#and it's honestly hard enough and expensive enough just to go live on our planet as it is

[askshivanulegacy]

Ofc they're not "colonial fantasies." People who dismiss exploration that way have an uninteresting, one-dimensional line of thought that perpetually wants to blame and condemn people (especially certain kinds of people) for things they've never done and bear no responsibility for.

Travel and exploration and seeing new things are part of us. People act like being a tourist is cringy, but sorry not sorry, this planet belongs to everyone and everyone has an inherent right to experience what it has to offer. There's a balance that needs to be maintained there, but the people out there exploring are not the problem.

Space is going to be the future of that. We sure could use people who care about maintaining it going into those industries and setting policies and practices and leading the way. Unless you WANT someone like Musk taking the reins.

so im working on a thought about how often, lately, i’ve seen science fiction dreams of space exploration dismissed as ‘colonial fantasies’ and what i’m thinking on is how readily we fall into the easy assumption that white people are uniquely and intrinsically exploitative (that white people are uniquely and intrinsically anything) and that this urge to colonize (to be exploitative, to consume, to sin) is an inherent property we can’t help but reproduce.

and the thing is it’s really important to think about what colonization entails and how much of the white american dream is built on an incredibly destructive way of life, how much white american ideals revere exploitation, consumption, destruction. it’s important to point out that elon musk’s vision for mars combines all the worst parts of manifest destiny, disney world, and company towns: he wants to build a fucking resort there with indentured servants and he absolutely doesn’t give a shit how many people die along the way so long as he gets his money. that’s a colonialist fantasy. absolutely. fuck that.

but… i can’t believe that the human desire to travel is nothing more than the desire to colonize. that’s like saying the human desire to love is nothing more than the desire to rape. humans love to travel. countless cultures have been nomadic or migratory, and even the most stable civilizations have traders, pilgrims, tourists. we have been travelers our entire history. we love to go new places. we love to see new things. we have looked up at the stars for more than a hundred thousand years; we’ve sailed our ships by their lights for more than ten thousand years; we’ve told each other stories of going out among them for more than a century. we are so close to the edge of the universe, and we are a species of ardent travelers. of course we want to go.

some science fiction is colonial. the desire to space just to plunder everything we can get our greedy little spacesuit gloves on, by all means, let’s interrogate our motives for trying to do that kind of thing. let’s point out that this is a pretty shitty thing to do.

but holy shit, we’re on the edge of the universe. we have always wanted to go. you can’t tell me it’s wrong to want to go and see what’s over the next horizon.

[amphtaminedreams]

Thoughts No.2

every time I see 50+ year olds mocking young people for feeling hopeless about the world and the state of their lives, it just honestly strikes me how little empathy they have

it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why gen-z/millennials struggle to be optimistic; many of us spend our time in education in a state of constant stress, because we took it at face value when adults told us “if you work hard, you can do anything”

WELL cut to 18, 19, 20, however many years later when you’ve burnt yourself out trying to make perfect grades at GCSEs, A-levels, then university, masters etc. and you come to find out:

1). the top, well-paying jobs (or basically ALL jobs in creative industries) in your field of interest usually recruit on the basis of either "experience" (time spent working unpaid/below living wage internships, completely unfeasible to someone from an average working/middle class family whose parents can’t fund their lifestyle during that period), “connections” or referrals

2). the accessible jobs will make you go through round after round of interviews and have you grovelling in cover letters about how much you just fucking LOVEEE the company when you literally just want money to live on, only for 90% of them to not even bother telling you that you didn’t get the job

3). EVEN ONCE YOU GET A JOB YOU’RE LIKELY GOING TO HAVE TO WORK THAT JOB FOR OVER A DECADE, PROBABLY MORE, TO EVEN HAVE A HOPE OF OWNING A HOUSE OR ANYTHING OF YOUR OWN FOR THAT MATTER

we are simultaneously watching as businesses established centuries before we were born destroy the planet to the point that many places will have become inhabitable by the time we have enough money to settle down somewhere

houses will be even MORE expensive, many of us will be forced to move miles away from our families and loved ones just to take what we can get, and in the meantime, we’re watching as a tiny percentage of people and their greed normalise living in poverty for an increasing number of people with no sign of this changing

it seems like this tiny percentage have such a stronghold over the political & legal system, mass media, and big business, that it feels we have no real power or platform to do something about it

the situation in Palestine has just emphasised the fact that to the wealthy, the innate value of human life is meaningless; it shouldn’t HAVE to be that you put yourselves in these innocent people’s shoes for Israel and its allies’ actions to horrify you, but if nothing else, it’s shown that it could be anyone, and that should be fucking terrifying

so like I said: it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why young people would feel hopeless when the concepts of moral decency and meritocracy, which our parents and their parents told us were the most important things ensuring us a meaningful, happy and fulfilling future, are increasingly being exposed as a crock of shite

the only conclusion I can come to is that there is something overriding their ability to empathise with the circumstances we find ourselves in and I’m thinking that, as is typically the case, it comes down to ego: they get defensive and shut down because this is the world they made, and they are the ones that lied to us about it-not only that, but they’ve lied to themselves for all this time too

[mandos-sluts]

The Ambiguous Bet

The Mandolorian x Fem!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Wordcount: 2.5k

Warnings: Smut, rough sex, mentions of sex work

Summary: Mando doesn’t think you could handle being a sex worker and you set out to prove him wrong

A/N: This is our first time writing any sort of fan fiction (much more to come) so we would really appreciate reblogging/reposting! We would LOVE feedback as well!

You’ve been working on the Razor Crest for about six months ever since the Mandalorian hired you to be his live-on mechanic. With everything the Crest has been through, Mando knew he had to hire you once he observed your mastery mechanical skills…you being drop dead gorgeous had nothing to do with it, Mando told himself.

Of course, Mando’s attraction was not one sided. You had watched him take down ruthless criminals with no problem at all. It didn’t matter that you had never seen his face. His strength, composure, and confidence (perhaps cockiness) made him incredibly attractive. Not to mention his rock-hard body. Every night you would lay on your cot and wish that he would just storm in and fuck you sensless. Alsa he never did, so you defaulted to pleasuring yourself and imagining that scenario.

Mando would never act on his desire for you, however. In fact, he often went out of his way to give you more than enough space or make the conversation more than appropriate. But this was becoming harder and harder for him to do. Before hiring you, Mando would relieve his stress and sexual tension at the local brothels on whatever planet he was hunting a bounty on. But once you came aboard, he stopped this practice as he could never find the time or excuse to leave the ship without you for enough time. Since you had started accompanying him on his bounty hunts to assist him in whatever he may need.

***********************

You were pleading with Mando. The two of you were walking back to the ship after acquiring a new puck, and you were starving and there was no food back on the Crest.

“Fine.” Mando snapped with his low modulated voice. “We can stop quickly at the cantina and grab something to eat.”

The two of you walked through the door. “Alright, hurry up–” Mando said, turning to you.

But before he could even finish his sentence, you were running up to a random group of girls, none of whom he recognized.

“OMG hiiiiii‼!” One of them screeched.

“Y/n what are you doing here?!?” Another one exclaimed.

Mando just stood a few feet away watching you excitedly greet the four girls.

***********************

They were old friends of yours. It turns out, they all worked at the brothel down the road. While catching up with them, they told how fun and effortless their jobs were. They made great money having great sex for a living. It was a high-end brothel, and it was completely safe and clean; clients had to pass health and background tests before purchasing services. Your friends made thousands of credits and spent them travelling the galaxy, going out to fancy clubs, and buying luxury goods.

After getting a drink with them, you walked back to the ship. Mando had already returned. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t want to join you and your loud friends for a drink.

You step into the Crest. You take in the filthy floors and musty smell and can only think about the flashy and cushy lifestyle that your old friends are living as sex workers. You honestly love working with Mando and travelling with him as a mechanic/assistant. But a lot of the excitement of the job revolved around your flirtatious relationship with Mando, and you couldn’t help wonder how much longer that would last. You let out a deep sign, and climb the ladder to the cockpit.

“Finally.” Mando says standing up and facing you. You stood in the doorway. “You need to rewire the calcinator before we take off. Get to it.” He said shortly.

You stand there, and simply stare at Mando.

“...What?” Mando says with his modulated voice.

“Ohhhhhh nothing.” You sign crossing your arms and slouching. “I’m just thinking about how much more glamerous my life would be if I were a sex worker instead of a rouge Mandalorian’s mechanic.”

Mando scoffs. “That’s funny.”

You tilt your head as you stare into his visor.

“You would never last as a sex worker. Trust me, y/n, you’re much better suited being my mechanic.”

“What?!” you say, feeling slightly offended. “Excuse me, but I would be an amazing sex worker. Trust me, Mando.”

“Yeah…definitely not.” Mando says.

“And why is that?” You shoot back.

“You’re too stuborn to be a sex worker.” Mando says nonchalantly, leaning back into his chair. “You have to put up a lot of shit. You basically have to do whatever your client wants you to do. You have to let creepy guys fuck you any way they want.” Mando says.

“Creepy guys like you?” You say with a smirk, staring directly into his visor.

“Exactly.” Mando expresses, maintaining “eye” contact with you.

You take in a breath. “Alright, Mando, I’m bored, and our next bounty isn’t due for three days.” You say stepping closer to the chair he’s sitting on.

“I’m going to work at the brothel tomorrow and prove that I can be a great sex worker.”

“Ha, I bet you won’t last a day.” Mando spits, crossing his arms.

“You’re on.”

***********************

The terms of your bet were unclear or nonexistent? But it didn’t matter to you, and apparently not to Mando either.

You weren’t a registered sex worker, but your friends pulled some strings and you were able to work at the brothel for the day under the pretence that you were “shadowing” one of your friends to see how the job worked.

Inside the brothel, you sat in the area where the girls hung out. This was a lavish, very expensive brothel. The procedure was simple: the sex workers all lounged around this beautiful gold hotel loby. Clients who didn’t already know which sex worker they wanted would enter and observe the sex workers, speak to some of them, and choose one (or more).

You sat comfortably in a big velvet chair. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t nervous. But the deal was that you only had to make it through a day. Maybe you wouldn’t get any clients at all! There were a considerable number of sex workers, and perhaps no one would choose you. Just as you were starting to feel better at that thought, the manager called your name.

“Y/n! You have a client. Head up to room 279, they’ll be up there shortly.”

Your heart starts beating fast. Okay, so you have a client within the first five minutes of starting your day, no big deal!

You head up to the room with your heart still racing. It’s a really nice room. It’s gold pleated and there’s a lounge area, a bar, and a huge bed. You walk over to a large mirror and examine yourself. You’re wearing a red silk and lace two-piece set. You look super hot, this is definitely the hottest you’ve looked since taking the job on the Crest. You take your hair clip out to redo it when the door swings open.

Your heart drops and your head swings around to see who your client is. To your surprise, Mando stands at the door. He stands tall and confident, legs a little further than shoulder width apart.

“Mando! What are you doing here?” You say in confusion.

He doesn’t say a word, but takes one step into the room.

Your confusion is written on your face.

“Mando, you have to get out of here. I have a client on the way.”  

He still says nothing

“Seriously! They’ll be here any moment, you really need to go!” You say with urgence.

His silence continues as he slowly creeps forward, slamming the door behind him.

“Why would I leave?” He purrs. “I paid for this.”

“Wait, you're my client!?” You ask.

Mando stops just a few in front of you. In a slow, deep voice, Mando says “Y/n, you can quit now, admit you were wrong... and we’ll head back to the ship.” You can tell he has a devilish smirk under his helmet.

You pause for a moment. “Ha…..no way, Mando. I’m not backing down.” You say nervously.

“Are you sure about that, pretty girl?” He says, taking another step closer to you. He looks down on you, staring directly into your eyes. Your “gulp” is audible. Your pussy starts to pulse as you take in everything that’s happening.

Towering over you, he puts his fingers under your chin and lightly tilts your head up to meet his gaze. “Because I won’t hold back.” He asserts. “I’ll be as rough with you as I am with every other whore I’ve fucked.” He says, pulling off his gloves.

“Good.” You say. “Don’t hold back.”

With that, he steps forward grabbing your neck, shoving you into the wall. You whimper loudly and he grinds his rock hard cock onto your crotch before turning you around and pushing you harder into the wall, and rolling his cock against your ass. You could tell he was big, very big. He quickly pulls back and shoves your shorts down with a grunt, exposing your bare ass. You gasp and he rubs the soft skin on your butt before slapping it hard. You let out a yelp as your mouth falls open. He aggressively slaps your ass several more times.

He chuckles lightly. “You said you could take this, so show me how good of a slut for me you can be, little girl.” He says. Your pussy throbs at the filthy language he’s using.

He drags you to the bed and bends you over. One finger enters you as you moan. “I spent a lot of credits on this, it better be worth it.” He says as he pumps his finger in you repeatedly. You cry out.

“Damn this pussy is fucking tight!” Mando says through his modulator. You moan loudly as his thumb starts circling your clit.

Still bent over the bed, and his free hand moves up your body and roughly grabs and kneads your tits. He aggressively rips off your shirt. You can feel your pussy dripping on Mando’s hand as your arousal pulses through. He continues to tease you as he circles your clit. “Fuck, this pussy is wetter and tighter than I imagined. Why you so wet, little girl, you like it rough?” Mando says.

All you can respond with are light, breathy moans. And then, Mando pulls his fingers out and lightly slaps your pussy. You let out a yelp. “Answer me.” Mando commands.

“Ye– Yes. Fuck, I like it rough Mando.” You respond.

“Good. Let’s see your skills, my little whore” he says as he kicks your feet apart to spread your legs. You feel his finger flick your clit and you whine loudly.

Without warning you feel his thick long cock enter your pussy. The pain was so pleasurable that you see stars. He sets a brutal pace. He continues to rail into you as you scream his name. “Mando! Fuck Mando, ahh!” You hear his heavy breathing through his modulator.

“Fuck.” Mando spits out. “This is the tightest pussy I’ve ever fucked.”

“You– you ha– have the biggest cock– cock that has ever fuc– fucked me.” You return. Your pussy starts to throb. Without warning you cum and release a rush of fluid onto his cock as your entire body shakes.

“Ahhh, what a good girl, cuming around my cock” Mando says as he pulls out of you.

Your leg muscles give in, you sink forward into the bed. Mando flips you over so you’re lying down facing up toward him. “What a desperate little thing you are.” He growls. Mando takes a moment and admires your completely naked body all spread out for him. You are so small underneath him. Your doe-eyes are wide, your mouth still agape, panting for breath, and your pussy glistening from your cum.

Mando then grabs you by your waist. “On your knees.” He orders as he shoves you to your knees. He takes his length in his hand and strokes his cock in front of your face a few times.

You quickly gather your composure and take a second to admire his enormous member. You bite your lip and look up to him. Mando puts his hand on the back of your head and takes a fist full of your hair. You stick your tongue out and lick his cock up and down a few times before putting the tip in your mouth. You try your best to tease him, but before long, Mando pushes your head further down his cock. You start bobbing your head up and down, trying each time to take more of him in your mouth. Mando remains still at first, just using his hand to guide your head up and down his shaft. You start moaning and move your eyes up to his helmet, with this Mando begins thrusting into your mouth. His cock hits the back of your throat. “Fuuuucckkk.” Mando lets out while face fucking you. You hear his little moans in between your gagging. “I love the sound of you gagging on my cock.” Mando asserts. “And you look so pretty on your knees with it shoved down your throat.”

Doing your best to breathe through your nose, you can feel his length tensing in your mouth. “Mm gonna fill that pretty mouth of yours up with my cum.” You let out a moan and can feel his hot liquid shooting into your mouth. Mando pulls out of you and puts himself back in his pants. You’re now naked kneeling in front of him while he towers over you fully clothed and armored. You’ve never been so turned on in your life.

You pant and look up at him. Your face is covered in spit and cum and your hair is a mess. He bends down and runs his thumb across your bottom lip before putting it in your mouth. You suck his thumb. “Good girl.” Mando purrs.

Mando pulls his thumb out of your mouth, stands up, and takes a few steps back. You slowly rise up and take a deep breath, trying to comprehend everything that just happened. You turn around to reach for your clothes.

“Thanks for destroying my new work clothes, Mando.” You say picking up the ripped pieces of the tiny top he tore off of you.

“You won’t need them anymore, you’re only working here for a day.” You grab a short white silk robe hanging on the wall, and put it on. “And what if I have other clients today?” You say mockingly.

“You won’t.” Mando says. “I purchased you for the entire day.” He says walking to the door. You stand there feeling a mixture of astonishment and arousal at the knowledge that Mando paid a ship load so that only he would be able to fuck you.

Mando opens the door. “After you.”

“You realize that this means I win the bet, right? You understand that you paid me in order for you to lose the bet?”

“Sure, sweetheart. Congratulations. Now, we need to get back to the ship, and you need to rewire the calcinator.”

***************************************

Masterlist

[shadyteacup]

could i also pls request for ur 300+ event? i’d like 4 from the angst prompts (make me suffer AHDJDHSKD) with ranpo, thank u <3

Some sweet suffering coming up, now😌 I love torturing y'all so much, that I ignore the pain writing angst causes lmao

Edogawa Ranpo + “Please just pretend to love me.”

Word count: 1429 || Warnings: angst, swearing out of frustration.

You were one of those people that ran behind fame. You loved money, respect and a place among the important individuals of society. Your life’s goal has been to become successful enough to live a luxurious life, and have people look up to you.

During your efforts to do so, you met a certain noiret, whose brilliance and emerald gaze made you week in the knees. You fell for him, hard. At least, that’s what you made him believe. You made him fall for you. You both were living the perfect life. You would make him breakfast, kiss each other when you awoke, gaze into each other’s eyes, bathing in the morning rays. You two would eat out on Thursdays, order in on Fridays, and go shopping on Sundays. It was perfect. It was beautiful. But it was shallow.

Ranpo Edogawa, obviously, knew this. He knew that you were only with him because of his fame as the best detective out there. He knew that you were only into him for the benefits, and that if he was to give up on his career, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid before dumping him. That’s part of the reason that he accepted many cases and didn’t throw a tantrum when asked to actually work at the ada. He didn’t want to lose you. He couldn’t lose you. You were the only individual that has ever tolerated his mood swings and has stayed. Besides, you were gorgeous. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of you. You were so perfect. You played the part of a loving partner so well, that you almost had him, the smartest person on the bloody planet, fooled. It took him a while to realise your true intentions, and even after that, it took him a while to accept it. He loved you dearly, and he just didn’t have the guts to admit that your relationship was built on greed. He started closing himself off from others, and soon became a shell of the man that he used to be. He left the office early, didn’t talk to his peers, mostly kept to himself, didn’t joke around, and worst of all, lost interest in snacks. Yosano, his dear friend and concerned colleague, decided to confront him about this issue.

“What’s up with you? And don’t tell me that you’re fine, because you obviously aren’t.”

Ranpo had, after months of silence, openly talked to someone that day.

“I don’t think it’s true love, Yosano.”

He had shed many tears that day, knowing that his friend would keep them a secret. He trusted her.

“You think, or you know?”

She had asked. He was left stunned at her question. Was he sure of this? Was he just overanalysing, and hence overreacting? What if Y/N actually loved him?

“I- don’t know.”

He sighed, leaning into Yosano’s shoulder while she pat his back.

“Then find out. Observe. Know for sure.”

He sniffed.

“But what if I’m right?”, he shifted to look at her, his face showing just how scared he truly was.

“For once, I don’t want to be right.”

She had widened her beautiful eyes at his words. Giving him a comforting smile, she had consoled him.

“If you’re right, then its best to free yourself from this mess. Toxic relationships can really hamper one’s mental peace. Besides, you’re the smart one, you’ll figure it out. I’m sure!”

That’s why he was where he is right now. He had seated himself on the couch, waiting for you to come home from work. He had a plan in mind; a plan that would seal his fate.

He heard the keys jingling outside the door, signalling your arrival. He patiently waited for you to open the door and step inside, watching you as you discarded your coat on the rack and tossed the keys in the key holder by the door. You rolled your shoulders to release the pent-up tension and raked your fingers through your hair. You stepped in, oblivious of his gaze or presence.

“Welcome home.”

His voice stunned you for a second, and you jumped slightly.

“Oh my, Ranpo, you really scared me!”

