade my mind. Yes, I feared the water earlier because what else does one do when they don't know how to swim? I didn't know the depth of the water, and it can be unpredictable at times. No matter how serene the atmosphere. I know all can be solved if I had the skill of knowing how to swim. But I didn't. 

But the one catalyst that drove that swimming session to even happen - well, it was him. Through my actions that did not align with my rational thinking, I went straight into the water to look for him. To find him. To see him safe. To make sure. If I didn't do any of that, I doubt I would be in the water at all. 

I simply - jumped. 

It was only now, at this moment with him across from me as he finished singing a song so sweet and pure - that I realized it was never really about jumping into the water. 

Whether I dared to say it out loud or not, I know it is true. A feeling that triumphs over my anxieties and fear, which I proved to myself by jumping into that water - I care about him. 

Elvis, I care about you. I say this in my mind. Words unspoken. 

I clapped, "That was amazing Elvis."

He smiled shyly, "Thank you, honey."  He said, placing the guitar back down on the picnic blanket. He hesitates, about to say something, and scratches the back of his neck as he mumbles something under his breath. 

His hands delicately get hold of a loose strand of hair falling over my face, and gently tucked this behind my ear. The action tickles me and I end up giggling a little, "Oh gosh, that tickles." 

Elvis grinned and leaned in again. "Hmm?"

"Yes, it does. I am ticklish, okay?" I chuckle, shaking my head. 

Oh gosh, wrong words Nova. Unfortunately, he caught on to my words very quickly. Elvis started to tickle me on my sides, and I couldn't help but gasp with my eyes going wide. I am lying down on the picnic blanket now, falling over from the actions.  My hands frantically attempt to push him off me, but with that infamous smirk on his lips - he doesn't hold back. 

"Elvis! oh my god, stop!" I said, in between gasps and laughter.

"Nope." 

Okay, two can play a game, Presley. 

I tickled him back, and he gasped with a picture of momentarily surprise. He stumbled back, now being the one lying down whilst I have the upper hand. Unfortunately, Elvis does not appear to be as ticklish as I am. He is quick to grab hold of both of my hands. Our laughter stops, once we both realize the position that we are in. I am lying on top of him, with both of my hands engulfed in his hand and his right hand wrapped around my waist.  Our faces were inches apart from each other, that I could feel his breathing against my cheek. 

"The power you hold over me, Nova." He said softly, with a wide smile. 

His words register through my mind like a faint wave, for I couldn't help but admire him. His tanned skin, those piercing eyes of his. His lips looked so soft. A strand of his perfectly groomed hair overshadowed part of his face. 

"You're beautiful," I said, unable to stop myself. 

Elvis grinned and shook his head, "Nah, you should see the view from 'ere. That's the breathtaking one." 

I blushed but shook my head still. 

"Oh, here you go with your flirting again," I replied, chuckling. 

"Always with you."

taglist:

@literally-just-elvis-fics

@obsessedwithurlove

@simplyamberj

@ilovereadingfanfics

@returntopresley

[senseearly]

I tried drawing young mithrun but ended up with an attempt for a kbms lovechild so uh:

MYRTLE (84)

Half-elf/born in Melini

Assigned female at birth/non-binary

Grew in tallman pace until they suddenly stopped growing at 20 years old

Currently working for their uncle (Kerensil Trading Company) in Melini but wants to be an adventurer

Close with their parents as a child but developed a strained relationship with Mithrun and Mithrun's struggles with rying and finding desires (worsened when Kabru died but they're both all good now)

More stuff under the cut:

Myrtle was actually an 'accident' and Mithrun carried them for 4 years (someone shared a HC that elves have a gestation period of 4-5 years so I'm borrowing that lol)

Myrtle spent most of their childhood in the Golden Kingdom and was visited by his uncle (Mithrun's brother) and Milsilril (who they call Auntie but at one point called her 'Grandma'). They are more familiar with Tallman/Golden Kingdom and Utayan culture, but not acquainted with their elven roots (they actually find Western elves intimidating)

Kabru did his very best sharing what he remembers of his hometown; Mithrun had assimilated into the Golden Kingdom way of life at this point and found some (most) of his elven noble ways too cumbersome

Myrtle was a kind child who grew up doted and loved by his parents and relatives. And they love their family with the same ferocity. But growing up, Myrtle was quickly made aware that his father, Mithrun, was 'not normal' - in most days, he was okay; in others, he struggled to get out of bed. In rare days, Mithrun was completely catatonic, and seeing Mithrun unresponsive, staring at the distance, scared Myrtle so much that he became somewhat of a troublemaker child, so that Mithrun always has to act and respond and not have anytime to be lost in his thoughts.

At some point, Myrtle 'disliked' Mithrun for the way that he is, not understanding his situation at all. Myrtle thinks that Mithrun does not love them enough to be better, feels ashamed that they cannot do anything to help Mithrun be better. But Myrtle's feelings on Mithrun comes from a place of love and ignorance - love because they do genuinely love their Father; and ignorance because they were never told why Mithrun was like that (Myrtle heard of what the dungeons were, but Kabru nor Mithrun never bothered to tell of the demon, Mithrun being the dungeon lord, or the full extent of the destruction of Utaya)

Once Myrtle became aware of their parent's pasts, they understood them a lot better.

Also thinking that a point of friction that Myrtle had with his parents was their dream of becoming an adventurer and fighting monsters (which were still rampant, though weaker) and Kabru insisting that they choose any other dream but that. Myrtle in their teenage years found Kabru too strict, too protective, not that Mithrun wasn't. But Mithrun at least was willing to teach them how to fight; Kabru made it clear Myrtle was not allowed near even a walking mushroom. Learning that Kabru was from Utaya, and what exactly happened in Utaya, made Myrtle understand why.

Eventually though Kabru concedes, knowing that Myrtle is much more capable, and surrounded by their own friends and comrades who will support them. I think in the last years of his life, Kabru made sure to prepare everything that will help Myrtle in his adventuring journey if they chose to embark once he is gone - such as speaking with guilds all over the content, ensuring a diplomatic immunity for Myrtle when they're in ally countries, writing an annotated adventure guide just for them, etc.

They work as a Vice-Manager of the Kerensil Trading Company (Mithrun's brother's merchant empire), but that's just a gloried name for the position of intern. Mithrun technically manages the Kerensil Trading Company branch in Melini, and is being pestered by Mithrun's brother to take over the main branch so that Mithrun will move back to the West. Mithrun is unmoved so Mithrun's brother has plans to declare Myrtle as 'heir' of the Kerensil merchant empire, all for the purpose of having his brother and niece move to the West (Mithrun's brother does not see the point of Mithrun and Myrtle staying at the Golden Kingdom any longer after Kabru's death)

(The beauty mark next to Myrtle's right eye is something that they got from Kabru's mother)

[captainsophiestark]

Ragtag

Grant Ward x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Written for Fictober 2023!

Fandom: Marvel

Day 1 Prompt: "It's not too late, let's go."

Summary: The scene with FitzSimmons and Garrett on the Bus at the end of Season 1 if, instead of FitzSimmons, Grant had found and captured his long-time best friend, partner, and girlfriend.

Word Count: 4,158

Category: Angst, Fluff

Warnings: Mentions of abuse. No depictions of it, but the mention/realization that a character has been abused in the past, while staring at/standing in the same hallway as the abuser.

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

This had to be a nightmare.

With each step I took, one foot in front of the other, I willed myself to wake up, to realize everything had just been a bad dream. And with each step, I was forced closer to the realization that my situation was heartbreakingly, terrifyingly real.

The past week, I'd had a line of similar thoughts, hoping and praying that the fall of SHIELD and the betrayal of my best friend and boyfriend, Grant Ward, had been some insane fever dream. That I'd wake up in the med pod on the Bus, the team happy to see me awake, and that I'd realize everything had been some horrible concoction of my imagination instead. But just like now, I'd been forced to come to terms with the fact that I was wide awake.

First, I thought the nightmare was Hydra's infiltration. Then it became Garrett, Grant's mentor and basically surrogate father, being a traitor. Then it was discovering Grant was a traitor. Now, it had reached a whole new level, as Grant frog-marched me toward the Bus that he and Garrett had taken over, my hands tied behind my back and his gun forcing me to keep moving forward.

"Grant... what are you doing?" I breathed, trying to keep the tears out of my voice as we neared the ramp of the plane. Garrett had taken things over in the name of Hydra, and he clearly had some hold over my boyfriend. Every step towards that ramp lowered my odds of making it through this.

"We can't have SHIELD following us, that's all," he said. He kept his voice level, trying to convince me he was being reasonable, like I'd heard him do with our enemies on missions countless times before. I shook my head.

"You are SHIELD, Grant," I said. "Please, please remember that."

His grip tightened slightly on my forearm as he led me to the base of the ramp, a comforting squeeze more than anything threatening. A week ago, it would've put me at ease.

"I'm not the man you think I am," he muttered. I sighed heavily through my nose, a little bit of irritation finally flaring up.

"I know you better than anybody else on earth, apparently including you," I huffed. Grant didn't respond.

As soon as we entered the garage bay, where Lola used to sit, Grant and I were flanked by three other agents, who followed us up the stairs. Grant moved ahead, leading me through the physically wrecked and shattered hallways of the plane we'd spent a few, blissful months calling home, and my heart squeezed tight in my chest. How had everything gone so wrong?

"Here she is, sir," he said, and a second later I saw John Garrett's stupid, shitty face staring back at me. I narrowed my eyes and scowled, unable to contain my hate and anger enough to keep a neutral expression.

"What's the matter?" he asked, his tone light and teasing in a way that made my blood boil. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Maybe I've just got nothing to say to you," I replied. He had the nerve to laugh.

"Well, that's fine then. I don't know that I have much to say to you either, especially now that you're here. Thanks to Ward, you won't be much of a problem for me anymore."

Over Garrett's shoulder, I saw Grant's expression flicker and shutter. Like a kicked dog, caught between someone he loved and someone who scared him. An anger I'd only ever felt when our enemies threatened Grant welled up in my chest.

In my entire, almost fifteen-year career at SHIELD, I had managed to get through it without killing anyone. Ever. Even before I had the Icer to knock enemies out instead of shooting them the old-fashioned way, I'd made a point of using non-lethal force. It mattered to me; it felt important to find a way to do my job without killing people in the process.

Grant had never had the same reservations. It didn't bother me, and although we'd talked about it once or twice, I'd never expected him to take up my same system when we'd been partnered on missions, when we'd become good friends, or when we'd started dating. Time and again, he'd gone to the mat for me, tearing apart anyone that existed as a threat to me with a force I'd never have imagined using.

For the first time in our lives, in our decade and a half of friendship, the tables had turned.

Thanks to the rest of Coulson's team, I knew John Garrett had significant organ failure. A Cybertek device in his chest was the only thing still keeping him alive. He'd abused Grant for longer than I'd known him, and for the first time, I could see clearly how it affected Grant, in real time. For both our sakes, I couldn't let this go on any longer. I didn't know if it would kill him, and I still hoped it wouldn't, but for the first time I didn't care enough to make sure it wouldn't. I needed to get away from Garrett, and more importantly, I needed to get Grant away from Garrett. Even if it was for just a few minutes.

The Bus's engines whirled outside, and I felt us lift off the ground. An added complication, for sure, but not enough to change the plan I'd just formed in my head. I took a deep breath in and out, steadying my heartbeat and readying myself for the action ahead, like Grant had taught me years and years ago. Then, I jumped as high as I could, bringing my handcuffed hands under my feet and around to the front of my body as I did. Before anybody could register my movement, I darted forward and struck Garrett in the chest as hard as I could, putting all my weight and momentum behind both of my hands.

