#and ive had like three interviews. and been told i interviewed well but they picked someone with more experience

[ttaibhse]

having another despair spiral over being unemployed 🙏

[konohamaru-sensei]

hello again!! thank you so much for gathering the iketeru illustrations for me (and translating them too, which i greatly appreciated), cause your post really made my day :')

it's funny that the author's got a whole book of fanservice for us lmao, but i love it! do you have a #1 favorite illustration (of anyone) from the whole book? (sorry if this sent twice btw, crap was glitching lol)

lovely anon, I must tell you that I once again went absolutely over the line with pictures I took. There are so many good ones!! I knew a few illustrations from sensei's twitter and knew how well it worked for me so I ordered this book from japan and yes, that is why I can never pick favourites I just like all of them (exception is the series in which the characters are teachers and you are supposed to be their student, not a big fan of those lol). Once again I put them under cut together with my chitter chatter about them asdhjflas

anyway im glad i made your day!

yes its amazing that this fanservice exist. In the interview at the end of the book sensei says they often drew their characters as practise (without lines) and then uploaded them to twitter to find out the people responded so well!! so they continued with it! More snippets from the interview:

they consider this a kind of alternative world that has no space in the manga (since its a gag manga).

they claim they didnt try to make the characters hot on purpose, it just turned out this way. in their head usao and kumao always had old people voices. but now they are glad the characters are hot because of the voice actors choosen.

they come up with a line and then assign it to a character, rarely the other way around.

Every one of their characters has one thing they think is special, something they like to show off when they draw them. for Uramichi its the chest, for Iketeru the slender neck, for Usahara the shoulders and Kumatani the arms!

and shockingly to me: since this manga is running 10 years now they said when they started they felt like Uramichi is so old, but now they are the same age! I cant believe how someone in their twenties wrote such an accurate manga about being in ones thirties.

gosh anon i wish this was more popular, i only have one friend to talk to about this story and i have so much in my soul dhkasdflsd so please come back if you feel like it!

ok so some of my faves under cut from here

first of: my favourite has always been ushara. he is cringe fail and i love cringe fail so much. but that also means he has almost no COOL lines because he is kind of an idiot (lovingly said) tho all his illustrations are so cute. so he wont show up here much tho i love everything about his arts of course!!

now you asked me for my favourite and ive known this one for a while, but I think my unbeaten favourites of everyone are the love confessions:

I love the different way they all do it. Uramichi pretty much goes "I love....you" (cries), Iketeru of course quotes it, Usahara just YELLS at you "HEY I LOVE YOU" and kumatani is like ".............. iloveyou" haskdlfh

generally kumatani has so many cool lines because he is so stone cold. this is also specifically heart wrecking for me because his voice actor Nakamura Yuuchi is my favourite thing since strawberries so if I imagine him doing the voice I want to die.

Three times Kumatani is an absolute tsundere about white day:

"you are chattering so much... well, tell me what you want now. I'll get you anything."

"What do you want? Tell me clearly"

"I told you to get over here"

another white day illustration i love is this one from usahara

he says "the present is me, hippety hop", which i find ultra cute with the little bunny and the hairclip!! but my friend said it sounds like he forgot white day and just brought the first thing he could find, which would be in character (adding this picture was a nightmare tumblr did NOT want me to upload it?? you hate cute boys? tumblr you hate cute boys??)

uramichi's face when he realises you april fooled him is so funny to me somehow

" You say "Im sorry".. that is also a lie, is it not?"

ok from now on the pictures will be low quality because tumblr wont let me upload the photos direclty anymore i need to screenshot them first. rip im sorry

ok there are a few here of uramichi saying somehow sexy things (to me at least) and it makes me go hrgnlkhdflk

""Good big brother (onisan)" you said. Who do you mean?" idk why that gets me so hard but why you asking .. wha...what you mean

"... Isn't it ok? You don't have to go home yet." (this is from the stayin the night portion)

"A promise from big brother. I will protect you well" T_T

this thing which can only be described as ship art:

is this bickering idiots to lovers sensei? is that what you mean to tell me sensei?

this usahara from the staying the night section

"Come play with me today!" (............ h.......how...)

this image if kumatani because of THE LOOK? um HELLO

unfortuantely the translation is kinda tricky because i cant read most the kanji and google lense is like?? but its something like "Do you think you have the guts to betray me?" or something like "Do you think I have the guts to betray you?" idk he looks good so its fine

almost done i swear!! there are a few kuma usa double pages i love

Kuma: "Don't look. Its hot." (sidenote, he is shirtless a lot. not that I complain or whatever)

Usa: "Where would you like to go? The ocean? My house?"

sorry i tried to keep my fingers out of all pictures but clearly failed xD

Kuma: "Shut up. Shut up and look at me."

Usa: "I understaaaand. Get over here." (crying, i want to)

this is a part of the book extras. I showed it to you with Iketeru already. I think the meaning is sort of the moment they realised their carreers are over, sadface

Kuma: "I never really liked it. I thought I would just throw it away. Damn it, I lost."

Usa: "The wind suddenly stopped. Ah, thats how it is. Its over"

of course there are a lot more other characters shown in the book, but much rarer and since they dont interest me too much they dont have my favourite lines asdhfklasdhf anyway anon I hope you liked this

[erodasfishtacos]

Could you do a blurb of mlb!Harry and y/n doing an interview with a magazine and they talk about how they met, how he decided he wanted to play baseball professionally, being a father and mother and winning the championship

thought this was a cute idea

okay! ive gotten a ton of requests. im going to do it in an article format.

It’s for Times Magazine - he’s over the cover - with the title - A Legend Among Us.

Tom is the interviewer

—

Harry had welcomed me up to his house for the interview. A beautiful sprawling mansion nestled in the woods near a lake in New York - right outside the city where he played.

As soon as I walked in, the house was warm and felt like a well-lived in house. The baseball player had apologized for the small littering of dump trucks, barbies, and blocks that were left behind.

We sat down outside on the patio, it was cool, and Harry was dressed in a Yankees hoodie and Nike shorts - sponsored by them of course.

Harry was actually Nike’s biggest money making sponsor due to his merchandise and memorabilia with the company.

I could tell Harry was relaxed, a carefree smile on his face opposed to the scowl he had when he was on the mound.

There were toys scattered on their pristine green grass, a massive pool, jungle gym, and sandpit - a child’s dream.

Harry cracked a joke that the landscapers hate cutting their grass because of all the toys in the way.

Tom: Mr. Styles - a pleasure to sit down with you. I’m a bit starstruck if I’m honest.

Harry: [laughs] it’s no problem. Thanks for agreeing to come up here.

Tom: It’s a beautiful piece of property.

Harry: Yeah, I love it. My wife picked this house out and she has way better taste than me. She did good.

Tom: Let’s talk about her. How long have you been together?

A soft look appears on Styles face as soon as he starts speaking about her.

Harry: We’ve been together ten years, married for eight now - just celebrated our anniversary a month ago.

Tom: That’s impressive, especially for a sport man like yourself.

I realize that what I had said hadn’t sat right with the baseball player. His tone comes back much sharper with me.

Harry: I don’t need to be rewarded or praised because I’ve stayed loyal to my wife. Just because of my job doesn’t make me a scumbag.

Tom: I apologize. It’s just that you constantly have beautiful women chasing after you.

Harry: Okay? Have you seen the woman I’m married to? She’s fucking gorgeous. There’s a reason we have four kids, can’t keep my hands off her.

Tom: Four kids - three boys and a girl, right? Tell us their names and ages, maybe something about them, if you would.

Harry: Our oldest is Easton, he is six and a half, and is definitely is a little leader. He doesn’t take shit from anyone and bosses all his siblings around. He’s the most like me.

Tom: Is that good or bad?

Harry: [laughs] If you ask me, I’d say good. If you ask my wife, she would say no.

Tom: Then Cash?

Harry: Yeah, he’s four. He’s the comedian. He is such a free spirit, easy-going, and always being silly. He craves attention and always gets it.

Tom: He sounds like a good time.

Harry: He is. Then Ezra who is two and just a sweetheart. He’s sensitive, very caring, but also nervous like none of my other kids are.

Tom: Does that make it harder for you?

Harry: Not at all. I’m just really protective of him.

Tom: That doesn’t surprise me.

Harry: Then we have Briar. Our little girl, she’s about three months old right now. We’re still getting to know her but she is a carbon copy of her mama.

Tom: Interesting. All your boys look exactly like you.

Harry: It was amazing to see those boys come out looking like me. I am man enough to admit I sobbed when I saw how gorgeous she was like her mother.

Tom: Wrapped around your finger, huh?

Harry: Just like her mama. Completely whipped for them.

Tom: What’s the secret that you’re hiding for such a happy marriage?

Harry appears thoughtful for a moment, reaching to take a swig of his protein drink as I take the opportunity to sip the expensive tasting sparkling water he’d offered me.

Harry: She is always making me work for it. In the best way possible. I mean I’m constantly chasing after her. She still plays hard to get like she did before we started dating.

Tom: I think most people would assume it was the other way around.

Harry: YN is the best fucking wife. I mean incredible, honestly. She’s the best mama to our babies. It would be impossible for me to not being head of heels for her.

Tom: What’s it like being a father?

Harry: [laughs] It’s the best. I thought baseball was the best job out there but it isn’t. I love being a dad. I would have a full baseball team if the missus would let me.

Tom: I mean baseball is a pretty good gig, right? You are the highest-paid player in history. You have also broken a massive amount of records that people thought were impossible to beat.

Harry: [his smile becomes a bit cocky as he shrugs] As much as it will make people mad, it comes easy to me but I also work hard because I want to set a good example for my children.

*interview continues about baseball for a bit*

In the middle of a question about his favorite teams growing up, we are interrupted by their patio door opening and a child who looks exactly like Harry toddles over.

It had to be Ezra as Harry had told me the other two were at school. The two-year-old had obviously escaped his mother’s grasp as she is hurriedly rushing out after him.

YN apologizes with a exasperated laugh, a fresh baby tucked in a sling around her chest. Ezra gives me a unsure look before he’s crawling up his father until he’s settled in his lap.

Harry forgets the question, distracted as he helps his son get comfortable in his arms, and a hand coming to rub the boys back.

He is assuring his wife that Ezra is okay, motioning them over to give her a kiss before doing the same to his daughter’s forehead.

Harry: It’s about nap time for this one. [Harry nods down to his son who’s nuzzling into his chest]

I was hoping to get more from the baseball player but as soon as Ezra requests that his dad takes him for a nap - Harry is soothing and agreeing with his son.

He is soft with his son, voice turning into a hum that is vastly different from the rough rasp on the field as he curses out refs.

It was overall a great experience, to get a look into the life of Harry Styles. I was walked out with Harry toting a sleepy toddler on his hip.

I got in my car, observing the Porsche, Escalade, Range Rover, and Lamborghini truck that is a reminder of just how rich this man was.

And I can’t say I’ll ever forget interviewing the most talented sport player that we will ever see in our time and much more time to come.

[x3kristax3]

Is this the end?

A/N: this has been highly asked for after my oneshots of the end. I have gone with MC POV and a little bit of Jakes. This story is unline any other I've seen written. I did base this off the song “Flower '' by Lauren Spencer Smith.

Chapter 1

After two long years of being with Jake and helping him get free things don’t feel right. We act like everything is okay but I feel like I’m making a fool out of myself lately. There have been a lot of fights and even with the distance. I just cant help but wonder what is going on. The last time I saw him was six months ago. He flew out and spent time with me while meeting my family and friends. Those two weeks everything was great until just before he had to head back. He got distant and pushed me away.