You exclaimed, walking over to him to peck his cheek, and seating yourself opposite to him.

“What are you doing home?”

“Can’t I be at my own house?”, he cross questioned, crossing his arms.

You were taken aback by his aggressive tone and raised a brow.

“Of course, you can. What’s gotten into you?”

He sighed, looking away from your gaze. He had to stay in character.

“I just... I’m a bit worked up, that’s all.”

“What’s wrong, love?”

You shifted in your seat, leaning forward to look more concerned.

“I lost my job. They say that I’m not good enough, anymore. We’ll have to survive with our savings and your salary.”

You were baffled.

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

You scoffed, slumping back into the cushion of your seat.

“But you’re the best at what you do, they can’t just fire you like that!”

He sat silently, observing your turmoil.

“That’s impossible. They can’t just do that. What about all the work you’ve done for them? All the cases you’ve solved, all those hours that you’ve put in; they can’t do this to you!”

“They can, and they did.”

You stood up and began pacing in the hall. Your mind was filled with questions. Your main worry was, ‘Was my effort worthless? Will I have to breakup with him? If he isn’t who he was before, then is there any point in being with him? Was all that perfect play, all those stupid nights when I had to run down to the store to get him fucking ice-cream, or when I had to laugh along to his pathetic jokes, do the laundry, the dishes, treat him like a fucking child; was all that for naught?’

Your mental trauma was too much for you. You were breathing heavily, and your mind was clogged with worries. You were so out of it, that you failed to realise that you’d spoken your worries out loud.

When you heard your own voice echo back in your ears, you gasped, placing a palm on your mouth. Looking over at Ranpo, you widened your eyes at his expression.

“Fuck, Ranpo, I didn’t mean it! I was just worried about how we’re going to manage the expenses, and I-”

“Please just pretend to love me.”

He whispered. His tears threatened to spill. His emerald orbs shone with unshed tears as he clenched his teeth, glaring at you.

“I knew you were in it only for the fame and money. I fucking knew it, yet I stayed. I decided to stay because I had honestly fallen in love with you. I knew that my friends were right about you. Dazai had warned be before we became serious; he had tried to tell me to break it off with you; he had tried to forewarn me, but I didn’t listen to him, because I was so fucking lost in this puppet show, that I had started loving it. I should have listened to him and left you, you shallow hearted bitch!”

You just stood stunned at his words. He had ever even raised his voice at you before. This was so unexpected.

“I haven’t lost my job, Y/N. this was a test to see if you’re actually into this relationship, and guess what, you failed miserably.”

You just stood there, processing his words. So, he hadn’t lost his job? All is not for naught?

Laughing, you shook your head.

“You and your stupid games, Ranpo. I swear I can’t keep up with your pranks!”

“This isn’t a prank, I’m serious- ”

“Gosh, you had me scared for a moment there. This is all your friend’s doing. What’s his name again? Dazai? Yeah, he did this. And you fell right into his little trap! He made you hate me, but you don’t hate me, do you? You love me.”

“Don’t blame my friends. Honestly, how shallow can you get?!”

He chuckled bitterly.

“Get out. Right now.”

You just stared at him, dumbfounded.

“But love- ”

“Out! Now! Get out of my fucking sight!”

You nodded, understanding. He was too smart to be fooled anymore. Picking up your coat, you left the house.

Ranpo watched you leave, and slumped to the floor, on his knees. He had just lost the one person who had managed to make him feel loved. That night, he cried his heart out.

Jsksks I hope u liked it @kovzumee ! lemme know what u think, n if u didn't want this, feel free to req again♡

[wasabito]

had so much fun writing for my baby boy tendou, so here’s my entry for the hqhq sfw server collab! be sure to check out the rest on the masterlist found here! enjoy ✨

words: 3.0k

prompt: “you woke me up at 3am for this?”

synopsis: your neighbor is ridiculous, kind of annoying and little bit on the weird side, but you wouldn’t have him any other way.

You had to be the biggest idiot on the planet—an obvious exaggeration, yes, but you were still inclined to believe it was true. 

How else could you explain the feeling of being so utterly fed up with one’s actions like this? Were there enough words in the dictionary to describe just how exhausted you were by your own antics, more specifically, your forgetfulness since that’s what had landed you in a world of pain and embarrassment?

The answer was no.

You sat with your back pressed against your front door, head in your hands and chin tucked between your raised knees and chest. At your side was your wallet along with stacks of newspapers, coupons and whatever else had been stuffed in your mailbox, bills probably. Advertisements too. Honestly, it was hard to be happy about a new restaurant opening up down the block when you were currently stuck—locked out of your apartment to be precise.

The landlord of your cheap little complex wasn’t expected to be back for another hour according to the sign posted outside of his office. So until then, you’d remain posted up by your doorstep like some loiterer. 

You shifted in place and blew a puff of air from your lips, feeling little pinpricks in your legs. For the fifth time in the last forty-five minutes you felt like kicking yourself, hard.

The sun hung low, nearly touching the distant horizon signifying the end of another day. Even the sky was painted a warm umber, casting dim shadows.

“Locked out, huh?” came a snide, but accented voice.

It took you way longer than necessary to realize that suddenly you weren’t the only person on this floor. God, where was your head at?

A pair of forest green crocs stood before you, complete with a few odd charms and trinkets. A cartoon volleyball, pinned next to a smiley face, a donut and a gaudy “i heart paris” chain dangling from the ankle strap. A person’s shoes could say a lot about who they were...your mother thought so, at least.

Resisting the urge to projectile vomit all over this stranger’s rather questionable taste in footwear, your wary gaze panned upward, glossing over white tube socks and a pair of the longest legs you’ve ever seen on a person—yet another exaggeration. You came face to face with a crooked smile. Curious ruby eyes returned your stare with almost the same amount of scrutiny.

Who the hell was this guy?

Mystery-man easily towered over you, and not only because you were hunched over and sitting. He was tall as hell, all lanky build, gangly arms and legs disguising lithe muscle and a surprisingly sturdy frame. He looked like the i-run-every-morning type; semi-athletic at the very least. His buzzed hair was the color of cinnamon, no that wasn’t right, paprika maybe? Either way, it contrasted sharply with the paleness of his skin, so much so that you could see the faint blue of the veins in his arms.

“Yoohooo, anybody hooome?” He tilted his head at you.

“Huh? Oh uh, yeah, I’m locked out. I forgot my key inside and Mr. Laurent won’t be back until later.”

“Hmm. That sucks...”

“...Um… do I… do I know you or something? You look a little familiar.”

He pinned you with a funny look, before pulling out a set of keys from the back pocket of his shorts.

“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t~ I mean we are neighbors, after all.” Laughing as if he’d made some sort of joke, he entered his apartment with a twirl and a dramatic wave of his arms.

You stared at his door for a solid minute, only to finally succumb to your urges and facepalm at your own idiocy. Of course he looked familiar, how could he not when he literally lived four feet away.

With a sigh of resignation, you braced yourself for another hour spent sitting outside your front door. It wasn’t like there was any other place you could go or anyone you could call. The battery icon on your phone blinked red, warning that it was soon to run out of juice. Guess that meant no Among Us or Subway Surfer for you.

Five minutes later, the door next to you opened. It was Mystery-man again, but this time, he sat in front of his door, just like you were. And he did so with a bag of pretzels and a jar of nutella in hand.

“Must be bored out here by yourself.” He crunched on a pretzel before offering you the bag to take some. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep ya company.”

You weren’t sure why, but there was something about this guy that intrigued you. You half-wondered if it was the funny little curl of his smile, or the wideness of his eyes that made it seem like he was looking at all of you, all at once. 

"You must be pretty bored...uh,"

"Satori Tendou, but most people call me Tendou. Miracle boy works just fine too."

"Right... Tendou, as I was saying, you must be incredibly bored to come sit out here with me. You sure you don't have anything important to do?"

Tendou's grinned widened. "Positive! And it costs me nothing to be neighborly, so don't even sweat it."

That was...nice of him?

If sitting outside with you was the way he wanted to spend his late Tuesday afternoon who were you to deny him? And truthfully, you didn't mind the company, at least not really. Provided this guy wasn't some creepy-stalker-weirdo, you were sure there wasn't any harm in getting to know the person who lived one door over.

"So, Tendou, how long have you lived in the area? You don't really look like you're from around here...I could be wrong."

Tendou raised a thin brow at you. "Weeeell, if you're asking about how long I've lived next door, it would be about three maybe four months give or take, but if you're asking how long I've lived in Paris, it would be a year next month. Speaking of, I think Semisemi has a birthday coming up..."

You watched as he pulled out his cell phone and tapped away at the illuminated glass screen. You couldn't help but notice the goofy little anime stickers on his phone case. One in particular caught your attention.

“Is that...Kirara? From Inuyasha??”

“Oho! So, you recognize this?”

Backtracking, you mumble out, “Ah, well…only a little.” Though your face was turned away, the tiny smile on your lips was not hidden from Tendou and he thought you were pretty cute.

Funnily enough, what you had expected to be a rather unnerving and possibly creepy exchange turned out to be anything but. Tendou was incredibly fun to talk to—a bit teasing and a little overwhelming with his superfluous hand movements and gestures. But he was funny and a lot kinder that you would’ve given him credit for.

You learned that he was originally from Japan; it explained his accented French. He had come to Paris right out of high school to study culinary arts in one of the most renowned countries for it. Now he worked as a chocolatier, under the tutelage of a master patisserie in the city, an older man who was both a creative genius and a thorn in Tendou’s side. Tendou spoke of his teacher with equal parts awe and annoyance. 

And he got to know you too. How you’d found yourself in Paris, thousands of miles away from home in an effort to rediscover yourself in the city full of rich history and culture. 

You didn’t have many friends here, and it truly was a pleasure to make his acquaintance.

Soon, you both heard the telltale sound of jangling keys as your landlord rounded the corner with his clipboard in hand. Once you were able to get your door open, you waved a goodbye to Tendou.

“Thanks for keeping me company, you really didn’t have to.”

“No biggie, it was fun!” He threw a mischievous little grin and a peace-sign over his shoulder and reentered his apartment. 

You found yourself wanting to cross paths with him again, and hopefully in better circumstances. But you hadn't known your wishful thinking was soon to manifest as you ambled through grocery store aisles a week later, eyeing down any items with pictures on it.

“Why in the hell is this toilet paper so expensive.” You mumbled.

“So, you complain about the price of toilet paper, but wear sneakers that cost two-thirds our rent.” That voice sounded familiar, and after hearing it for about an hour just days ago, you were a bit surprised you could recognize it so quickly. 

Stunned, you looked up to find Satori Tendou, your quirky neighbor with an arm full of pita chips, a milk carton, and baby carrots.

“I never said I made the best choices.” You found yourself smiling despite the previous crease in your brow. “...Dude, get a cart before you drop everything.”

Instead of getting his own, he simply dumped what he had into your cart with a teasing grin. You couldn’t argue with his logic there. Tendou sidled up against you, once again towering over you with a kind of ease that should be criminal. “Need help reading something?”

You wanted to say no. You almost said no. But swallowing your pride, you gave a weak nod. “Yeah, this word right here.” Pointing to the unfamiliar script printed on the label. “What the heck is this?”

“Weeeeell, looks like that brand is scented, ya know, for when ya—”

“Don’t bother finishing that sentence...please.”

You quickly grab what you need and continue on down the aisle with Tendou following closely behind.

Just like when you’d first met him, he made conversation the entire way. By the time you both made it to the cash registers, you’d argued at least three times over french pronunciations and whether cashews were the cousin of peanuts.

And just as last time, he left you with a grin and a peace-sign while you stared after his retreating back, paid groceries in hand.

After an entire day spent baking, you found yourself on Tendou’s doorstep with a tupperware full of baked goodies later the next evening. You had been meaning to thank him for being such a good neighbor to you. It was certainly unexpected, but a welcome gesture nonetheless.

You only had to knock twice before the door was wrenched open and you were greeted with the set of...vanilla? Some pop song played in the background while your neighbor looked at you curiously.

"H-Hey Tendou, I um...I baked you these." You held out the plastic container, hoping he'd simply take it from you without question and you could return to your apartment without somehow embarrassing yourself. "There's a little bit of everything in there, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, macadamia nut—wait you aren't allergic to anything, right?"

"Nooope! Not a thing, thanks neighbor!"

"It was no problem, especially since you've helped me, not once but twice now."

Frowning, you couldn't help but be a little upset with yourself. You'd come to France to prove that you could, in fact, live a normal life outside of your family’s jurisdiction but day by day you were proving to need them more and more. 

It was disappointing, to say the least.

"Hmm, what’s with the constipated look on your face. Did the toilet paper not help?” Tendou tilted his head at you with a teasing grin, lips curled at the edges, taunting. You blinked up at him, surprised, and if you were honest, a little annoyed too. 

"Hah?!"

"Just thought it was worth a mention, nighty-night~!"

Tendou proceeded to shut the door on you; one hand rested on the frame and the other held on to the cookies. You quickly took a step back lest he chop your entire arm off, ready to trudge off in the direction of your own home but not before sticking your tongue out at him.

Stupid Tendou, always saying stupid shit. 

You were on the couch, half asleep when it dawned on you that it had been his own twisted, “Tendou” way of cheering you up. 

The rest of the month passed just like that. Occasionally, you would bump into Tendou at the grocery store, or the leasing office, or even the laundromat. And every single time, he’d either make you laugh until your sides hurt or annoyed enough to want to give him a friendly punch. At one point, you two had even exchanged phone numbers, because according to Tendou “it was ridiculous not to have your friends on speedial” which only led to hours spent on Facetime or playing iMessage games.

You knew exchanging numbers would come back to bite you in the ass, it was only a matter of when.

It was clear you weren’t going to any sleep tonight, that was for sure. The incessant buzzing of your cell phone every five minutes was an enemy to your circadian rhythm. You could name on one hand those in your contacts with enough sense to know that you lived in a completely different time zone from them now.

Somehow your neighbor was the very last person you suspected, but it was his contact photo that stared back at you, goofy looking grin and all. You squinted against the brightness of your screen in your otherwise dark bedroom.

you up?

come quick

gotta show ya somethin

come oooon

you're awake, i know you are

It took you less than a minute to shuffle on a pair of slippers, grab your keys (you weren't going to forget them this time) and slip out of your apartment.

You hadn't even knocked twice before the door was pulled open. Tendou looked a mess, more so than usual. Unidentified stains littered the apron looped around his thin waist, streaks of what you hoped were just flour and granulated sugar were all over his hands. You almost wanted to ask if he was baking or dealing dope.

“You woke me up at three in the morning...for this?”

“Yuuup!”

"When I said you could call me at any time, I really didn’t mean any time.” You scratch your side, a contemplative look on your face at the sight of Tendou in what you would assume to be his pajamas. An old volleyball hoodie with the words "Shirazorizawa" printed across the front, and old sweats the were so obviously cut with scissors at the knee.

Rolling your eyes, you mumbled a curt, “Alright, move aside.”

Tendou ushered you over to his kitchen where several of his cooking supplies laid on the island, along with a tray of some chocolate dessert spread.

“It’s all still in the testing phase, but I think I’m onto something here.”

He was definitely giving off “mad scientist” vibes. You tried not to snort.

Holding a small chocolate cake in his hand, he smiled, a genuine smile this time. "Open wide."

You obeyed, far too tired to argue, and let him pop the treat into your mouth. Tendou watched as you chewed, as if it were the most interesting thing ever. His wide gaze carefully took in every shift in your expression.

"So? Whaddya think?"

"I...," You chewed a bit more. "...It's delicious! Is that—"

"—Pistachio, why yes it is!" 

Tendou was practically bouncing on his feet with excitement. "It takes the entire thing to a whole new level."

You had to agree with him there. This was probably the best chocolate madeleine you'd ever tasted. "Great work, miracle boy. Will you be introducing this new recipe to Claude?"

Mentioning his teacher seemed to sober him up a bit. "Ehh, maybe? The old man's a bit of traditionalist, so I'll just have to figure out a way to get him to approve."

"Maybe try calling him at three in the morning?" 

Tendou stuck his tongue out at you before popping a dessert in his mouth. The pure delight on his face was so contagious, you found yourself smiling just the same. You couldn’t help but admire his passion.

“Hey, Tendou… do you like your job?”

He blinked at you, chewing coming to a slow halt. “Well of course! The pay isn’t the best just yet, but it’s a labor of love. I’m willing to put my all into it at least.”

“Huh… that’s pretty cool.” You wiped your fingers on a nearby rag. “I hope to feel the same one day… if I can figure out what I wanna do.”

“Why not bake? You’re pretty good at it.”

“Oh am I? Last week you said my baking needed some work.”

“Well, duh, but my standards when it comes to confectionaries are impossibly high. Even so, I think you’d be successful as a baker. What’s stopping you from pursuing your labor of love?”

And that was the thing with Tendou. He talked a lot, teased even more, but it was never idle ramblings. Somehow, he always seemed to hit right at the heart of the issue with almost painfully uncomfortable accuracy.

“I don’t really know so…” You looked away, trailing off.

“Either way,” he said and placed a finger under your chin, raising your head until you were looking him in the eye. “I’m rooting for you.”

For a moment, you simply stared, awestruck. It was the first time in a long while someone was actually putting their faith in you, believing in you. He had come blazing into your life unabashed with his easy grins and gaze alight with mischief. His encouraging words, sincerity, sensitivity. Tendou was really incredible.

“Tendou…” You took his hand in yours, squeezing it. “Thanks. For everything.”

“Of course, what are neighbors for.”

BONUS:

Three months later you sat curled up next to Tendou on his sofa, his entire apartment smelled of chocolate cocoa with hints of cinnamon.

Before you was an application. Culinary school.

“You really think I can do this?”

Tendou placed his head on your shoulder with a tiny smirk. “One hundred and twenty percent!”

You pondered for a moment, then decided that if he thought you were up for the challenge then you’d believe him.

“For the record, you probably aren’t supposed to recommend your girlfriend for an interview. You know, conflict of interest and all.”

Tendou laughed and pulled you closer. “Trust me, we’ll be fine, so don’t worry your pretty little head, ‘kay?”

[homesteadchronicles]

Original Writing Excerpt: “To Me”

Hello, my homies! I have an unexpected piece of writing to share with you all today, one not related to my known WIPs. Instead, this comes from the world I detailed here, one I’ve now been given permission to flesh out into a full-fledged story.

You don’t need to know the world in order to read, but I’ve provided the necessary context below in order to dive on in!

CHARACTERS:

Ero “Del’Gris” Idess: An intergalactic music idol in service to her agent, Kiladian Wellthane, who enlists her help in exposing his enemies’ corruption. Yoselle of the Starsea (”Ghost”): Ero’s bodyguard and long-time employee of Kiladian Wellthane whose unspoken feelings for Ero grieve him.

CONTEXT:

Ero and Yoselle have been dispatched by Kiladian to the Polaris Nightclub in order to secure information on the corrupt CEO of a pharmaceutical empire. When Ero botches her mission, she seeks comfort from a source both she and her target know can only lead to complications.

THE EXCERPT:

You are a specter: ethereal, immaterial, insignificant. She is a spotlight: illuminating, enticing, unyielding. These two halves cannot hold one another. These pieces fit different puzzles. But she needs something to elucidate and you did not hallucinate her invitation to centerstage. Still you skirt around the sidelines, flirting with shadows, fearful of exposure. She stands, a beacon in the clubhouse, awaiting your answer.

You refuse to reply.

Polaris, you convince yourself, requires better surveillance than the shoddy bodyguards provide it. Expensive liquor, lavish decor, and a distinct lack of security – the omen of emergencies. It was everything you loathed and Ero loved.

She didn’t seem to mind now, not that she ever had before. Why would she? She has you. Needs you. Wants you, a part of you thinks, hopes, refutes. Ero plays her role without shame. Flattery reserved a permanent space in her mouth and her lips make use of their eternal inhabitant to elicit information even when her hips were in motion.

Your place lies elsewhere. Astride. Afar. Procurer and protector both had their parts to play. Separately.

Then why does she keep staring at me?

It is your fifth circuit around the dance floor when you notice her attraction attention. Her gaze ought to be on your target, on Gentarou Hongou, on the mastermind of a corrupt pharmaceutical company. Her hand would bat his chest as her lashes bat her cheeks and he would indulge her as everyone always did. Their mission depended on his entanglement. Did she expect to seduce him with a half-given gaze?