Garrett went down like a sack of bricks. He doubled over, gripping his middle as he groaned. I brought my knee up and hit him again before anybody could stop me, and then I took off running through the familiar passages of the jet that I used to call home.

"Garrett!" I heard Grant cry, distress in his voice that sent a pang running through my chest. I ducked around a corner at the sound of thundering footsteps behind me, and soon the agents that'd followed Grant and I from the minute we set foot on the Bus came rushing into the small common area in front of all our bunks, one room over from Garrett and Grant.

I heard shouting from the other room, and Grant's voice faded as he told Garrett to wait just a second. I tried to keep a piece of my attention focused on that while I engaged the three agents who'd decided to chase me. Even with my hands tied, they weren't much of a match for me.

I wrapped my arms around the neck of the one who'd come in last, using him as a human shield against his friends as I held him in the sleeper hold.

One by one, I worked through my three assailants, until they were each unconscious on the ground. As soon as the last one was down, I paused to tune back in to the goings-on in the other room, and heard Grant's voice as he assured Garrett that he would live. Apparently Cybertek was preparing to treat him in Miami.

I made the quick decision that I had enough time to make sure these three wouldn't continue to be a problem, so I dragged them into my old bunk (right next to Grant's) and then wedged a loose piece of the dining table's structure into the door so it couldn't open again. It likely wouldn't hold them for very long, but it was better than nothing. I took a few extra seconds to wrestle out of my handcuffs, my mind working as I did.

With Garrett and his three goons incapacitated, I had decent hope of getting Grant alone. I heard Raina, an inhuman we'd been struggling with, promising to stay in the room with Garrett and keep him safe. And then, I heard Garrett's voice hissing at Grant, barely above an ugly whisper.

"I need you to put her down."

I straightened, hands on my hips as my handcuffs finally dropped from my wrists, and frowned. There was no mistaking what he meant, but I couldn't imagine he actually thought he'd get very far ordering Grant to kill me.

"What?" Grant's voice, barely louder than Garrett's. I shifted a little closer to the doorway to hear better. "No. There's plenty of time. I won't leave you."

"And I'm telling you to cross her off for me. It's not a weakness, is it?"

The silence seemed to stretch for years. Then, finally, Grant's voice:

"No."

I turned on my heel and ran.

The nightmare continued, apparently, as the man who'd saved my life more times than I could count anymore had apparently just agreed to be my murderer. I couldn't believe he'd actually go through with it, but I also couldn't believe he'd entertain Garrett to this point. I couldn't take any risks, not now.

I slid down the ladder between the sleeping compartment and the cockpit, landing in the maze of pods in the hull just as I heard heavy footsteps overhead. My heart started racing in my chest, a fear like I'd never felt in all my near-death experiences at SHIELD gripping my chest.

Grant wouldn't actually kill me, would he?

I darted between the pods, and just like in a horror movie, I heard Grant's voice call out my name from behind me. I sped up, finally ducking into one of the pods and locking it behind me as I heard his footsteps closing in. My hand slammed on the locking device and it turned from green to red just in time. A second later, Grant appeared before me, his hand on the glass separating us.

"Open the door," he said, his eyes locked on mine. I could only see one of his hands, and my heart raced in my chest as I realized the other was likely level with his hip. I took an involuntary step backward.

"Grant... you're scaring me," I breathed, tears at last rising to the surface and threatening to fall. I'd fought them back once, but this time, I didn't think I'd be able to.

"Y/N, just open the door."

"No. I heard what you said, I heard what Garrett said. You... you wouldn't actually kill me. Would you?"

He grimaced, his jaw setting in the expression I recognized as him dealing with something he DID NOT want to deal with. My heart broke a little more in my chest.

"Just open the door."

"No! Grant, are you kidding me?" The tears were coming now, streaming down my cheeks, and I stepped towards Grant again, pressing up against the glass to get as close to him as possible. "I love you! You're my best friend, you're my partner! You're supposed to have my back through anything! I... I'd started daydreaming about marrying you! About the two of us, having the SHIELD careers recruits would be hearing about for the rest of time, before finally retiring somewhere nice together. Every time I thought about my future, Grant, you were in it... and now I might not have a future because of you? Are you kidding me?"

His expression flickered, and he couldn't keep some sadness and regret off his face when he looked at me through the glass this time. The tiniest spark of hope fluttered in my chest. If he felt bad, maybe I could still talk him off the ledge. Maybe I didn't have to lose the love of my life.

"I'm sorry. I tried to tell you... I'm a bad man. I'm not the man you thought you fell in love with."

"Bullshit!" I cried, slamming my fist into the glass in front of me. Grant jumped a little, surprise registering on his face. "You are exactly who I think you are. I know you, Grant, I've spent the last fifteen years of my life with you. Garrett may think he knows you, but he's wrong. He knows who he wants you to be. But I know who you actually are."

"You don't-"

"The sugary, caramely coffee drinks you secretly love but refuse to let anybody else but me know you drink?" I said, interrupting him with a hand on my hip, my eyes locked on his. "How invested you got in The Circle when I made you watch it on Netflix? All the time we spent planning what our strategy would be if we ever went on the show together?"

He grimaced, but I didn't give him a second to respond.

"The face mask you did with me that you loved, and all the stupid pictures we took together with the masks on? Your aggressive hatred of the Patriots even though you're from Massachusetts? The fact that you sleep best with a sleep mask, and that you have to take your socks off right before you get under the covers? Not a moment before, and definitely not after? All of that shared history, all of those things we've shared and that I've gotten to see, and you think I don't know you?"

Grant just stared at me, looking at a loss for words. I let mine hang in the air for a minute, then continued.

"I highly doubt John Garrett could list even one of those things. And those little things that you do every day, that you can't fake? That's you Grant. I know you. I know you've saved me more times than I can even count, from the demons in the real world and the ones inside my own head. So I get that Garrett's got you believing you're some kind of secret evil supervillain, but I know enough to know how ridiculous that is. You're the best man I've ever met, Grant. Please, believe me over that piece of shit upstairs that never cared enough to know the real you."

Grant still didn't speak for a few long moments, but this time, I just let the silence hang. I held his gaze, the tears having finally stopped. I didn't wipe away the remnants as they slowly dried on my face. Finally, Grant sighed, breaking eye contact to look down at the ground before returning his stare to me.

"And how exactly do you see this going?" he asked, his voice low. He'd leaned in a little, like we were co-conspirators, and I swear I felt a weight lift off my chest. The glimmer of hope had turned into a full light. "What do you expect to happen next, after all this? Don't tell me you still see a happy ending, with us retiring after full careers at SHIELD."

I sighed through my nose and rolled my eyes up to the ceiling, before fixing Grant with a look. He raised his eyebrows, and I had to fight back a laugh, mostly at the relief for that small moment of our relationship back to normal.

"Well, no, I don't think that's in the cards anymore," I deadpanned. "But the only important part of my vision of the future has been you, Grant. I don't care if we get mentioned in SHIELD classes years from now or if we're labeled as failures, examples of what not to do. All that matters to me is you."

He stared at me for a few more long, silent moments. For most people, he would've been unreadable, but I recognized the slightly-wider eyes, the deer-in-headlights look he got whenever I admitted big feelings that he didn't expect me to share. It was a good sign, and when he swallowed and cleared his throat, his expression had all of the grim defeat gone, replaced instead by a shaky hope.

"So what are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting we run," I said simply. "It's not too late, let's go. Let's ditch it all, and go somewhere we can start a new life together. Screw Garrett, screw SHIELD, screw Hydra. All that matters is you and me."

Grant stared at me like he didn't believe I was real. Slowly, swallowing heavy again, he nodded. I raised my eyebrows and smiled.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," he finally managed, nodding again, more sure this time. "Yeah, let's do that. You're... you're all that matters to me, too."

My small smile broke into a full-on grin, and at last, I hit the lock on the door. I slid it open the moment the lock flashed green, darting forward to close the space between me and Grant and wrapping him in a bone-crushing hug. I buried my face in his chest, and after a moment, he wrapped his arms around me in return.

"Well. I guess she was a weakness."

Grant and I's heads snapped up in unison to find John Garrett standing just down the hallway from us. I narrowed my eyes. Of course he'd picked this moment to show up.

Grant stiffened under my arms, and I could feel the stress radiating off of him. Garrett took a small step towards us, but I didn't dare move, lest Grant feel anymore trapped than he already did. Besides, holding him tight in a hug we'd shared during and after a thousand traumatic experiences felt like the best leg up on Garrett I could get.

"Agent Ward, I didn't train you to be a pushover. I trained you to be a man who could go in and do the job that needed to be done," said Garrett. "It's not too late. You don't want to disappoint me, son."

At the same time Garrett's words washed over Grant, he took another step closer, and his hand flexed at his side. Grant flinched under me, and I saw red.

In almost fifteen years, Grant had never flinched. Not like this. When something came flying at his face? Sure. When an especially good jump scare happened in a horror movie and he tried to hide how badly it had scared him? Always. But when someone stood apart from us, subtly threatening him? Never. Not once.

Garrett had clearly manipulated him, badly. I knew that. Throughout the course of this interaction, I'd assumed Garrett had crossed the line into mental abuse, too. But now, I realized it had gone even further. To mental and physical abuse. Garrett had hit Grant enough after Grant "failed" him, that my boyfriend, who'd stared down some of the scariest people in the world without fear, stood next to me trembling, caught between a rock and a hard place.

"Think things through here, Ward," said Garrett, continuing his slow walk towards us. "Either you kill her, or I do. Weaknesses are unacceptable, especially now that we've come out of the shadows. A happy ending doesn't exist to this love story that came from your lies at SHIELD. So don't be stupid, son. Don't make this worse on yourself than it has to be-"

My hand moved before my brain actually registered what I was doing. I grabbed the gun out of the holster at Grant's waist, the one I thought he might've decided to use on me only about ten minutes ago, and I levelled it at Garrett. I was aware enough to realize this wasn't an Icer; this had the ability to do lethal damage. And for the first time ever, I decided I didn't care. I shot John Garrett in the chest, twice. He dropped to his knees, the life quickly fading out of him, leaving a crumpled heap on the floor.

The gun fell out of my hand and clattered to the ground, my hands were shaking so bad. I dropped to my knees, a wave roaring in my ears as I stared at Garrett's dead body. Vaguely, I registered tears streaming down my face. What had I just done?

A second later, Grant dropped next to me. His arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me to him. Not only had I just killed someone, I'd killed someone important to Grant. In front of him. His abuser, yes, but that wouldn't make it much easier to watch the man he thought saved him die before his eyes.

"Grant... I'm so sorry," I breathed, the words coming out broken around sobs and gulps for air. I shook my head and buried it into his shoulder, the reality of everything washing over me again and again, like waves pounding into the shore. "I can't believe... I just killed someone. I'm so sorry, I... I've always found another way. Always. All life is precious and important, but he was just so rotten- And he was hurting you- I'm so sorry."

I broke, words failing me as I shook, sobbing, head buried in Grant's chest. He wrapped his other arm around me and held me tight, which only made me feel worse. We stayed like that for a few moments, until I finally got a hold of myself enough to look at him. His eyes remained on Garrett's broken form, and it felt like a punch to the gut.

"Grant... how can you be comforting me right now? After what I did to someone you care about, I-"

I broke off again, the words turning into choked sobs as I ducked my head back into his chest. I squeezed my eyes tight, waiting for Grant to come to his senses enough to pull away. Instead, he sighed, and pulled me closer.

"Come on, is that even a real question?" he asked, his words as shaky as both of us combined. "The same way you forgave me for everything I did. I love you. And... if you, of all people, decided the right decision was to shoot John Garrett? ...Well, I don't know. Maybe he was having a worse impact on me than I realized."