These last three months Ive been looking at apartments and setting up job interviews. I should of known when Jake didn't ask me about it that something was wrong.

I ended up flying out to Colsville to surprise him and I knocked on his apartment and a girl answered wearing on of Jake's tshirts.

“Hello” she says confused. 

“Sorry I must have the wrong apartment. My friend must of moved recently.” I say with my heart breaking knowing the truth.

I hear from behind the door Jake’s voice “your coffee is ready, love” as the girl shuts the door.

I stay stable and walk to the elevator. I wait for it to open and I heard someone come out of one of the apartments. I try not to look back, not wanting to see if it’s Jake. As the elevator door opens I feel someone grab my hand and spin me around and I see Jake. I lose it and break down looking into his blue eyes that don’t have that love I used to see looking back at me.

“MC please let’s talk” he says.

I can’t say anything as tears start streaming down my face. I manage to get out of his grip andI bolt into the elevator

 “You stay” I manage out between the tears as I make the door close. I fall to the floor and my phone goes off and I see it’s Jake. I toss it in my bag and it breaks my heart.

I knew this was coming, he became distant but I didn’t want to believe it. I walk out and get into the rental car and my phone keeps going off and it’s Jake.

I answer after the 10th call since I told him to stay “Jake I don’t want to hear it! You made a fool out of me!” I say hanging up without letting him say a word.

I pick up my phone and call Jessy. I know she moved to Paris after we managed to find Hannah but I know she comes to visit so I’m hoping that when I told her I was coming here that she was coming.

“Hey girl everything okay? I know you said you just got into Colville today” she says as she answers the phone.

“Jessy” I say , bawling my eyes out, unable to get out anything more.

“MC what is wrong do I need to get Dan on this chat?” she ask

“No Dan. He’s just going to tell me ‘I told you so’.... I came out here to surprise Jake and try and rekindle because we haven’t seen each other in 6 months and" I start having a panic attack.

“Calm down, I just landed coming to Duskwood as well. Send me your location and I'll  come get you in a cab and we can go get coffee.”

I send her my location “Jessy….. Its over between me and him and there is nothing to fix anymore. He cheated on me,"  I say crying again.

“I’ll be there right away. Once I get out of the cab I'll call you again, stay there please.” she says, concerned for me.

We hang up the phone and I lean my head back and close my eyes.

My mind wanders to these last six months. Where did we go wrong? What happened we were madly in love? I thought moving out here would make things better and we could live a normal life together.

I get startled by someone knocking on my window and I open my eyes and see Jake. He has a cup of coffee in his hand and I see the sadness in his eyes. My window is cracked so I don’t get too hot waiting for Jessy 

‘MC can we talk please, i brought you coffee,” he says trying to do that smile that melts my heart and he knows it.

“Jake, I need some time. I flew out here to try and fix things with you. Only to knock on your door and have another girl answer it.” I say turning on the car and shutting the window as I put the music on and the song “Flower '' by Lauren Spencer Smith plays and I just start bawling my eyes again.

Jake tries to open my door but it's locked and my phone goes off. 

“I’m in the parking garage, first floor, red BMW. Heads up he’s standing outside my driver door” I say as I answer wiping the tears away from my eyes.

“Oh he better leave before I lose it on him!” she yells into the phone and I can tell she’s angry.

All of a sudden, I see Jake get pushed back from the car by a female and I notice the red hair. I can’t help but laugh because that’s my best friend.

“Dan and I warned you what would happen Jake!” she angrily yells in his face. “You thought we were joking but I already told Dan what she told me! How the hell could you cheat on her when all she wanted was to be with you!?”

She goes to open the  back door and realizes it is locked. I undo it knowing he’s not going to try anything and I was wrong. As Jessy is putting her luggage in the backseat with mine, he opens the drivers door and crouched down so he’s at my level. I turn my head away from him in pure disgust of him.

“MC, please we need to talk about this” he says, starting to reach out but stops.

“Just leave her alone, she doesn’t want to even look at you, Jake” says Jessy as I climb into the passenger seat in the front seat, unable to drive at this moment and just wanting away from him.

“Jessica, just let her tell me this herself.” he says.

“I told you fucking stay! I walked away from you crying because it’s over. You hurt me Jake and I can’t keep doing this,'' I say looking into his eyes as I start crying again but so flustered with myself and him for not seeing the signs before this trip.

He stands up “fine but I eventually do want to talk to you about everything’ he says as he steps away from the car.

Jessy gets in the car and I get out. I look at Jessy, give me a few moments I need to say some things to him” i say walking around the front of the car and away from it and he follows me.

He leans against the wall and reaches for my hand but I cross my arms. “I need to say something and then I’m walking away before I say or do something I regret right now” I say with tears still in my eyes.

“Okay, I understand.” he says and I see the hurt in his eyes.

“I helped you become a free man from running.” as tears run down my face.  “You took me over to your house to meet your family, even your MOM! You introduce me to them, saying that you’d marry me. Then you looked me in the eyes after we left and say ‘It was just a joke’. You kiss me and I’d smile, did you even know? When you’d say that kind of thing, I’d be excited. You got me hoping one day you would mean it.” as i feel my heart rate increase. “I always thought I’d only make a fool of someone else. Now you have only gone and made me make one of myself. We’d fight and you'd send flowers but i guess they aren’t just used for big apologies.” my hands start to shake. “I guess I should’ve been more conscious of how you spoke to me, trying to control me. When we would fight you’d give me space and not communicate and for a while I thought that’s what i should appreciate.” Blaming myself for not seeing this sooner. “Maybe I was holding onto what I thought you were, but when you think too hard, eventually it starts to hurt. The version of you in my head, now I know it wasn’t true. Young people fall for the wrong people, I guess my one was you.” as I say this I walk away. 

"MC, I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you." He says but I act like I didn't hear him.

Not giving Jake a chance to say anything as I get back in the car and Jessy pulls out and I see him in the side mirror standing there watching the car leave.

Jakes POV:

I watch them leave and I see MC’s face in the side mirror and my heart breaks. Once they are out of sight I punch the brick wall behind me as I see the girl from last night come walking out to the elevator.

“I won’t be coming back” she says as she walks past me. I don’t say anything to her because she already figured out it was more than what MC mentioned.

I head back into my apartment and pull out my phone. I open the messages but knowing she’s not going to check them right now and I can’t blame her.

Jake: MC, I’m sorry for everything. You deserve better than this. I know for the last year I haven’t been the best and you kept trying to fix things between us and I just pushed you away. Please just know you will always hold a space in my heart and I did fall in love with you and I hate that I broke you like this.

I hit send, unsure if she even blocked me until it shows she’s online. I see her typing and then nothing and she goes offline again.

“I will always love you, MC” I say to myself as I throw the coffee cup I still have across the apartment.

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Cats 1986 (and Others) vs. 2016

A post I made a few months ago comparing information gathered from interviews with different Cats casts has come up again recently and I’ve heard even more interviews since, so I want to add on to that a little and elaborate on the things I’ve already said.

CW: Some of the language regarding Demeter’s backstory is a bit darker than I’ve previously mentioned

So, I’ve now heard interviews from US Tours III, IV, and V, spanning from 1986 to 2012. They’re all Broadway-based, and the Broadway Revival went in a very different direction, but the three tours were all very similar to each other.

In both the tours and in 2016, the cast was sat down before rehearsals to hear the “story of Cats”. However, this meant two completely different things. The Tour casts were told the plot of the show, who their characters were and what they were meant to be doing. The 2016 was told the story of how the show Cats was created, how ALW had the idea and made a show out of it. No mention of the story and characters. This means that the Tour casts were given useful information for building their characters, while the 2016 cast got something that was interesting but did nothing to help them do their jobs in the present. More emphasis was put on the show’s legacy than on how to actually perform it. Trevor Nunn did the 2016 explaining, I believe, and it sounds like he was on an ego trip, talking about what he did instead of what the cast was supposed to do. Trevor Nunn is one of the few people who knows how the show works, so this is quite frustrating.

Though the Tour cast was given a whole story, most of them only remembered the perspectives of their own characters. The point of learning the plot was so that they knew what they were doing. It wasn’t supposed to matter to the audience. So, everyone mainly focused on their own jobs. But, everyone knew Demeter’s backstory, because it was the first thing they were told and it caught their attention. It almost became a meme that the first sentence of the plot was “Demeter was raped by Macavity”.

The story begins with Demeter having just escaped from Macavity. He kidnapped and raped her. Though she didn’t want it, she kind of enjoyed the sex, which messed with her head quite a bit. Bomba went through the exact same thing, but because she enjoyed it, she acts like the whole thing was nothing more than an annoyance. The two react to the same situation in different ways.

Jacob Brent was either given a toned down version of the story (he mentions kidnapping, but not rape), or he chose to give a toned down version to avoid the uncomfortable subject. 

The 2016 knew that Macavity and Demeter had some sort of backstory, but they weren’t very clear on exactly what happened. They decided that they’d had an abusive relationship, but that the whole thing was consensual and there was no kidnapping, because the only element of this story that the audience can pick up without context is that there was some sort of sexual relationship between Macavity and Demeter, but she’s now afraid of him.

At least one cast member said that Macavity was a rapist, but she didn’t elaborate.

This messed with Demeter’s character far more than anyone expected. The rape element honestly isn’t necessary. Demeter and Macavity had some sort of sex, but it could’ve been consensual, with Demeter enjoying the sex but hating the man. That’s actually what Gillian Lynne seemed to have implied in interviews. However, the kidnapping part of the backstory is important, because it establishes the connection between Demeter and Grizabella. While hiding from Macavity, right before the story begins, Demeter sees Grizabella on the Bad Side of Town. Due to not being a Jellicle before this night, she doesn’t know who she is, and therefore has no bias against her. She just sees this woman living on the streets, humans wondering aloud why she isn’t dead, and felt sympathy for her. 

So, when Grizabella appears at the ball and everyone hates her, Demeter wants to intervene, but she doesn’t want to upset her new friends. She came to the Jellicles for protection and is afraid of them rejecting her for siding with their enemy. Still, she tells the tribe what she knows about Griz, possibly trying to convince them to be nicer to her, but it doesn’t work and Demeter just starts following the crowd.

The lyrics Demeter sings, by themselves, are musical exposition that doesn’t imply sympathy. A line like “You’d really have thought she’d ought to be dead” sounds like it could be played as an insult. The words can either mean “I’m surprising the poor thing’s still alive in her condition” or “Why can’t the bitch fuck off and die already?”. Without the context of Demeter’s backstory, Kim Faure picked the latter, when with the context, it’s clearly meant to be the former. So, Demeter’s delivery of her lines in Glamour Cat in 2016 is venomous, almost sadistic.

Later on, towards the end of act one, 2016 Demeter reaches out to Grizabella like she does in most other versions, despite the earlier delivery. What made her change gears? I have no idea.

So, there was a lot of insight on Demeter. She’s the character with the most detailed backstory, making her the closest thing the show has to a protagonist. 

Another character that gets a lot of attention, as he demands, is Tugger. Many Tugger actors were interviewed. I think he’s the favorite character of the host of the podcast. Different Tuggers from different eras responded to certain topics differently. Tuggers from the 1980s were unaware that Tugger was commonly interpreted as Not Straight and that Tuggoffelees is a thing. But, the more recent the show their from, the more they’re aware of and interested in the topic. The Tour V Tugger joined very late, during the last few years of the tour. He had access to the internet and could see what the fandom was up to. He played Tugger as ambiguously bi and, though he hadn’t thought of it at the time, liked the idea of the Tuggoffelees pairing. Tyler Hanes, 2016 Tugger, was the only one interviewed who played Tuggoffelees on purpose.