Either Ero or Gentarou comes to the same conclusion, as she discreetly excuses herself to evacuate the floor and he does not even bother watching as she goes. You give chase, coming to a heel behind her as she reaches the dancing’s edge. Stress tugs her brows together. She has disappointed her target. Disappointed herself. Worse, you realize, she has disappointed Kiladian.

“You’re off your game,” you note. A comment and a question intermingle therein, indiscernible.

Ero maneuvers through the crowd with angered grace. Each foot falls just shy of stepping on another’s toes, the click of her heels on the metal beneath like a tongue snapping against bared teeth. “Hongou’s harder than I thought,” she mumbles, “and not in the way I need him to be.”

The bar comes quickly into focus as you follow her. It’s going to be a long night.

Ero glides into the shaky comfort of a barstool. Before you can intercept, she has the bartender concocting something with a name you won’t remember for a price you cannot fathom. Ero’s erratic when inebriated and adamant when infuriated – not a winning combo for their cause.

She beckons you over with a caress of the empty seat beside her and you stiffen. Your place is beneath behind her. But, for a moment, weariness cracks her mask and the lonely soul inside creeps out. “Ghost,” she drawls. Her fingers walk up your chestplate, eyes unblinking in unspoken expectation, and you will indulge her as you always have. “To me.”

The seat is filled before you can stop yourself.

Two drinks slide along the countertop and stop in front of them, one a glittering gray encrusted with crystal and the other a dusty yellow clouded by rising mist. Ero cradles the latter before acknowledging the former. “Oops. Looks like I ordered one too many.” Her tone holds no remorse, only mischief. She nudges the glass towards you. “Guess someone ought to keep me sober.”

You can’t deny that. Deny her. You drink.

Each sip is a burning kiss to your lips, searing all the way down until the sweetness kicks in thereafter. It’s easier to forget the sting when the aftertaste settles in. You swallow again. Again. Again, until you learn to love the flames, too.

Ero only toys with her order. It’s not her usual selection, not her Nightfire. The glass in front of her holds Del’Gris’ favorite - all flash and fruitiness - but no bite. Which means she believes the show must go on. Which means Del’Gris gets an encore.

You need to navigate this delicately. “Hongou gave you the slip?”

“He may as well have. Kiladian’s information was off – Hongou’s not involved.”

“You’re sure?”

Ero dips her head as if to nod before it droops in defeat. “Honestly? I don’t know. Making heads or tails of the man is more complicated than making eyes at him.” She retrieves the cherry inside her drink and rips it clean off the stem. “I’m not myself tonight.”

“That’s not true.” The words slip out before you can subdue them. An unfortunate error, but Ero appraises you with wide-eyed surprise and you wonder whether it was a blessing in disguise. “You were not Del’Gris tonight, true. Del’Gris holds every man captive in her grasp. But you were Ero tonight – and any glimpse behind the curtain is enough to fluster a lesser man like Hongou.”

Ero twists your words around in her mind like the stem she knots in her mouth. When she pulls the stem free, her answer spills out too. “You know me too well.”

Not as much as I’d like, you think. Still not enough to keep you safe. It is an unbidden - but honest - admission. Not one Ero would adhere to half-plastered and wholly penitent. You settle for “well enough to know when you’re not well.”

She scoffs into her cup, a bitter laugh against sweet liquor. “Can’t get any worse”. Ero raises her hand and requests another round of liquid courage: Nighfire on the rocks. It’s a slow burn, she told you once, reeking of booze and other bodies, just the way I like it.

You hadn’t liked it. Hadn’t liked the way her hair ensnared your shoulders, encircling you in her scent as you scraped her offstage. Hadn’t liked the lingering kindling of body heat. Hadn’t liked how much you dreamt of her touch afterwards.

The bartender brings her his poison and she tips it back in one go. Tipsy, but standing, Ero advances towards the dance floor. “Well, if our mission’s botched, must as well bust a move.” Half-lidded eyes hone in on you. “Don’t make me do it alone.”

There’s a plea beneath that tease, but the implications complicate your reaction. To stay would be wise. To go would be wine, a gradual inebriation, a delight today and a mistake tomorrow. A slow burn.

Noticing your hesitance, knowing your heart’s a mess, she approaches. “I’m not the only one unwell,” Ero whispers. Her tender denouncement strangles your judgment. “But we both have to choose health.”

She steps away. The crowd begins to swallow her, enclosing on all sides. Ero extends her hand to you. “Ghost,” she calls out. Her fingers curl inwards, a gambler clutching their stake. “To me.”

Your hand finds hers before you can stop yourself.

Polaris’ patrons shove you deeper into the throng of hedonism. Writhing bodies surround you on all sides, ushering you and Ero closer, closer, closer along to the beat of a song. You can’t make it out – not over the beat of your heart. 

But Ero can. She leans into you, giggles sending shockwaves against your skin, and it’s then you realize: the woman on the soundtrack is Del’Gris, but the one in your arms is Ero.

In my arms. The thought locks into place before you can register that your arms are, in fact, around her. Mechanically? Yes. Uncomfortably? Undoubtedly. Neither of you seem to mind, if the way she slides her hands around your neck and nuzzles into its crook is any evidence. 

Then again, you always were the problem. After all, what right have you to hold her after haunting her for so long?

“You’re overthinking it,” Ero says. You’re not the only one who knows the other too well. “Maybe I ought to take the lead.”

You both laugh at that, at yourselves, at everything that your twisted lives have led to because if you don’t laugh, you might both break. Then again, at least you’d crumble into one another.

Ero only leans back and leads on. Your hands keep her feet aloft, her back aligned. This imperfect rhythm, this imbalancing act, leaves you both in synchronized breathlessness.

Neon lights illuminate your mingling skin in a patchwork of discordant colors. They rise to wreath Ero in a heathen’s halo: green envy, violet ire, scarlet lust. The crowd around exalts her alias - “Del’Gris! Del’Gris! Del’Gris” - but Ero has only ever worshipped you.

Always the star, you muse, and I am but the planet trapped in orbit.

“They’re calling for their queen,” you tease.

“They’re calling for Del’Gris,” she clarifies, “but I believe someone requested Ero.”

“You must have heard a ghost.”

Whatever impish inclinations Ero might otherwise maintain were exorcised in an instant. Seriousness seats itself in place of playfulness, mouth thin and eyes taut. Her hand rises to graze his cheek. “Ghost you may be to everyone else, but you’re always Yoselle to me.”

You have been brutalized by mobsters, held for ransom by hitmen, and crushed by an atmospheric crucible more times than you can count, but nothing has ever taken hold of your heart half as hard as that. “I never mind playing the specter if it means shadowing you.” And it’s true. You would spend the rest of your days in obscurity if it meant skirting around her radiance.

But Ero has never been one to settle for second best.

“Oh, is that so?” That ruinous mischief reclaims her lilting smile as she presses herself inward, upward. “In that case,” she whispers and her breath is a phantom promise against your lips. “Ghost, to me.”

Your mouth finds hers before you can stop yourself.

[sunflowerspectre]

Hellfire and Ectoblasts

For @cleanlenins

Title: Hellfire and Ectoblasts Fandom: Danny Phantom x Lucifer Summary:  The devil works hard, but Vladimir Masters works harder. When Vladimir Master dabbles in dealing favors to others to get his way - much easier than constantly possessing everyone - Lucifer Morningstar has a few choice words for the business tycoon. Rating: T for cursing (multiple uses of the F word, mentions of drug abuse) Final Word Count: 5005 Ft. Uncle/Redeemed Vlad AU

Read on A03 Read on FF

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Los Angeles is new territory, despite all the places Vladimir Masters has traveled. He has drunk martinis in the sands of Bahamas, made deals in Cancun, and has a passport larger than most politicians. He has even traveled further into the Ghost Zone than most of the fully ghosts there.

Yet the city of angels has always eluded him, or rather he eluded it. It never quite appealed to him, with the oddities and gaudy casinos. It felt almost beneath him and it has, honestly,  never been on his priority list - at least, not until now.

Business is business and Vlad Masters will always go where business is; even if it is in a city like Los Angeles. Even if it is with an admittedly annoying sixteen year old teenager for a long extended amount of time.

Honestly, what was he thinking when he wanted Daniel as a son? He should have gone after Jasmine, he begrudges. At least she knew when to be quiet.

“Are we there yet?”

Vlad feels his eyebrow twitch, a vein throbbing in his neck. Daniel Fenton has the nerve to look at him with large innocent, doe eyes as if that is not the hundredth time he has asked that question in the past hour.

His somewhat nephew had jumped on the chance to go to LA with him; he would have been more suspicious of Daniel’s intention if not for the fact that the space shuttle endeavor will be within one quick bus ride from their hotel. As challenging, and even powerful, as Daniel can be - he is very much an open book that has been quite easy to read.

Danny opens his mouth, as if to ask that infuriating question again, but is stopped short by a small ecto blast. The ectoplasm effectively sticks against his mouth and despite the way he claws it, it refuses to budge. He settles for crossing his arms in a huff with a narrow glare. He idly considers it for a moment before a middle finger raises in contempt.

“Curse at me all you want, Daniel, but I refuse to listen to that infernal question the entire trip.”

Danny’s body language makes it clear that he is mocking him. Vlad waits until his fit is over before removing the ecto blast. Danny, huffing about being cut-off, leans back into the seat of the private jet. When he glances out the window, catching glimpses of clouds, he can not help but think wistfully how much better it would be to be flying Airline Danny. Jets, private or otherwise, are too confining now that he knows what it feels like to touch clouds.

He bets that the skies of Los Angeles is beautiful up close. He absently wonders if he gets far away enough to the nearby desert if he will be able to get a good view of the stars. The Orion constellation, not to mention a few planets like Venus and even Saturn, should be more visible here than it would be in Amity Park. He wonders if he flies high enough if he can get a good picture with a smartphone.

“Why are you going to LA anyway? Don’t you have enough money that you don’t need to be blowing it at casinos? Or is that the whole point?”

He barely even spares Vlad a glance through the corner of his eyes, arms crossed lazily against his chest as his cheek presses against the cool glass of the window. While being with Vlad is not the worst thing in the world - at least not anymore - he can not help but wish he would’ve been able to bring Sam and Tucker along. He imagines that they would be thrilled to go somewhere that’s not the Nasty Burger. At the very least, they would be better conversationalists.

Well, I guess it’s at least fun to mess with him, Danny thinks wistfully, a more devious smile on his face. If anything, it is a great way to pass the time. Messing with Vlad has always been a treasure, but now with little repercussions, at least nothing that compares to the way he used to threaten to kill his dad, it is like the entire world is his oyster.

“You can never have enough money, young badger.”

Danny coughs something into his elbow that sounds suspiciously like ‘ eat the rich’.  His eyes watch Vlad carefully with feign innocence, as if he never said anything at all. His elbow hides the large shit-eating grin threatening to break on his face.

Vlad makes a point to ignore the comment, continuing easily, “Since our - my -”

He struggles to find the right word, fumbling a bit with a strained look on his face. Mentions of the past have always been hard to bring up when he is, honestly, doing his best to move forward from it. He feels strained at the mere mention of how he behaved beforehand, somewhat even embarrassed by the things he tried to pull. He cannot be thankful enough that the Fentons, including even Daniel, have even given him this second chance. The young badger’s trust is not an easy thing to earn.

“ Your redemption arc,” Danny offers somewhat helpfully.

While not fond of the term, Vlad has to admit that he cannot think of a better phrase.

“-Yes.”  

He accepts the term Danny offers with clenched teeth, “-and as such, possession has become quite unfavorable . I have taken up doing business the old-fashioned way.”

Danny turns to face him. His innocently blinking eyes do not fool anyone with the gleam of mischief shining brightly in them.

“-Legal suits and proper paperwork?”

Vlad snaps at him suddenly, a vein throbbing in his forehead as he regrets taking off the ecto-gag.

“Oh will you - stop that?”

The outburst sends Danny reeling  into a laughing fit, clenching his sides tightly.

__________________________________

Danny’s smartass comments cost him; though, in his opinion, it was absolutely worth it. To his dismay, Vlad drags him along through the city of angels instead of leaving him at the hotel. He claimed he needed to meet a new potential business partner. He gave an entire speech of how it would be good for him to learn how the business world works, but Danny can only recall maybe the first few sentences of said speech. Vlad even went as far as stuffing Danny into the most uncomfortable expensive clothes that he could find. Honestly, couldn’t the man at least get comfy expensive clothes? Gucci makes sweat suits. He makes a mental note to send some links to Gucci sweat suits to Vlad later.

Comfy or not, he still would have preferred to have just headed straight to the space shuttle endeavor. At least then, he would be in ghost form most of the time anyway. It would have been a ten - maybe fifteen - minute flight himself from their hotel room; he even promised Vlad that he would stay invisible the whole time and not touch anything he was not supposed to. A promise that was hard to give since oh man did he want to touch the shuttle just to say he touched something that was in space. He even begged his uncle. Slipped in a few mentions of how his mom would be so happy if he was able to go and get pictures.

He almost got him too, but alas, his efforts were in vain. Instead, he is stuck in a limo. It is not a bad thing in and of itself, but even a luxurious car feels suffocating when you want to be somewhere else.

He eyes the protesters lining up on certain streets. Sam would have loved it here. He keeps track of all of the ‘trendy’ vegan cafes he spots along the way for future reference; he even spots a few goth-centric stores. He snaps a few pictures, sending them over their group chat. He follows them up with pictures of pictures of every BBQ stand he finds for Tucker’s sake.

Sam: Still with the ex-villain?

Danny snorts, scooting away from Vlad as much as he could before snapping a picture of his unsuspecting ex-arch nemesis. Vlad visibly sighs, the exhaustion showing on his face as he does not even bother to look at Danny anymore.

Tucker: Someone looks like he’s having a great time

Danny: He’s with me, of course he’s having a  great time. I’m a joy to be around. An absolute blast.

Tucker: Isn’t every party you’ve gone to nowadays a bit - dead?

Danny audibly groans at the bad attempt at puns, sending a quick message of how puns are his thing; it’s his whole shtick.  But like all group chats do, the conversation grows dead pretty fast.

He is already growing bored again after having sent all the memes he could find ( and how dare they not laugh react at them) . He settles for rolling the window up and down obsessively, occasionally even sticking his head through it. When that adrenaline rush is short-lived, he ends up leaning against the door while obnoxiously clicking the window button repeatedly until Vlad is forced to ask the limo driver to put on the child lock. He considers the idea of just phasing his head through the window, but as weird as LA is, he thinks even that would be a stretch.

He could just phase away entirely. After all, the limo is not ghost proof. Vlad even got rid of most of his more outrageous contraptions and traps so he knows that the seat will not suddenly grow restraints if he tries to get up from it. He wonders if the oddity shop that they passed is still open? He did promise everyone souvenirs and the weirder the better (as is the whole point with souvenirs).

But he also promised his mom that he would get along.

Besides, Vlad said he would pay for lunch when they are done and they passed the most delicious looking burger place.

After what feels like forever, watching all the places he wants to go but can’t right now like a sad puppy begging for the window to be let down, the limo finally pulls up in front of a nightclub. LUX. Danny raises a brow. He may not be the smartest out of his family, but dead languages are his specialty. He glances to Vlad, wondering if he should be more concerned about his pseudo-uncle doing business here. Any nightclub named after light that looks this shady can not be good.

He is also pretty sure that he just saw a drug deal around the corner and some of the people in line already look under the influence of something .

“Am I even allowed here,” Danny questions, pausing a moment to count on his fingers, as they exit the limo. “I’m only like - sixteen? I am a literal child. ”

Vlad continues walking as if he does not hear Danny’s voice grating on behind him. Somehow, the teenager has a voice that seems to stick out like a sore thumb against the boom of the music coming out from the club’s doors.

“You are not a child, Daniel,” Vlad finally acknowledges.

“Uh the law would disagree, sir,” Danny waves a finger after him, “I am a minor.”

The sun is already starting to set, which means the club is steadily filling up; a majority of people are still out in long lines outside of the club’s door. He glances at them briefly, if in a bit of curiosity at the club wear. He blushes wildly at some of the more out-there club wear and focuses quickly on the fact that Vlad is steadily getting ahead of him.

“We are not here for drinking, Daniel,” Vlad’s voice comes out a bit exasperated as he fixes his tie. He eyes the people in line with a bit of disdain, but otherwise ignores them.

Vlad continues on past the lines, not acknowledging the way that some of them call after him. He keeps his hands in his pockets as he gets closer to the crowd; Danny realizes that it likely has something to do with the high possibility of getting pick-pocketed. After all, Vlad does not exactly blend in, but neither does Danny in the suit that Vlad forced him in.

Danny is close in tow as they head straight for the bouncer at the door.

If Vlad was not so used to the way that Maddie could ( has and absolutely will) beat him, he would have been more surprised at the woman at the club’s door. The choice being a bit abnormal in the job. Her intimidating presence is enough to make most of the more pushy people at the front second-guess themselves. A few of the people who dare to test the boundary of the velvet rope quickly change their mind as she just glances at them. Danny’s first thought is how much Sam would like the bouncer. The entire leather outfit is just something that feels like she would like, compared with how tough the woman seems to be. If the woman didn’t scare him so much, he would have tried to take a picture.

His second thought, however, is how off she feels. The closer he gets to her, the more his core vibrates deeply in his chest. As if it is trying to transform and get him out of there, like an animal’s instincts to a predator. Run. RUN. RUN. He digs his heels into the ground and refuses to listen to his gut. He refuses to let his gut determine what he thinks about someone, or how he acts on them. He learned the hard way to control that impulse.

Besides, she does not seem that dangerous - he thinks? He glances to the knives strapped to her thigh and the mean look in her eyes. Mostly. But his ghost sense has never gone off. That means that possession is off the table - so is her being a ghost. But he has never felt his core vibrate this way, in such a paralyzing instinctual fear. The only thing that comes close is when he faced Pariah.

Danny is sure that Vlad notices it too, he is way too smart not to. Vlad’s expressionless face does not give a single thing away, staring straight on even as the woman looks him over closely, a sneer on her face. Something about the way she bares her teeth feels more like a threat, as if she is prepared to rip your throat out herself at any given moment. The worst part is that it feels like that is something she is very much capable of doing. She gets startlingly close to Vlad’s face, sniffing him. He refuses to flinch and let this woman know how much she intimidates him.

He seems to pass whatever test she was giving him. Finally she just snorts, taking the card that he offers her. Danny only catches a glimpse of the red and  gold lining against black with some sort of name written on it. He barely sees the flash of some sort of horned symbol on the edge. Just who is Vlad doing business with anyway?

Whatever the card is, it works. She backs off, crossing her arms against her chest as she moves out of the way of the door to let them through. The glare she gives some of the people at the front of the line scares them out of even thinking about shoving their way in through the open door.

Danny sticks close to Vlad’s side this time, feeling the urge to get as far away as he can from the woman. He is not sure if she will stop him. He would love to get out of this situation with Vlad, but he would hate that it meant staying anywhere near the woman. The wild beating of his core is getting worse and it feels like he can’t breath.

He is unsure if he can handle being around her much longer with his core acting up like this. He feels like he is this close to a heart attack.

“You smell weird, but whatever. He’s inside.”

He smells weird, Danny wonders how she can smell anything especially when all he can smell is all the people around them not wearing deodorant. He tries his best to brush it off as some sort of intimidating tactic. But when Danny passes by the woman, she leans forward, visibly sniffing him as well.

“Sorry it’s my - uh - aftershave,” Danny’s panicked lie confuses even him as he just waves at the woman as he enters the club, finally taking a deep breath in as the door shuts behind him.

Still thoroughly weirded out by whatever that was, something that does not improve when he’s suddenly surrounded by drunks and loud blaring music, he sticks abnormally close to Vlad. The people surrounding them are too drunk to notice when he phases through the elbows that are just too close to him or the shoulders that almost bump into him. Vlad looks back at him briefly, a ghost of a smile on his face, before he turns attention to the crowd.

“Whatcha looking for? The bar? Drugs? A confessional?” Danny asks as they finally reach a section that gives them some elbow room. He brushes off imaginary dirt, and not so imaginary something , off of his shoulders.