I cried harder at that, relief and sadness and a thousand other emotions that had been warring in my chest all day coming together to be processed as one. After a few moments, I felt Grant's shaky breathing and a few drops of wetness on the top of my head as he cried silently with me. Grief for a lot of things gripped us both, but at least we could cling to each other.

A few long minutes later, we finally pulled apart and helped each other to stand. We were both still shaking, and I did my best to stand between Grant and Garrett's body. It felt wrong to keep my back to Garrett, to let myself avoid facing what I'd done, but I just couldn't make myself do it.

Wordlessly, we wandered back up to the main level of the Bus. Raina still waited here somewhere, but we didn't see her, and we didn't seek her out as we headed for the cockpit. With a few looks, we both knew exactly what we wanted and needed to do. I held Grant's hand tight in my own as we had the Quinjet set down immediately, in the middle of a field in Oklahoma. Neither of us wanted to be on board a second longer.

We walked out of the cockpit and towards the ramp in the back, avoiding any of the cargo bay where so much had happened. We found Raina in the living room, but she didn't try to stop us. Hand in hand, Grant and I walked off the ramp and out into the field. A moment later, the plane took off again, continuing on its original course and leaving us behind.

Grant tugged me closer to him and wrapped an arm around me, and we leaned on each other as the plane disappeared into the sky. Both of us still shook a little, and we were each the only thing keeping the other standing. After a minute, once the plane completely disappeared from sight, Grant spoke in a quiet voice.

"So... what do we do now?"

"...I guess we just start walking."

I looked up at him and our eyes connected for a few moments, holding each other's stares and trying to promise the other that everything would be okay. With Garrett gone, now more than ever, there was nothing stopping us from leaving all the hurt and bad memories behind, and starting over somewhere new. With any luck, Raina would tell people we were dead along with John Garrett, and that would be the end of our involvement with SHIELD and Hydra.

For now, though, none of that mattered. All that mattered was the man standing beside me as we turned, our backs to the plane and its path, and started walking towards our new future, hand in hand and one foot in front of the other.

****************

Marvel Taglist: @valkyriepirate @luv-ghostie

[faretheeoscar]

PROMISE ME MIGUEL…

*Warnings this is long just for being an explanation to my fan art drawing for Non Violent Communication fic of @greensagephase *

Apologies for any mistakes I might have made,I wrote this on a plane hehehe

So a couple of days ago I had this dream about Peter and Miguel meeting each other, keeping the to the canon of NVC in mind that Peter is gone (my heart aches for Peter and I’m having a full brainrot rn)

I can’t remember the full details about it so I’m gonna improvise a bit, but in general this is how it went. (in general the premise was that Miguel got to talk to Peter, it was in a dream, the same dreams he has with his family when Gabriel, his mom or Gaby come to visit him in his dreams.)

Cue the dream and the brain rot!

——————

Miguel have been tossing around all night, he have been getting conflicted about his feelings about you, how they started to develop which each passing day, at the beginning he was reluctant to even acknowledge you as his friend cause he was afraid of loosing you, but then everything changed, it’s been 2 wonderful years of what he thinks it’s the most amazing friendship of his life, there’s no one like you, he feels comfort around you, something he had only had with his family, and nowadays it’s not an unfamiliar feeling for him to consider you as the closest person he has in his life.

The thing is that recently his thoughts have been diverted in another direction, you both have been in certain situations that made his heart beat faster than normal, he has been noticing your smile, the way your eyes sparkle every time you look up at him, the way you do a little scrunch on your nose when you think and stick out the tip of your tongue when you are concentrating, his thoughts have led him to think to you in other ways more than a friendship, made him crave to be closer to you, to be more…

But Miguel is conflicted, he doesn’t want to risk the only thing that is a constant in his life, specially not knowing if you are maybe feeling the same thing that he is feeling, he knows something in the air has changed, he can sense it, but still he doesn’t want to put anything in line, that’s why Miguel has been distancing himself from you for a little, he has stopped pairing you up with him on the team missions cause he gets nervous that he’ll screw up and say something he wouldn’t, hell today he was so nervous to be around you that he has cancelled his Saturday dinner with you, and he’s not only nervous about how you might feel about him, there’s other thing that bothers him deeply… and it’s your past, he knows you have had your own hard journey to heal, and he has helped you in what he can first, as a boss, then as a friend and now… he wants to help you with your heart, the thing is that, he has never ever wanted to insult Peter’s memory, and that’s what scares him the most about this situation, that’s why he has gotten in an anxious state when he is trying to rest, he tosses and turns on his bed, he has been like this for two weeks now, not even being able to sleep with your hoodie cause it causes him an amount of fear and guilt that he doesn’t know where it comes from, maybe it’s also the same insecurities he has regarding about thinking… no, not thinking, wanting to be in a relationship again.

Miguel is in front of his monitors this being another night when he tries to get these thoughts away from his head distracting himself with job, but tonight his head is pumping, he hears a slight beep on his ears, the sleep depravation is getting to him, he even feels that he eventually will pass out with exhaustion, a thing that doesn’t take long to happen as he suddenly feels his knees weakening, his brain quickly responds to it in a flight or fight situation and he hangs on to the closest surface attempting not to fall, but suddenly everything goes black for him.

Miguel opens his eyes and blinks but he’s not in his lab, somehow he’s now at your house, spread out on the couch, his head doesn’t still hurts and he feels heavy, there’s a soft hum on the living room, billie holiday plays in a very soft volume, the scratch of the record it’s soothing and helps him with the head ache, he feels his heart warming at the thought of being at your place again, but as he regains his senses he feels the couch, it isn’t the same couch that is now at your apartment, it’s the old one…

Miguel looks at the soft old fabric and touches it with his fingertips wondering what the old couch is doing there, he tries to sit down on the couch and he notices your apartment is also on the same configuration you used to have it, the old bookshelves are there, almost breaking by the weight of the books in them, your old pictures and not the new ones… something weird is happening, this moments are when he curses about not having a spider sense to sense, not knowing if he’s in imminent danger or to be able to read the room he’s in, all his worries get answered when a soft masculine voice comes from behind him.

“Oh hey there, you’re finally awake!” Peter says as he looks at him smiling leaning on the pilar next to the kitchen.

That’s the answer, he’s dreaming.

It’s a very vivid dream and he starts to be a bit insecure that something might happened to him just like when he saw his family, but this couldn’t be like that, cause why on earth would he be seeing Peter on his dream.

“Relax Miguel, you’re safe, you just passed from exhaustion, but you’re fine” Peter chuckles as he offers him some coffee and sits down next to him in the couch maintaining a safe distance.

“You…know me?” Miguel’s eyebrows furrows as he looks at Peter, he’s still not sure how he is in his dream or why does Peter knows him if it’s really a sort of apparition like the one he saw of his family.

“Of course I know you Miguel, you might think I don’t know you, but you’ll be surprised of how much I actually know about you” Peter chuckles and relaxes on the couch as he says that, as if he was talking to an old friend.

Miguel’s mind starts working a million miles per hour, if this is really Peter, if somehow he is really talking to him those that means that, have you really been talking about him to Peter? Of course maybe he could see you as he took care of you, just like his family did for him, just like Gabriel, his mom and Gabriela were in his dreams, perhaps he was in your dreams too. Miguel was pretty sure Peter was always looking out for you.

“Really?”

Peter nods his head and smiles softly at him.

“Yeah, you see, I look down to her, I protect her from here, take this as my own HQ and my monitors are that old tv over there” Peter jokes as he motions at the exact copy of his old apartment he shared with you.

“No, but in all seriousness, she has told me everything about you, she always talks to me when she gets the chance, when she leaves flowers at the cemetery, when she feels alone, when she dances in the living room…” Peter can’t help but chuckle as a wide and tender smile appears on his face, he of course has never stopped loving you, you were… are his everything and will always be,before he gets distracted more by the thought of you he shakes his head and continues talking to Miguel, after all he is here with him for something important.

“She always talks to me about your friendship with her, about everything you do together from the small little things like the morning coffees, to the big things like Christmas or new years celebrations, your missions, she is always so happy when she talks about you…”

Peter gives Miguel a knowing look that makes Miguel a bit uncomfortable for a second, it’s not his plan to intimidate him or anything, but he can’t help his playful nature.

“She has told me about your dinner weekly traditions, about the food you prepare for each other, the evenings talking and listening to records while enjoying cafe de olla and pan dulce”

This makes Miguel think, the fact that you talked to Peter about everything you two always do, from biggest things like the missions to the smallest things like your traditions of cafe de olla and pan de dulce shouldn’t really surprise him, cause he also tells his family all about them, when he speaks to Gabriel before going to sleep or when his mind drifts and he pictures another reality with his family there, where you are in there too, when he pictures a big family dinner and you two talking about the smallest of things as everybody gathers on the table to eat; in his fantasies he talks to Gabriela about the music and movies you show him from your universe, he talks to his mom about the recipes you share together, and lately he confides to Gabriel about his confusing feelings towards you. Miguel knows the sentiment of speaking to his loved ones about the important things in life even when they are not there anymore, so that makes him sure that you talk to Peter like he talks to his family, but the fact that you eagerly talk about him with Peter, brings a small blush to his cheeks, that he hides drinking some of the coffee Peter offered him earlier.

“I hope you don’t mind that I seem to know a lot about you” Peter smiles softly at Miguel and he shakes his head giving him a soft smile in return.

“Of course not Peter, and same goes to you, that I do hope you don’t mind I also know a lot of things about you either”

Miguel starts thinking about all the times you have shared information with him about Peter, when you have shared memories of your time with him while he was still with you.

Peter nods at him,.”It’s alright” he looks at Miguel as he sees that his mind goes somewhere else, he’s worried about being there with him alone, he knows why Miguel is here with him, he knows the purpose of his brief visit, Miguel is scared of feeling, scared of opening himself to love again, slowly lifting his walls up again, cause even though he has a lot of fears mainly about how you feel and how he doesn’t want to compete with your memory of Peter, what Miguel fears the most is that he doesn’t think he might be good enough for you, that he might be better keeping a distance between the two of you again, building up his walls regarding physical touch that he let slowly crumbled with every spark of electricity and comfort he felt when he got to touch your hand or feel the warmth of your embrace, even though you have showed him and told him that he’s everything and more you could ask to be better, to be happy, he doesn’t think he’s good enough even as a friend, specially cause of his latest actions on keeping distance from you.

“Listen, we are both here to talk about something important, I know how you feel, I know what conflicts your mind and let me tell you, despite what you think of yourself…You’re a good man Miguel”

Peter puts his hand on Miguel’s shoulder and let’s it stay there, his touch only wanting to give Miguel comfort letting him know that is was a valid thing to feel, he sometimes felt when he was alive that maybe he wasn’t enough, but that was a thing that you always reminded him an absurd concept, you always told him, that it was enough for you two to be together, that what you only needed for happiness was to see him smile, same thought that always came to him, your smile, your happiness was the most important thing in the world for him.

“I couldn’t be happier with what you have done for her, how you have help her get through, how you changed her world upside down when you let her in the Spiderverse, im happy that you care for her, that you protect her and even more happier because she’s happy when she’s with you, she’s free, she has a confident, she has a friend to rely on, Im happy Miguel by the fact that she chose you…”

Miguel looked at Peter with big wide eyes, he couldn’t believe how kind he was being with him, but he couldn’t believe either that he told him that you chose him.

“What do you mean?” Miguel asks Peter hesitantly, and it only makes Peter laugh.

“Come on man, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that she also fell over heels for you,like you did for her”

Peter pats his palm again on Miguel’s shoulder in a friendly way, to try to ease his nerves when he sees him getting tense, letting him know with that gesture that it was totally okay with him.