Tyler Hanes was very interesting. He watched the 1998 film while preparing for the role and didn’t seem to like it very much. He wanted his version of Tugger to be his own and avoided taking inspiration from any other version. John Partridge’s Tugger and Hanes’ Tugger being so different from each other might’ve been deliberate.

But, the choreography is what really messed with Tugger’s character. The host of the podcast mentioned Tugger’s pelvic thrusts and Hanes said that he wanted to do that sort of thing, but the new choreography removed all of it. He couldn’t make Tugger as horny or sexy as he wanted to. It was a key part of the character, but the choreography just wouldn’t let it happen. The result is that a bunch of queens fangirl over Tugger, but because Tugger’s defining trait in his number is being vain and obnoxious, the reason why he, of all toms, is considering the sexiest is completely lost. He’s just a dick to everyone (except Misto) and they love him anyway. 

Other Tuggers do act like assholes during the number, but it’s not the focus. The lyrics are about Tugger being difficult, but the choreography, often to a comedic degree, isn’t about that. The message of Lynne’s choreography is that DESPITE Tugger being obnoxious, he’s a sex god and that’s what matters to his fans. Blankenbuehlers’s choreography mainly focuses on Tugger being obnoxious, which is a better match to the lyrics, but it makes the character less likable.

Also, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The two most sexualized numbers are Tugger’s and Macavity’s. Tugger’s number is about a man being sexy. Macavity’s number has two women being sexy. Blankenbuehler redid Tugger’s number, toning down the sexuality, but he left Macavity alone completely, so it’s as sexual as it always is. Male sexuality needs to be toned down, but female sexuality is fine. This is what happens when a woman is replaced with a straight dude. I doubt it was done on purpose, but there was definitely some subconscious bias going on there.

The way the casts talk about the two choreographers is also different. Both of them are treated as the experts on the show, more like how a director is normally treated. But, how well they filled that role varied. Lynne could explain what every single move meant. Those who worked with her knew exactly what they were doing. Nobody has ever described any of Blankenbuehler’s choreography with the same detail. In numbers in 2016 that Blankenbuehler left alone, even without Lynne present at all, everything was clearly explained. Skimble actors, since Skimble’s number wasn’t altered much, describe people who’d worked with Lynne talking them through the choreography. No one talked about Blankenbuehler’s work like that. Every move of Lynne’s Jellicle Ball apparently represented something. Blankenbuehler’s Jellicle Ball looks fine, but there isn’t that level of detail.

The rehearsals of the the choreography were paced differently as well. 2016 was apparently put together in something of a hurry. Most Cats rehearsals begin with several days of the cast studying cats and learning how to move like them. 2016 devoted only a few hours to this. Gillian Lynne reportedly visited a rehearsal and was upset the none of the dancers knew how to move like cats. Cats has unique choreography in a unique cat-like style, but the 2016 team had no time to practice it, so they often come across as a bit too human. They’re talented human dancers, but they’re not very cat-like. Blankenbuehler’s choreography is often in a different, more modern urban style, that doesn’t seem like it was done with cat-like movement in mind.

I don’t hate Blankenbuehler. In behind the scenes stuff, he seems like a nice guy that the team liked working with. But, I don’t think he really understood what his role was. He was a choreographer and he did choreography. This would’ve been fine, even great for any other show, but not Cats.

Most modern musical theatre is based on opera. Characters sing about their feelings and that tells the story. The added element of dance takes the feelings of the song and amplifies them. The actors are emoting with their entire bodies in a larger-than-life way that creates an emotional intensity that audiences can empathize with. The music makes the audience feel what the characters are feeling in a way nothing else really can. Music is kind of magical. You hear a certain melody with certain instruments, and suddenly you’re happy, or sad, or angry.

This, by the way, is why going for realism in musicals is a terrible idea. Musicals don’t exist in physical reality. They exist on an emotional level that realism takes away from.

Cats rarely works like opera. The lyrics are mainly just adaptations of whimsical poems, so they don’t tell you much of anything. Memory, which features original lyrics and no dancing is an exception to this rule. In general, because they’re not dance roles, Grizabella and Old Deuteronomy have to use music and song lyrics to play their parts in the story. Jemima also does this whenever she does something connected to either one of them.

But, Cats is normally more of a ballet than an opera. Ballet tells a story purely through dance. Because the lyrics in Cats matter so rarely, it ends up working like a ballet, because the dance, unrelated to the poems, means something. It’s still a heightened reality where music invokes emotions and actors emote with their whole bodies, like in other musicals, but instead of the dance being an amplifier, it’s the storyteller.

ALW really liked a bunch of poems and wanted to put them to music. The result was a bunch of songs with a similar them but no real connection to each other. That works as a concept album, but Webber wanted a musical, an actual show where people danced to his concept album. He didn’t care about the story and didn’t expect anyone else to.

But, other people cared about the story. No one knew how to make a musical that’s not about something. Trevor Nunn added Memory and the storyline with Grizabella as an emotional centerpiece. There wasn’t a clear plot, but, on an emotional level, it now felt like something was actually happening. Gillian Lynne had no idea how to choreograph a musical about nothing, so she didn’t. She came up with her own interpretations of things and made the show about something. Several somethings, in fact. Victoria is going through puberty and discovering her sexuality. Demeter is recovering from an abusive sexual experience, with Bomba having a different attitude towards being in the same situation. The women in the story were given detailed story arcs that often revolved around their sexuality.

How sexuality is portrayed in Cats could be its own essay. 

Anyway, Cats tells its story with a unique style of choreography. Because the choreographer is the story teller, Lynne had a lot of influence over the show. She was the one who knew all the details. Blankenbuehler was brought in to choreograph a show, like a normal job for him, not knowing what that would actually mean. He came in to have dance amplify the emotions in the song lyrics like in any other musical, not knowing that that’s impossible to do with Cats. The role of choreographer meant a level of knowledge and control that would normally belong to the director, composer, and lyricist. He didn’t realize that the show having any story at all depended on him.

So, he did stuff that looked cool, but didn’t tell the story, or that took the story in a direction that it wasn’t supposed to go. Tugger dancing in front of a giant mirror is funny in the moment, but that sort of narcissism, though funny, isn’t likable, and Tugger needs to be likable. He’s a major character and he helps save the day at the end by hyping up Misto. But, 2016 Tugger hypes up Misto because if feels like Misto is the only cat he truly respects. He has the same respect for Old Deuteronomy that the others have, but he doesn’t sound quite as sincere when he sings about him. He spends so much of his number antagonizing Munkustrap in particular that it’s hard to believe that he has any respect for him.

What can be learned from these interviews is that Blankenbuehler didn’t know what his job truly was and was there because someone important thought Cats would be more popular in 2016 if it was more like Hamilton and got the Hamilton guy to give it a make-over. Nunn was so proud of the show’s success that he neglected what made it successful in the first place, and the 2016 cast was rushed through rehearsals without proper instructions. Everyone tried their best, but they were all stuck.

For the most part, I blame whoever decided to have Blankenbuehler rechoreograph the show. Blankenbuehler did what he thought his job was and the cast did their jobs to the best of their ability. What really ruined Cats 2016 was an executive decision to fix something that wasn’t broken, believing if they made the Old Big Show more like the New Big Show, that would make people love it again. But Hamilton is no more like Cats than a cat is like a dog.

[autumnleaves1991-blog]

Next One’s on You 3/5

A/N: Thank you so much for reblogging, commenting, and liking! I read them all and I really appreciate it. Let me know if you want to be added to a Taglist. This is my personal favorite chapter so far. :D 

Summary: A series of moments in the life of Maxwell Lord and reader centered around drinks. 

Pairing: Maxwell Lord x F! Reader

Warnings: 18 + for language 

Taglist: @josepedropascal @mrschiltoncat @ghostwiththemostbitch @mrsparknuts @oldstuffnewstuff @yespolkadotkitty @heythere-mel @justanotherblonde23 @artsymaddie @maxlordsgf @xjaywritesx

My Masterlist 

Chapter Two - Vodka Martinis 

Chapter Three: Orange Juice 

Our start was rocky. From the unwanted solicitation, throwing a latte in his face, the note, that horrible date with Tom, and being doused in freezing water. You really thought that things couldn’t get any more rocky. Until you met his mother. Mrs. Lord as she commanded you to call her, was a complete and total bitch. 

Coming in like a hurricane and leaving nothing but devastation in her wake. After that night you continued seeing Maxwell Lord. You’re first date he rented out an entire movie theater, and didn’t even pay attention to the movie, his face buried in your neck the whole night. Followed up by small dinners at his mansion, and late night drives in his blood red corvette, the top down, you curled up against his side after a long day at work. 

After each one of these dates his toxic mother would swoop into your work and threaten you with anything in her arsenal. How she could get you fired, lose your apartment, sue you for some insignificant thing, and each time you would kindly tell her to fuck off. But she wasn’t just going after you but Maxwell as well and her claws were deep into him. Preying on all his fears and insecurities that she had instilled in him from a young age. Whispering lies in his ear that she had you tailed and were cheating on him, just using him for his money, or worse trying to get a baby out of him so he would be paying you for eighteen plus years. 

Each time he would come to you and you would remind him something his traumatized brain forgot in those moments….how much you loved him. 

Yes, he was an egotistical, rich, asshole and that is what the world thinks of him. But you saw so much more than that. The way he would take off your sticky non-slip shoes and rub your feet after a long day at the shop, stinking of coffee grounds. How he would hold your hand and rubs circles with his thumb whenever he drove you somewhere. The way he would make love to you with such tenderness, the aftercare where he would clean you and hold you so close you could feel your heartbeats sync together. You were his deepest secret, proof to the world that Maxwell Lord had a heart. Although no one knew that. 

You sit on the couch with your ice cream watching TV. Maxwell had a charity gala this evening and you're watching the news coverage hoping to get a glimpse of him in his tux. You had given him a new pocket square for his birthday last week and he promised to wear it. You dip the spoon in and lift it up to your lips when it clatters back into the carton. You put it on the table and crawl on your knees closer to the TV. 

Maxwell Lord IV is being interviewed by a local reporter looking immaculate. Not a single strand out of place and smiling jovial as he answers the questions. But that isn’t what caught your attention...it’s the blonde woman on his arm. You recognize her instantly as a model on the cover of the magazine your roommate bought yesterday. She is gorgeous, thin, wearing a floor-length pale pink dress, and a diamond collar. Her hand rests in the crook of his elbow and he has one hand over her own. 

“Mr. Lord, is this your girlfriend?” the reporter buzzes. 

“Oh Kitty here?” he kisses the beautiful woman's cheek and she giggles, “No, she is just a good friend of mine, I don’t have time in my life for any serious relationships.” He smiles at the camera again and you notice the pocket square is a pale pink to match her dress and not the one you bought and you feel the ice cream sour in your stomach. 

You reach for the knob and turn off the television laying down on the floor looking at the small cracks in the ceiling. You recall the conversation about this gala replaying it over and over again in your head. 

“Do you want me to attend with you?” 

“No, it’s just some boring charity gala we have ten to fifteen a year. I wouldn’t want to bore you with having to endure that for an evening,” he adjusts his tie and smiles over at you laying in his bed. 

“I understand,” you nod leaning up to kiss him softly, “Are you...going with anyone?” 

“No. I haven’t been attending these things with anyone since you and I...since you and I,” his eyes soften as he sits on the edge of the bed, taking his hand in yours. “You know how much I love you darling, I just want to keep you all to myself. If I bring you to this gala the press are going to start asking questions and….I’m not ready to share you with the world yet.” 