“My business partner,” Vlad answers curtly, eyes still scanning the crowd. He knows what he’s looking for, despite not having met the man before.

When Lucifer Morningstar reached out to him, insisting that they meet in person to discuss business, Vlad almost brushed him off. However, a combination of the man’s obsession with the devil and the fact that Lucifer Morningstar’s very identity doesn’t go back any further than a few years intrigued him. How does a man who legally has only been around for a few years get so ahead in the business world? More importantly, who is he really?

“What does he look like, maybe I can help.” Danny offers, looking over the crowd as if he would suddenly be able to who they are looking for.

“It is our first business meeting, I’m afraid, but if he looks anything like his photos, you can’t miss him.”

That gets Danny’s attention. He swerves suddenly on Vlad, jutting his hands out to form a T, his fingers press against his palm, “Whoa, time out! You brought me to a business meeting with someone you never met before? How do you even know the guy’s like, I don’t know, a ghost hunter?”

“You're a paranoid teenager, young badger.” Vlad’s voice is dry with a lack of amusement, “I’ll have you know that I reach all my partners quite well. Lucifer Morningstar is nothing more than a lunatic, however he is quite popular with our mutual partners.”

“ Lucifer,” Danny harshly whispers, his voice only half-way kidding, “Don’t tell me you actually made a deal with the devil?”

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise him if Vlad did - if such a thing is really possible - but it would put a strain on their now alliance. Vlad’s about to retort, likely something along the lines of you’re being ridiculous Daniel, but he gets cut off prematurely by another voice.

“Well not yet, but let’s see if that changes today, shall we?”

A particularly British voice gets their attention as a man in a well fitted suit, looking vastly more comfortable in it than Danny is, struts their way. Despite looking like every other business man he’s seen, the man doesn’t feel like the usual stuffy suit type. He feels dangerously charismatic, with an easy smile on his face and a magnetic pull that makes it difficult to turn their attention away from him. He has a few beautiful women, and at least one man, at his side. He whispers something that Danny wishes he didn’t hear, to each of them before they regretfully leave his side.

“You must be Vladimir Masters.” The tone of voice is not a compliment, coming off more mocking, “Look at you, a bit older than I expected, but ultimately age is never an issue. Provided you’re at least an adult.”

The sultry look that the apparent Lucifer Morningstar has as he looks Vlad up and down appreciatively reminds Danny too much of how Vlad used to look at his mom. He starts to feel sick to his stomach, gagging exaggeratingly in the background as he tries his best to ignore the way his core has returned to vibrating, thumping hard against his chest.

Whatever the woman at the door was, Lucifer Morningstar must be at least the same thing - or something close to it - to make his core react the same way. He should be more concerned over it, but he glances toward Vlad. He looks stony as ever, the only sign of discomfort being a vein beginning to throb on his neck. Ah, so he does notice.  

He doesn’t seem surprised either.  Danny wonders if this is some sort of test again, to see what he will do and how he will react. Especially in front of an unknown factor. Shit. Danny curses when he realizes that’s why Vlad brought him along in the first place and then curses again - more directed at Vlad himself this time - for Vlad being as cryptic and vague as Clockwork.

 I just wanted to see the endeavor, Danny bemoans as the man ushers Vlad (and by extension, Danny) to a clear booth. Taking Vlad’s lead, Danny acts more confident this time around, trying his best to act like every inch of his being isn’t screaming to run.

“Drinks,” Lucifer offers, seeming comfortable in the booth with his arms stretched out wide against the edge of the seat across from Danny and Vlad. While Vlad accepts the offer, ordering a simple old fashion, Danny speaks up with a cheeky grin.

“I’ll have a coke on the rocks,” Danny orders, showing a lot of teeth in his grin as he gives finger guns, of all things. After a pause, he adds on, “Not shaken nor stirred, please.”

Vlad’s exasperated sigh is barely audible as he breathes out through his nose. At the very least, he should be glad that Danny is acting normal - as awkward and tiring as normal is.

“I must admit Mr. Morningstar, I was a bit surprised to receive your invitation,” Vlad speaks easily. He politely sips at his drink, but otherwise leaves it untouched, more focused on the conversation. He tries to not let his eye twitch when he hears Danny suck up his coke through a straw.

Lucifer looks at Danny in amusement, seemingly unoffended by the teenager’s manners (a small blessing). Unlike Vlad, Lucifer doesn’t shy away from his own drink, downing it easily. He orders a few more at one of the ladies passing by, followed by flirtatious compliments that make her giggle and once again, makes Danny wish that he couldn’t hear what was being said.

“Well how could I not invite a man such as yourself, Vladimir,” Lucifer’s voice is exaggerated, almost strained, “Or is it Vlad? Vladdy?”

Vlad does twitch at that and Lucifer grins, “Vladdy it is. Better than douchebag, I suppose.”

Danny snorts at the sudden word, laughing hard enough that he barely stops the coke from pouring out of his nose. He takes in a deep breath, wiping at his face with a cocktail napkin as his nose burns from the soda.

“I prefer to use the term fruit loop,” Danny speaks up helpfully.

Lucifer seems delighted at this information, his eyes lighting up in glee as Vlad visibly sinks into the seat.

“ Fruit loop,” Lucifer repeats gleefully, “Lacks a bit in curse words for my liking but fruit loop it is!”

“You can always say fucking fruit loop,” Danny offers as if he is still being helpful, the grin on his face more genuine, “Or fruit by the fucking loop?”

Lucifer’s laugh is infectious, his eyes gleaming as Danny joins him in laughter at Vlad’s expense. For a moment, the two continue back and forth before Vlad is forced to intervene; the vein is his neck is more noticeably throbbing at this point.

“Mr. Morningstar,” Vlad cuts in, his voice stern, “What exactly was the point of the invitation, if I may? I hope it wasn’t to just call me outrageous names.”

Lucifer nonchalantly waves off Vlad’s growing ire, “Oh no, I invited you over for much more than just that. Favors, you will find, are my  specialty. One could say it’s my whole business. I grant favors and I do not take kindly to others who sneak up on my business and steal it away.”

There’s a flash of something in Lucifer’s eyes. Something dangerous. As brief as it is, it’s enough to make Danny’s core hum against his chest, his hand grips his knee tightly. His eyes flicker to Vlad and as much as the older man is trying to hide it, Danny can tell that he’s just as suddenly bothered by whatever that was.

“It’s the point of the matter, you know,” Lucifer continues, “Steal my business, shame on me, steal my shtick, shame on you.”

He downs another glass and grabs something off a platter as someone passes by. It looks suspiciously like a joint. He lights it up without a second thought; Danny tries his best to act like he doesn’t know what it is as Vlad eyes him through the corner of his eyes.

“Word is that you, Vladimir Masters, have been sneaking around granting favors to a chosen few. I don’t know how you grant said favors, I don’t particularly care. But I do wish you would stop.”

The dangerous aura that’s thick in the air is heavy, but the realization that Vlad has still been up to shady business is heavier. Danny slumps into the seat, leaning forward with a heavy sigh.

“So you have been up to shady shit,” Danny mumbles under his breath as he absently stirs the straw in what has to be his third glass of coke.

“If you don’t stop,” Lucifer continues, “I’m afraid I’ll have to make you stop. If Mazikeen does not get to you first.”

He gestures his thumb toward the woman that was outside the door; she hovers nearby as if she knows exactly what they’re talking about. The grin on her face is malicious, bordering on feral as she twirls a knife across her knuckles without breaking eye contact. That woman is intimidating, Danny swallows thickly, but grins wildly at Lucifer.

“Oh he’ll stop,” Danny reassures the man before Vlad can even get a word in. There’s an edge to his words; a very clear message underlying his words. “Otherwise I’ll make him stop myself.”

A flash of ectoplasmic green swirls across his eyes. Vlad, not quite intimidated by a sixteen year old still going through puberty, simply mumbles under his breath, oh stop with the ‘scary’ eyes, Daniel, honestly. Lucifer catches the moment, eying them both with interest as he relaxes into the chair. He makes a motion with his hand and suddenly the woman - Mazikeen - isn’t there anymore; Danny isn’t sure where she went, if he should be worried about it, or if it was a sign of good faith.

“ You are a very interesting child,” Lucifer says, “At first I thought you two may have been one of mine, but that’s not really the case is it?”

Danny isn’t sure what one of mine really means; he doesn’t really want to know either. The way Lucifer says it feels off, as if he’s not concerned by it or that they would have been in worse trouble if they had in fact been one of his (whatever that means). Vlad recovers fast, eying Lucifer with narrowed eyes.

“Just what is it that you’re inferring, Mr. Morningstar?”

“Why, that you’re not human, of course!”

He says it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, a large grin stretched on his face as he finishes off the suspicious joint, making a point to blow the smoke away from them. It may have been a trick of the light, or even just a magic trick, but Danny swears that the smoke formed some sort of devilish face. Complete with the horns and all.

Danny’s grin falters as he watches Lucifer closely.

F-uck-ing typical. At this rate, he will never get to see the endeavor or any other of California’s space museums. Why can’t he have just one normal road trip for once? No circus ringleader, no reality altering devices, no ghosts, and no ghost hunters. He just wants to get a selfie with a space shuttle, order as much hotel food as he can off of Vlad’s card, and then crash. Maybe even go to the Griffith Observatory. Fly to the Hollywood sign. Sneak into a Disney park and take a selfie on top of Cinderella’s castle. Just a normal trip (with a few added advantages to being a half-ghost boy). Now, he has to instead worry about some devil-obsessed (but definitely weird and maybe not human at all) club owner finding out his secret.

This is exactly what Danny told Vlad; meeting someone you don’t know is just a risk. At the very least, Lucifer doesn’t look like a ghost hunter. He definitely doesn’t fit the M.O. of a Guys In White agent. There could be other agencies out there though, other people who want to hunt them down. Who knows, maybe whatever this guy really is likes to eat ghosts or hunt them for sport. This is exactly what he was concerned about. Now, his secret, and Vlad’s secret too he supposes, could be blown all because Vlad had to go make a shady business deal.

Danny turns to Vlad, not even bothering to whisper as his voice cuts through the loud music.

“I told you so.”

[peachyteabuck]

come water me ☂

summary: after years of depending on science to give you a child, you think giving a magic a shot isn’t a half-bad idea (a commission for @myhoneybeeheart) 

pairing: steve rogers x thor odinson x reader (established steve rogers x reader)

words: 3,538

trigger warnings: infertility, MMF threesomes, creampies, praise kink, breeding kink, cuckolding, angst if you squint but like REALLY squint. REALLY REALLY squint. 

ask box / masterlist / commission info / ko-fi

You and Steve had both done every test known to every male and female fertility specialist in the United States, along with several European countries, Japan, China, and Australia. Every single one, for each of you, pointed to the same thing – infertility.

Persistent infertility. As in, the both of you are not only infertile, but will continue to be infertile despite any type of treatments any type of doctor wants to put you through. Steve doesn’t qualify for experimental treatments, and you’ve tried at least five to no avail.

Long story short, neither of you can have biological children.

The problem is, you both really want biological children. But, according to biology, it just isn’t going to happen.

“Science says so,” the last doctor had told you, voice full of apology. “I’m so sorry.”

That particularly heartbreaking appointment was in the late afternoon, but the battery of tests meant you and your husband were stuck in the shitty doctor’s office until long past when the sun had set. You were grateful how dark it was when you left, terrified some Captain America stan or paparazzi would get a high definition picture of both you with puffy faces along with snot and stray tears still running down your face. It was late when you got back to your secluded high rise, neither of you hungry nor willing to feign it enough to order something. You didn’t know about Steve, but the sadness had somehow overwhelmed every single one of your senses – making your taste buds pointless and limbs numb. Silently, the both of you got ready for bed and held each other as emotional exhaustion acted as a second weighted blanket and lulled you both to sleep.

It was the next morning when you thought of what you had dubbed “the plan.” You had gotten up before Steve (unusual, as you’d been together long enough that wallowing in self pity was a shared activity) and sat at the kitchen table with unbrushed teeth, messy hair, and the sort of determination that comes with a self-reflexive ultimatum: if “the plan” didn’t work, you’d stop trying. You’d tell Steve that you’ve come to terms with your inability to conceive and continue your journey to start from the assumption that there was nothing either of you could do to make it happen. It’s a heartbreaking reality, but it was one you were willing to accept.

It took a few days to work up the courage, to find the right time to broach the idea with the man you chose to spend the rest of your life with. The perfect moment ended up being when you were both eating dinner, Steve telling a story about something ridiculous Peter had done on a mission (turns out, flirting with a fellow agent undercover as a full service sex worker is not a good idea). You were both happy, incredibly so, and you knew whenever your husband talked about the kid it ignited the special light inside of him that wanted to be a father.

It was the tail end of the story, he was two beers down (a special mix Tony had concocted that balanced with Steve’s serum-induced metabolism), and he was happy. So with a deep inhale and sustained eye contact, you rambled with your prepared speech that covered a few of concerns you knew Steve would have and informed him of your personal deal.

You finished quickly – words tumbling out of your mouth before you knew they were being spoken. Your heart beat loudly in your chest, blood rushed to your ears. You were terrified.

That was, until Steve gave his reply a few hours later.

(He asked if he could table the conversation for a little while, wanting to “think it over.” Of course you told him it was okay, especially since you knew there was dessert still waiting to be eaten in the fridge, and you were still very hungry.)

You imagined a lot of responses from your husband, the worst of which sounded like the beginning of a particularly sad Shonda Rhimes television show:

“You want to what?” Steve nearly screams. “You want to invite Thor Odinson in our marriage bed so that we can have a child!? No! I won’t allow it!”

You fall to the ground, sobbing, clutching your phone as you scream back. “I want what’s best for us! For our family! For our future child!”

Steve storms out of the bedroom, turning back to your crumbled figure just before stomping out. “I’m calling a divorce lawyer. I want you out by Monday.”

You expected you’d have to convince him, would have to coax his clenched jaw towards your face so he’d know how serious you are from the look in your eyes. Maybe you’d have to wait days, weeks, months before he’d agree, would have to have long conversations with him and his colleague about negotiations and boundaries and whatever else.  

What you didn’t expect was for Steve to agree not only immediately, but enthusiastically.

“T-that’s it?” you asked. You both were in bed, reading separate books before you’d each turn off the lights and go to sleep. He was reading something about battle tactics during Vietnam while you were thumbing through a book about the history of swearing.

Steve did not look up from his novel. “You want to have a threesome with Thor in the hopes it’ll give us a baby?”

You looked to him, brow furrowed. “Yeah?”

Now he puts the book down and turns to you. “The worst thing that happens is we have sex with a literal deity?”

At first you think he’s joking but, nope. He’s serious.

“Uh, yeah,” you reply again.

Steve shrugs before going back to his book. “Then yeah, but you have to call him.”

You blink a few times – shocked. Pleasantly shocked, but still shocked. “That’s…a deal. Yeah. I can, I’ll talk to him.”

Steve smiles, turning back to you once more and giving you a peck on the cheek. “Sounds good, babe. Let me know what he says.”

You nod, still a little surprised. “O-of course.”

With that, the conversation ends, and you need to figure out how to contact the man in question.

The next morning, you learn from the detailed calendar Tony’s assistant keeps that Thor’s on Migard for the rest of the month, doing…whatever. Honestly, you have no idea what he’s doing, and – even more honestly – you don’t care. Short of saving an entire population from destruction, you’re sure he can make time for you.

Luckily you find him easily, watching some reality show about weird white people in the living room of a common floor. You take deep breaths for stepping into eyeshot, asking if you can sit next to him (he says yes) before you start what is likely the most uncomfortable conversation of your life.

Somehow, though, Thor beats you to it. “If you want me to help you and Steve conceive, just tell me the date and time you want me in your bed.”

Even more so than when Steve accepted your recent proposal, you’re surprised by Thor’s forwardness. “Um-“

Thor smiles, putting a comforting arm around your shoulders before pulling you close against him. “Listen, I’ve done this with many families on many planets. I’ve never done it on Earth, but I’m willing to give it a try for you two. You deserve a child, and I’d be happy to help with that.”

You wipe a stray tear before allowing yourself to be enveloped into Thor’s massive arms. “Thank you,” you tell him after your heart had stopped beating at your ribs as if they were boxers going for the championship title. “Thank you so much.”

You feel Thor smile against the side of your head. “Of course, anything for you.”

You return to Steve with your findings, who agrees to set it up for the next night. The few hours before the mythical man is scheduled to arrive are an otherworldly combination, as if you had put giddy excitement, gut-wrenching fear, and determined optimism in a Nutribullet with bananas and strawberries and vanilla Greek yogurt and served it with-

“Honey, he said we both have to eat before,” Steve pulls the breaks on your train of thought, nudging your plate of food towards you with a small smile.  “I’ve known you for long enough to know what you overthinking and forgetting to eat looks like.”

You nod and sigh, biting into the seasoned steamed vegetables. “Sorry, I-“

Steve shakes his head, swallowing whatever from his plate he was chewing. “I’ve also known you long enough to not need you to explain. Just eat.”

He’s right, you think as you clear your plate. You’ve known Steve for over a decade, dating for nine of them and married for seven. He met you through Natasha, who knew you from your work as a professor studying the differing effects of veterans and civilians (how she found you is still a mystery) and invited you to a conference that Stark was funding and therefore required the Avengers to make an appearance. He knew everything about you, and you knew everything about him.

For the first time in a long time, you wonder whether that’s a good thing, or a bad one.

When Thor arrives, he directs the two of you with ease, accepting a glass of expensive red wine as he follows you to the expansive bedroom.

He makes you strip first, tells you to lay in the center of the bed with your legs spread over the end and arms at your side. Steve’s next, already half-hard as he takes his position by your head, on his knees so he can watch the show in front of you. He’s naked, erection hard against his chiseled stomach.

“You’re so beautiful,” you tell him, blissed out before anything had ever begun.

He smiles down at you, same look in his eye the same day you got married. “You, too babe.”

Thor lets you have the moment as he undresses himself, letting you wrap a hand around Steve’s cock as he slots himself between your legs.

“Mm,” Thor hums, tracking your every move with a precise eye. “What a pretty cunt you have…”

A deep moan from you cuts him off as he kneels and licks a wide stripe up your dripping center, his large hands moving under your knees to bend your legs to your chest.

“Oh!” you cry, one of your hands moving to clutch his long blonde hair. “Oh that feels so good!”

You can feel Thor smiling into your folds as one of his perfectly calloused fingers slowly enters you, reveling in your now-mindless acceptance of pleasure. “So tight,” he moans. “Can’t wait to feel you around my cock.”

It doesn’t take long for your brain to fry, losing your ability to do anything but moan and sloppily jerk off your husband as Thor begins to fuck two fingers in and out of you at a bruising pace.

Steve watches you intensely, takes over jerking his own dick when you lose control of the muscles in your hands.

Thor scoffs, rolling his eyes you pout when his lips leave you.

“C’mon, love,” he murmurs into your inner thigh. “Don’t neglect the man.”

Nearly panting, you wrap your lips around Steve’s cock while Thor continues eating you out.

“Fuck you’re so good at this,” Steve hisses as you start to gag on him, running your tongue on the underside of his cock.

You do your best to smile as one hand moves to play with his balls, eyes screwing shut as you turn all your attention onto your husband’s cock.

“That feel good?” Thor asks, hand around the base of his cock. He grunts when Steve nods, his head thrown back in ecstasy. “C’mon, Stevie. Tell me how good your wife’s mouth feels on your dick.”

Steve swallows what little spit is left in his mouth before trying to remember how to speak. “It f-feels so good,” he’s breathless, chest straining as he tries not to come. “Wet and t-tight, the best thing I’ve ever felt.”

Thor grunts deep in his chest, as if he’s restraining himself. “Keeping going – and tell me when you’re about to cum.”

Steve moans when he hits the back of your throat, both hands now tangled in your hair. “F-feels so good, like she’s sucking the life out of me through my fucking dick- Oh fuck!”

You’re deep throating him now, breathing through your nose as you gag.

“T-Thor,” he moans, voice strained. “I-I think I’m-“

“Stop,” the man at the end of the bed commands as he continues fucking his fingers in and out of you. Reluctantly, you do as you’re told, ceasing all actions and giving Steve the most pitiful look you can muster.