“The other day… she prayed… she was so confused about everything she was feeling and she reached out to me, at first she was scared when she realised what she felt about you, she was unsure about telling me, she felt a lot of guilt, she… well she prayed for hours, prayed for my forgiveness cause her heart aches to move on, although her head keeps on telling her it’s wrong, but her heart wants to open, wants to get a second chance to love, and she wants you Miguel, she wants to love you”

That statement gives Peter a small heart ache, not by the fact that you fell for someone else, cause he never wanted that, it was the last thing he thought about when it came to you, he knew your heart, how it could love so much and how you can be passionate, caring, sincere, your love is the purest thing he has ever felt and he’s happy that Miguel is probably going to experience it if you two stop playing and let yourselves feel, and that’s what makes his heart ache, the fact that you aren’t letting yourself feel again, that you think you need to ask for his forgiveness, it’s what troubles him, and that’s why he is also with Miguel right now, cause he knows that if he pushes him into the right direction and you see the man that is in front of you and how he cares for you that you’ll understand that is okay to love again.

“All of this talk Miguel, its for me to tell you that, I trust you, I’ve seen how you’ve helped her through the good and the bad, I’ve seen your relationship mix, morph and transform, how you both changed, and how you get the best out of each other” Peter keeps smiling softly at him, getting an immense amount of proud when he thinks how you have changed with Miguel’s help.

“Miguel I want to ask you a favour… remind her? Remind her it’s okay to love, remind her how it feels, how to open her heart to love again, stop dreading what you feel for each other and try”

“I don’t want you to feel guilty about insulting my memory, or to think you’re taking my place, it’s really not the case, I have never want anything more than to see her happy, to see her smile and finally move on, I trust her heart with you, and that’s why I need you to make me the promise to try, to let her know that feeling butterflies in her stomach again is valid, to feel the illusion of love and that her heart is gonna be safe”

Miguel smiles kindly at Peter and nods his head, there’s been a weight lifted up his shoulders, he was so unsure of letting out his feelings for you because he feared to insult Peter’s memory, but now that he got his reassurance from the man himself, he could even start to feel butterflies in his stomach as Peter mentioned them, a small blush creeped towards his cheeks when he basically got Peter’s blessing to be with you.

“I promise I’ll take care of her Peter, take care of her heart”

That’s a promise that Miguel makes to Peter with all his heart, a sentence that he was afraid of saying out loud before, a statement he takes pride in now and wants to fulfil.

“I know you will…”

Peter gets interrupted by a soft voice, your voice calling for him, he can clearly hear it, as he looks around your living room.

“Seems like it’s time for me to go, cause your lady awaits” Peter smiles at the sound of your voice, a slight tone of sadness in his voice as he wishes he could go back like Miguel is going to be doing in a few moments.

“It was very nice to finally get to talk to you Miguel, I admire everything you do” Peter offers his hand to Miguel and shakes it gets up from the couch walking towards the bedroom of the apartment living Miguel alone but before he disappears he looks back at Miguel and adds something else.

“You both have a lot of things coming up in your future, I can’t wait to see you…happy. Now, go get her”

————-

When he opens his eyes again, he’s back in the lab, his head stopped buzzing but his eyes take time to get adjusted to the lights as he blinks.He’s on the floor and a soft warm hand is holding his face, as you cradle his head on your lap trying to wake him up, your eyebrows furrowed and a concerned look in your eyes.

“Miguel, Miguel! Are you okay?” You sigh at the sign of him waking up, your nose scrunches and you try to get his attention to you. “Hey, Miguel, look at me, everything is fine…”

—————

And… scene! Hahaha

In my dream I just remember him explaining to me that he passed out from exhaustion and then everything got blurry as everything led somehow to a romantic confession and me finally getting to kiss him hehehe. 🙈🙈🙈

But yeah, how does this turned into me writing almost 3k words?! idk,my mind went wild, guess this is what happens when the brainrot goes hard.

Anyways Alondra @greensagephase this is just my AU, what happened in my dream, not pressuring or anything with his sort of spin off story of mine lol, hope you enjoy what my brain cooked about Pete and Miguel, but this is all thanks to you and your writing that I got to imagine this scenario 🫶🏼

Ps. I’m including as a bonus the silly expressions I was trying to do of Peter that led me to dream about this and then fully sketch him with Miguel.

[apparitionism]

Asleep 2

For the anniversary this year, I have the second “half” of my @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange story for @kla1991 : an involuntary bed-sharing situation that turns not sexy but disastrous. The first part took on Myka’s perspective; this conclusion is written from the other side of the bed. A confession: I find in-universe Helena’s head voice a somewhat difficult register to compose—because while she can’t be fully insane, she needs to teeter or list, sometimes more than a little (but without falling into histrionics). Which is to say that if you don’t entirely buy the turns of thought and/or coping mechanisms I’ve given her here, your skepticism is well-placed. Ultimately I hope it’s the case that a person can be broken but still want in a way that’s... pure? Justified? Sweet? Reciprocatable? Maybe just “vaguely recognizably human”?

Anyway, this is long, first because it extends well beyond the point at which the first part ended, but also because when a Bering and a Wells get to talking (as they at last do!), they need to work things out at their own pace...

Asleep 2

My arm is asleep.

Under normal circumstances, a person would, upon becoming aware of this, shift position so as to restore blood flow.

Under normal circumstances.

But very little is normal about the circumstances under which Helena’s arm is asleep.

She is in a hotel-room bed, in the dark of night, lying on her left side, with her left arm, her now-asleep arm, pinned beneath her. So ends the disturbingly limited “normal” portion of the situation.

Here begins the larger portion: she absolutely must not move.

Irony guts at her with that, a shiv-and-twist remembrance of bronze restriction—but that prohibition had involved a significantly different auxiliary verb: “cannot” rather than “must not.”

Grammatical particulars aside, her immobility now is barely less a torment. This is because her other arm, her alive right, terminates in an even-more alive sensate hand, one that now rests—but is in no way at rest—on Myka’s right hip.

Myka, too, is lying on her left side, a small distance in front of Helena, lying in this hotel-room bed. Such proximity in such a space might, under other circumstances, signify the fulfillment of a long-held dream... but here, now, it seems a nightmare. For Myka is Helena’s colleague and no more; they are in this bed for sleep and no more; and Myka is playing her part correctly while Helena is not, in contravention of what she has sworn to herself she would do no more.

Such drowsy sense the placing of that hand had seemed to make, when she had found herself facing Myka’s back. She had in the past regarded that length covetously, relishing the idea of touch both salacious and tender.

For all her coveting, however, she had in fact only once laid hands on that back, both hands with intention on the clothed blades of Myka’s shoulders: a terrifying embrace, one that was in the most basic physical manner right but overall searingly wrong, screaming bodily truth but surrounded by words that said nothing they should. A perversion of promise, like so much else that had happened in Boone.

Yet Helena had clung to its memory all the same.

She’d thought, here in this unexpected proximity, to supersede that, to touch once again, once again but brief, once again though brief. To erase and replace.

First she touched the right blade, light; yet her hand wanted stillness, more connection than a mere pat against cotton-clad bone. And there was Myka’s hip, a beckoning promontory jut... a place to rest. Rest, however brief.

Once placed, however, her hand had proved reluctant to retreat.

Brief, she reminded it.

No, the hand had responded. I belong here.

Helena knows this is true. She knows also that it cannot be true.

But she is no stranger to holding contradictory thoughts in her head. This has been essential to establishing and maintaining, in these new Warehouse days, a functional equilibrium. Functional. Indeed her goal, in this “reboot,” has been to function, which she has lately defined as something on the order of “to move through time nondestructively.”

This definition had come about due to her realization, pre-reboot, that her difference from others, her inability to fully perform a modern self—her arrogance about that inability, even as she attempted to hide both the inability and the arrogance—chipped at, chipped from, the good (the good nature, the good will, the goodness) of those around her. Over time, such chips accrued as wounds.

Nate. (Adelaide.) Giselle.

She had as a result finally understood that coming back to the Warehouse would mean, at the very least, that those with whom she interacted had already made a bargain, perhaps even a peace, with the inevitable violence of history: with the way the forces of the past could—would—affect, even infect, the present. Helena herself was, at her simplest, merely one more of those forces.

She did consider requesting that she be re-Bronzed, now absent any pretension of traveling through time, but rather as a way of neutralizing a dangerous, and demonstrably unstable, artifact. But then an image had come to her, possibly as an omen, possibly as only a desperate wish: Myka’s devastated face upon hearing such news.

Boone all over again.

Thus the reboot. Because the most significant entry under “function,” with additional emphasis on the “nondestructive” portion of that definition, was her resolution to spare Myka pain. In the past, Helena had been both careless and careful—surgically so—in her infliction of damage on Myka above all others. But she had sworn to herself that those days were done.

Done, but Helena knew she had not paid anything near a sufficient price.

So. To maintain distance, no matter how troublesomely ardent her wish to close it, was—had to be—part of her penance. And to do so decorously was—had to be—the gentlest approach. That was what Helena told herself in her more rational moments.

This moment, in this bed, is not one of those. If it were, she would simply remove her hand. Simply remove it, then roll over.

But her mind races, finding complication: She doesn’t know what sort of sleeper Myka is. Had Helena’s placing of hand awakened her? If she had awakened, has she now fallen asleep again? If she has, would she then be reawakened by the hand’s removal? Or would she, if still awake, draw some negative inference about the entire situation based on removal?

Ideally, Helena would maintain a facsimile of entirely blameless sleep while engaging in that removal, but can she make such a performance believable?

Never in her life has Helena been so concerned about her ability to mislead convincingly as when she has attempted to deceive Myka. That was the case in the past, even at her most nefarious, and now she worries day-to-day that her strictly disciplined disguise of near-constant wishing ache will slip and fail. A simple I am asleep should be... well... simple. But it is not, and Helena is reminded of Claudia’s tendency to observe, in situations both dire and banal, “Here we are.”

Here we are, because Myka is apparently indifferent to the idea of sharing a bed with Helena.

Here we are, because Myka is apparently indifferent to history.

Here we are, and that latter indifference is a surpassing irony, due to the fullness of—

Helena sees that she needs to divert her train of thought, as descending into unjustified anger will help absolutely nothing.

First, she entertains a fantasy of sitting up, turning on a light, and explaining to Myka that this entire situation is untenable, and that if they are going to share a bed, they should share a bed. But it’s true that Myka did not seem even to consider that as a possibility, which seems ludicrous, given the past... no, that’s back to unjustified anger, for who is Helena to resent what Myka wishes not to consider? And indeed, who is she to interpret the past in such a way as to believe she understands what Myka would have considered?

Focus on the facts, she tells herself. What actually happened in that nefarious past. And do so dispassionately.

Regrettably, the word “dispassionately” brings to mind another word: “passionately.”

Again. For she had thought that word not long after she and Myka had first entered this room, first entered it to find, as Helena’s unrestrained fantasies might have conjured, only one bed. That they were clearly intended to share. Thus her mind’s unruly leap to... an adverbial manner in which they might do so.

But Myka had said not one word about the accommodations, so Helena had held her tongue as well. She nevertheless couldn’t help but feel it an elaborate lack of remark on both their parts, the silence practically baroque in its fullness.

Baroque too had been the courtesy with which they jointly prepared for bed, a you-first-no-you stutter-choreography of politeness that ensured privacy, yes, but also reinforced the barrier between their past and their present.

Which Helena understood was necessary. It did nothing, however, to mitigate the breath-hold of preparing to lie down beside Myka.

Once she had managed that lying down, however (with a relative aplomb for which self-congratulation was not, she felt, unjustified), she hoped her torment might ease. A bit. If she could manage the additional task of pretending the body beside her was no more significant than any other human. Some flesh, recumbent.