You smile, tightening the grip on his hand, “As long as I don’t have to share you with anyone either.” 

“There is no one else, you’re it for me honey,” he pulls you in for another kiss and you sigh. 

Your heart shatters thinking of the model and how perfect she looked on his arm. She would be the perfect addition to Maxwell. The words of his mother seep into you and your self doubt begins to bloom. You shake your head and get off the floor, put the ice cream away, and go to bed. The heaviness of your heart dragging you to sleep. 

The next morning doesn’t get any better. Your usual good morning phone call with Maxwell never comes and you go to work and try to clear your mind, sure it’s nothing. When your lunch break comes and still no call or even show of him you call his work. His assistant tells you regretfully that he is in meetings all day and can’t be reached. The sick feeling in your stomach continues to grow and when you get off you decide not to wait around for him, catching a cab to his home. The whole staff knows you and greets you happily and the chef makes you a sandwich and listens to you babble about your day as she cleans up. 

The household quiets down for the night and when it hits eleven and he’s still not home you take off your clothes, put on one of his shirts and crawl into bed. Determined not to let him get away with ignoring you all day. The next morning you wake up early, having tossed and turned the whole night. But this time the bed isn’t empty. A warm arm is draped across your waist and his mouth is pressed against your head holding you close. You sigh and watch him sleep, his face free of worry as he dreams.

You carefully eject yourself from his arms and go into the kitchen starting the button on the coffee. It’s very early and the chef isn’t even here yet so you decide to make some breakfast for yourself and Maxwell. The difficult conversation may be easier over food. You get out the egg whites, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and cheese for omelets and get to work cooking. Halfway through turning on the small radio and dancing around the kitchen to some Beegees. You're almost done cooking, putting the omelets onto the plates and pulling out a carton of orange juice and pouring a glass. 

You hear a slight chuckle and whirl around to see Maxwell Lord IV in his grey sleep pants, white shirt, and wearing bright blue cookie monster slippers you had bought him as a joke since he has a secret affinity for cookies. “What are you doing honey?” he asks, gesturing to the mess. 

“I...I thought we could have breakfast together and...talk...we need to talk Maxwell.” 

He lowers his head and nods grabbing the plates and juice before setting them down at the small kitchen table. Usually he liked to eat in the grand dining room but the small eat in kitchen table was your favorite. He sits close to you and digs in groaning at the taste. “This is delicious.” 

You give a half hearted smile, taking a bite and putting down your fork, turning to him, “I saw your interview at the gala....why did you lie to me about not having a date?” 

He grimaces, “my mother surprised me,” he sighs, “I was getting dressed for the gala and she shows up with Kitty, throws your pocket square in the trash and pushes us into the limo with her. I get the feeling that Kitty didn’t have much choice as well, but we played the part. I never wanted to lie to you, I just didn’t have time to tell you.” 

“Then why ignore me all day yesterday? No call, no visit, and when I tried to call the office they said you were in meetings all day.” 

“I was in meetings all day and I am so sorry about not calling in the morning but I had to take care of something very important yesterday.” 

“What was it?” not taking no for an answer. “My mother,” he rubs a hand over his face, “I had breakfast with my mother...I told her that what she did the night before was unacceptable and that I wanted to be with you. Of course she spent the entire day arguing with me but I couldn’t give a care. And at the end of it all I told her she needed to choose. Either she accepts you and we move forward or she can forget that she has a son.” 

“Maxwell,” you beg, “why didn’t you call me? I could have gone with you, you shouldn’t have had to do that alone! What did she say?” 

“She told me if I wanted to marry that poor coffee shop bitch, then she would never speak to me again.” You're silent as you process his words. Marry…? 

He stands from the table and goes into the foyer of the house. You can hear him digging in his coat and he comes back with a tiffany blue box. He drops to one knee before you and tears sting in your eyes, rubbing at them furiously. 

“I told her goodbye and then went to pick up the ring from the jewelers, I ordered it three weeks ago,” he opens the box and you gasp at the princess cut diamond surrounded by sapphires. “I had this big proposal planned, candles, champagne, a string quartet, your favorite restaurant. But, when I woke up this morning and saw you in my shirt, dancing and cooking breakfast, I thought this was a much better time. Plus you know how impatient I am darling.” 

You let out a watery chuckle and nod in agreement. Allowing him to continue, “I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I want to bring you to every gala, show you off to the world, and every morning I want to wake up with you in my arms. Will you marry me?” 

“Yes,” you cry, “yes of course, I will marry you,” you're openly sobbing and he has tears streaming down his cheeks as he slides the ring onto your finger. Pulling you out of your chair and into his lap as he kisses you passionately. His hands running through your hair and holding you close. 

“Oh my,” the chef opens the door seeing you both on the floor in a passionate embrace and backs out. You laugh calling them back, “We’re engaged!” you shout and the chef and butler run into the room congratulating you both. Maxwell smiles at you and you beam back at him kissing him again. 

A loud knock sounds at the front door and the butler rushes out to answer. Returning a few moments later apologizing as Mrs. Lord slams open the door. “Maxwell!” she shrieks, and you groan holding on tighter to your fiancé who is rising to his feet and pushing you behind him, locking his hand within your own. 

“Mrs. Lord?” he asks, “If you want to speak with me you will need to schedule a meeting with my assistant.” You squeeze his hand in encouragement and watch as she gapes like a fish.  

“You can’t be serious?! You are seriously going to give up your mother for some cheap whore?!” 

He steps forward and growls, “She is not some cheap whore, this is my fiancé and you will never speak to her like that again. I am tired of being your punching bag, allowing your toxic words to seep into me. I will no longer allow you to control me, we are done. Now good day Mrs. Lord.” He tightens his grip. 

“Maxwell, you can’-” she stammers and is cut off when he yells raising his voice. 

“I said good-day! Get the hell out of our home, you are no longer welcome.” She tightens her grip on her Hermes handbag and straightens her Dior dress before glaring daggers at you. 

“This isn’t over,” she hisses and turns on her heel stomping out of the house. 

When the door slams shut behind her, the staff quickly leave you two alone and you hold him close in your arms. Leaning up to whisper in his ear, “I am so proud of you.” He sighs and holds you tighter, placing a kiss to your temple. “I couldn’t let her talk like that about you.  You are going to be my wife, and no one will ever disrespect you like that.” 

“You’ve really changed Maxwell, I think some of those things you said to me the first time we met,” you tease and he groans. 

“Despite our rocky start and how much of an utter asshole I was, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because it brought me to you. I love you sweetheart,” he kisses you gently. 

“I love you too. Do you...do you think she’s going to do something bad? She seemed very angry when she left.” 

“Whatever happens, we will face it together. She is a bitter old woman, what’s the worst she can do?” he holds you close to his chest and reaches down for his orange juice taking a large drink. “Let’s just focus on the next thing.” 

“What’s next?” you sigh taking the glass from him and taking a deep drink. 

“Planning the wedding of the century darling.” 

You cough loudly. Oh fuck what have you gotten yourself into now? 

Chapter 4- Champagne (check master list for link)

[lassieposting]

skulduggery/alt!serpine for the getting together ask game?

I’m bored, so. Send me two (or more) characters for a headcanon on how I’d have them get together

OHOHOHOHO SEE THIS IS A GOOD ONE BC

ive already been thinking about this and im. Lowkey really glad im not the only one

See I always hated skug with any serpine, like I was a passionate anti from 2007 - about three months ago but. I enjoyed their dynamic in phase one and then i read like three of their interactions from sow and got converted or some shit apparently idfk, anyway u know i love an angsty ship

this got really long so tldr; enemies to vitriolic hate-sex buddies to lovers, painfully slow burn, but they'll both die claiming they still hate each other

It begins with China.

She orders him to kill Serpine, and he refuses. He's not even 100% sure why when he does. It's not like they're friends. He's killed people he liked a good deal more than Nefarian Serpine under orders.

But she says, "kill him" and he says, "no", and then things spiral so quickly that it's actually a few days before he even has time to think about her parting shot, flung at him as he walked out on her: "if you want to keep him, you'll be the one looking after him. He's your responsibility, not mine. And if he hurts someone, you -"

He'd shut the door on her at that point, but he knows what she was going to say. You look after him yourself, you train him yourself, and if he hurts someone, you kill him yourself. A wonderfully old-world way of looking at things. He's fairly sure he remembers getting the same speech from the housekeeper when he tried to bring home the ugliest feral tomcat he'd ever seen as a small boy.

(This will come back to bite him. He's not sure how or when, but it will. That's the way of things, whenever he turns his back on China Sorrows. Her last parting shot - a classic "you'll regret this" - ended up getting him killed.)

But then there's Mevolent, and cleaning up a city in the aftermath of its latest Traumatic Event, and putting a size 10 to the backsides of the City Guard, so his priorities get reshuffled somewhat, and it's almost a week later that he thinks to ask, "Heard from Serpine lately? He's being oddly quiet."

Valkyrie blinks at him from the passenger seat. Her fingertips tap tap tap at the touchscreen. She's messaging someone. He doesn't know who. "He's...around."

"Why the pause?"

"Hm?"

"You paused," he points out, switching lanes to get around a hatchback dawdling along at 60. "He's...around. You're trying to hide something from me. I'm aware you still talk to him, you know."

She doesn't deny it. He's gotten used to that, in the last few years. She doesn't tell him things anymore. It's that distance, the distance he can try to banter over but never truly remove. She's a lot further away than his passenger seat. "He's been looking for somewhere to live, like. Now that he's here for good. So, you know. That's probably keeping him busy."

Nefarian Serpine is living out of a stuffy first-floor rented room above, of all things, Vaurien Scapegrace's pub.

He knows this not because China was having Serpine followed (although she was) or because plenty of old faces from the Sanctuary still owe him favours (although they do), but because he receives a text from Scapegrace at a quarter to midnight, in the middle of a grisly murder scene.

have u beaten anyone up lately? do u want to? think thrasher just rented one of our rooms to a war criminal

He taps out a response, half-focused on the screen and half on Valkyrie examining the photos on the dead man's mantelpiece. She looks like she's just figured something out.

Which one? Thrasher, or the other guy?

By the time he's dropped her home, said hello to the furball and returned to the city, morning is bleeding into the sky. He knocks sharply on Nefarian Serpine's peeling rented door, and then again when there's no response.

From inside, a thud.

Then another, followed by some deeply impolite language, and then the door jerks open. Serpine, wearing an impressive bedhead, a scraggly attempt at a beard and a pair of patterned socks with a hole in the toe, squints out into the hall and snaps, "D'you have ANY IDEA what time it is? This place is supposed to - ah, shite. It's you."

"It is," he agrees.

Serpine gives him a sulky jerk of the head - an invitation - and vanishes back inside. He follows, closing the door gently behind him. Inside the room is dark and depressing and smells faintly of mildew and sweat. There are clothes on the floor.

He pulls the curtains open and looks out the window, giving Serpine some privacy to get dressed.

"Found me at last, have you?" Serpine asks from over by the bed. There's a rustle of fabric and the sound of a belt being done up. "What do you want? Come to take my other hand?"

That's it. That's what's different. "Other? You don't seem to be missing any at present, Nefarian. Valkyrie's work, I take it."

Serpine sits down on the bed with a squeak of springs, and when Skulduggery turns to face him, he's smirking and, thankfully, wearing trousers. "Ever so nice of her, wasn't it? Doesn't work like the old one, though. You know. The one I used on you."

He sighs. "And here I thought this last week would've given you time to come up with some new material."