“C’mere pretty girl,” Thor murmurs, leaving one last kiss at the most sensitive part of you. “It’s time for me to fuck you.”

You and Steve both moan deeply as he lifts himself to his feet and aligns himself with your center – hardened cock bobbing against his stomach. The sight is enough to make your center tighten, skin on fire as you wait for him to gift you reprieve.

“Such a perfect little pussy,” Thor mumbles to no one but himself, grinning wide as he enters you.

Little words are exchanged after that, Thor focusing on the feeling of your cunt instead of talking.

“Oh Thor-“ you moan, pulling away from Steve to throw your head back once more. “Oh shit holy-“

Thor just laughs, leaning down so he can kiss you. He places one hand next to your head for balance, the other moving to jerk Steve’s cock for you. His whole body works like a perfectly build machine, hips and hand working in tandem to get all three of you off. His movements are languid and purposeful, as if each muscle contraction and release was planned long, long ago in some expert fashion.

As Steve moans once again that he’s close, you remember what Thor had told you the day previous – that he had done this for other people attempting to build their families. In an instant, you were struck with the fear that this was somehow mechanical for him, something he was doing out of some sense of duty with half his brain focused on what he was going to have for dinner or what fruit was in season – something mundane and minutely distracting so he could phone it in and take the credit when the pregnancy test came back positive.  

Thor notices you’re drifting away, grabs you with one hand and coaxes your eyes to meet his. “Don’t worry about anything, baby,” he tells you, voice low in his chest. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

It’s comforting – you can’t describe why, don’t even understand why; but even if you could, Steve’s begging cuts your train of thought short.

“Fuck please,” his voice is high and desperate, anything left of his precious Captain America façade torn to shreds by the possibility of denial. “Please let me come!”

Thor just shakes his head and smiles, putting him through the same torture as he did before but continuing fucking you – ignoring Steve’s cries as he rubs at your clit.

“Ignore him, baby,” he murmurs to you, “C’mon, focus on how good it’s gonna feel when I make you come.”

That’s all it takes for you to lose yourself, to throw your head back and buck your hips up and scream as loud as your exhausted lung will allow. At the last second before you reach your peak Thor moves away from you to grab the back of Steve’s head, pulling the man into a deep kiss.

“Fuck,” Thor groans against Steve’s lips. “Fuck you’re both so gorgeous I’m, fuck, I’m gonna-“

Thor releases himself inside of you with a deafening shout, moaning into Steve’s mouth as his come spills out of you. You’re speechless, watching them kiss above you while you pant.

For a moment there’s silence – the thick scent of sex and the wet sounds of their mouths and your pussy being the only things that fill the air. The only thing that cuts through it is Thor’s gruff voice instructing Steve to take his place between your legs.

The shuffling is awkward but gives you a minute to breathe, the clouds in your brain clearing with a few seconds of being left alone. Unlike Steve, Thor lays next to you on his side, one hand framing your jaw as he kisses you deeply.

Steve takes a moment to admire Thor’s cum dripping out of your pussy, resisting the urge to kneel down and lay his tongue there and drink it all down.

He swallows what little spit is left in his mouth as he enters you, body trembling as his eyes roll to the back of his head. The feeling of your pussy – though familiar – is sublime; mixed with the feeling of Thor’s cum inside of you makes him want to cry from the overwhelming pleasure.

He doesn’t, though, he somehow gets his brain and cock to reconnect so that he can fuck you despite his entire body screaming. You’re sensitive – if Steve couldn’t read your body language, your screaming moans and eyes screwed shut would tell him. It’s a precious thing to see you in such a feral state, to see you fucked out and desperate and begging to be pushed over the cliff again and again and again. You’re normally a very professional woman – always put together and well-spoken and knowledgeable in any subject necessary.  To see you incoherent, lost to the pleasure – it’s something special Steve is determined to remember for the rest of his days.

“Such a good boy,” Thor tells him when he notices Steve’s concentration fading. “You fuck your wife so well for me,” he turns to you, leaving a kiss at the corner of your panting mouth. “Doesn’t your husband fuck you so good?”

“Y-yes,” you reply after you take a second to process what he’s asking of you. “Steve’s so good at fucking a baby into me, makes me feel so good I, oh!”

Something in Steve snaps as he listens to Thor, elicits something primal that makes him dig his fingers into the pit of your pushed-up knees as he pounds into you without mercy.

“Gonna-“ Steve moans. “Gonna fuck our baby into you, gonna make sure everyone knows how good I fuck you, fuck!”

Thor just smiles all big and toothy, looking between your face and Steve’s. Just as confident as before, he trails the same hand as before between your breasts and down your stomach, rubbing at your sensitive nub once more.

“You can do it, baby,” he whispers to you, coaxing another orgasm out of you with skilled fingers. “You’re so beautiful, I want to watch you come again. You can do that, right? You can come again for me?”

You shake your head, too overwhelmed to form coherent sentences. “I, I- “

“Shh,” he trails his thumb – still soaked with your slick and his precum – “It’s okay, my little dove. You can do it once more for me and Steve. C’mon, you can do it with him, right?”

You don’t speak, don’t move, don’t do anything – too focused on the feeling of Thor next to you and Steve on top of you and Thor rubbing at your clit and Steve fucking your pussy and the warmed sheets between your fingers and the sweat pooling between your breasts and-

“Fuck!” Steve’s screams mirror your own internal monologue. “Fuck I’m-“

Thor uses the thumb that was just under your lip to grab Steve’s jaw, forcing their eyes to meet just as he had done many times before. “Come for me.”

You and Steve’s orgasms come at the same time, the both of you twitching as you fall slowly, deliriously, from the shared delicious high.

When the French coined folie a duex, you’d always assumed it was about some madness that happened to manifest in two people. But what is defined as “madness?” Could it be the sweet satisfaction that flows through each of your veins like gold? Could it be the vacant contentment behind Steve’s eyes? Could it be the vacant content behind yours?

Somehow, Thor maneuvers the two of you so that all three of you can lay there, out of breath and sweaty all over as each of you stares at separate spots on the ceiling.

You’re the one to break the silence, stuck between the two men in the center of the large bed. “Do you think it worked?”

Steve turns towards you, leaning on one arm while the other spreads itself over your stomach. “I think so.”

Thor turns over next, mirroring Steve’s position. Free hand, though, goes to cup your face, pulling you in for a quick peck on the lips before guiding you to Steve for a much deeper kiss.

“I think so, too,” the large man says eventually, watching as you and Steve remain locked together. He doesn’t think either of you can hear him, but he smiles at the softness on both of your faces nonetheless.

[calebdumes]

fake dating/relationship prompt fill for the lovely @pretchatta

I may have let this one get away from me

fandom: star wars rebels

relationship: kanan jarrus/hera syndulla

rating: m (not explicit) 

word count: 2.7k

~

"Why can't your contact just meet us on the Ghost when he gets into town?" Kanan asked for the millionth time as they navigated the winding streets of Neshorino. Hera resisted the urge to roll her eyes and adjusted the bag on her shoulder.

"Because," she replied in an even tone that didn't reflect her growing irritation with the man. "My contact left explicit instructions to meet him at Neeli's Inn." 

"Yeah but your contact also said he was at least three rotations out. So I don't know why we can't just wait for him there."

"He's already paid for our room Kanan." Hera squinted at him, the sun dancing brightly off of the colored spires that dotted the city. "It would be rude to reject his hospitality."

That and her contact was overtly cautious about this meet up. That’s why they left the Ghost two cities over and had to take a shuttle to the Capital. The Ghost wasn’t tagged by the Imperials and it’s signature modulator made a world of difference on jobs like these but her contact had insisted and Hera obliged. 

Kanan grumbled something under his breath but continued on beside her. He had been antsy ever since he stepped off the Ghost, on edge and starting to get on her last nerves. If she didn't already know that this was a two person job, she would have left him behind with Chopper but then again, her contact had been extremely specific, two people were needed. 

In all honestly, Hera would have thought Kanan would be all about this job, three days on a beautiful planet with all expenses more or less paid for. This was right up his alley. Well, except for the mission part of it. He still wasn't fully on board with the cause, she doubted he ever would be but he was slowly warming up to Hera's rebel activity. Heavy emphasis on slowly. 

"It will be fine." she tried to assure him, stepping out of the way as a group of school aged Abednedo children rushed by. "Think of it as a vacation, three days to relax while we wait on my contact."

"If we want a vacation, we should go to Spira." He looked around at the curious city carved into the mountain side with a perplexed expression. "Or some place less crowded."

This time, Hera did roll her eyes. "Duly noted." she said before turning down a wide side street that led directly to the side of the mountain. 

The rust colored rock of the mountain side that made up the façade of the inn, was ornately carved with flowering vines, the arched windows that dotted the surface were thrown open to emit the high breeze, vibrantly colored curtains spilling out like banners.

She followed the path leading to Neeli's Inn, the sun warming her face and lekku. She didn't know what Kanan's problem was, this place was far better than some of the other planets they had visited. Before she pushed over the heavy wooden door to the inn she turned to face her partner, grabbing onto his arm to stop his movement. 

"My contact said the owner is a bit of a traditionalist." she warned.

Kanan arched a heavy brow at that. "A traditionalist of what?"

"He didn't say, so just be cautious."

"Aye, aye captain." he gave her a jaunty little salute in response. 

Sometimes Kanan was insufferable. 

The foyer glowed orange and yellow from the glowstones trapped in ornate diamond shaped lights, giving the wide space in a warm and inviting feel. The woman manning the front desk however, not so much. 

"Can I help you?" the weathered looking Abednedo woman snapped as they walked up. Her long greying hair was tied back into a single braid that she looped over her shoulders like a scarf. She eyed them with a faint trace of disgust, her mouth tentacles curling.  

"We have a reservation, under Starbird." Hera supplied, ignoring how Kanan was glowering beside her. 

The woman tapped on her datapad before asking bluntly. "You're married?"  

Hera balked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"No unmarried couples are allowed to share living quarters." she glanced at them. "and you only have a reservation for one room."

Hera felt her chest tighten with anxiety. Her contact could have let her know that little rule before setting them up for a three night stay. She was formulating a response when Kanan's arms snaked out and linked with hers, pulling her up against his side.

"We’ve been married one year tomorrow if you can believe it." he said giving Hera an adoring smile that made her knees go weak. "Right dear?"

"What?" she said again, her mind suddenly refusing to think beyond married, Kanan, and the warmth of his body pressed up against hers. He gave her a little nudge, his smile taking on a desperate edge. "Oh right. Yes." she nodded with a wooden smile. "Tomorrow's our anniversary." The words came out stilted and unsure but just about everything in her mind was shot circuiting at the moment. 

The Abednedo woman looked unconvinced as she handed over their room key. "Room 406." she clipped out. "Breakfast is over at 9 so don't be late."

"If it's as good as we heard, we wouldn't miss it for the world." Kanan said with a wink before dragging Hera up the stone steps behind the desk. He didn't let go of her until they were well out of the Abednedo's view, right when Hera's mind decided to come back online.

"What was that?" she hissed, stepping away from him, smoothing her hands down the front of her flight suit.  

"Improvising."

"By saying we were married?"

"Hey," he pointed his finger at her. "You're the one who said it would be rude to reject your contact's hospitality. Besides, what happened to thinking of this mission as a vacation?"

"Yeah well now we're going to have to pretend that we're married so we don’t get kicked out!" she rushed out, her voice a little higher than normal. “Or worse!”

Kanan stopped by the door marked 406 and leaned slightly into her space, enough to make her breath catch at the sudden closeness. "Would that be such a hard thing to do?" he said in a low voice. 

Hera swallowed. It was getting difficult to think again. Kanan was right there, those green blue eyes locked on her, his lips just inches from hers. Close enough to kiss, to taste. Her heart skipped a beat in her chest, her mouth going dry. But then Kanan took a step back, his face impassive. "Or we could just go back and wait on the Ghost."

"N-no." she choked out before clearing her throat. "No, it's fine. It's just three days right?"

Kanan smirked and swiped the key through the door control. "Right, three days on a beautiful planet with good company. What could go wrong?" 

Hera let her breath out in a long push, following Kanan into the room and subsequently running right into the solid muscle of his back. 

"Oh you gotta be kriffing me." he said in a low groan. Hera darted around him and took in the room. It was bright and airy, the doors leading to a wide balcony thrown open to let in the clean sunlight. Ruby red drapes fluttered in the constant breeze, contrasting with the thick stripes of dusky purple in the etched stone walls. But the thing that had caught Kanan's attention wasn't the beauty of the room. It was the bed. 

The one, single canopy bed pushed up against the wall draped with gossamer white silk.

Hera groaned. "You gotta be kriffing me."

"I'll sleep on the floor." Kanan said, dropping his bag down at his feet. 

"No you don't have to do that." She rubbed at the base of her lekku. "We can share right? It's fine with me if it's okay with you."

"Whatever you want to do, Captain." 

She nodded. "It's okay. Everything is going to be okay."

Everything was decidedly not going to be okay. 

The first night Hera hardly slept, stiff as a board while Kanan breathed lightly beside her. A mountain of pillows sat between them, demarcating their sides of the bed. She closed her eyes and tried to force herself to sleep but it was impossible knowing that Kanan was right there. 

When morning came, the sky a brilliant wash of colors outside their room, her eyes were puffy and dry from lack of sleep. Kanan looked just as bad, his hair adorably mussed and a frown heavy on his lips. Hera slipped from the bed and locked herself in the ‘fresher to dress, her brown slacks and light purple tunic a far cry from the safety and comfort of her flight suit.

Breakfast had been another challenge. The dinning hall was practically empty when they arrived. Only Neeli sat at a table, looking up at the with a pointed look. Kanan’s arm snaked around her waist, holding her close as he loaded up a plate of food.

“This is ridiculous.” Hera said picking at a slice of melioorun. Kanan had pushed their chairs close together at the table, his feet resting against hers. It made Hera’s stomach clench uncomfortably. 

He hummed in agreement before tossing back the rest of his caf and saying, “Why don’t we get out of here?” he whispered it close to her ear cone. 

“And go where?” 

“See the city.” he breath ghosting over her skin. “Leave our chaperone here to worry about some other poor couple.”

“We’re not a couple.” she said with force. Kanan sat back and Hera instantly missed his warmth. 

“C’mon, just for a few hours. It’ll be fun.”

Hera sighed, giving in with a nod and letting him pull her to her feet. He took her hand in his as they passed by the proprietress and didn’t bother letting go long after they left the inn. She could feel his fingers against her skin. They were surprisingly soft for someone who liked to take on rough and demanding work. He held her hand gently, loose enough that she could slip free anytime she wanted. But the truth was, she couldn’t even if she tried. 

She let him drag her all over the brightly colored city, stopping at nearly every bustling market he could find. Neshorino was a beautiful place but Hera hardly remembered any of it. She was too preoccupied by Kanan. 

Hera wasn't stupid. She knew Kanan had feelings for her, he made that fact pretty clear on Gorse. And while his flirtations hadn't necessarily stopped over the past few months since joining her crew, they had become were few and far between. He knew how she felt about relationships. He knew her priorities. 

But the thing was, Hera found herself missing them, that sly smile and wicked glint in his eyes. Kanan was handsome, a bit reckless but good and kind. He fit into her life like he was always meant to be there, like fate or destiny was somehow pulling the strings, weaving them together. And somewhere between one breath and another, Hera was falling for him.

No, she suspected she had fallen for him not long after she met him. This was much more than that.

She was in love with him.

The realization hit her as she took a bite of her ryshcate, the gooey spiced nuts and flaky pastry sticking to the back of her throat making her cough.

Kanan’s eyes grew wide as she struggled to breathe. She reached for his cup of Jawa Juice and taking a gulp. 

“You okay?” he asked in a voice that was laced with concern. Other beings sitting near them at the café were watching them closely. Hera felt herself blush.

“I’m fine.” she gasped, her eyes watering. “Just went down the wrong way.”

Kanan looked unconvinced, the hallows of his cheeks sharp in the orange glow of sunset. “Why don’t we head back to the room?”

Hera nodded and let him lead her back to the inn hand in hand. As they crossed over the threshold, she rested her head against his shoulder, letting herself believe for a moment what it would be like if they were actually together. 

She pushed the thought aside. There was no use getting lost in daydreams. 

Back in their room, she stripped out of her day clothes and pulled on her black thermal pants, tugging her white shirt over her lekku. Kanan was already under the covers, the sheets tucked under his bare arms as he stared at the white canopy overhead. 

Hera flicked off the light and padded softly over to the bed, curling up under the covers. Her heart panged deep in her chest. She loved him. So what was stopping her from having him?

The mission? No, that was an excuse and she knew it. So what was it?

Fear. 

Fear that he’d throw her aside once he had gotten what he wanted. That he didn’t really love her. That it would ruining the friendship that they had built. That he would break her heart. That she would break his. 

Hera fisted her hands against her stomach and squeezed her eyes shut. So much could go wrong if she let herself have this. There was too much at stake, too much to loose if things turned sour. Hera didn’t know if she could handle that pain. 

“Hera.” Kanan’s voice said. Her eyes flew open to see his face looking over at her from the pillow wall. “What’s wrong?’

“Nothing.”

He frowned. “I can sleep on the floor if this makes you uncomfortable.”

Her hands unclenched as she sat up. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?” he asked, crossing his legs under him. 

Hera bit her lip, looking down at the sheets pooled around her feet. 

“Hera, tell me what’s going on.”

She shook her head. Damn her fears. Damn the consequences. She wanted him. 

Hera leaned across the pillow blockade and kissed him, softy but with desperation. Kanan froze beneath her and for one heart stopping moment, she feared the worst but then he was kissing her back, his hands coming to rest on her hips. She let herself get lost in the sensation of his lips on her, the heat of his hands where he held her. 

When they broke apart she was breathless, her cheeks molten with heat. Kanan looked just as wrecked as she felt. 

“I love you.” she said. “I love you Kanan Jarrus and I want you.”

Kanan kissed her. She fell onto her back as he kissed along her jaw and down her neck, his admission of love seared into her skin. Her hands traced down his bare chest, feeling his muscles shift as he moved. He pulled off her shirt as she shimmied out of her pants, chuckling when her shirt got caught on her lekku.

He mouthed at her collarbone, the tops of her breasts, her navel, then lower.

“I love you too.” He said as they lay together fully sated and breathless in a tangle of sheets, the pillows scattered on the floor. “In case I didn’t make that clear.”

Hera smiled and kissed his cheek. “You might have to show me again love.”

Kanan grind at her wickedly. “It would be my absolute pleasure dear.”

The next morning at breakfast, they sat side by side, pressed up against each other as her contact, a middle aged Abednedo man with a thick beard on either side of his mouth tentacles explained the mission. 

“There are two refugees that I need you to smuggle out of the system.” He explained, his eyes darting around the dinning hall. “Their names are Immel and Chuli, their parents were arrested for treason and the Empire is hunting them. I need you to deliver them to their Aunt on Batuu.”

“Sounds easy enough.” Kanan said, his pinky finger curled around hers. “Where are they now?”

“You can find them in the House of Strangers. In the lower city.”

Hera frowned. “You said this was a two person job?”

The contact wrung his hands nervously. “Yes,” he looked between them and then down at the table before mumbling, “You will have to pretend to be a couple to take them from the House. It was the only way I could convince their caretake to let you take them from here. Is that going to be a problem?”

Hera smiled up at Kanan. “No that won’t be a problem.” she responded. “Not at all.”

[likeitloveitblogit]

Jötunnary 5: Family Reunion

Jotunnary Masterlist - All of the Jotunnary posts exist within the world of my upcoming fic “Love is an Imaginary Dagger”.

A/N: Today's post is a bonus scene filling in the time between Thor finding out Loki has been pretending to be Odin and the two of them arriving on Earth. Takes place during the timeline of Thor Ragnarok.

Word count: 900+

Loki knew that he was going to have a hard time explaining to Thor why exactly he had decided to take over as Odin. It was honestly a mix of reasons, some Loki wasn’t even really sure he understood himself. It had started when he woke up on Elfheim nearly dead and completely alone. When he made it back to the palace he realized that, once again, everyone assumed he was dead. At first Loki only planned to disappear into the distance and let everyone forget about him. But as he made his way back out of the palace, he ran into Odin all alone in a deserted hallway and the urge for revenge overcame Loki. That had been years ago and Loki knew that the day would come when someone would recognize him and it would end.