But when they were situated thus beside, Myka spoke. “You seem a little upset,” she said.

Helena had barely been able to restrain a snort. Now Myka saw fit to comment? As if allowing this portion of the play to pass without remark would create some undue strain upon collegiality? As if their incongruous bonhomie might buckle under the weight of that silence? Oh, that was rich.

Bottling her pique, Helena questioned: “With?” To make Myka say it. Mere saying wouldn’t hurt. Would it?

“You haven’t been yourself since you put that camera in the static bag. Was it a problem, seeing it again?”

Helena held herself rigid so as to keep her body from betraying neither her disappointment at the question nor, contradictorily, her relief...

It was a reasonable question. A good question. Not one on which Helena particularly wanted to focus (although it indicated a certain attention on Myka’s part, an attention on which Helena suspected she should not dwell), but it did deserve an answer. “It closes a door, doesn’t it,” she told the ceiling, for turning her head to address the other body directly seemed an invitation to peril. “That one I opened so nefariously, long ago.”

“Or—and—maybe it closes a loop,” Myka said.

Unexpected. “A loop?”

“Right after college, I went through a self-help phase,” Myka said. She paused, and Helena found herself on relative tenterhooks regarding the applicability of this (new!) information to the current situation. Which reminded her how much she had missed talking with Myka... because of the very sound of her voice, yes, but also because her conversation could range so unanticipatedly. So rewardingly unanticipatedly. Helena had known few people who could lead her on such unpredictable, yet productive, journeys.

Was Myka’s apparent willingness to begin such a journey now indicative of... anything? A softening, perhaps, of relations between them? Not a rebooting of their once-burgeoning intimacy, for that had to remain taboo, but could it be that some restoration of their previous intellectual engagement might be, at the very least, neutral rather than harmful?

Helena had moved a tentative pawn in that direction during their conversation on the airplane. Perhaps this was Myka’s answering move?

With an exhale that seemed like resignation at what she was about to say—to reveal?—Myka said, “I felt like I needed to be someone different—someone better.”

Another pause. Helena considered that such a feeling seemed very Myka (and she heard that phrase in Claudia’s voice), but also very misguided. Of course she was not at all placed to make such judgments, and even less so to convey them to Myka. Thus she said a simple, “Did you,” to encourage without prejudice.

“So I read a lot of books,” Myka said, to which Helena had responded internally, Of course you did. “One was about how to get things done.”

“All things?” Helena asked.

“Sort of.” That was followed by yet another pause. Yet another puzzle.

All these pauses. Was Myka on the verge of sleep? Helena said, soft, thinking she might go unheard, “Perhaps I should read that book. As a help to myself.”

At that, Myka had laughed, more delay, but also soft. “I don’t think it’s any kind of help you need. The guy who wrote it had a big system, all these rules, and I love rules, but these... I admit I didn’t stick with most of them. Honestly, any. But an idea that did stick was actually a pretty minor part: open loops. Stuff you track subconsciously, all the time, because it’s incomplete. How troubling that is. And what a difference it makes when you close a loop, when you each a resolution. I mean, he was talking about stuff like answering emails.”

“Emails,” Helena echoed. So far from artifacts.

“Which this is so much bigger than,” Myka said, exhibiting, not for the first time, an uncanny ability to scoop from Helena’s thoughts. “But maybe the principle holds. You don’t have to tell me. But I hope you have fewer open loops now than you did. Before.”

“Yes. The number. Fewer,” Helena said, factually.

She of course couldn’t say out loud (but it was equally factual) that Myka herself was the loop most capaciously open. The one that gaped, superseding, never mind the number of lesser.

Indeed, however, that number was now minus-one. Oscar. Oscar and his ballad... that loop closed.

Helena had in fact, while handling the camera, begun to ideate a wish that someone (Steve? Claudia?) might be persuaded to use the camera to capture her image... for it had occurred to her that a spark of art, some production on which to concentrate, might animate this reboot... something to pursue, rather than to be pursued by...

But. Lying abed, still and strangely hopeful—a state she should have known would not endure—a realization had struck her, as an open hand to the face, a realization of why Myka had brought up loops and the closing thereof: she had somehow discerned Helena’s wish, via that scooping of thought, and was discouraging her from pursuing it.

So much for any softening. This was instead a warning: Helena should not open a loop that Myka might be obligated to close. And Helena had no trouble grasping that the warning was in no way limited to the use of a single artifact... no, it doubtless applied to any burdensome loops Helena might be thinking of opening, any new incompletions that might come to trouble Myka.

“I understand,” Helena had said, regretting that pawns could not be moved backwards.

At the same instant, Myka said, “I’m glad.”

That collision had canceled communication entirely; in its wake, Myka had turned out her light and turned away from Helena.

Leaving Helena to her thoughts.

Well, fine, had been the first of those.

Next had come an equally mulish sniff of And I will have no difficulty directing any subsequent away from this shared bed.

Whereupon she had proven herself both wrong and right, thinking about history, about the fact that, whatever Myka’s commentary or lack thereof had or hadn’t signified, the fact of Warehouse agents lodging together, sharing beds completely platonically, was certainly nothing new.

This line of thinking had enabled Helena to distract herself by recalling a mission with Steve and Claudia, one in which Steve had announced, after checking in at their hotel, “Bad news. Just a king room left, but they said they’d bring up a cot.”

He had then immediately assigned Claudia to said cot, prompting her to protest, “No way! This situation screams rock-paper-scissors tournament! Loser gets the crappy night’s sleep!”

“No way,” Steve protested back, far more mildly. “The father of science fiction gets first dibs on the lumbar support, and my back’s got a decade on yours, so I call second. If that father agrees.”

Helena had. Sharing with Steve had been fine.

Sharing with Myka should of course have been no different.

Should of course have been...

But now, here in the impossible present, as Helena’s left arm slumbers and her right hand sparks, what should have been? Isn’t isn’t isn’t.

She needs further distraction, so she casts her mind again to Claudia and Steve, to the compensations they have offered her during this strange and estranging reboot: at first Claudia, who had welcomed Helena back so unreservedly and continues to offer wholehearted allyship; and then Steve, who had quickly become an unanticipated boon companion, a partner upon whom Helena has felt increasingly, and increasingly exceptionally, lucky to be able to rely.

And yet these compensations, though Helena hopes she conveys all appropriate gratitude for them, are never sufficient, for Myka—necessary yet unreachable—is always present.

She’d been so, even during that cot-delineated retrieval. Its aftermath had (so much for distraction) involved a significantly Myka-related incident, for Helena had dared, as she, Steve, and Claudia were relaxing in the hotel lounge prior to retiring, to broach Myka as a topic of conversation. As one might do, she’d thought: speaking about a colleague.

“I have an inquiry,” she’d phrased it. To make the ensuing question sound... scientific?

Dispassionate, she jeers at her recalled self.

She jeers also at what she’d said next: a too-bald, “How is Myka?”

She had known, even at the time, that what she had truly wanted was to say that blessed name, to speak about that blessed person. She could not speak to Myka in any meaningful way, and she was starving.

Steve and Claudia had then shared what seemed an extremely charged glance, so Helena hastened to dissemble, making sure to use questions so as to prevent Steve from finding her immediately untruthful: “Given that her liaison with Pete ended? They’ve... recovered, as it were? Both faring well?”

But her tone had struck her own ears as too bright; a desperation rippled behind it, and Helena knew from experience that behind that tiptoed a still deeper threat of rupture, which required work to be kept at bay. As Helena had been instructed by her most successful therapist to do when such awareness overtook her, she began to breathe with attention.

Neither Steve nor Claudia spoke as she did so.

When the danger passed, she smiled, as best she could, to signal to them her appreciation—and to herself, her success.

Steve then said, “You’re not asking about Pete.”

Helena valued—as a personality trait—Steve’s discerning willingness to push. She did not in that moment value how he thus so easily revealed a glaring flaw in her initial approach: she should have asked about Pete; with that as her entrée, the talk might organically have turned to Myka. Foolish of her to think so unstrategically... or was her failure to do so a paradoxically positive sign?

“Give it time,” Steve said, and Helena knew he was making no reference to Myka and Pete’s recovery.

“My relationship to time,” she said, with contempt. Time: she’d taken it. Now she had to give it? A forfeit. Well, that was fair.

Claudia said to Steve, “Speaking of, we’re wasting it. Are we gonna do the thing?”

“Only if H.G.’s on board,” Steve told her. It was an unexpectedly mind-your-manners utterance.

“What is the thing?” Helena asked.

“Claudia’s trying out alcohols,” Steve said. “We can’t do it around Pete, obviously, which means retrievals are our—”

“So many questions to answer, right?” Claudia interrupted, her avidity increasing. “You know, am I über-suave James Bond with the martinis? Or a fights-against-my-general-cool-geek-vibe Carrie Bradshaw with a cosmo?”

Helena had had no idea what she was referring to, but the investigation seemed entirely fit for someone her age. “What have you determined thus far?”

“Turns out cosmos don’t work for me,” she said, “as the prophecy foretold, and Bond-wise, I like a martini all vodka, no gin; sorry, Vesper.”

“Is that all?” Helena asked.

Further avidity: “Oh god no. Vodka drinks aren’t perfect: white Russians are way too sweet. Also in the white family, the wine category pretty much bores me. Also there was this one time Steve ordered a gin drink called a white lady that I couldn’t even think about because it had an egg white in it and one look made me retch.”

“Quite the wide-ranging experiment,” Helena said, hoping to forestall further off-putting description. “Not conducted with inappropriate... ah... intensity, one hopes?”

Steve patted Claudia’s shoulder, at which she rolled her eyes. “I’m supervising,” he said. “No more than a few tries in one sitting, and we’re doing it mindfully.”

Claudia abandoned her attitude and nodded. “Paying attention to what I’m tasting. How to find, you know, notes and stuff. Except for the disgusting egg-white thing, it’s honestly been fun.”

“I’m not opposed to fun,” Helena said, and she was a bit surprised—but pleased, and pleased to be pleased—that Steve didn’t squint in response. “So, Mr. Supervisor, what’s next?”

“I’ve been pushing for the wide and wonderful world of beer, but—”

“Seems too jocktastic,” Claudia said. “You know, ‘Beer me, bro.’”

“I don’t know,” Helena said.

“Anyway that’s really not me,” Claudia continued, as if Helena hadn’t spoken. She did have a tendency to ignore Helena’s ignorance, a tendency that Helena enjoyed and found frustrating in equal measure.

“Her beer perspective is severely limited,” Steve lamented.

“I myself have always found a strong stout ale quite enjoyable,” Helena said: her contribution to Steve’s cause. It was also true, the fact of which he seemed pleased to affirm with a quirk of lip and a quiet “so you have.”

Claudia’s expression remained skeptical, but she shrugged weakly and said, “I guess I could give it a shot?”

“Oh, because H.G. says so,” Steve twitted.

To that, Claudia squared her shoulders. “Yeah. Don’t you know who she is?” she demanded.

“Who I was,” Helena hurried to emphasize, “and given that Steve assigned me the bed on that basis, he—”

“Who you are,” Claudia corrected, throwing the emphasis back.

“And who is that?” Helena asked. What distinction did Claudia imagine was relevant?

“The person who told me my destiny was glorious. You’re still that guy, right?”

Relevant indeed. Helena was taken aback, indeed taken back to that extremity, back in a novel way. She had been so mired in the Myka of it all in the intervening time, that she had lost her view of the bright salience of Claudia’s presence. Wrongly. “I am,” she said. She hoped Claudia believed her.

“Okay,” Claudia said. “So I’ve got this big-as-Pete’s-biceps incentive to hope the stuff you say is true. And by the way, one of you has to casually drop in front of him how I said that, because I want the points.”