Serpine shrugs and spends a moment picking out a pair of shirts from the wardrobe beside the bed. If it's a test, it's a painfully obvious one. Almost an invitation. Go ahead, shoot me.

No, this is something Skulduggery knows far more intimately. A display of brittle confidence in the face of a threat. I'm not afraid of you. Do your worst.

Serpine is afraid of him. Afraid of being arrested, maybe, or killed, or worse. He'd have relished that fear, once. Delighted in flipping the tables.

He leans back against the desk, ankles crossed and arms folded. After a moment, Serpine turns around with a shirt on a hanger in each hand. He holds them up for an opinion.

Skulduggery points wordlessly at the green one, and the blue goes back in the closet. "If you're not here to kill me, what do you want?"

While Serpine is doing up his buttons, Skulduggery retrieves the folded sheaf of paper from the inside pocket of his long coat, and holds it up. "I came to drop these off."

Serpine's vibrant eyes narrow. "What is that? An arrest warrant?"

"A list of landlords in Roarhaven willing to rent to refugees. Valkyrie mentioned you were looking."

Serpine blinks at him. Skulduggery doesn't often bother with the facade in Roarhaven, but if he had a face right now, he'd be blinking back. It's a weirdly awkward moment.

"...thanks," Serpine says after a moment, tentatively reaching for the papers; Skulduggery leans forward to pass them over. "That'd be...helpful."

He sounds very uncomfortable saying those words. When Skulduggery responds, "You're welcome," he feels much the same.

Serpine unfolds the papers and skims them. Three pages of property listings. Tipstaff had printed them off for him with only a raised eyebrow and a, "Never thought you'd move out of Dublin, Detective."

"What brought this on?"

He looks up. "Hm?"

"You show up here at an ungodly hour of the morning, nobody to rein you in, and you're being helpful? I don't buy it. I know China as well as you do. She told you to kill me, didn't she?"

"She did," Skulduggery acknowledges, and a very old, very spiky part of him gets a kick out of watching the blood drain from Serpine's face. "I told her no."

"Bollocks."

"Hard to believe, isn't it? But it's true. Ah, don't look at me like that, Nefarian. It's got nothing to do with you. I was just feeling argumentative that day. And, if nothing else, I can always rely on China to argue with me if I tell her no."

"So -"

"For my sins, she made you my responsibility, see. I'm supposed to keep an eye on you, make sure you don't get up to any of your old tricks. And if you do, then I'll kill you. I'll be checking in on you to make sure you're behaving yourself. Think of me as a...probation officer, of sorts. With benefits."

More blinking. This version of Serpine is not a morning person. He bets his alternate self got to sleep in far later in this Serpine's dungeon. "I'm not seeing any benefits."

"The benefit is I get to kill you if you step out of line. I never said the benefits were for you."

"Are there any benefits in this for me?"

He considers this for a moment. "You get to live. Because of me. I saved your life. "

Serpine's face is emotionless and his voice is flat.

"Oh," he says. "Yippee."

He's interviewing a witness when his phone rings.

He politely excuses himself, and steps out into the hallway to answer it. "Pleasant."

"Hello!" Serpine says brightly, and launches immediately into, "I want a car."

Skulduggery's fake face blinks at the sigil-embossed wallpaper. It takes a second to even register the voice, and another to pick up on -

"How the -? Who gave you this number?"

"Valkyrie." Serpine sounds completely unapologetic. "And you're supposed to be teaching me to drive."

Serpine can't see his head tilt. He does it anyway. "Am I now? And what gave you that idea?"

"I'm your problem now, remember? Besides, you agreed to it," is the smug answer. "Before our little holiday back to my dimension, I said I wanted a better house and a latte and a car. And driving lessons."

"I never agreed to that."

"Well, you didn't say no. That's agreement by default. Sorry."

"Plenty of people can teach you to drive, Nefarian. You could teach yourself, even. Watch a video on Youtube."

"Detective Pleasant, I am shocked," Serpine teases, suddenly dripping with insincere concern. "Think of all those poor defenceless mortals I could run into. There's an advert on the television about how you're specifically not supposed to hit them with cars. It kills them, apparently. How will I cope without you there to make sure I resist temptation?"

Skulduggery grinds his teeth. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Immensely. I'd completely forgotten how much fun it is to have you at my mercy. And you did say you're supposed to keep an eye on me."

Skulduggery goes quiet for a moment, focusing on reining in the urge to hit something. Serpine's face. He wants to hit Serpine's face. With a chair. Trust him to figure out that being Skulduggery's responsibility meant he could go to him for help.

"Fine."

"Excellent! And now you have my number, so you can let me know when you're free."

"Since when do you have a mobile?"

"Since today," Serpine says airily. "Tanith helped me pick one out. I can talk to anyone, anywhere, whenever I like now. Isn't that great? I mean, I only have two numbers, three now that Valkyrie's given me yours, but still. Now I'll always have someone to talk to."

"This is a work line. It is not for social calls."

A passing sorcerer startles a little at his tone, and he gives her an apologetic smile. As an afterthought, he rolls his eyes in a you know how it is gesture. But she's already walking away, so really he just rolls his eyes at her back, which is probably rude of him.

Serpine is still talking. "- can send little moving pictures, and I've downloaded all these little applications, so now I do all sorts of fun things. Do you use...whatsit...Snapchat? I have Snapchat now. And I've got Angry Birds and Candy Crush and Grindr."

And that? That right there? That is more than he ever needed to know about Serpine.

"Goodbye, Nefarian," he says firmly, and hangs up.

He checks in on Serpine once a week, officially. Unofficially, he clocks more hours than he'd like to admit parked in an alley outside Scapegrace's pub, waiting for someone to scream bloody murder. Serpine spots him a couple of times, gives him a jaunty wave with his newly-regrown hand on his way to the off-licence, mocking and unconcerned.

But nobody gets murdered. Serpine seems to be...behaving. For now.

"I've volunteered you for move-in duty," Valkyrie says, apropos of nothing. When he blinks at her, she shrugs and takes a sip of her coffee. "Serpine's found a flat. He needs some furniture shifting."

He's not going to throw anything at his partner in this busy mortal cafe. He's not.

"I see. And you thought that has anything to do with me because..."

She polishes off the last dregs of her drink with a slurp. "I can't float stuff up stairs."

The apartment Serpine is moving into is a decent two-bedroom on the fourth floor of a six-floor block in a quiet area with a history of minimal unexpected-demolitions-by-overpowered-supervillain. Skulduggery idly wonders, as he pulls up in the parking area behind the building, whether a mass murderer moving in - and the frequent visits by the other mass murderer charged with keeping an eye on him - will bring down housing prices. China will hate that, when she wakes up.

Serpine is waiting for him out front, surrounded by boxes and furniture, already looking a bit frazzled. His outfit is stylish and his slicked-back hair is sticking up in places where he's been running his hands though it. He startles and looks up at the sound of footsteps, and seems to breathe a sigh of relief. "Ah! You came. Valkyrie said you'd know how to go about getting all this, you know. Up there."

"You can hire people for this, you know," Skulduggery tells him. "Removal men."

"With what money?" Serpine asks, a little helplessly. "Valkyrie gave me some of her old things, but I got most of this from - what's the word? - second hand shops, and the refugee aid centre. I've been looking for work, but...you know." He gestures at his face. "This is my criminal record."

Which...is a fair point, so Skulduggery rolls up his sleeves and moves to one end of a squashed two-seater couch. "Fair enough. Grab the other end."

Serpine's mouth almost drops open. "You want to carry it? Like peasants? I thought you were here to float the damn thing!"

Well, he could. But the world isn't actively ending right now, so he can afford to be petty. "I don't use magic unless I have to, these days. We'll be doing this the old-fashioned way."

"But." The last time he saw someone look this aghast was when Valkyrie realised how the citizens of Roarhaven saw her. "But that's manual labour!"

"A little manual labour will do you good."

"Gods, I hate you," Serpine tells him as he moves to grab the other end of the couch.

Skulduggery turns the facade on specifically to give him a smug smirk. "I know."

By the time they're finishing up the boxes, Serpine's new neighbours have come out into the hall to see what all the banging is about. They seem young, mostly - too young to recognise him from the war. Skulduggery is starting to suspect that Serpine has accidentally moved into student housing, but he keeps his mouth shut. Serpine is being chatty and charming, holding court in the corridor, and Skulduggery mostly lets him get on with it in between trips to the bottom of the stairs to pick up more boxes, until a young woman who holds Serpine's front door open for him and chuckles, "Left you doing all the work, has he? He's a talker, your boyfriend. I bet you don't get a word in edgewise."

It's not often that Skulduggery Pleasant is lost for words. "I. I'm sorry. What?"

Fortunately, Serpine chooses that moment to interrupt the conversation he's having and interject, "Oh, no, darling. We're not together. He's just here to make sure I stay out of trouble."

There's something off about how he says it, though. There must be, because the woman taps her nose like he's just confided a secret, and Skulduggery can't help but feel like he's just been made the butt of a joke he doesn't fully understand.

He checks on Serpine once a week. Occasionally Serpine texts him. A blurry photo, usually paired with a caption like, "what the hell is this?"; a set of traffic lights, or a lollipop man, or a chihuahua in a little jumper. Sometimes he responds, but sometimes he doesn't bother.

It's not like they're friends.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, Roarhaven's shopping district is bustling, and Nefarian Serpine is late.

Skulduggery's been people-watching, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, for fifteen minutes when he finally shows up with a to-go coffee cup in one hand and a stack of books under the other arm. He's frowning.

"You're late," says Skulduggery, by way of greeting.

Serpine shrugs, taking the seat opposite. He dumps his books on the round table and gives the menu a cursory glance. "Sorry. I was at the library. Almost missed the bus."

A waitress approaches wearing a shirt stamped with the logo of the little bistro they're sat outside, and while Serpine orders lunch, Skulduggery idly examines the titles stamped along the spines of his book mountain. Some of them look old, leather bound tomes with fancy gold lettering, and the rest seem to be...textbooks, of all things.

"A little light reading, Nefarian?"

"Huh?" Serpine - busy watching the waitress walk back inside - swivels round to face him, and shrugs. "Oh. Yeah. I want to see if they match up with the slanderous shite they're teaching at the university."

"Excuse me?"

Serpine shrugs. "Vapid and Ty - you know Ty, weird hair, lives next door - thought it might help me adapt if I learn more about how your world is different to mine, so. I've been sitting in on some classes. Unofficially. History. Mortal Relations. That kind of thing. You have battles here that never happened back home, you know."

Skulduggery folds his arms across his chest and leans back in his chair, amused despite himself. "Mortal Relations? You're going to Mortal Relations lectures. You."

"Shut up," says Serpine, pointing a finger at him. "You don't get to laugh. You're not the one nobody wants to hire. - because that's still a problem, by the way. Aren't you supposed to be helping me with that?"

"I'm supposed to be making sure you don't kill anyone or make a nuisance of yourself. Sorry to disappoint."

"Would it kill you to write me a character reference?"

Skulduggery coughs conspicuously into his gloved hand with the throat he doesn't have. He picks up the top book from Serpine's stack and flips idly through Religion & Warfare: The Rise Of The Church Of The Faceless In The 15th Century . "Think about that one for a minute, Nefarian, and you'll remember why it's not happening."

"Fine. Be like that." Serpine's shoe nudges his leg under the table. "Here, were you at the Battle of Black Rock?"

He has to think about that one for a second, then hums in the negative. "Hm. No. I missed that one. I think that was when I was holed up in Cork with a broken leg. Why?"

"History 201," Serpine muses. "I tagged along this morning. It was mostly about that fight, but it never happened in my dimension. It was borderline slanderous, honestly. The professor is an imbecile."