And now here was Thor, angry and confused, dragging Loki through the palace into their old chambers. The path was familiar, bringing back memories of a childhood that felt tainted by all of the ways that they had each changed.

“Thor please do calm down” Thor ignored Loki’s pleas and continued down the passages.

Finally they reached Thor’s chambers and he shoved Loki inside and slammed the door behind them. Thor began pacing back and forth, not even looking up he demanded “Explain now!”

This was exactly what Loki was dreading. What was there that Loki could ever say that could make Thor understand? You left me to die, so I took on a new life.? I was simply living up to the expectations you all had for me? I was destined to be a king and this was finally my opportunity to take that destiny back for myself? A destiny that he was not sure that he really wanted, and what better way to test that than to try living a time in Odin’s shoes. And were there not things that Loki and Thor had discussed they would do differently from Odin given the chance? No he could not tell Thor any of that.

“What did you expect?”

“Honestly I stopped expecting anything you do to make sense to me long ago. But I never thought that you would take it to this extreme of a level. Killing father to take his throne?”

“Wait what? You think I killed Odin?”

Thor stopped pacing and looked at Loki, “of course I do. You don’t really expect me to believe that Odin would have let you take his place on the throne, do you?”

“Well, no. Obviously not. No one is stupid enough to believe that Odin would willingly let me have a place on the throne. But that does not mean that I killed him.”

“Then what did you do with him? To him?”

“I gave him an early ‘retirement’. He is totally fine. Just a simple memory charm and a quick trip to another realm where he can’t hurt himself.”

“Loki! Where did you send him?”

“You’ll be happy to know that I sent him to your very favorite planet. Midgard”

Thor turns toward the door ready to leave, “we must leave immediately to retrieve him. There are threats coming for Asgard and we cannot hope to face them without Odin’s help”

"You go ahead and prepare yourself, I have to handle somethings before we return to Midgard"

"What do you have to handle? You haven't been doing anything this whole time."

"I know this is hard for you to understand but there is more to being a ruler than war and violence. I have worked here on Asgard to enhance the lives of our people."

“At the expense of those in all the other realms?”

“Well clearly they had the wonderful Thor Odinson to protect them. The rule of the Allfather has been long and wide spread, but that does not mean that it is right. Have you ever wondered if having Asgardian forces living in each of those realms was really in the best interest of everyone involved?”

“It was not my place to question Odin’s decisions. We were sent to protect and that is what I did”

“Protection from evil is all good and well when the bad guy is clearly defined. But as someone who comes from a race of people who are considered monsters I have a different understanding of that topic. I have studied histories of many realms and seen that when the powerful lend strength to a select group that aligns with their own interests, it is often not what is best for the people of that land. But this is not the time to get political, let me settle a few matters…”

“Being born on Jotunheim does not make you a monster. You were raised better than that.”

“Your takeaway is that I am better than the people I was born of, because I was raised better? Clearly you will never understand the logic that led me to make the decisions I’ve made.”

“Loki, I want to understand where all of this is coming from. You have changed so much and I don’t feel like you are the same brother I grew up with.”

“Brothers? Well that makes this one Hel of a family reunion. I think we better be making our way to the bifrost so that we can be retrieving that father of yours.”

“Loki, he is your father too.”

“That is very much incorrect in so many ways.” And with that Loki left the room, not giving Thor another chance to speak.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Pictures in the Sky.”

You guys *want fluff*

Me *ripping open an industrial sized bag of build-a-bear-stuffing whispering* they wanted fluff 

Lol I hope this is what you demons were looking for. was trying to work on creating an emotional environment with words instead of leaning on action to make things interesting. 

Tried to insert some of my own experiences to make it more authentic. 

Hope you guys enjoy :) 

Sunny glanced out the window. The night was dark, as it tended to be on earth, though a patch of warm honey light spilled from the kitchen window and onto the back lawn lighting the grass below. Squinting into the darkness, she thought she could see a shape illuminated by the light blue blanket which he had draped around himself.

She turned her head watching as blue light spilled in form the living room, where Jim was watching a late night game. 

Martha was sitting at the kitchen table next to a pile of paint cans with a book open before her on the table.

Sunny approached the back sliding screen door, feeling a waft of cool night air brush over her skin. It smelled damp, and earthy. Tilting her head she could the distant chatter of crickets. She reached out sliding the screen door open with a soft swish before stepping outside onto the back porch.

She closed the door softly behind her and walked out across the deck tilting her head back to look up at the sky. The stars had been more prominent on her home planet. Where earth suffered from the grip of light pollution and a rather distant view of the universe, her planet had bordered a massive star nursery which produced many clusters and a great amount of gaseous emissions.

Still, with the moon rising high above them, and the distant arm of the milky way cutting across the sky she had to admit the remoteness was quite beautiful. No wonder humanity had always been obsessed with the night, so dark and mysterious.

Her feet met cold grass, and at first she couldn’t tell if it was wet or just cool.

More crickets started up,and where the backyard met the treeline, she thought she could hear the distant croaking of frogs.

The thought of those strange little creatures made her happy. She didn’t know why.

As the honey glow of the kitchen faded into the distant, the mound on the grass grew into sharper focus.

Adam lay on his back, one a blanket spread on the grass one hand resting behind his head, the other resting on his stomach. The night was pleasant enough that he didn’t even bother to wear long sleeves.

His pale skin stood out in the darkness.

She saw him turn his head as he heard her coming, and a flash of teeth glittered white in the dark.

She paused --- standing over him -- and looked up at the sky,”Homesick?” She wondered 

He laughed, “Maybe a little.” He patted the blanket next to him, and she obliged taking a set and then flopping onto her back against the blanket.

Overhead a streak of white light cut through the darkness before vanishing.

“Beautiful, isn’t it.”

The moon winked at them from the darkness.

“Yes .” Sunny whispered 

He reached up a hand pointing out towards the darkness, “You see that cluster of stars there, just a few degrees left….. Yeah. That’s where your planet is.”

Sunny stared on in fascination.

Adam rested his hand back behind his head, “Crazy to think we saw parts of the same night sky.”

She had never thought about it that way before, and it made her shiver a little.

“Of course the light form there is likely a couple thousand years old, so even if we had been looking at each other, its actually more like seeing into the past.”

She turned her head to look down at him crickets chirping softly in the background.

A light wind rustled through the trees, bringing with it a distant roll of white noise. The grass rustled next to them creating a rippling wave back and up towards the house.”

“You seem to know a lot about astronomy for a soldier she said wryly, though honestly she was really just baiting him into talking. The voice of a human was generally very nice, melodic  almost with a sort of cadence to it.

He chuckled softly, before pausing, “you know all this.” He reached a hand up towards the sky, “Is the reason I became so fascinated with aliens, and astronomy, and becoming an astronaut.” She turned to  look at him, curious, and he continued on.

“I think it might be the earliest memory I have. Mom says it was only a  few years after the first colonies were settled on mars. We were just beginning to build up our station on the moon, and there was this meteor shower.. I think it was the Perseid Meteor shower, which happens every year or so. Now my memory could totally be wrong about everything but…. I remember huge balls of fire that made crackling noises as they fell from the sky…. Like i said, I am pretty sure my kid mind made it out to be a bigger deal that it actually was, but….” he trailed off to look at the sky, “Every time I think about it I get that same feeling, a sort of sense of awe….”

He sighed, and as if to punctuate his sentence a bright streak of light flew across their vision.

“After that it was all over for me. I wanted to watch all the space movies, I wanted to go to all the museums, and then when I heard about UFOs, well the obsession just got worse.”

Sunny turned her head to look at him, “What is a UFO.”

He laughed face split by a massive grin, “The irony is glorious. I am explaining what a UFO is to an alien. A UFO is an unidentified flying object. And when I was a kid I got caught into one of those conspiracy theories that said the government was lying to us about the existence of aliens, and that  they had visited earth in flying saucers and abducted people and what not.”

Sunny snorted, “The GA would never have bothered entering your planet’s atmosphere.”

“Well I know that now, but when I was a kid, I was convinced….” He shifted a bit close enough that she could feel the heat shedding from his skin pointing upwards, “See that one, its called the big dipper or ursa major. If you follow the tip you can find tPolaris. It’s been used by humans to navigate for thousands of years. We can’t see polar lines like you, so we needed some way to find north.”

He dropped his hand back down to his chest, “Of course, as I got older I sort of dropped the UFO thing in favor of knowing that there were aliens out there. I had read the studies listened to all the talks, and there seemed to be no way that we were the only ones. I grew up trying to convince people that there were other worlds out there with other life….. He sighed, no one ever believed me.”

“You crazy person.” She muttered resting one set of arms behind her head enjoying the irony.

“Ha, yeah. Sad part is, I may never have gone to space. You know my parents aren't all that wealthy, and traveling off earth is generally pretty expensive. When i was a kid I begged to visit Mars, or the moon. IT was devastating when My parents said no, of course now I understand that we were a couple  million short.”

Sunny tried not to think about that outcome. A dimension in which Adam never made it to space would probably have been a very sad one.

“I went  through different phases too. At first I wanted to be an astronaut, and then I wanted to be an astronomer, and then a physicist, and then rocket science or engineering like my brother.”

Sunny shot him a look.

He laughed, “I know, I know. I’m not half as smart as David. I couldn’t math my way out of a paper bag. I love science… I was just never very good at it .” For a moment his voice took on a rather melancholy quality, but sunny kept him quiet, “A couple years before all that, there was a scientist, the Einstein of our time, and he created this mathematical theory that  determined the folding potential of space. With this theory we could travel the universe without having to worry about the issues of light speed. So they started construction on the first interstellar ship. Of  course I kept a close watch on it’s construction, but then my brother went and told me about the UNSC’s pilot academy, and you better believe I was on that in under five minutes.”

The thought made her smile. She could just imagine his excitement.

There was quiet for a moment, and -- in the background --- sunny thought she could hear the soft trickle of water, perhaps a stream or a creak, or an artificial fountain off in the distance.

She ran her fingers over the grass.

Such a strange plant. 

“Have you ever….. Have you ever been homesick for a place you’ve never been?”

Sunny glanced over to find him looking at her. She shook her head, “I can’t say I have.”

He sighed and turned back to the sky, “Well, I have. During the academy, and the years before that, I would look up, and…. Well I just wanted to go so bad. I can’t describe the feeling. It’s like you're a piece of something broken and all you want to do is return to where you were meant to be. I was missing from space and space was missing from me, and I wanted it so bad that it was like a physical sensation, like anxiety or anger except it…. Well it makes you want to cry or to scream, and it was so frustrating because it just never went away.” 

She looked up trying to imagine the feeling. It was hard to think that Adam could have wanted anything so bad. She had always been to busy with family drama to have wanted anything more. Her desires were so base as acceptance that she could barely imagine such a strange an abstracted feeling….. The feeling of being broken with no explanation.

“I  trained for years to get to space, and Sunny, my first inter-space flight, that moment when you break from atmosphere, and the earth curves back behind you, and the stars unfold before you…. It was.” he shivered, “It was the most exhilarating moment of my life, like coming back home but multiplied by a thousand.” 

She heard him sigh, watched his chest rise and fall from the corner of her eyes, “I know it sounds stupid. Humans honestly weren’t meant to fly, or to be in space. We are terrestrial creatures after all, but….” He shook his head, “Something just felt right, and it still does.”

“And then you found aliens?”

The longing melancholy faded from his voice replaced with a smile, “Sunny, I am probably the luckiest son of a bitch in the entire universe. I flew a jet to the moon, I was on the bridge during the launch of the first interstellar ship, I was on the bridge during the first warp, I was the pilot who flew our first mission to a planet outside the solar system, and I was the first man to ever see extraterrestrial life.”

He paused, “Of course…. After the war….”

He trailed off biting back pain. Sunny felt her stomach twist. She knew what had happened after the war, PTSD , the loss of his leg.

His voice had grown quiet, “It was the worst time of my life. I mean I have had some pretty bad moments, but nothing compares. It was like…. Being betrayed by someone you love. Looking up at the sky made me sick, the thought of flying repulsed me, alien life scared the shit out of me. I was growing to resent the one thing in the world -- or out of this world --- that I loved. I have never felt such despair…. Because life just wasn’t worth it.”

Her stomach continued to tie itself into knots, she felt a tingling rise up in her face and neck.

“I’m so sorry.”

He must have sensed the guilt in her voice turning his head to look at her. He reached out a comforting hand and rested it on her arm smiling, “Don’t worry, it was just a leg.” The smile he gave her was genuine, his words earnest, “Besides, it only took a dog to pull me back around. The relief was insane. I hadn’t looked up for almost a year, and then one day I couldn’t sleep, so I walked outside.” He nodded towards the porch, “I remember I was standing right there, crutches, the dog, and I remember fighting with myself whether I should look up or not, because I knew if I didn’t feel anything than…. Than I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I remember Waffles, She licked my hand and looked at me like she was encouraging me to do it, and when I did, and the feeling came again, I was so damn excited I actually ended up slipping on my crutches and falling off the porch.”

The two of them laughed at that image.

She shook his head still smiling, “You should have seen it, there I was lying in the grass in a heap, the dog was all concerned,and then my mom comes running out of the house freaking the hell out, my dad’s behind her and he’s got the gun, and they see me on the ground, and they are just so confused. And I’m looking up at the sky and they’re looking down at me, and I just start to laugh, and they are looking at me like I’m insane because I probably am. And then you know -- because I’m pathetic -- of course i start to cry like a baby, and then my mom does and then my dad does, and now I’m crying and laughing, and it was so stupid.” 

He shook his head. His hand was warm on her arm.

“Of course, mom wasn’t exactly laughing when I told them I wanted to go back to the UNSC but they agreed and with a little help we managed to get a nice prosthetic, and by that time they were looking for a captain for the harbinger. Once the GA heard that I was still around, they requested me personally.”

“Did you piss yourself with excitement.” She wondered 

He eyed her, “You jest, but I totally almost did. Captain of a mothereffing space ship, Sunny. That was like my dream after a dream, like the impossible dream that you have that you know isn’t going to come true. Of course there was a lot of push back from members of the UNSC because of how young I was, and how inexperienced , but in the end the GA insisted.”

“You lucky bastard.” She muttered 

“Yeah.” he muttered his voice going soft.

He shifted a bit closer resting his head on her arm like a pillow. She glanced down he raised an eyebrow in the half darkness, “What, might as well make you useful while I can.” She shook her head at him and he just grinned before blinking and reaching up to point at another set of stars, “Ursa minor….. And that one over there is Pegasus.” 

Sunny followed his finger, but couldn’t make out more than the greater star field. She did manage to see ursa minor after a few minutes, and then after that, she couldn’t see anything else.

They talked a little more, and laughed about dumb shit.

She liked this pastime.

They didn’t do this sort of thing on Anum 

Mostly because they were too busy killing each other to care.

But here the humans were pointing at the sky and finding pictures in the stars.

Kind of adorable. 

[jjba-hell]

Revoked

Still late for day 2 but I am enjoying the hell out of these prompts. (Today’s prompt was sci-fi)

Trigger warnings for the death of the ice cream gays but lemme know if I missed anything else.

Summary: a weird mismatched team of busted up aliens and half-blood humans just dealing with some shit.

For the lovely: @lasquadraweek2021

“You should really just transfer to a new body Pros. Humans aren’t supposed to live this long, babe.”

You grumble probably more to yourself than to the man whose forearm you were tinkering in. Well... maybe tinkering wasn’t the word either. He needed another repair and honestly you can’t help but feel like Risotto only offered you the air-mattress in the ship because so many of these psychos have bio-tech they can’t afford to upkeep.

“Sure, I can’t afford a rewire but I can surely afford getting my brain transplanted in a new body.”

“Human bodies are so easy to grow though.” You peer up at him over your magnify glasses with a wriggle of eyebrows. “Fully grown in a quarter rotation? Come on I still have to wait another half rotation to buy a swimsuit let alone grow a body.”

Prosciutto flexed the hand you were working on to spite you but all you did was strap the wrist down and switch off the impulse circuit before getting up and walking toward the exit of the ship where the others were sprawled out in the soft baby blue grass of the planet you were hiding out at.

Melone’s gaze shot from laptop up as you kicked your untied boots from your feet and slid into the grass, barely hearing him as he asked “Any luck with Pros’s arm?”

“I can’t keep mending the same two wires that keep popping off. Its best we find a place that can handle Babyface’s software and get a new one.”

“Still not budging for just replacing the whole thing?” Formaggio asked from somewhere across the clearing.

Like he was one to talk- Akils like him grew back heads and limbs, there wasn’t exactly a need to know anything about biotech.

“Nope. Are all humans this stubborn?”

“I think its the half Megnu in him.” Illuso was the one to chirp in this time.

“That’s still not confirmed.” You sat back on your feet to try and spot your teammates.

“Well he won’t let me analyze.” Melone sighed- continuing to worry away at the clear glass screen that held all his designs.

Melone truly was a bit of a madman to you- he designed the entirety of his body on that simple glass tablet and yet couldn’t finish his face in time before the feds were on him for unethical medical practice- ironic considering he was only putting himself through the strain of fitting his brain into a piece of machinery. What his official titles were in his old field were beyond you.

“Pesci’s not all Scud and he’s not half as stubborn.” You commented and with a soft hum the team fell back into silence.

“Where’s Ris?”

“He’s in bed- that last jump took a toll on him.” Illuso finally rose up from the grass himself heading a bit further away from the clearing, probably wandering after Ghiacchio who was asked to take a lap after he froze off Formaggio’s finger.

You clambered up a few steps to find your captain with the old-fashioned two-way radio in his hand as he lay passed out on couch of the shared living room.

Risotto would rather be caught dead than caught like this so, with intent, you stepped up to take the radio out of his hand. He seemed to gently wake at your fingers prying the piece or equipment from his hand.

“Shit.” He grumbled. “How long-?”

“Ghiacchio’s not even back from his lap- don’t worry. Just head off before they catch you.”

And with a slight groan he rolled up and disappeared down the hallways to his bunk which sounded with an ungraceful “clunk” as he fell into the bed.

Your name got hollered with the slightest tone of desperation from Prosciutto and with that you were back doing your part in the team behind the scene.

“You’re a purebred?” Prosciutto had eventually asked after a few minutes of boredom at watching you weld wires back to the motherboard.

You couldn’t help but laugh. “What am I? A dog?”

He seemed to swallow his words.

“Where do you think I’m from?” You tried to smooth it over.

“Caestea- at least your appearance would have you look like that.”

Another laugh. “I’m from Earth, Pros.”

His eyes widened. “Impossible.”

“Oh yeah. My parents weren’t exactly refugees but they are most certainly not human. Fuck knows what my genetic makeup looks like but thankfully I certainly age like a Caestean. You are all human, huh?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Not that there are many of us left.”

In a sense you felt bad for him. You’d seen photos of Earth long before it started to mimic its brother planet Mars but you rarely thought of how wickedly the planet must have lost its life before intergalactic intervention. Humans were strangely scared and selfish creatures but no one deserved to die because there was no clean water to drink.

You shook off the macabre though before closing up Pros’s arm and putting away the tools. “That should do for now but we really do need to think of a replacement in the near future.”

“Thanks.”

It was a half-assed thank you but it surely caught your attention. Pros was a little too prideful to give just anyone a thanks but nonetheless you returned the sentiment. “No problem.”

Outside the boys were fighting again- or rather Ghiacchio was arguing as Formaggio was pushing his buttons while Pesci grilled a rather obscenely colorful fish over the fire-in-tin.

“Oh just the person we needed to see.”

Getting clasped with two arms over the neck was bad enough but from Sorbet and Gelato, now that was trouble waiting to start.

“Oh gods, what do I have to offer this time.”

“Don’t be so serious!” Sorbet cooed darkly.

“We were just hoping you could help us out with the next target.” His boyfriend added.

If you could just roll your eyes back far enough.

“Wandering off from our captain’s orders doesn’t sound like something I’d want to get myself involved in.”

“Not even for a bionic manufacturer?”

“Or a healing bay, for the ship? Surely you could install those things no problem.”