Steve snickered and said, “I know my job. But in the meantime, I think I’d like to toast to all these sentiments, and to the agents offering them. With a strong stout ale.”

They tasted the three strongest the hotel bar had on offer, and Claudia pronounced that her favorite, one purporting to convey roasted notes of coffee, chocolate, and other darkness, was “way too complicated for your average broseph.” Which Steve seemed pleased by, as a judgment, so the overall experience scored a success.

There was no further talk of Myka, however, the avoidance of which topic seemed quite deliberate... as if Steve and Claudia had determined that Helena would not benefit from it.

Or that she did not deserve it.

For the best, Helena had concluded. Either way.

Now, in a similar “for the best either way” sense, she makes to raise her hand, with that intended overlay of feigned sleep, so as to shift away and at last regain equilibrium, restoring feeling to her sleeping arm and calming that oversensitive hand. But instead—in what she can interpret only as a stupidly id-driven attempt to bank some never-to-be-repeated sensation, to the memory of which that desperate id might cling in a touch-deprived future—she moves her hand, not away from Myka, but further down her leg.

And her worst fears are instantly realized: Myka’s body reacts violently, as if in revulsion at the very idea of Helena touching her.

It was only a hand at rest, Helena begs, with no conception of why or to whom she is rendering that supplication. That was all.

Alas, that was—is—not all, for in the next split second Myka is falling from the bed and crying out in pain.

Helena, at a loss, attempts a faux-innocent inquiry, which Myka answers unintelligibly. In trepidation, Helena ventures to the mattress-edge, then lowers herself to the floor next to Myka—and she is appalled, for the situation that confronts her is all debility, even more so than the absurd “my arm is asleep” with which this farce began: Myka’s shoulder is dislocated.

Further, Myka is now unconscious.

Spare Myka pain. How utterly unsurprising Helena finds her inability to obey such a dictum in even this most basic physical sense.

Unsurprising... worse, dispiriting, and it brings her low, such that again the incipient rupture asserts its subterranean power, urging Helena to give up, to run away and leave this broken Myka to someone else to bind up and save.

You’ve done it before.

That resounds in her head as both accusation and affirmation, and the voice pronouncing it might be Myka’s, or some deity’s, or that of any of the other personages who jockey audibly for primacy in that space, including Helena’s own.

She initiates breathing with care, even as an eddying undertow tempts her to entertain the notion that escape, too, might be rebooted, tempts her to entertain and revel in its ostentation as a response to Myka’s indifference, her rejection of history, even her revulsion.

Here is my answer to all that, a departure would declare.

Helena labors to breathe herself away from such perfidy, but the scenario creeps along, with an undertone of sinful relish, as she imagines leaving Myka to awaken alone and in pain.

But then—because her labor leads her there—she further imagines the various permutations of “someone else” who might be called upon to save the day in her absence. Whereupon the thought strikes her that moving through time nondestructively requires her to think seriously of, and to think seriously out, such knock-ons... how, for example, would Steve and Claudia respond to having to clean up this mess, knowing that Helena had made it?

Moving through time nondestructively. Interesting, here, the overlap with moving through time selfishly: selfishly, she does not want to destroy Claudia’s image of her as someone whose opinion matters. She does not want to destroy Steve’s image of her either, for it seems to have at least some positive components. Further, she does not want to destroy the fellowship they three are building.

If for no other reasons than those, she concludes that having caused this quite specific damage, she must fix it.

Because she can.

The fact of the matter is, Helena cannot fix most things. She has tried mightily to maintain the pretense that she can... but she has been forced over and over to confront the absurdity of that bravado. This very specific fix-it, however, she can perform. And while that performance—inconveniently, in the present circumstance—requires touch, here it can be functional. Perhaps in success she might in some way efface her earlier invasiveness...

Yet she can do nothing without two functional arms. She thumps her still-insensate left against the bed, hard—too hard, for Myka’s eyes open. She mumbles out something Helena decodes as “whatareyoudoing.”

“Preparing to remedy a situation,” Helena says.

“Okay.” Myka murmurs. She seems oddly comforted by the answer, to such an extent that she relaxes, losing consciousness again.

That’s fortunate, given the required manipulation.

Helena prepares herself to do it quickly, efficiently, as she has done in the past... rather dramatically on one occasion, as she recalls, for an agonized Wolcott... but she should not think of Wolcott. For the regret.

She sets that aside, preoccupying herself instead with the necessary activity. Her manipulation, determined and strong, is rewarded: what begins as a sluggish resistance resolves into a slip-pop of relocation, one that shudders a familiar path through her own bones. She then cushions Myka’s arm with a fresh towel and uses a pillowcase to fashion around it a tight sling.

Levering Myka up onto the bed would most likely cause further injury, so Helena sits beside her on the floor, ensuring periodically that she continues to breathe. The wait is calming, cleansing, its peace a renewal of a soothing activity of which Helena has been long deprived: observing Myka closely, at actual leisure. At no point since her return—so at no point in, literally, years—has she had such an opportunity.

She’s reminded, in that observation, of the true fundament: this precious person. Who could never be merely some flesh.

After a lengthy time, during which Helena is pressed to consider, to remember, to value Myka’s singularity, that precious person’s eyes flutter open.

That person tests her bound arm, a tentative physical investigation that approaches elegance in its delicacy.

But Myka’s delicacy and elegance, too, Helena should not think of. For the regret.

“I’m not in the hospital,” Myka burrs.

Reasonable, practical. This is what Helena should think of. “Not yet,” she says. “But we’ll go if necessary. If you’re in pain.”

Myka’s face contorts. “Not if. I am. Some. More than some. I’m sorry.”

“For being in pain?”

“That. But also, for changing this whole thing.”

Helena leaves the latter alone, for she cannot begin to interpret it. Focusing on functionality, she asks, “Can you dress yourself?”

Myka nods, but she winces far too much with even that motion, so Helena screws her courage to it and says, “I’ll change and then help you.”

Herself, fast, then Myka: Functional, she snarls internally as she addresses the situation, and even faster. She’s relieved to find that Myka’s trousers and boots are less complicated than she’d feared, and as it happens, preventing Myka suffering additional physical pain—even while undressing and redressing her!—is, paradoxically or not, far easier than navigating emotional shoals, or even hand-on-hip physical shoals. Focusing on Myka’s face for twists, listening for labors in breath, adjusting accordingly... it’s distractingly, satisfyingly concrete. Only the present moment matters.

Only the present moment matters. This is the mantra Helena iterates internally as they proceed to the nearest urgent care facility.

Yet as they wait there for attention, Helena finds herself increasingly unable to ignore why they are waiting there for attention. In the present moment, which matters. She begins—or does she intend it as an ending?—with, “I’m assuming you flung yourself to the floor in an attempt to escape a circumstance.”

Myka hiccups a laugh that makes her cringe in protection of the shoulder. “That’s weirdly accurate. As an assumption.”

Helena recoils at the confirmation, but she must acknowledge it. “A circumstance in which I touched you in a way that was unwelcome,” she agrees, with gloom.

“Unwelcome,” Myka echoes.

It’s so... definitive. It was one thing for Helena herself to think it, believe it, say it aloud. Quite another—though it shouldn’t have been—to hear it from Myka.

A punctuating end to what never truly began between them: there is some consolation, if only philosophical, in the idea that after so many starts that were false, they may at least enjoy a finish that is true.

“Of course it was,” Helena says, following with, “and how could it have been otherwise.” She puts the final period upon it by adding a bare, spare dig: “Given history.”

Myka closes her eyes... in acceptance of the cut? When she opens them, they are glistening. Tears? Helena is egotistically gratified by such a response, never mind that it means she has yet again failed to hold to her resolution.

“Helena,” Myka says, and now Helena is gratified simply by Myka’s low utterance of her name. Myka does not always use that deeper voice, and Helena does love (yes, love) the rare pleasure of hearing her name in it. “I’m so tired,” Myka says next.

That is less gratifying. It’s yet another utterance Helena should leave alone; of course Myka is tired. But in what she is sure is a mistake, Helena says, “Of?”

“Everything. But particularly, you.”

A dagger, that was. A cut back. Testimony to Helena’s concatenating mistakes.

“This you,” Myka adds.

The additional twist of blade leaves Helena unclear on the devastation Myka intends. “Of course” is all she can think to say.

Myka closes her eyes and exhales heavy, a near-sob. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” she intones, but what need has she to apologize? “That was the pain talking—or, no, I still know you well enough to know you’ll hear that wrong. What I mean is, I’m saying something I could keep holding back if the pain wasn’t cracking me open.”

The pain. Cracking her open. Which would never have happened in the absence of Helena’s stupid, thoughtless touch. Which in turn makes abundantly clear that the stupid, thoughtless person who applied that touch is the “this you” Myka means.

If Helena is to remain in this situation she must take measures, so she lengthens her inhales and exhales, entirely ashamed both at needing such a crutch and at having to exhibit that need.

After a moment of silence, Myka asks, “Are you breathing differently than you were just a second ago?”

Myka isn’t Steve. Helena could at least attempt to lie about this, to cloak her shame... but it’s effort, either way. “Yes,” she says, choosing the unpredictability of Myka’s interpretation over the unpredictability of her own performance.

“Is that good or bad?” Myka asks. “Or both?”

The questions stop Helena, stop her in the same way her at-leisure observation of Myka had. I still know you well enough, Myka had said, and it is true. This is why, Helena would say if she could. Your knowing to ask that.

But she can’t say it, and, worse, she doesn’t know what she should say. What should come next.

Apparently Myka doesn’t either. That not-knowing persists, hanging, until “next” arrives, as an intrusion from outside their suspension: medical attention is at last directed Myka’s way; she is escorted out of the waiting area and taken elsewhere.

“We’ll call you when you can see her,” Helena is told.

Alone in the waiting area—for no other human seems to have suffered damage this night—and uncomfortably situated on a hard plastic chair, she tilts her head back against a similarly unforgiving plaster wall.

She closes her eyes. She’s had no rest, no rest for so long. She is drained. Physically empty.

Philosophically as well.

She imagines trying to sleep... or rather, she imagines not trying to remain awake.

Doubtless futile, either way.

She next imagines constructing an airtight argument that could not help but persuade all who hear it—Myka in particular, but all others as well—that this entire situation is Artie’s fault.

Also futile.

This despite its being the fact of the matter, for indeed he did bring the situation about. Perhaps not in a proximate sense, but in the ultimate... the idea of which, after a moment, strikes her as both comic and tragic: Artie as the ultimate cause? Of anything, from the universe on down? Though he would doubtless like to imagine himself so... even at the Warehouse, however, he must be not even penultimate, given the bureaucracy that sits over the entire concern...

Helena thus spends the bulk of her time in the waiting area stewing about—stewing over? stewing under?—the relative positions of god, Mrs. Frederic, and various Regents in the universe. None of it, however, requires her to alter her breathing; rather, she composes in her head the opening paragraphs of several publishable monographs on these and related topics. It isn’t restful. But is evidence of something other than emptiness.

When someone does at last call her to see Myka, everything has changed.

Well. Not everything. Helena herself hasn’t, as her bureaucracy-pantheon thought may have been philosophically valid but made no difference.

Myka, however, has changed entirely: her arm is now professionally dressed, but more importantly, the knit of pain has left her face. “They medicated me,” she says, giving the word “medicated” a rapturous cast. “The X-rays said I didn’t break anything, so we’re waiting on results of a scan to see if I need surgery but in the meantime I feel better than I maybe ever have in my life and I am so happy to see you. All these doctors were like ‘why did she think she could fix you’ but I knew why and it was because it’s you. and that scan? It’ll shout out how Helena Wells relocated Myka’s shoulder so she didn’t need surgery, and they don’t know this, but actually H.G. Wells relocated Myka’s shoulder, which is even more amazing. Wait, that’s not more amazing. You’re the most amazing when you’re you than when you’re that guy. Even though I guess you are that guy. Sort of. Wait, Claudia’s been saying ‘that guy’ a lot now. And I cut and paste from her so much, but I don’t like it. The way things are.” She heaves an enormous sigh and blinks at Helena, as if she’s just re-understood that another person is present.