"You're dying to vent, aren't you?"

"Would you mind terribly?"

Skulduggery pulls his ornate pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket and checks the time. "You've got fifteen minutes. Better talk fast."

Time goes by.

He checks on Nefarian once a week. They have coffee, sometimes. Valkyrie knows not to cross the line of bringing Serpine to Skulduggery's home, but she adds them both to a group chat and neither one leaves.

Nefarian wrecks his first car, and Skulduggery makes the drive out from Dublin at 5.45am to rescue him. He calls the tow truck while Serpine sits, pale and shaken, in the Bentley's front seat, drenched from the rain and squelching miserably every time he moves.

He apologises for calling so early, and for once he sounds like he means it.

Skulduggery takes him through the McDonalds drive thru to cheer him up, and as Nefarian tucks into a box of fries with gusto, he thinks, oh no.

They're not friends. They're not.

"Is this a date?"

Skulduggery tilts his head, hand stilling over the car keys. "I'm sorry?"

Valkyrie tosses another piece of popcorn into her mouth. She's already in her pyjamas, fluffy ones with dogs on them, and she's flicking through the Netflix queue. "You're all dressed up. Is this a date? Have you two finally gotten over yourselves? God knows it's been long enough."

He snatches up the car keys and sniffs, disdainful. "After all these decades, Valkyrie, if that's what your expert detective skills are telling you, I have failed as a mentor."

"And now you're getting defensive."

"I'm doing no such thing. Where's Tanith, by the way?"

She laughs and does double fingerguns at him. "And that's deflection!"

He sighs - dramatically, for her benefit - and as he checks his pocket watch, she continues, "And, she's on her way. Get out, already. You have a date to keep and we have movies to watch."

"It's not a bloody date," he complains, patting his pockets to make sure he's got everything. "And I originally asked you."

"Yeah, but opera's boring. Here, is he meeting you there or are you picking him up?"

"Goodbye, Valkyrie."

"See?!" She shouts after him as he shuts the front door. "Date!"

[laketaj24]

The Rules IV: Triggered

Author’s Note: Thank you all soo much for your input!!! It helped me out more than you know! This was fun as hell to write and I hope you’re down for a ride! It’s about to go down. There are two songs that really hit the nail on the head for this part, they are linked below! Happy Reading my people!

Pairing: CEO!Henry Cavill X Reader

Warning: Angst. SMUT. DRAMA.

Want to catch up! Click HERE

Song Inspirations: Jhene Aiko: Triggered (First Part) Jhene Aiko: P*SSY Fairy

If your heart slowed anymore, you’d collapse. But it wasn’t just the lethargic beat of your heart that slowed down. The kiss. The fucking kiss was being replayed in your head over and over, the way she cupped him, the way his lips touched hers and he deepened it. You feel the bile rise at the helm of your throat and you step back.

“Excuse me.” You whispered to a bewildered Alex, “I need to leave.”

He noticed. You could tell by the way he looked back to Henry and then you. His tall frame went from relaxed to apathetic. “Is it him?” He gave a wave in Henry’s direction and then stepped closer to you. “Y/N?”

“I can’t talk about this right now.” You attempted to push your way through the crowd and caught an opening into the gala hall. Alex was on your feet, his long strides made it easy for him to catch you. “Hey, I can’t talk about it right now.”

Your mind raced, he took a month away from you, was it because the entire time he had her? Were you some fucking mistress, side-chick, side bitch… Homewrecker? Inwardly you taunted yourself with the unceasing line of insults to yourself. Fuck! Fuck.

“Look.” Alex cleared his throat and stepped closer to you. His presence kept you from bolting into the nearest room and destroying everything in it. You were grateful for that, maybe. “He is not worth you not enjoying this night. Do you know how beautiful you are right now? Every eye in the building was with you when we arrived. Make him mad, but don’t let him win. He did nothing to deserve a win apparently.”

The pep talk worked and more and more you were starting to understand why Alex was a friend you didn't want to lose regardless of what happened. The first dance is casual, you fight tears watching the woman touch his hand, laid her hand on his chest and laugh like he was a comedian. He wasn't that damn funny. You stay for an hour, it was required to stay an hour, you have done only what was expected of you and nothing more. Alex took you home, the car ride is silent besides the occasional murmur of a curse word under your breath.

Home is what you craved more than anything, once the door was closed and Alex's driver left you released a scream that scared you, followed by a sob as you felt your heart literally break. What a fucking feeling? Grief for someone who didn't deserve it. You didn't drink to solve your problems, so alcohol was a no. Sleep was the obvious answer.  The dress felt like it burned your skin, you were certain it didn't, but the fact that it came from him made it poison. He was poison, that you willingly chugged down like a vintage wine and now the repercussions had finally made their grand entrance. And fuck them.

Why were you looking them up, they were a known couple, known to everyone but you? You typed in his name and nothing but her appeared Billionaire Henry Cavill and Olivia Tate grace the Emmy's with their presence. Will this playboy finally settle down? Olivia Tate has HC's heart around her finger. You were sick again. You throw the phone on the couch and screenshot the picture of him kissing her. Is this the future Mrs. Cavill?

You changed clothes, slipping the crop top and leggings on. You knew it wasn't the end of the night. And you were right, sleep does not come. He sends you seven messages, each of which you stared at trying to formulate a response, but they didn't merit one, until the last one.

Henry: I've been looking for you for an hour. Where are you?

Henry: You left without a word? Are you mad or something?

Henry: A response would be nice.

Henry: Y/N

Henry: Y/N. I'll find you later.

Henry: Be there in ten.

Y/N: Drive safe. Are you bringing the wife with you?

You hit send of the picture you'd saved.

Henry: Wow.

The wait for him to arrive only infuriates you more, your mother had always said your temper was like a wildfire, once it sparked it would consume everything to the ground. You knew she was right; Henry even knew your temper needed to be managed, but no one fucking managed you. This included Henry. He didn't knock. He never did really, he entered with his perfectly tailored suit and an eye roll. And the lamp crashed behind him. He ducks, but his face is shocked.

"What the fuck was that?" he hissed.

"My fucking two-hundred-dollar lamp." You picked up the shoes and hurled them across the room next and he ducked as if he knew they were coming and charged towards you. You moved from his grasp. "You have been with her for a year!" It roared out of you and then the tears followed. "Why did you even come over here? Did you think I would be okay with it? Do you think I want to be your whore? Come when you say, fuck when you say and then you go home to her. Don't touch me!!"

"You're not going to let me explain, are you?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake! Explain Henry, tell me what lie did you conjure up, while headed here. She's just a friend. I wasn't with her." you shake your head and Henry folds his arms across his chest. "Is she the reason you wouldn't let me kiss you?"

"Are you finishing acting like-."

"Say it!" You cut him off and step closer to him. You wanted to hit something, but his face was too pretty for that shit, and despite your anger, your mother raised you better than that, "Like what Henry? Get out."

"Y/N."

"I said get the fuck out!"

His jaw clenched and he pushed his hands through his thick mane of brown curls, ending the polished look he had earlier. "I'll call you later."

"Oh, no the fuck you won't." You opened the door to Alex standing there with his eyes on Henry. Why was he back? "He was just leaving." You explained to Alex. "Bye."

Alex stepped aside and held up the brown bag, you could smell the Chinese and noticed the wine bottle. "We didn't get to eat." He explained. The smug grin on his face sealed the night, he was a good guy.

You smiled and watched Henry stare at him before looking back at you. He shook his head, "Goodnight."

"Fuck you." You whispered.

In the past hearing, people say they were numb sounded foolish, of course, they felt. A human cannot simply shut it all off, but you were wrong. So wrong, it was easier to go numb than to feel. It started with work, your time invested in the company allotted you vacation three fucking weeks, paid and free.

The first week you spent with Alex, not fucking his brains out like a part of you wanted to but being a friend. He allowed you to talk, you told him everything and he listened with no judgment and that made it easier. Tia was around too, she spent the night with you when she could, in between hair appointments and makeup slots. Her career was changing fast, you were happy for her even if you barely showed it at times.

The second week you shut them both out. You told them you were out of town, but you were in your apartment with food and tear-soaked pillows. His phone calls had stopped, but you feared it was only because you changed the number. Work could contact you via email if they needed to, but no one even called you during the first two weeks. The marketing strategy you left would do well, you knew it. And besides your certainty in your program, you didn’t care what Cavill Industries did at the moment.

The third week, everything went numb, there were no more tears to cry. Every inkling of him that existed was gone, including the $6000 dollar dress. You burned it and at that final act, the night was gone from your mind. He’d broken the rules. You’d both set them and when he kissed her, he disqualified himself.

The first day back to work your anxiety had you in its grip. Every phone call and opening of your door you dreaded. But he didn’t come. He wasn’t even in the building, according to your boss and that eased everything. You could work with him not being anywhere near you, and that made you apply to the other firms that had once been interested in you. You got two calls immediately. Matheus Corporate wanted to hire you without an interview and after the offer they sent, you were taking it. You typed out your resignation letter and turned it into HR. It was the right choice.

It was a month before you saw him again, and the Cavill you saw briefly in the lobby looked nothing like the one you had grown accustomed to. His hair was wild, and he had a beard, an actual beard. His slate-blue eyes were tired as were his movements. Just seeing him triggered you, the horrid memories of that night flooded your head and the pain resurfaced. Being numb would not be possible around him. You knew it. You hid in the stairwell like an idiot and avoided him. Nine more days of work here and you would be clear.

“Look, the way I see it, we are friends now.” Alex kicked his feet up on your desk and looked to you for affirmation.

You gave it to him nodding your head and chugging down your third bottle of water. “Yes, we’re friends. So, when I call you up at midnight and you’re with your little girlfriend cuddling and things you still have to make an appearance.”

“Girlfriend?” He scoffed.

“You heard me.” You pointed at him.

“I’m hoping one day the little girlfriend, I am cuddling will be you.” He smiled. “There is no rush and no expectation for it. But I didn’t want you to leave this place, oblivious to the fact that I really like you.”

Your heart warmed and you smiled. “Nine days to go and your boldness is out the bag.”

He shrugged. “Did I get brownie points?”

“A whole cake.” You said. You were back to work an hour later, singing under your breath when the door opened.

“I told him to wait outside.” Your assistant said, trying to beat Henry in the office. She turned to you. “Ms. YLN, Mr. Cavill is here to see you.” But he was already in front of your desk.

“Get out.” He said to her.

“Whatever you have to say to me, she can hear.” For some reason, you knew if the door closed you would succumb to him, “Speak.”

“You are not leaving.” His voice was not composed, just wavering and near weak. “Y/N.”

“Gianna, you can go.” You exhaled. What the hell had happened to him? She left the room and the space that once seemed huge started to shrink. Henry walked towards you and you held your hand up when he reached your desk. “What?”

“You changed your number.”

“What did you expect?”

“For you to give me a chance to explain,” His eyes plead with yours for the opportunity. “Can I have that please?”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, I was never yours, right?”

“You’re still mine.” The slight possessiveness came back to his voice.  

It made you weak for a moment, your hitched breath took over the silence. “Hurry up, Henry.”

“She is my girlfriend.” He said.

The words punch at a wound you were certain was nearly healed. You hoped he was going to say that he left her, the pathetically infatuated part of you wanted him to say, she dumped him. But he just reaffirmed what you already knew. Olivia Tate was the official girlfriend of Henry Cavill. “Thanks?” You swallowed. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t want her to be, I want you.”

“You are making no sense and I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to throw things at you here. I just wanted to leave all this in the past. Go be with her.”