Honestly it was hard not to fall for the stereotype that all Makzi’s do is play dirty and haggle like merchants but here you were, stuck between them and being tempted into breaking formation with them.

“And what would I have to lose?”

“Nothing much-“

“Maybe some face with Risotto.”

You couldn’t help but scoff. “You want me to convince him?”

“Exactly- he might actually consider something if it came out of your pretty mouth.”

“Or rather, if he could come in it.”

You took one step back and bowed out of the hold between the two of them. “Fucking sleezes. Your shit’s gonna get you killed, mark my words.”

“So its a no?”

“Its a fuck no, Sorbet. Vile comments aside, that shit is expensive, even dent-jobs sell for millions... that kind of money is too big a job for us to handle right now and stealing one even more. Get your heads out of your asses before you come up to me with more dumb shit, next time.”

And with that you slipped back beside Illuso as Pesci was grilling up the third fish for the night. Looking back at what you had said was not untrue. That night you were restless in your bunker above Formaggio- Illuso peering behind the sliding divider across the little hallway that ran between the bed bunks.

“Something on your conscience?”

“No.”

“You sure?” You nearly leapt out of skin as Formaggio’s forehead popped up just below your chin outside your divider. “You’ve turned and kicked like 10 times, babe.”

“Please don’t babe me.” You frown at him but you answered the gnawing feeling by asking. “Where are Sorbet and Gelato?”

“Probably in their bed.” Illuso answered as if there wasn’t a more logical answer.

“Wanna put money on it?” Your eyebrow raised.

“And catch them in the act? Daaamn you’re dirtier than I thought.”

“Come on then, 10 drinks at the next stop they’re not in their bunk.”

“Shit, I can’t miss on that opportunity.” Formaggio’s divider slid open all the way to allow him to plop with bare feet to the double bunks at the end of the hallway.” You and Illuso watched in trepidation as he knelt down and knocked. There was no answer save for Risotto’s stern frown behind the top divider making an appearance. “What do you want?”

“Are Sorbet and Gelato in there?” You piped up first.

The angry frown turned into concern as he slid out of his bunk to replace where Formaggio was. He slid the door open to reveal one big empty bed.

What you’d have given to be wrong. But instead the panic bit you all and soon you were messily slipping on boots and running around the ship to find the missing lovers.

Pesci checked the engine compartments he might have accidentally left open, Pros checked the storage while Risotto was seeing if he could track them on the radar. It was only when you were hoisted onto the roof by Formaggio that the dread set into your bones.

“Tell Ris to switch on the overhead console lights.”

You called back down below you. Part of you wished you didn’t... since all it did was put them on display.

It was a vile thing that made Risotto’s eyes grow darker than they already were and once dawn broke, you and Melone quietly put the bodies into the best makeshift body bags you could manage. The lake a few paces away was where you last saw those body bags.

After you left that pit stop you sat in silence in the communal meeting area, your legs flung over one of the armrests in your seat- staring blankly at the coffee table you’d nipped from a market not too long ago.

“So... what’s the plan?”

You asked at anyone who would listen.

“Do we go on as usual? Find their families?”

“Revenge?”

Your head turned to Prosciutto as he was enjoying one last drag of his cigarette.

“You’re brave.” You huffed a bit of laughter at the thought. The big boss and his cronies- the only real reason none of you strayed from Risotto’s orders was way up on a station so far up the intergalactic alliance ladder that you’d have a better shot at killing the king of Gnomia B908 and getting away with it.

“Why not?” Illuso was the one to back it. “Surely we could track the sick fucks that did it.”

“You’re thinking too simply.” Risotto grumbled over his fist. “They didn’t get themselves killed by accident. This was deliberate- a display not to challenge the higher ups.”

“Any idea what they were planning?” You sat up, propping your elbows onto your knees.

Risotto kindly pulled up their hidden plans- your name encircled in red a few times. They seemed to have had their eye on a biotech printer and medbay that was once used by the Boss himself.

“What’s the relevance of an old medbay?” Pros posed the question to you- Melone was up front with Formaggio.

“Medbays need to keep track of any irregularities in DNA to avoid any incompatibility issues. Its one of the few things that can’t be wiped because its burned into the drive. They were trying to expose the Boss’s identity.”

“And they were planning on risking us all in the process?”

You pointed at a little arrow shooting off your name once more. “They figured I could remove and replace the hard drive before anyone noticed.”

Your throat felt dry as you realized what that meant. Whoever this person was... if they could follow something as irrelevant as a used medbay to keep their tracks clean... chances are you were all, at best, being watched.

The thought must have been shared as Risotto didn’t breathe a word as he moved to the front of the ship and changed course to an unaffiliated vector you know damn well you’d probably be searched and cleansed for.

To no one’s surprise the pristine white towers blinded and no sooner than two seconds of coming into orbit of one of the bigger planets you were requested to land.

You stood beside you captain as the ship docked and you waited with your hands behind your head to greet the haz-mat team. “You must be pretty serious about this if you’re willing to get sit in their prison.”

He gazed down at you and with a deadpan tone simply said: “You’ve escaped, I’m certain you could do it again.”

[samtheflamingomain]

thanks, it's the mania

I'm pretty sure I'm hypomanic right now. I'm bipolar; most people know the 2 extremes of those poles, severe depression and abject psychosis. Mania is below psychosis, hypomania is like Mania Lite, then there's "mixed states" where you have symptoms of both depression and mania at the same time. Anyway.

I like to make birthday/xmas presents for the very few close people in my life. I'm talking painstaking realistic portraits of a dog from the background of a friend's FB profile because she hasn't posted any other pics of her.

My best friend in the world, Connor, who lives in Toronto (2h away) and I see maybe 3-4 times a year, was coming home for labour day.

I've had some shit going on that meant I had delayed the main present I was making for him until this week, thinking labour day was next weekend.

Then, Thursday night, I realized I was wrong, and Connor would be here at noon Sunday. I had to make a decision: bite the bullet and forget about the gift, or bite the bigger bullet and spend the next 72 hours putting in insane amounts of work for a project that might not even come out very good.

I decided I really wanted this to get made, and for him to see it before I don't see him again till Christmas.

Sorry for waiting so long for the reveal. It's a card game. Hope it was worth the build-up.

I've made games before - card, board and video. I'm good at it, and it's a very satisfying result to play a game with a friend that you personally made.

So when all my roommates played a game called Gloom last week, I knew I loved the concept but hated the execution. I could do it better, and change it up enough to make it an entirely new game. It's called Casting Call. It's pretty hard to explain but I'll try.

Basically your job is to "write" a reality show. You're dealt 5 "cast members" and use "drama cards" to construct their stories throughout the show. Play the "lost an ally" card on Jane for minus strategy and luck points. But the thing is that in order to play that card, you need to tell the story of how she lost that ally, and if any other cards/stories have been played on her, it all has to flow together.

Anyway, I've never undertaken such a huge project with so little time, and I had to work 5 hours today. I knew as soon as I sat down to crunch this fucker out by Sunday that I needed to Optimize The Machinery.

I wrote macros and shortcuts for programs to make writing, printing, cutting and sealing 85 cards across 5 categories as seamless as possible. I started at 9pm Thursday, and buy 9pm Friday with 4 hours of sleep, I was so close to being done.

I had neglected a lot of tasks so I took 3 hours to do that, relax a bit, and then suddenly remember I'm missing 15 cards. So I worked from 12pm to 3am to make those. I finally went to sleep at 4am Friday with nothing left to do except the packaging/box and to write out the rules. I could do that in a few hours after work.

Well, I overslept, barely made it to work on time and had some chores to do when I got home. When I started working, I was already exhausted, but I knew I wouldn't be likely to get much if any sleep again that night.

Then Connor said that the trains weren't running that day and he'd come visit next weekend instead and I almost collapsed from relief.

I know it sounds completely insane to do what I did. For a fuckin card game.

But it's really, really good, and I loved every minute of making it, and I know it would've been worth it to see Connor laugh at the funny cards and appreciate the subtle inside jokes we have.

It's not like he could take the game home and play it with anyone else but me and maybe our friend Casey if we explained some of the references. But I've made him another game, and whenever he visits he always brings it to play with me.

I don't own many board games myself, because they're expensive and I don't have a lot of friends, and the friends I do have to play board games with "just don't get" Cards Against Humanity. We play mostly Catan-like games and Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit which is over in 5 minutes because every one of us knows every single answer.

But Connor loves every game I've made him play. He was so resistant to Trivial Pursuit for years until he played it, loved it, and proceeded to kick my ass at it for the past decade.

I was relieved to hear he was postponing his trip, but honestly, I would've stayed up all night tonight to finish it, and it would've been worth it.

Not sure why I wanted to write about this; it's just not really something I can tell people. When my coworker asked why I was so tired today I couldn't exactly tell her this essay of a reason, and saying "I worked 20 hours straight on making a card game that only one other person on the planet would enjoy playing with me". I said I didn't sleep well.

I get to have a normal night's sleep tonight and do some other shit tomorrow, but then I'll be back to finishing it up. Looking forward to that dopamine hitting when I open the box to my new game.

Stay Greater.

[namjoonchronicles]

protocol • nj

↳ genre fluff, domestic, parenthood

↳ words 2.7k

↳ summary Not everyone has a clue on how to raise a genius child, especially you.

↳ warning none

This is third time in a row that you find yourself waiting in this office. The hideous view of the mahogany desk, the slanted photo frame by the door sill. When the secretary leaves her desk and gives you an annoyed look, you felt the need to rise from your chair and tell her exactly how you feel before she even gets near.

“Listen, with all due respect,” you began with a sigh, “This is a horrendous waiting spell, my husband and I—“

Namjoon just went out to get coffee for both of you and he came forward to a scene he wasn’t prepared for.

“How many more procedures do we need to go through, just!” your voice raises, “to get an elementary school scholarship? Other people have their jobs to get to, and honestly fuck you and your stupid protocols. Why do you even have an office when you’re out 24/7.”

Heels spun to see your husband’s caught in the headlights eye, holding up two coffee takeaways, probably stopped breathing 2 minutes ago. You grabbed your hand bag and the documents in the secretary’s hand, and told her with a menacing tone,

“If my baby boy doesn’t get the scholarship he very much deserved, that’s on you.”

You snatched the coffee from Namjoon’s hand and grumbled, “We’re leaving.”

Namjoon followed immediately after, too stunned to even say a word. The secretary, in her expensive Alexander McQueen, and Pandora bracelets stood there with her arms down. Namjoon bows numerous times, even as he exits the revolving door. His wife is fuming, he hasn’t had breakfast, or lunch, can this day get any worse?

Fuck that because his wife is marching towards the car and finds the parking ticket on the windshield. You crumple that up and throw it on the ground, fuming.

Namjoon zooms on in the balled-up parking ticket and picks it up from the tar road as you angrily climb into the car and shut the car door as hard as you can. Namjoon climbs in on the passenger seat, holding his breath.

By now, you’re leaning your forehead on the steering wheel, sniffling.

“Babe,” barely audible but full of soothing weight, his large hand covered your back, up and down, side to side. Then it crept up your shoulders,as he pinches them with just the right amount of pressure and presses his lips on them, whispering, “It’s going to be okay.”

You leaned back to your car seat, finally having calmed a little. Tears streaming down your cheek still. They just continuously roll. They just won’t stop.

“For all we care, Koya doesn’t even need the scholarship. We could totally afford the school,” he said with a little shrug and the clarity of a billionaire.

“Yeah but he deserves it, he worked hard for it...”

“But he doesn’t need it.”

Namjoon switches in his seat, “We’ve been battling this out for two weeks now, I think it’s time that we move on and pay him ourselves... it’s not like it was too much, you know damn well I could afford his fees without having to go through this trouble of asking signatures from people who are clearly shirking from their much needed duty.”

There’s truth in his words. But Hyun isn’t just enrolling into an elementary school. He was enrolling in an exclusive curriculum that was arranged for above average IQ. That, he got from his dad, you’re sure.

“The parking ticket,” you squeaked.

“I got it,” he shot.

After what seemed forever, the car finally moves. Koya is sent to an art class on weekends so when you fetch him, his clothes were stained with all kinds of color. Namjoon and you looked from the car window, with a fond smile plastered on both your faces.

“He couldn’t be more obvious ha,” you commented. And Namjoon just smiled wider.

“Go get your son,” you said through a big grin.

“I’mma go get my son,” Namjoon said, the seatbelt whirled, and the car door clicks open. You smiled at the view of his back as he jogs a little to cross the street to get to his son. He gestured for the little one to wait until he gets there. They’re like a big and small pair. Koya jumps into his father’s arm and you could tell that Namjoon was grateful for those hours at the gym. Koya is 30 kilograms at the age of 7 and chances are he is going to lose all that weight by 10. Then he is going to grow taller. He is already taller than most of his friends. And then you will have to deal with two towers at home.

After art classes, it is important for Koya to take a nap. Brains that rest well, work well. He doesn’t even have any do’s-and-don’ts, he eats literally anything, studies when he wants, watches TV. So, while all parents fret on what their kids eat, how many hours they watch TV, when they study, you never had to worry all of that. In your principles, kids should be kids and in a way that is acceptable by the society.

They shouldn’t be on the phone for hours. They should be doing things what 7-year olds should do. And you’re lucky that Namjoon, sometimes agrees with you. One of his arguments was that the phone was one of the greatest technologies ever made and now, you can observe the movement of the planet through an app.

In his words, “Isn’t that cool!” Blinding smile, twinkling eyes, all the fiasco.

Namjoon carries Koya in from the backseat, took off his shoes, socks, and lay him down on his space rocket bed. While you escaped to the showers, Namjoon shed his jacket and sat on the edge of his office desk, reviewing documents to be sent in order to self-sponsor his child. His silhouette forms, the orange sky behind him looking picturesque as he flips the pages slowly, taking to terms everything he needed to know.

You by now have reclined to the door sill on your sides with your arms crossed and a faint smile on your lips, boring into the view of him.

“Love,” you called.

Namjoon jerks his head up, hanging his jaw, mumbling, “...two hundred seventy-five thousand,” and registers that you have mentioned his pet name, “yes?”

“I was just thinking,” you thwarted further into his home office, to the two-seater sofa he has and sat, “Is this the right thing to do?” You looked up at him, briefly, not long enough for him to decipher your thoughts, “Sending our baby off to a system they say, made for children like him? Why do they make it sound like he’s different?”

“How do we know that we,” you paused and try to rephrase your sentence so it sounds right, but no matter how you switch the words, it sounds wrong, “You and I both know what it’s like to be in the system, the pressure, the title of a genius, the weight of the word. Koya’s just 7...”

Namjoon turns over his shoulder, sets the documents down on the desk, and rubbed the back of his neck, tutting his tongue.

“What if he ends up resenting us? The way we did with our parents, for sending us both to a special school and giving us depression before we even turned 12. All because we have the family’s name to live up to.”

Namjoon moves from the desk, to circle the mahogany coffee table, and to the seat next to you.

“You heard him yourself that he wants to go to this school, that he wanted this curriculum. You heard yourself that his teachers cannot,” he shut his eyes and re-phrased, “do not, have anymore materials to teach him because he was beyond that level of intelligence,” Namjoon covered your knees with his palm.

“I don’t want him to feel that his intelligence is the only thing that defines him.”

“That’s why we need to send him there, so they’ll teach him!” He rejoiced. But no matter what, you can’t deny the weariness in your heart. You were worried that a system different from others, will make him the odd one in the bunch. You for instance, cheated on your IQ test so that you scored lower than the initial ones because you heard your parents plan. Namjoon didn’t do his IQ test until he was in middle school and he narrowly escaped from attending a more specific curriculum for the gifted.

“Let’s give this a try, for the hell of it,” his voice softens.

“This is your son’s future,” you darted, poking his chest.

You stood up, abruptly. Namjoon pushes his tongue to cheek.

“I’m going to my parents, don’t wait up,” you shouted from the door. Namjoon hangs his head low.

“She was the one being all ‘my son needs to have this scholarship, fuck your protocols and shit’ and now, she’s not even sure,” Namjoon lifts his ass off the couch, mumbling to himself. But you change your mind like you change your clothes when it comes to what’s best for others. Because you know for a certain, while you put your earrings that evening, it’s your son who will have to deal with the aftermath. And any decisions made, in place of him, is your responsibility. And you know this, because Namjoon isn’t always going to be around for a discussion.

You will be left raising Koya alone most of the time.

Namjoon has to leave by midnight, and he’s unsure if you really need to be at your parents today. He didn’t think you should, but you sounded so certain that anything he says would be best thrown in the bin before it leaves his mouth.

He clears his throat, “Helsinki is tonight, just so you know— “

“—I know,” you put on your perfume, and rubbed your wrist together, looking at him through the mirror.

“I thought you might have forgotten— “

“—I won’t be out long, I just needed some clarity, some kind of foundation that I’m doing something right,” you explained, slipping your phone into your back pocket, brushed your shoulder against your husband as you walked out.

Two weeks after that conversation, Hyun, which was Koya’s actual name, was colouring in his colouring book when he said, “Mom, do you know that goldfish has an attention span of only 9 seconds?”

“No, baby. I didn’t know that,” you lied, you knew.

Hyun continued to colour, moving his head to the other side, “I got that fact from you, actually,” he passed.

Maybe Namjoon was right. Maybe you were underestimating your kid by thinking you know best. Maybe you’re afraid of something that hasn’t happen yet. Either way, as you pan out to the view outside the Trimage Apartment, where the skies are a concoction of lilac and pink, you prayed someone else would take the wheel.

“How come you do not know when your own husband is coming back?” Your mother nags you, as you held the door open for her.

“Because he would tell me if I needed to know. Chances are, he doesn’t even know when he’ll be back, so why bother asking?” You plopped on the sofa next to her.

“It feels like you’re doing this all on your own, by the looks of it...” she passed, looking around your apartment, scanning for whatever is out of place.

“What drinks do you want, ma?” You asked, already off the couch and speeding towards the kitchen, “Tea? Juice?”

“Juice sounds great,” she passed, “I came to keep you company, because I heard from your dad that Namjoon wasn’t around...”

“Aww, is it really because of that or are you bored of seeing dad pick his nose,” you chuckled.

“I don’t need to answer that,” your mom grimaced.

Hours after she came, while Hyun is away for a camping trip, you sat down with her, watching Pretty Women. Her favourite movie.

“You know, when you were younger, you showed incredible talent in academics and memory. Your dad and I were panicking, because when the doctor say it was above average, the reading, checking 6 out of 6 types of intelligence, we literally don’t know what to do...”

You lay your head on her lap this time, curled in a ball and to the side. You hummed in reply.

“I know you cheated on your IQ test thinking I’ll send you off to a boarding school if you did well, and although I think you were capable of it, I wasn’t ready to let you go despite what your father said,” she continued in a soft gentle voice.

It was then she revealed that all she wanted was for you to study at your own pace, at your own capability, without her interfering—or telling you that you’re made for something much better, much more difficult than this. For awhile, she thought what she did was right. Honing your mind by suppressing them. But she sometimes wished that she had went the other way. That she should have seen you for what you are without you fearing anything, without you over-calculating.

“I for sure, don’t know how Namjoon was raised, but I think when it comes to this, his mother is a more eligible person to be asked,” she pats your head. And your eyes bore into the screen at the view of Julia Roberts dazzling smile, not sharing the joy she had.

But rather, the insecurity of it all.

Miles away, several countries apart was Namjoon sitting in his black Sedan, waiting for his driver to get him where he needs to be next. While he waits, he scrolls down the missed call list, his wife in a good 17 of it.

He knows Hyun is away for a stargazing camp. He knows that his wife is still unsure about the curriculum. And he knows that he is running out of comfort words to present to his worry-wart wife. Some things are best unplanned. And some things are best waited out. His logical mind versus your soft heart—a familiar battle.

The moment you picked his calls up, he said, “We’ve been through this many times. We have had conversations and we’re running in circles of whether or not our son is capable of what he is capable of. And I say yes, while you say no. Harbouring all sorts of feelings, by staying on your side and I’m staying on mine and I think it’s safe to say that we both are sick of it—and I...”

“You’re right,” that isn't the retaliation he expected? That rare sound of defeat. He was so stunned he couldn’t even process it all in a string of a second. His wife, hot-headed butch of a wife say that he was right? Is this real? Is this even the right number? Yes, it’s his wife. He checked to be sure. Twice.