Is there some ideal way to answer this flood? Helena settles for an antiseptic “I’m pleased to see you out of pain.”

Myka gasps and flails wildly with her uninjured arm, which gesture eventually resolves into an index finger directed at Helena. “That’s it exactly. I’m out of pain. All out. No more pain to give. Particularly not to you. So saying I’m tired of you? I regret it, and I apologize for it, and I promise that’s the end of it. I was wishing to get something back, and you don’t want it back, and so I have to be fine. Without it. Without you.”

Without you. Helena supposes she should be impressed by how concisely Myka can foreshadow disaster. “Should I not... be here?” She braces herself for the answer.

“Of course you should. I have to be fine without how you were,” Myka says, very quietly. The collapse of her volubility gives Helena pause.

She knows it would be better not to probe; she ought to, as Claudia says, “take the win.” But “Of course you should” is only facially a win... “How was I?” she asks. To wound herself by making Myka clarify what has been lost.

“Oh, how you were...” Myka says, her words dragging. How much—any, all?—of this might be due to the varying effects of the medication? “Putting me into this story,” she continues. “It was so big, and I didn’t understand what it was, really or at all, but it felt so big. Yearning and tragedy, and there I was, still me, but in it, so in it, all in it, next to you. Bigger than life, and I... loved it? Needed it? Something to take me over. But my wishing for any of it back, when of course you don’t?” She raises that free arm, then lets it fall. Futility, it says. “So small. Only somebody little and desperate would want to make you revisit any of that.”

Medication effect or not, Helena can’t let Myka keep on with this. “Make me revisit it? Yearning and tragedy? I’m the one who inflicted that, and with malign intent; I damaged you. And I cannot imagine a scenario in which that debt is discharged.”

Myka squints. “Debt,” she says, as if articulating a new noun, but not one that names an abstraction; no, this thing is big and blunt, a dumb object that takes up space. Unfunctional furniture. That I carry on my back, Helena moods.

“Oh!” Myka then yelps, her tone shifting to excitement. “But I just damaged myself. So now we’re even!” She delivers that last bit big and broad, for all the world as if she’s the comic lead in a panto.

Helena has not spared a thought for panto in years. “That makes no sense at all,” she says, because it’s the case, but also to scorn the memory. This is no time for that past.

“Would you like me to dislocate your shoulder?” Myka asks, as if it were a reasonable proffer. Still comic, but now strangely sincere.

Helena meets this bizarrely compelling, ridiculous combination with as much severity as she can muster. “Honestly no. I would not.”

“I see,” Myka says, and she points again, this time without preambling flail. “Some prices you aren’t willing to pay.”

Helena can at the very least be honest about this. How nice it would be if Steve were here to verify. “Willing to... in the sense of volunteering to? No. In the sense of understanding that I deserve to? Certainly. So do me damage if you must. In particular, do me damage if you think it could even the score between us. It won’t, but if you think it could? Please do.”

“That’s pretty twisted,” pronounces the only arbiter who matters.

“You sound like Claudia again,” Helena observes. To push the judgment away? Yes, and she tries to make certain of it with, “Is that another cut and paste?”

“Maybe. But now that I think about it, she sees things pretty clearly a lot of the time. Don’t you think?”

“I would like to think,” Helena is compelled to admit. Hoist by her own petard.

At this point—suspending any resolution—a doctor reenters the curtained area. “Good news: no surgery,” she tells Myka.

“See, I told you she fixed it,” Myka preens.

“You did,” says the doctor. “Several times,” she adds, dry.

Helena says “I’m so sorry,” only to hear Myka say, at the same time, “Sorry not sorry!” Another echo of Claudia... this one, however, clearly heartfelt.

The doctor turns to Helena. “Don’t try anything like this again. You got ridiculously lucky.”

“That’s kind of her M.O.,” Myka says. “Except when it isn’t.”

The doctor sighs. “I’m pretty sure that’s my point. And listen, make sure to follow up with your local doc. They’ll prescribe a ton of PT, so brace yourself.”

Myka snorts. “Brace myself? Sure, but not for the PT; my boss is going to flay me alive.”

The doctor barely reacts. “Oh, maybe this one can fix that too,” she deadpans, directing an eyeroll at Helena, accompanied by a murmured, “not a suggestion.”

“Oh, she’s in for the flaying,” Myka says, with more than a little cheer. “If not for this, then for something. Eventually.”

The doctor shakes her head, eyes unfocused. “Good news for me: I don’t have to care.” She points at Myka: “You go to PT.” Now at Helena: “You don’t try to practice medicine.” At both of them, her eyes flicking back and forth with purpose: “Got it?” Helena nods; she senses Myka doing the same. “Excellent,” the doctor says. “Or whatever. I’m done with you now.”

She conveys with her rapid exit that interacting with both of them has been a most exasperating experience.

While Helena does not appreciate being chastised—and especially not for attempting to care for Myka—she does appreciate expertise. Especially when it contributes to Myka’s well-being. It’s a conundrum. “I find your doctor’s aspect strangely appealing,” she says. “Speaking of bracing.”

Myka grins. “I was totally thinking the same thing.”

“And yet I would practice that medicine again.”

“For me that’s good news.”

As they prepare to depart, Helena says, “I confess I’m curious as to what you intend to tell Artie.”

Myka offers a slight stretch of her right shoulder in the direction of her ear: the only version of a shrug available to her, bound as she is. “Maybe I should leave that to you. You’re the writer.” Forestalling Helena’s reflexive objection, she adds, “I know, I know. The research. The ideas.”

“And yet I don’t have any. I certainly don’t see a path to inventing anything that would—”

“How about I take your photo with that camera? Think that’d help?” This is accompanied by a different grin: sly.

Whither the warning? Or is this a test? Myka isn’t Steve, yet Helena goes with truth: “It might. With any number of things.”

“If only,” Myka says, inscrutably. “Anyway I intend to tell Artie that this is all his fault, because he sent us on this retrieval in the first place. Obviously I won’t say what really happened.”

While Myka bestowing such grace is not surprising, it moves Helena all the same. “Thank you,” she says.

Myka opens her mouth, then closes it. She does it again. This wait... it’s grace too. “You’re welcome,” she eventually says. “I mean I’m tempted to tell him how you saved the day—the arm—but I know I shouldn’t, because I don’t want to draw attention to the hotel charging us extra.” To Helena’s quizzical eyebrow, she says, “For the missing towels and pillowcase. Which I tried to talk the nurses into giving back to me, but they’d already tossed them as hazardous waste. Or something. Or maybe I’m just not very persuasive? Or clear in what I’m asking for?”

Helena would very much like to explain that her own answers to those questions are negative and affirmative, respectively: no, you are persuasive; but yes, you are unclear.

“On the other hand, they did medicate me,” Myka says, perking up. “I keep thinking it’ll wear off, but not yet!”

The consolations of intoxication. “To the delight of your shoulder I’m sure,” Helena says. To my delight as well, she wishes she were free to say.

Their return to the hotel room offers another “everything has changed” hinge: no longer a stage for new and awkward performances of politesse, the space is now familiar, a place they have reentered. For the next act of the play?

Myka, who has preceded Helena in, stops and sways—just a bit, but Helena instinctively steps close, taking her by the elbow of her uninjured arm with one hand, stationing the other around the curve of her waist.

She feels Myka’s breath catch at the contact; immediately, she curses herself, loosens her hold, and says a terse, “I’m sure you want to lie down.”

“More than maybe anything. Or, wait, no, not anything.” Myka turns and catches Helena’s eyes with hers, but Helena cannot use that gaze as the basis for any inference.

She backs away as Myka lowers herself onto the bed; eventually, she backs her way into the room’s one armchair. It lacks give. It also lacks arms at a height that might provide anything resembling support. Helena slumps down, trying to be grateful that it exists at all.

Long minutes pass. As in the hospital’s waiting area, Helena imagines trying not to remain awake.

Similarly futile.

She chances a glance at Myka, who meets her eyes again and says, “That looks uncomfortable. Or what I mean is, you look uncomfortable. Which honestly is pointless, unless you’re doing some hair-shirt thing, because we’ve got this big bed. Not a lot of hours before we have to leave it, but we’ve got it for now.”

“That went poorly before.”

“I think circumstances have changed. Don’t you?” Weighted.

Circumstances are always changing, Helena could say. Usually for the worse. Instead she ventures, “You’d let me lie down with you?”

“I never wouldn’t.” Myka squints. “Wait. Did that come out right? Anyway, yes.”

Medication: not yet worn off. “You’re sure?” Helena asks.

“I’m pretty sure this bed is almost as big as a field where Pete’s favorite sport happens. It’s at least as big as an ice rink anyway, and those aren’t small.”

Helena refrains from pointing out that that was no help in the previous disaster. She doesn’t, however, appreciate being able to recline. For the first while, the fact of being beside Myka is less relevant than the slow loosening of her lower back and hips.

 “Can you sleep?” Helena asks, as they are both evidently lying with eyes open to the ceiling.

“Not now,” Myka answers, and the sentiment seems clear: not after all of this. All of this with which we must deal.

The bed first, perhaps.

She turns to look at Myka, if minimally. “Did you request a cot?” she asks, because she doesn’t know. Because the answer might reveal... something?

Myka’s eyes widen. “Oh my god I should have,” she says. Stricken.

“Why didn’t you?”

“It didn’t even cross my mind.” She’s talking more to herself—or perhaps to the room at large?—than to Helena. Is this continued evidence of the medication?

“And do you know why that is?” Helena asks, hoping for that revelation, even if drug-induced.

“Honestly I think I thought I was being given an ultimatum. Like it was something I had to be fine with or else.”

“Fine with ‘or else.’” Helena means the echo as rueful agreement.

But: “Sharing a bed with you. Platonically,” Myka says, taking it instead as a request for explanation.

“Platonically,” Helena scoffs, unable to avoid the idea that agreeing to accept that adverb would, paradoxically, usher in others. (Passionately.) (Speaking of paradoxically.) “That word is so often misused.” It’s a push-off. A push-away.

“But I’m using it correctly.” Myka sounds not offended, but rather self-satisfied.

Fine. Harden the position. “You are not referring to our consciousness rising from physical to spiritual matters.”

“Well... but how about love for the idea of good? As a path to virtue?”

Myka is well-read. In this moment, that fact is not entirely pleasing. “I suppose we were both attempting to be courtly,” Helena concedes.

“I mean I’ll grant you that nobody ended up transcending the body,” Myka says. Helena is about to agree, to snap away from churlishness, to express regret and apologies, when Myka exclaims, “Hey! I just had the best idea for a joke. So you’re not a hologram anymore, right? So you know what you were trying to be? Last night, in bed?”

Jokes. They confound Helena nearly as completely as metaphors do Steve. “I have no idea.”

“A Platonic solid,” Myka declares, triumphant.

Helena is mortified to find that in this case, she “gets it.” “Myka,” she sighs.

“Too soon? But come on, it’s not bad!”

“Alas, it is.” This quality, Helena can recognize.

“Right, but the good kind.”

Helena is not made of stone. Or bronze. How much easier everything had been then, sans choice and sans reason... and most importantly, sans the near-irresistibility of this one human. “I did always enjoy the word ‘icosahedron,’” she tenders.

“See,” Myka says, now in indulgence rather than triumph. “Pretty sure you have more than twenty faces though.”