“Y/N.” He said your name as if he was fighting for breath. “There are some things you do not understand about me. Things I would rather not talk about, but I don’t want her.”

“Then leave her! Damn it.” You bit out. “You are a grown man. You can make decisions on your own. If you didn’t want her then end it. End it now.”

“I can’t talk here.”

“Where else are you gonna talk?” You laughed. “My place? Hell no.”

“Mine.” He shook his head. “I’ll send a car for you after work. Don’t make them work Y/N. Just come.” He looked at you. “Please.”

“Fine.”

 You didn’t fight his orders on meeting him, curiosity reared its ugly head and you were gone. His home was at the edge of town, the driveway curved up a hill and lead to the glass estate. It was incredible. Had you been here on better circumstances, you would have enjoyed the view. You stepped out and the door opened. Henry had shed the suit for a black shirt and black sweats that hung at his waist somehow accenting his frame. Fuck. Were you even going to be strong enough to say no to this god? One last fuck? Just to say goodbye fuck, it wouldn’t be frowned upon.

You argued with yourself and walked into the home, the décor was much like his office dark brown woods with a modern sense. You stood in the foyer and looked at him. The closer to the door you were, the more likely you were to say no to him without hesitation.

“I can’t shut you out of my mind.” He confessed. He had shaved, but his hair was still tucked behind his ears, longer than normal.

“Just tell me.”

“I met Olivia in college.” He sighed. “We used to date off and on, but it was never more than sex. Never.”

“That’s all it is with us.” You interrupted. “Hence the reason I don’t need this talk.”

“Then why’d you come?” Henry stared. “I have been infatuated with you for months and when I finally got the opportunity to be with you, I jumped at it.”

“Don’t feed me bullshit.” You held your hand up.

“Who do you think hired you?”

“Why can’t you just leave her?” You asked.

“She knows things about me that can ruin me.” he stopped talking. “Liv is talented at getting the things she wants. If I leave her, she’ll spill it.”

“Oh, get the fuck out of here!” You laugh. “You expect me to believe this Lifetime movie shit? You got a girlfriend and you want me too. Admit it.”

“I don’t want her.” He shook his head. “I want you.”

“You can say it until you’re blue in the face. If you don’t show me, how in the fuck am I supposed to believe that this… isn’t just a way for you to get what you want.”

Henry sunk to his knees. “I’ll beg you.”

“Dogs beg.” You spat.

“Anything.” He rasped.

“Do you know how bad I hurt? I didn’t work for weeks. I didn’t care for weeks. We’ve been together a month. Do you think my behavior was normal? Do you think yours is normal? No. We are bad for one another and I just…”

How did he get up so fast? You moved back and he was on you, his steps heavy and determined. He caged you against the wall and then you realized, his face was wet with tears.

“You have to believe me.” He whispered and the fear clawed through him. “Please.”

There was an urge pushing you to leave this place, nothing good can come from him. But his face was pained, you’d never seen this part of him. You cupped his face affectionately and your lips graze his cheek. It feels as if he shutters and then you just do it. You hesitantly kiss him. Your lips touch his and the energy that passes through you ignites a groan.

“Please.” The plea is accompanied by him responding to the kiss, tenderly. He leaned into you, his body blanketing to you and taking whatever breath you thought you had left. But you were sure that he took your breath away without a kiss. His brow furrowed as he deepened it pushing your head against the door. He wrapped his arms around you, swaddling you in his muscles while somehow it wasn’t the muscles that you felt. For the first time, he was being himself with you. He allowed you to feel what you didn’t even know was there.

He pulled back from you and he moved as if he was dizzy. The breath he had stolen from you had made it's way back to you and you inhaled. There was more than a desire that flickered between the two of you.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

His eyes flashed with a little hope. “Same.” Henry didn’t wait for permission he just scooped you up from the floor and kissed you again, this time it hurt. The hurt is so fucking good.

“I want,” the words were caught in your throat. Was this right or were you spiraling? “I want you, here. Right here.” He lowered you both down on the steps so that you were straddling him, you didn’t care for his comfort. You wanted him to feel you. “You remember the rules?” You whispered. Your tongue licks his lips and then dives in and he’s taken back, gripping your ass that is winding on his dick. You can feel him through the sweats. “Hmm…”

“I could never forget.”

“Don’t cum unless I say.” You smiled before kissing him again. You bucked your hips on and his eyes widened the lust pushing through. “You hear me, sir?” Your voice was low and filled with lust. “I want to fuck you right here.” He grew harder, flinching against you. “I want you to moan my name when you cum…”

Henry’s hands were in your hair, pulling you back so he could see your eyes. “I’ll do whatever the fuck you want me to, just fuck me.” He begged.

“Did you miss me?”

“Always.” He groaned lowering his head to your breast. He sprung the from the blouse and ripped it in two. “Always.”

You wanted to believe him, but the lingering hurt from the past month. “If you lie to me again,” You unsheathed him from his sweats and stroked your hand down the length of his cock. You swiped the precum that oozed from the tip down and pumped again. “Missing me is all you’ll know how to do, sir.”

“Fuck,” He jumped in your hand and sucked air in through his teeth.

“Understand?”

“I-,” He moaned when you increased your speed. “Oh fuck.”

“Yeah,” You were so turned on by the way you were making him feel. You now understood why he wanted to be in control of everything in the bed. It was sexy as fuck to watch what you could do to someone. You could watch them unravel, put them back together and do it again.

Henry pushed the pen skirt up and easily ripped the panties. He tossed them behind you and his fingers were in you. Prodding and working, you fucking missed him, even though you shouldn’t have. “Y/N.” He moaned. “I’m almost there.” He panted.

You stopped stroking him and began to ride his fingers, lifting yourself from them and then back on until the next time Henry pushed his cock in. He was fighting every urge he had to allow you some control in this thing. He threw his head back when he was fully inside of you and stilled.

But you wanted to fuck him. You wanted to ride him slow and draw out every fucking moment you could with him. So, if you regretted being here in the morning, the walk of shame wouldn’t have too much shame. Your walls sealed around him and he gripped your hips trying to stop you from fucking him, but you continued. Your rhythm was wild, you used his shoulders like an anchor and smiled down at him. His face was red and misted with sweat. His curls were soaked, and he was mesmerized. Your tits bounced in front of him and your eyes were rolling. “Y/N.” He warned and you felt his cock grow harder and then he growled, shuddering in your breast as if he had waited forever to cum inside of you.

“Seems you broke a rule.” You laughed and continued to fuck him. He made sounds that only made you wetter for him and the man was part machine. He had to be as his cock grew back rigid and he was still shuttering from coming the time before.

Henry licked his fingers and slapped them onto your clit before he pulled you towards him. His fingers knew how to work your pussy. Moving in circles and then another slap before he started back again, and you were about to cum. You didn’t want to. You shook your head and Henry looked up at you, “I won’t last another time. I ca-,” Your pussy shook around his and your thighs locked down as the pleasure surged through your body. “Shit!” He yelled before slamming into you and spilling his cum again. “Y/N.” He rasped.

The floor wasn’t a bad place to lay for the time being. Henry was wrapped around your naked body and there was no need for cover. He kept you warm enough.

“Was she the reason you didn’t kiss me?”

He exhaled. “She,” he paused. “I never know when she will decide to come back into my life.” He admits. “And up until you, it was easier not kissing, that way when it ended… there were no emotions in it. It was just fucking. I can’t do that with you, okay? A single glance from you could make my heart stop, a kiss would have shattered me.” Henry admitted.

It was quiet for a while. Just deep breaths and kisses all down your body. “Let’s go to bed.” You said finally. “My boss would be mad as hell if I missed tomorrow.”

“I’m throwing you resignation away, and if you’re having problems out of Mike… I’ll fire his ass.” He stood up and reached his hand out to you. “Come on, the bed is the proper place to make sure you’re so tired work isn’t an option.”

  His bed was comfortable, the sheets were so soft you were tempted to ask where he got them. You slept peacefully entangled in the muscled mass that is Henry. But it was not a complaint to make, being without him for so long made you grateful you could listen to him breathe and feel his heart against your back.

“Thank God.” The unfamiliar voice came from the bottom of the bed.

Your eyes narrowed as the bright sun made its way through the windows. The blonde hair was the first take away, it was Olivia. You scrambled from under Henry’s body. “Henry!” If she wanted a fight, you were ready to fight her, you’d just prefer to not be naked while doing it.

Henry groaned and once he caught sight of her he jolted up from the bed. “Olivia. You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Don’t be rude. I was just saying thank God.” Olivia leaned over his legs and looked at you. “I hated watching him mope around here. He looked like a puppy, sad because his bitch went away.”

“Bitch? I beg your pardon, Henry if you don’t get this woman.” Henry gave an admonished look to Olivia and gripped your hand. It didn’t comfort you. It just pissed you off. You snatched your hand away from him. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” One more foul word from her and you’d fight naked.

“Excuse my manners, darling. I’m Olivia and I am so glad you are here. It seems we have some rules to introduce.” She pushed up from the bed and left the room. “Chop, chop Henry, dear. Bring your bitch, I have a plane to catch.”

[t-o-m-hollands]

Tom x You

Summery: Tom and his brothers have a pub. You, trying to avoid working on your new album, spend most of your time in there. Lots of flirting and bickering ensues.

Themes: Sort of frienemies to lovers, slow burn, mutual attraction but they are both to dumb to realise. General dumbness all around. Idiots in love.

Word count: 4k

Warnings: Drinking and swearing. Smut in future chapters.

PART I of IV

***

At 8 years of age your father hands you a worn guitar and with the patience of a saint teaches you how to make it play the holiest of sounds. Every day you practise, until your fingertips has hardened and they move effortlessly over the strings.  

At 10 years of age you write your first song. It’s a puerile little tune about a sweet boy with hair like honey and an opportunity lost. It’s repetitive and nonsensical but your mother hums the chorus for weeks after hearing it.

At 14 years of age you meet up with a record label and when signing the dotted line on the contract you feel a chill down your spine and your grandmother’s stories about the crossroad demon comes back to you verbatim. With determination you still put your name on the paper in a signature you’ve spent hours practising. Only days later you hear your voice on the radio for the very first time.

At 17 years of age there are headlines in magazines about you, photos of men they claim you’ve dated and interviews with people who claim to be a ‘close source’ to you, even though you’ve never met them, spilling lies on every page. You find out your closest friend has sold information about you to the tabloids for over a year.

At 19 years of age you go on a world tour, though the only parts of the world you see are airports, hotels and playing venues and then later at night: nightclubs. You travel the world, but you learn nothing about it.

At 22 years of age and your boyfriend breaks up with you for an actress. There isn’t a day that year that tabloids don’t ‘report’ on it. He spends most of the time telling the world how much happier he is in his new relationship, and you spend most of your time staring down into a bottle.  

At 24 years of age you feel drained, dog-tired and worn out. On a regular basis there’s photos of you stumbling out of pubs, bars and restaurants all over the internet. Your record label is threatening a lawsuit and you haven’t talked to your manager in weeks. You have no friends and your family doesn’t know what to do with you.  

Okay, so maybe being a successful singer isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. Especially not when the entirety of the internet is making fun of you.  

And yes, maybe you’re in a flunk and haven’t written anything decent in months. And okay, maybe you haven’t even picked up a guitar in weeks. And maybe throwing away your phone in order not to have to face the record label was a bad idea. And maybe, hand on heart, the right solution to your problems is not to waste your days away in a well-hidden pub in a backstreet in London with the cutest pub owner you’ve ever seen, with biceps that makes you want to drool. A pub owner who has no interest in you and finds you annoying beyond belief.  