“You’re right, I’m overthinking it. I’m making my past as my son’s future, implying my fears as his, and see myself in him when he is himself,” you sighed into the phone.

“And I think, we will take him out only if he says he wants out, which he isn’t,” you added, “It’s hard when he looks up at me because I see myself. I forgot that you see that too. I mean,” you chuckled short, “Who else knows how to raise a kid smarter than yourself?”

“Babe, I love you. I’m catching the first flight home, and this time, I’m coming home when I say I am.”

The plane’s wing slices through the night sky.

“And our family will be whole again.”

Namjoon is poking toy swords into the air, next to you.

“Focus, Kim,” you scolded, “We came to find Koya’s birthday present, not yours.”

“I already got my birthday present,” he shot back, “I’m looking at her.” You turned to him to see a sleazy smile and a wink.

“If you do that again, I’m going to actually hurl something at your head,” you warned, “There’s something about you Virgos.”

“Well, like it or not, you’ve married a Virgo. The damage is done,” he then proceeds to make machine-gun sounds.

“What do you buy for a 7-year old genius?” You hummed.

“Whatever 7-year olds likes,” he wiggles his eyebrow and showed the very sword he was holding.

So that’s how you got three swords home. Not sure if this a blessing or a curse. But the smile on those two faces, what else can be better than this.

Fuck standard operating procedures. Fuck protocols.

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copyright © 2019 namjoonchronicles do not repost

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #362

(this is actually from yesterday but i never posted it and now i don’t feel like updating the answers, so yeah)

Have you ever been cheated on? No. Who’s car were you last in? My mom's. Have you ever thought about getting your nose pierced? It's been pierced multiple times, but each time the hole closed after my piercings had to be taken out at the psych hospital. The final time though, it closed because the damn stud fell out in my sleep for the billionth time, I couldn't find it, and I let it close out of annoyance. Have your parents ever smoked pot? My dad has. Do you tend to make relationships complicated? I mean, I don't think so. I hope not. Are you good at giving directions? NO. Like, I can't. I would accidentally lead you to the middle of the ocean. Would your mom care if she found condoms in your room? She'd be confused as fuck because I live with her so she knows for sure I'm not seeing anyone. Did you speak to your father today? No. Did you kiss someone before you were sixteen? No, it was actually a month after turning 16. Could you go a day without eating? Nooo. I've said before and I'll say it again, I don't deal with abdominal pain well, so yeah. Are your nails always painted? They never are. Have you ever met any bands/band members before? No. What color is your hair? Boring 'ole brown. .-. Your best friend needed somewhere to stay, could they live with you? She absolutely could. I know Mom would welcome her without hesitation. Have you danced in the rain? No. When you said something naughty when you were little, did your parents wash out your tongue with soap? No, but it was threatened. What do you think of spanking little children when they do something wrong? Okay or not? No, it is absolutely not okay. You do not teach children through fear, ever, nor do you show children that it is ever okay to hit people when you're upset. Who was the last male you hung out with? Uhhh, I think Girt? I haven't truly hung out with a guy in a long time. Who is your favorite person to text? Sara. Who did you last take a picture with? My sister. What’s your favorite brand of jeans? I don't have one. Which show is better: Spongebob or The Fairly Odd Parents? The latter. Both can be funny, but Cosmo cracks me up. Has anyone ever told you that you looked like someone else? I actually think the only time I was ever compared to someone else (make-believe, at that) was when I dressed up for Halloween one year and a friend told me I looked like Eileen Galvin from Silent Hill 4: The Room. Do you enjoy the sound of crickets at night and birds in the morning? Yesssss. Who is the most overrated singer? Idk, I don't even know who's "in" right now. What is your favourite planet? Saturn. Do you have any pets that you had since you were born? No. Do you own anything that you had when you were a baby? Yes, stored away. Do you enjoy Mario games? Mario Kart is fun, but otherwise I'm not a massive fan. What’s your favorite online game? World of Warcraft. Have you ever been hit with a ball in gym class? I think so. I was always terrified of the days we got to play dodgeball or whatever, like that shit hurts. Do you ever turn your cell phone off? No. Who was last to cook for you? My ma. Do you check your texts right away when you receive them? Usually. Who is your most trusted person? My mom, probably. How late did you stay up last night? God, I don't even know. Last night was my sleep study, and I was so uncomfortable in that bed that I slept maybe only an hour or two. Hell, or less. I also couldn't sleep on my stomach, which really didn't help because that's always how I sleep. I'm exhausted now and have such a headache. When/where are you most likely to sing? In the car, I guess. I very rarely sing anywhere. Would you ever wish to explore a cave? FUCK YES. You see the person you fell hardest for. What do you do? Panic like a motherfucker internally, avoid eye contact, and try to evade him (not like he'd actually pursue me) without being too obvious. Have you been/are you depressed? Both. Are your pop-ups blocked on your computer? Yes. Have you ever ridden in a car with someone who was high? Yes, because I was afraid to tell her I didn't want. Thank fuck we got home safe. I was absolutely, positively terrified we'd be pulled over. Who is the best hugger you know? Ha, actually the person I just mentioned. Have you ever had to be put to sleep for an operation? Yes. Does anybody have any proof of stupid things you have done? Oh, Facebook comments... Why did you text the last person in your inbox? I was replying to my mom. Have you ever been able to do a split? No. Did you ever date the last person you kissed? Yes. Are you intimidated by the last person you know talked badly about you? She doesn't "intimidate" me, no. She just gets on my last goddamn nerve every time she opens her mouth. Have you ever cried in school? Yes. Last person of the opposite sex you screamed at? I've never screamed at a guy because I'm afraid of them. I've sobbed at Jason, so like my voice was raised, but it definitely wasn't screaming. Do you have any weird sleep habits? Well, speaking of screaming, my nightmares have me shrieking in the middle of most nights. I also talk in my sleep like, a lot. Do you consider yourself an emotional person? Very. When was the last time you had a headache? This morning, I'm sure because of how shitty I slept. When was the last time you encountered a puppy? Prepare for a rant... We have one right now, even though our landlord told us specifically no puppies because of all the housetraining they require. My mom has been wanting a dog, and Tobey finally agreed to it, and she's been looking for a while. So my sister Ashley randomly shows up with a stray puppy a friend was keeping, terrified and LOADED with ticks, and she's reminding Mom and I why we DON'T WANT A PUPPY. She's peeing everywhere BUT outside (specifically on a stupid fucking expensive carpet that Tobey will have a cow over just ONE stain), is terrorizing my cat, and has an overwhelming amount of energy. Ashley specifically told me that if Mom doesn't let Ash know, I needed to tell her if the puppy was stressing Mom out, "because this isn't supposed to be a stressful experience for her." Well, she's been sobbing again and again and I literally just came back mid-question from comforting her because she broke down so hard she could barely breathe because now she had diarrhea on the fucking carpet. Ashley's all bitchy now about it for no apparent or even remotely valid reason, and by God do I want to cuss her the fuck out over this bull she brought on. Safe to say we're not keeping the dog, but not quickly enough. When Mom hurts, I hurt, and I am so goddamn furious. Is there anything that happened a long time ago that you still laugh about? Yeah, a number of things. Do you ever try to interpret your dreams? No, given I don't believe most have any meaning. It's brain word vomit, lol. What was the last thing you bought impulsively? I don't have the income for impulse purchases. When I get money, what I'm after is well-planned. How do you feel about singing songs out loud in front of other people? I don't, usually. I'm very self-conscious about it. When was the last time you were feeling really, really nervous? That nervous, I'm unsure. I've been nervous, sure, but I haven't had a massive anxiety episode in a while. If you’re no longer in school, what is something you miss about it? If you’re still in school, what’s something you think you’re going to miss about it? I miss feeling productive and like I was going at least somewhere. Do you use your turn signals when you’re driving? Yes; I hate when people don't. How exactly are you feeling right now? Mad at my sister. Have you ever had to board up your windows because of a hurricane? No. Do you tell anyone to chew with their mouths closed? No, to avoid "confrontation" that is too negligible to even quality as conflict. I'm just a lil bitch when it comes to stuff like this. Have you ever ordered pizza and sent it to someone else’s house? No. What was the first thing you drank when you woke up this morning? My nurse or whatever her position is (I don't mean that dismissively, I genuinely don't know her title) brought me some orange juice. Do you think stretch marks from having a baby are ugly or badges of honor? Oh my god, fuck off. Anyone who can carry a child for nine months and then endure what I assume is the worst pain (usually) survivable has every ounce of my goddamn respect. The natural result of making room for a like 6+ lb. human being is not "ugly." It's a part of life and to me shows an incredible amount of bravery and love to be willing to go through something I could absolutely never. Ever done a keg stand? Haha, no. My dizzy ass will pass. Who is the last person you lent money to? My mom. Do you share clothing with anyone? Mom and I will share bras or pants sometimes. Have you ever visited anyone in a rehab? No. Was the last thing you drank a Coke or Pepsi product? No, I have lemonade right now. Honestly, do you think that you’re going to be an overprotective parent? IF I wanted to be a parent, I feel like I definitely would be. Not like... overbearing, but still extremely protective in cases I think it's called for. What was the last kind of chips you ate? Veggie chips yesterday, actually. They're honestly not that good, but it's a doable snack with salsa. What is one thing that you really wish you could understand, but don’t? Economics. I dread taking care of my own money because idk what the fuck to do with taxes and such. What is the last thing you charged? My phone. Have you ever held a snake? I've held plenty of snakes, I love them.

[writingwitheli]

GrandMech

Most mechs were hard to function, even with experienced pilots.

They didn't move like people do, the mechanics don't really allow for that. You have to know the engineering intimately to clearly envision how the thing was going to react to your direction. Most pilots spend months learning their piece before going into the field. There were simulators, and for a while the board argued for mechs to be built in a uniform manner for faster learning.

But technology went a bit too fast for that. And the things were way too expensive to mass produce.

Grandma Katersfield knew this well. It was her life's work.

I mean she wasn't my grandma. But she kinda was. She was everyone's grandma, in a way. Most mechs these days still have her work in them, even if there were scraps rebuild around it. Some people called it practical. Pilots called it good luck. The engineers called it "Finally someone who knows what they're fucking doing."

When she passed away, in her garage (had she ever existed anywhere else?), the military held a funeral. Most of the planets held a funeral. The board, somewhere in their core-planet bunkers, held a meeting.

The war wasn't over, and we weren't winning. And we'd just lost our best engineer. It was a big fucking hit for morale. There were losses everywhere.

Presumably after sending a swarm of government drones through the property, the board very quickly touted "Katersfield's Final Work", and "The culmination of everything she's ever done". Some people pointed out the public images that showed how the thing was half-done. But enough people wanted hope that everyone gradually bought into the idea.

The board appointed Katersfield's daughter to lead the finalization of the thing. Ann wasn't exactly an engineer, but they knew how the public would read it. They gave her a team of their best to work with.

When construction was nearly done, the board officially announced that Katersfield's son-in-law would be piloting it. Everyone expected it; he was the only striped pilot in the family. But it hit the top of everyone's news anyways.

The public test run was expected to be simple, and broadcasted live as far as the outer-space colonies.

It… didn't go so well.

Okay, it went very badly.

I mean.

Bad.

What followed was a lot of media confusion. The board hastily tried to put the blame on over-eagerness. People were fired. We lost four moons while our squadrons re-evaluated their lives.

Mark and his husband, Will Katersfield, had a very public divorce. Some people argue it was the media pressure. Some people suspect that the board forced them apart. I think it was a long time coming.

For a while the board pushed forward other candidates. They ran competitions for new mech designers and engineers and electricians. Offered an absurd amount of money and resources. A lot of cool stuff came out of it, but nothing really compares to Katersfield's work.

It was three years after that when media went into a frenzy over a low-grade video of the mech doing cartwheels over the family farm. Fucking cartwheels, man. I can't even do those in my own body most days.

Every news ship went down there as quick as they could. A bunch of civilians, too. Granny says a board member actually showed up in person.

Everyone was immediately on Ann about it. She was the only one that really stayed on the farm. She knew the machinery well enough. And maybe she'd inherited the pilot skills of one of Katersfield's late spouses.

To the dismay of the board, Ann insisted that the pilot was Thoma, one of Will's children. The media went ballistic. Kids weren't even supposed to be piloting mechs in the first place.

Thoma gave an interview to their school teacher and described the sensation of piloting upside down as "even better than going all the way around the bar on a swing and then having Grandma's cookies with two scoops of ice cream!" Their wide grin with missing teeth was eventually made into metal-cards for soldiers to attach under their breast plates and remind them of home.

At some point, Ann made the mistake of admitting that she'd taken it out for a test-run while she was tuning up some joints (she hadn't been an engineer when this started. But things change).

The board came down hard. They publicly announced that Ann was the cartwheeling pilot, and further that she'd accepted a high raking military title with absurd honors and enough pay to buy a moon. They posted a date with a public countdown clock for her departure to the front lines.

Now the way Granny tells it; Ann didn't know about any of this until her neighbor came by with the milk and a congratulations. Granny would probably piss on the board if she still could. Don't let her try it.

Ann did go. She didn't have many options, really. Her bio-logs phrase the situation as "the board made a decision. I complied."

We pushed back the front by two whole planets. Ann wasn't much of a pilot; she spent too much time thinking, but the war pushed around her. Most of the time it only took a three second clip of her unnaturally smooth landing and quick gravity adjustment to a new planet. My old mech would take two minutes to land and readjust. A lot can happen in two minutes.

The official report says Ann died on Mitas 9. The board will probably censor this whole damn thing if I try to explain what happened, but just remember that official reports are. Well. Official.

The mech was commandeered immediately. They cleaned it up, threw on a new coat of paint, and put their highest ranking pilot in the hotseat.

Everyone was in a hurry to get back to it and have a plan ready before Ann's death was publicly announced. Yeru knew the schematics by heart and spent one month living with the mech every hour of every day to make up for lost time. The board went as far as making them legally exempt from standard reports. Yeru's bios were never made public, but you can pull them from the military archives in Section B. They clearly knew their way around a mech, and honestly seemed to be a good person as far as I can tell.

The board had seemingly learned from prior incidents. The Generals hosted a secluded military showing of the first test-run. Those archives are probably deleted, but all you really need to know is that Yeru never made it off the ground.

For a few months, the military looked into sabotage. Yeru's bio-post about the joints being "just plain creaky no matter how much I oil the thing" convinced a bunch of higher-ups that the mech had been swapped out or something.

I know. Creating a whole fake mech to replace it with? Somehow managing to swap the thing out with as much board, military, and media surveillance as it has? Absurd.

Also I'm sure you're well aware that plenty of good mechs have creaky joints. I hear you ran Sacrifice 2 for a while there. Lt. Jen complained about how loud that thing was for months after he shared a hangar with it near Osylus. Not sure if that was your time or not. I'm going to tell him it was, so he'll have something to complain to you about. When he does, ask him about the wardrobe cloning incident. I'm sure he'll know what you're talking about.

Anyways.

The news about Ann went public, and the board pushed it down the feeds with reports about a new Stealth Carrier that would move faster than a pilot-ship. It did. Everyone loved it. I'm sure it's shit compared to the last carrier you were on.

Thoma, meanwhile, had grown up and gotten their way through military school. It might seem strange to you now, but Thoma actually didn't touch a mech the first decade of their service. They had a few friends and plenty worshipers, but still hadn't officially earned enough stripes to be a pilot. The Generals wanted to make sure Thoma was knocked down enough to keep from getting big-headed about it. But Thoma didn't really care.

Thoma fought hard and studied harder. They proved themselves again and again. You can look up the public records of their medal-acceptance speeches. Every damn time they would say "This is a great honor. Can I trade it in for a mech?"

Pissed a lot of people off, but it was fucking hilarious if you ask me.

Eventually Thoma led a fairly large squadron and took a half a continent in a week. When I asked them about it, they said they had sent a text message to the Generals saying "I could've gotten all of it, if I had my own mech :,(". I know them well enough to know they probably actually sent a frowny-face emoji to the Generals. Don't do that. It's hilarious. But, Don't.

Probably.

For now, anyways.

The board reluctantly let Thoma break the mech out of some museum somewhere as a reward for their service. They weren't intending for Thoma to actually run as a pilot since Thoma had already gotten to be in charge of things. It would be a media mess, at best, a military loss at worst.

Thoma did a fucking backflip over live media.

Anyways the board and the Generals argued about it for a week, but eventually did the only thing they could do. They made Thoma a pilot. There were lots of assurances that Thoma would still be holding their responsibilities as Planetary Sergeant. No one cared. Thoma had done a fucking backflip; the Katersfields were at it again.

I'm told that week of debate consisted of at least fifteen other pilots trying the mech out and reporting up failures of various kinds. Don't worry about that, you'll do fine.

I'm sure you know most of the story from there. Thoma took Belet 5 through Belet 11, and some other smaller planets along the way. Majestic. War hero. Idol. Etc etc.

The board immediately pushed Thoma’s son, Madene, into the military and straight into pilot's school. They make a lot of dumb decisions, but even the board could see the pattern here.

You might not have read this about me, but I used to be an electrician. I worked on Thoma's team for a while. The Generals gave Madene special permission to visit us sometimes so he could learn the mech hands-on. He'd always wanted to be an artist or a planetary refurbisher. That was clear from the first day we met.

I'll tell you this now, it's not part of public record: Madene ran the mech just fine when it was just us around. Thoma would give some long drawn-out speech about minding your manners and being careful with her. It was their Grandmother's soul in that machine, after all. Madene didn't really listen, but the mech ran just fine anyways.

When Madene was nearing graduation, the Generals sent their scouts around to see how things were going. The mech ran straight into their drones and fell convulsing onto the ground.

It was a hard time for a while, Thoma was upset with Madene and Madene was embarrassed. There were lots of arguments, and the Generals tried to pretend Madene just didn't have enough experience as a pilot. The idea that Madene did it on purpose didn't get recorded, but it's what a lot of people assumed. I don't think that's what happened, anyways.

Madene tried really hard after that. He pushed himself in school, and as a result they let him try out a bunch of other mechs. He proved he could handle it just as well as some of our better pilots. He took Entrapment marching around the school-system planet four times.

Thoma tore their knee in a pretty brutal fight, and since they were nearing retirement anyways the board arranged for a public hand-off of the mech.

I used to talk to her when I worked. My old pilot - the one I worked electricity for before Thoma - had always been superstitious about this sort've thing. She used to spend a good half-hour reassuring it before she's let me do any work on it. I guess I'd picked up the habit. You might want to pick it up, too, if you haven't already.

I'd asked her to help Madene out. He'd worked so hard and I could tell Thoma was slowing down.

You might have seen the media of that. Afterward Madene was particularly… verbal. Even if you didn't see that, I'm sure you heard about what happened to him after. Don't be too harsh on him, it's really not his fault. We were all too hard on him.

All the media says the Generals did a lot of research and realized I was better suited as a pilot and they shifted me over. How that actually happened was… well. A little boring.

One of their scouts had caught me helping her move over so I could get a better angle at the spinal wiring.

Blah blah blah. I'm sure you know the highlights from there.

So here's where we get to the advice that was the whole point of this message:

I admit the public eye is a little difficult to get used to. Honestly I recommend you just ignore it. They'll say shit no matter what you do.

Don't call her by the name the board gave her. I know that's what you learned in school and in training. Don't do it.

Don't piss her off.

Be patient - her memory isn't what it used to be.

Don't tell her what to do. I read your file, you have a lot of experience. I know this will be the hard part.

If the mediacom switches to one of those awful family gameshows. Just. Let it happen. No, they do not get less annoying to listen to. Yes, she knows they're all the same.

The internal heating will be On when you're on any below-regulation temperature planet. I know you're from the outer colonies. I know that will be too warm for you. Get over it and try not to dress down too much; she's easier to maneuver when you're in layers.

The one exception to the above is her tune-ups and maintenance. She doesn't like it. She never does. We have four crews to make it easier and I still do it myself sometimes to help her get over it. You're going to have to get good at negotiating.

If you leave a battle with a sudden craving in your neurons for hot and hearty soup, go get some hot and hearty soup. She'll get stubborn with you next time if you don't.

Granny will take care of you from there.

-Captain Layfar