“You do as well. Some revealed only under the influence of opioids.”

“Here’s one I don’t think I’d have the guts to use otherwise: my explain-it-to-you-using-words face.”

“Explain what to me?” Helena asks. It’s a surrender. She should better have said she did not wish that face revealed, but that would never have stopped a determined Myka.

“Why I flung myself to the floor.”

“I thought that had been explained? You were attempting to escape a circumstance.”

“First, the flinging was more involuntary than an attempt. And second: your hand.”

“Perhaps you don’t remember”—a strange thing to say to Myka—“but we had this conversation previously.” Helena does not want to have it again.

“Not this conversation. In that one, you drew the wrong conclusion. Or relied on an invalid assumption. Actually both of those. Anyway, your hand.”

“Please stop saying that,” Helena requests. Begs.

“Fine, I’ll finish the sentence: Woke up every nerve in my body,” Myka says, causing Helena to cringe and wish she could this very instant construct a truly useful time machine so she could fly backward, overleaping this latest passage so as to muzzle Myka before she could say that, because she believes it but knows it leads nowhere functional. To her continued mortification, Myka carries on, “Woke them all right up.” This, she says rhapsodic. Helena feels that tone in her gut, a hot twist of something she deserves as pain, but that manifests, shamefully, as pleasure. “Then your hand moved, and it shorted out the system—my system—and I fell out of bed, and the rest is history.”

“On the contrary, the rest is quite present.” Helena tries pushing all of it away, striving for detachment. For function.

“So, your hand,” Myka says again.

Helena raises the offender. “Also present.” Detachment. Humor, even; pushing, pushing, pushing. Trying to maintain.

“No, I mean why,” Myka pushes in turn.

Helena bats back, in faux innocence, “Why is it present?”

“Why was it present. On me.” Low now, her voice, just as compelling as, and even more commanding than, when she uses it to utter Helena’s name.

“I have no excuse,” Helena says.

“I don’t need an excuse. I need a reason. Do you have one?”

“It isn’t exculpatory.”

“As long as it’s explanatory.”

No escape now. No excuse, and no escape. “Here is my reason: I wanted to touch you. So against all better judgment, I did. Intending only that, nothing more.” Myka’s response to these words is an exhale. Loud. Unlike the hospital sob, however, this is slow and controlled. Helena allows a decorous pause, but no words ensue, so she goes on. Myka deserves an explanation that is complete. “But then I found myself unable to... un-touch you. Competently. And the rest will at some point be history, upon which I will never cease to look back and berate myself.”

Waiting for whatever may come next, Helena feels exhaustion inch through her, infiltrating her eyes, limbs, brain, sapping every vestige of energy... her surrender to the creeping leach is imminent when Myka says, “I like that reason.”

All right then. Awake and aware. “You do?”

“You really can be impossible to talk to. Listen to me: if I did that—touched you—I would find myself the same. Unable to un-touch. Do you understand?”

What would be the cost of abandoning her resistance? “I don’t know...” she begins, then reverses course and begins again. Truth, never mind the cost. “Yes. I do understand. But I don’t know what to do about that.”

Myka turns her head full toward Helena, twisting her long neck. Helena turns her own head, but that isn’t enough, so she shifts onto her side—her left side, punitively aware that it will be weeks before Myka can turn in such a way.

They look at each other, Helena both knowing and fearing how her guilt must freight her gaze. Regarding Myka so close, looking now into eyes that are open, is a boon she does not deserve.

After a time, Myka says, “I know what I want to do.”

Her intent is abundantly clear. The entirely of Helena’s being balks, stranding her again in Boone: if she makes a move for the momentary better, it will most likely end worse. She cannot find the... courage? or is it foolish disregard for consequences?... to reach for that moment of joy. Neither, however, can she find the discipline to dismiss its possibility.

“But I also know I shouldn’t,” Myka says, breaking with clarity into Helena’s indecision.

Well. Helena can certainly see the wisdom of that, so perhaps at last they are approaching a real accord that will render all hopes and wishes moot, so that neither courage nor discipline features in the—

“I can tell the meds are messing with my head,” Myka says, “and if there’s one thing I want to remember in picture-perfect detail, it’s this.” She moves her right index finger near to Helena’s lips, then withdraws it.

Unable to un-touch. That withdrawal reaffirms that Myka believes what she says. “This,” Helena echoes, mesmerized.

“So I’m going to wait till tomorrow to—listen to me saying it out loud—kiss you. For the first time. I want to be all there when it happens.”

There is a practicality to Myka’s thinking, and to Myka, that Helena worships. She tries to match it with a bit of her own: “If it happens.”

Myka’s jaw drops. “Come on! I said it out loud! It’s real now!”

“It’s been real for some time, hasn’t it? But I’m being realistic about the circumstance. You might not remember that you wanted to.”

“Seriously? I’ve remembered it since we met.”

Helena has remembered it just as long. She has. Denying it is pointless. But she has a larger concern, and though this is the wrong time to address it, perhaps medicated Myka will afford an unfiltered read...

“Or you might think better of it.”

“Of kissing you? I don’t think so.”

“Of what could ensue. The possibility of a... relationship. Between us. What if it doesn’t work?”

“Relationship.” After she says the word, Myka’s lips part and close, as if the very word is savory. “What if it does?”

It is savory. However. “I’m asking as a practical matter, not philosophically. I’m constrained: I can’t leave again. That’s why I came back.” The thin strand to which she is clinging... refraining from attempting to rekindle an intimacy hasn’t been only to keep Myka safe. It has also been to keep the Warehouse safe for Helena herself to inhabit.

“Then don’t leave again.”

“But what if that means you do?” This is not philosophy either. This, too, is history.

“If I do, then I do, but I’d like to think I won’t. We’ve both had our walkaway crises, and they didn’t take. So if it doesn’t work, we put it behind us like adults. If Pete and I could, then so can you and I. But I’d rather not have to. So let’s be careful.” She pauses. “Breathe however you need to.”

The words are an embrace. A physical clasp might be more galvanizing, but right now, Myka is managing just fine with words. “If this works, it will be because you say things like that.”

“Good news, because I mean things like that. And I intend to keep saying them. Hey, speaking of saying, do me a favor and write down what I said just now, about the adults and the careful, because I want to remember it.”

Sluggishly, Helena ideates rising, going to the room’s desk, finding logo-bearing paper and pen, writing...

****

Helena and Oscar are in a salon. They are engaged in a dispute regarding choices and consequences. Helena is standing at a lectern, and Oscar is reclining on a lavishly upholstered chaise longue, kicking his right leg such that its calf bounces in a languid little rhythm against the low cushioned edge.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

“The choices that create a circumstance will not, repeated, resolve it satisfactorily,” Helena says. Is she reading from a monograph? “As we see in the case of your own Ballad of Reading Gaol, do we not? And yet injury need not lead inevitably to future debility, so clearly some choice in the matter is—”

“Helena,” Oscar says, interrupting her monologue. “Helena,” he repeats. He sounds nothing like himself, but rather someone else, and Helena is straining to connect the voice to the correct person.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

“Time to wake up,” Oscar-as-someone-else admonishes. Encourages?

“I know,” she tells him, hugely frustrated, fighting. “I’m trying.”

His impassive mien is no help. It never was.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

Trust Oscar to cast some part of himself as the pendulum of a particularly annoying clock—

“Seriously, wake up,” Helena hears, and consciousness jolts at her: Myka’s voice.

Oscar dissolves. Into laughter or tears, no doubt, as he was wont to do...

Helena’s eyes open, meeting Myka’s, and she is brought back to it all: the hotel, the bed; the shoulder, the hospital... then hotel again, bed again... and finally words, as if for the first time.

Myka is lying on her right side, facing Helena. Her eyes are bright, her gaze intense.

“Are you in pain?” Helena asks.

Myka leans forward, as if that were a signal. The signal: for Helena is the astonished, grateful, transported recipient of a kiss, a first kiss—the first kiss—one that is swift but soft, gentle, genuine. Like morning... “Better now,” Myka says when she pulls back. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Stay there.”

Better now. Not lost on Helena are all the ways that signifies, including: better that this happened now than at some point in the desperate past. Then, such a kiss would have been a tragic wish for all they would never have. Now, instead, it can stand as a reward for having survived all of that, as well as, universe willing, a mark of embarkation.

By the time Myka returns, Helena has sat up, stationing herself on the edge of the bed. She has also realized that she must apologize—for they should not embark on this new voyage with yet another of her many faults unaddressed. “You charged me with writing down part of our conversation. I didn’t. I fell asleep instead.”

Myka hesitates before joining her on the bed’s edge, clearly considering which arm should be next to Helena. She chooses the functional right. “It’s okay. Even if I don’t remember exactly what we said, I remembered what we needed to do.”

“Needed to,” Helena reprises. She could supply words of her own, but why? Myka is saying the ones that matter...

“Needed to,” Myka affirms. “So where were we?” She raises her useful hand to Helena’s cheek, cradling. Helena leans into it, saying nothing, because silence now says everything.

This is a longer kiss, more wandering, more suggestive of possibility, more likely to lead to such possibility... Helena is the one to this time pull away. “A place quite new,” she says.

“And yet I’m pretty sure we’ve been headed here all along.”

“It wasn’t inevitable,” Helena says. She is thinking now of dream-Oscar, who is slipping from her mind, dropping, like a poorly initiated painting, but he must have obstreperously been maintaining something about inevitability. He always did.

“No,” Myka agrees. “And it still isn’t. So let’s be careful.”

“You remember that part? Despite my stenographic failure?”

“Even if I didn’t—but I do—I’d know it’s important.”

Helena turns and touches her right hand to Myka’s right hip. She would certainly not be able to do this now if she had not done so in the night... the night’s ontogeny recapitulating the phylogeny of their shared history. Myka covers Helena’s hand with hers, and there is healing in the simple fact of their sitting. But eventually that is not enough, and another kiss ensues, longer still, and lips outweigh quiet hands—or no, lips add to quiet hands, but hands are not content to remain so calm, and so this continues and might continue—

Myka makes a noise that is clearly not of pleasure; she moves entirely away, her right hand pressing protectively at her left shoulder. “We’re going to need to be careful about this stupid shoulder too. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You’re sorry? I’m the one who can’t keep my hands to myself.” Ontogeny, phylogeny.

“It’s not like I’m some paragon of self-control... and I am sorry, because I’d like to be able to participate fully. But also I’d like to not have to hurry on account of catching a plane. In good news, eventually my shoulder will heal. I know we can’t stay here till then, but...”

“It would help,” Helena supplies.

“If only because we have to come up with how this supposedly happened. I still think maybe I should take your picture. Or you could take mine? Because by the way, here’s a funny thing: I was trying to write a novel.”

“You were?” More that is new... “Speaking of icosahedra,” Helena notes.

“I want to tell you about it.”

“You do?” Trying to convey her incredulity. That Myka would allow her such... access.

“I want to tell you everything. But in the meantime we have to tell Artie something... I guess we’ve got both flights plus the layover in Denver to get our story straight.”

Stories. Narrative. Novels? “But we’ll tell Steve the truth. Won’t we?”

“Of course we will. And Claudia, right?”

“Also necessary. Although most likely mockery-inducing.”

Myka smiles. It’s a sunrise. “Stress testing. If we can take it from her, we’ll be fine. Then again we might need the time on the planes to rest up for that.”

“Weren’t you able to sleep, this past while?”

Myka shakes her head, and just as Helena opens her mouth to express regret and apologize again for her own sleep, Myka silences her with a kiss, one that lingers, lingers, lingers... still half against Helena’s lips, she says, “The un-touching part really is difficult. But don’t worry about my not sleeping: for the first time in a long time, I was happy to be awake.”

END