Yet here you are,  

again.

***

“It’s Tuesday” Tom informs you as he hands you cherry coke and a straw.

So, it goes like this. Tom is obsessed with time. He’s always informing you of either what day of the week it is, or the time of day. As if he’s trying to shame you into realising that 10 am on a Tuesday is not an acceptable time to order a dry martini.  

“So?” You ask, feigning ignorance as you open the can. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed that this is a coke and in fact completely free of alcohol. I mean in the good ol’ day they at least had the cutesy to put cocaine in there.”.

“Don’t worry” he says, scrubbing the surface of the already clean counter-top “there’s a shit load of other stuff that’ll destroy your insides in there”.

You try not to roll your eyes, honestly you do. You fail. “Oh no, is it sugar? Please, doctor say it isn’t sugar!” you wail dramatically.

“No, not just sugar” and you can tell he’s also trying not to roll his eyes at your exaggerated play acting. “You know, I saw this documentary once about what they put in coca cola and –”

“No, nope, no, no. Absolutely not” You shake your head vehemently as if that will stop his words. "I would literally rather hear you talk about goddamn golf for an hour than put me of one of life’s few great pleasures”.

This time he doesn’t manage to stop himself from rolling his eyes at you. “Oh, I think we both know you find more pleasures in life than coca cola”.

Before you can answer him something insanely witty the door to the office behind the bar opens and an anxious looking Harrison step out. “Tom, Sam says the fish delivery didn’t show up again so we’re out of cod and therefore fish ‘n chips.”  

Tom rubs his face, looking worried. “Alright, I’ll call him up and see what happened.”  

But Harrison still looks tense. “Also…” he trails off, losing courage.  

“Also, what?” And Tom too sounds tense now.  

“Well, Downey from the bank called, he says the invoice is way over due and he wants a meeting. I told him you’d call today”.  

Tom keeps rubbing his forehead, as if to literally fight of a migraine, and his shoulders tense. “Yeah, yeah I’ll call him this afternoon”. Harrison nods and walks back into the kitchen

“You know, I cou –” but you don’t get to finish your sentence before he interrupts you. “Don’t” he says, voice sharp as a whip.

“But, it would just be a loan, honestly I – ”

“No, and I mean it.” And you judging by the tone of voice he uses and the stern look he gives you you’re well aware that he isn’t joking. It’s like his usually warm and kind eyes are nailing you down into your seat. “I’m not gonna borrow money from a customer, as you well know.”  

The problem is that really wouldn’t be a big deal for you to offer him a loan or give it as a gift really. You love this pub. You love the people working here and the patrons and coming in for a drink or a meal or simply a chat and a laugh. It’s your safe haven. No one ever hardly ever bothers you here. No one asks you for a selfie or asks you about when more music is coming out. No one tugs at your sleeve or try to sneakily take a photo of you. Here, you are normal. And it would devastate you to see the Holland boys lose it all when you know you can help. You have more money than you know what to do with.  

However, you know there’s no arguing with him when he’s got that look on his face so you don’t, just keep sipping on your cherry coke as your foot taps along to the song on the radio. From inside the kitchen you can hear the faint sound of the Holland twin's laughter.  

Tom turns away from you to sort out the whiskey glasses on the counter behind him. But when picking up a glass he fumbles, and it falls out of his hand and lands right on his foot, though it fortunately doesn’t break.

“Ah, fucking bastard!” he shouts, grabbing hold of his injured foot.

“You shouldn’t swear in church, you know” ¨you say, as you finish your coke.

He looks at you indignantly, pouting like a child, “well, lucky for me, this is a pub.”

“You say potato, I say tomato, now make me a real drink.”

“For fucks sake, darlin’, you gotta eat something.”

***

So, it’s either late or early, depending how you look on it. On tube stations all across London early worker are already gathering on the platforms to take their commute to work. Not you. Not Tom either.  

Now, Tom is an early riser and has been since childhood. His nanna used to say that he had energy enough for three children. Despite regular closing shifts at the pub he likes to be up at dawn. Says he likes to get an hour at the gym and a walk with Tessa in before he heads to the pub to make sure everything is in order. After having checked with Sam that everything is stocked for the day, he has his protein loaded breakfast while ordering supplies or read through whatever paper work he need to be on top off before opening up the pub for the day.  

Tom hates having this routine disturbed.

So, it goes like this. Harry had been the bartender most of that night, since Tom had ‘other business to take care of’. Whenever Harry was bartender he’d usually spent more time drinking with you than he did serving up the other costumers. When Tom came back and saw the state of you, he’d sent you home, telling you that you’d had enough for one night and asking Harrison to walk you home. Then he’d giving Harry a proper telling off. You had dutifully walked with Harrison to your apartment, thanked him sweetly, and then as soon as you saw that he had passed the corner walked into another pub just across the street for more. It wasn’t as charming a place as The Hollands and their bartender sure wasn’t as handsome or as fun to annoy as the regular one at Hollands. But in a pinch, anything will do.  

Upon closing hour however, as you made your way home, you’d discovered that your keys were missing. Being absolutely wasted this did not worry you in the slightest. You just strolled back on unsteady legs to The Hollands to see if you’d dropped them there. Tom, who had closed the pub for the night, was still in. From the windows you could see him going through stacks of paperwork in front of him, a frown on his face. Upon hearing you knocking on the window at 2 am he’d jumped out his chair to see what was going on. When seeing you three sheets to the wind, dressed in a thin dress on a cold summer’s night the frown on his face had gotten worse.

Now here you are, in his apartment, in the dead of the night, and he’s offering you a plate of tortellini. Tessa had been overjoyed to see you and after having been allowed to greet you she had then been sent to her place and out of the way of your drunk, stumbling feet.

“But I hate tortellini” you whine.

“Christ sake, Popstar, just eat the damn food”

“No, I hate it, Tom, I hate it so much, it makes me think of- of- ” you hiccup.

“Are you actually crying right now?”

“It makes me think of- of - cheese sauce and -”

“Sorry, but what now?”

“And – I – I – I hate cheese sauce”. You’re full on sobbing and he just stares at you in disbelief.  

Then, somehow the world seems fall the wrong way around. It takes you a second to realize that you’ve slid down on the floor and that you’re staring up at the ceiling. Tom’s strong arm take a hold of you and he guides you to a sitting position, leaned up against the wall. With your face in his hands he stares at you in indignation but there’s something else there too. You’re drunk enough to dare to call it tenderness.  

Suddenly you’re aware that you’re sobbing, but you can’t remember why that is.

“Fuck who knows” he responds and when you give out a sound that’s something halfway between a sob and a laugh he starts laughing too. “If I make you something else to eat, will you eat it then? You’ll feel better in the morning if you do”.

Your head feels heavy, so you lean it against his hand and nod. “No cheese sauce, please”.

He rolls his eyes, but he’s laughing too. “Sure, no cheese sauce for Pop Princess.”

“Oi!” You call out “You promised to never to call me that!” Pop Princess was the title the tabloids had given you early on in your career. He keeps smiling, but it’s a gentle smile, and trace the frown between your eyebrows with his finger, as if he’s trying to erase it.

“Will you please just sit here while I cook?”

You nod again, too tired to say anything. He gets up, and you can hear some pouring water and then he places a glass of water in your hand. “Drink” he orders, then he’s gone again, and you can hear the clattering of pots and pans as he starts cooking. You’re just staring into the wall, trying to make it stop spinning; limbs heavy with sleep and whiskey, a nice buzzing numbness in your head.

Then he’s in front of you again, looking at you with a frown “I thought I told you to drink that” and you look at the full glass clasped in your hands. “Seriously, you’ll feel better if you do”.

You roll your eyes “oh, please, Tommy. Remember who you’re speaking to. I’m the local drunk, there’s no need to lecture me in hangovers”. But you do as you’re told and chug down your drink and hand him the empty glass. “Good girl” he says and gets back to his cooking. Before long the delicious scent of food is spreading through the tiny, cramped kitchen.

You start humming a song you wrote years ago but never released, low enough so you think Tom won’t hear you over the sizzling pan. But he does.  

“What’s that?” he asks, curiosity in his voice.

“Oh” you say, leaning your head back against the wall as you close your eyes in the hope that the world will stop spinning. “Just a song.”

Everything goes quiet for a while and you find yourself wondering if you’ve fallen asleep. But then you hear his voice. “Keep singing, please”.  

It surprises you, the amount of tenderness in his words; such a gentle bequest. So, you do as you’re told. In a voice raspy from the whiskey but sweet from his kindness you sing.

“I’ve been holding my breath, I’ve been counting to ten, 

Over something you said, I’ve been holding back tears 

 While you’re throwing back beers, I’m alone in bed

You know I, I’m afraid of change, Guess that’s why we stay the same, 

So tell me to leave, I’ll pack my bags, get on the road, 

Find someone that loves you better than I do, darling, I know, 

'Cause you remind me every day, I’m not enough, but I still stay”

You trial off and he keeps quiet too and goes silent again. Then he slides down beside you, a plate of pasta carbonara in his hands which he offers you along with a fork. “Eat” he orders gently. You do, and it tastes delicious.

“God, Tom, you could rival Sam in the kitchen”.

He snorts but you persist. “Seriously Tommy, I’d hire you as a private chef if I didn’t know you’d be an insufferable employee”.

He snorts again, but you can tell he’s amused. “Wow, thanks a lot”

“Seriously, you’d always complain about my lack of organization, or the fact that I keep all of my face masks in the refrigerator, or that I never have any food at home or that I don’t eat at regular hours or that I sometimes just forget to eat and just have a Red bull for dinner instead or that I – ”

“Jesus Christ” he interrupts you “who the fuck let you be an adult? What’s wrong with you!?”

You’re wolfing down your food, so it takes you a moment to answer. “Someone said my problem was ‘a mind-boggling lack of general discipline and a staggeringly low ability to organise’” you finally say.

“Who said that? I mean they’re not wrong”.

“You said that” you point out as you finish your plate of carbonara. “Also, this was scrumptious, and also, may I sleep here tonight?”

He looks at you in disbelief “Yeah, duh, I’m not kicking you out? I mean, I thought that was the general idea of this”.

He grabs a hold of your plate and takes your hand in his other as he guides you both up to a standing position. He places the plate among the other dirty pans in the sink and then lead you to his bathroom. Giving you a new toothbrush, he orders you to brush your teeth while he changes his sheets. He hands you a shirt to sleep in and when you’ve changed you argue for a good 10 minutes while about who’s to sleep on the couch before he puts his foot down and say he’ll ban you from his pub unless you take the bed instead of him. So, you do.  

His bed soft and comfortable and smell of his detergent. From the living room you can hear Tessa’s deep breaths and the sound of Tom tossing around on the sofa. You wonder how uncomfortable he is.

“Tommy just come in here instead” you call out, voice drowsy.

“No, I told you, you take the bed”

You snort. As if you were going to give this bed up, no chance. Not now that you know how comfortable it is.  

“Yeah, duh” you answer. “Wasn’t planning on taking the sofa, but the bed’s big enough for the two of us, innit?”

Dead silence from the living room. Even Tessa seems to have been struck silent.

“You sure?”

You sigh. “Yeah, I'm sure, for fuck’s sake Tommy, just come in here”.

You hear the sound of footsteps slowly making their way across the floor, then he’s in the doorway. Clad in a pair of black boxers and a black t-shirt, awkwardly scratching the back of his head as he avoids looking at you.

You pull down the covers and he lay down beside you, keeping his distance in the bed. You have your backs against each other, staring into separate walls and even through the whiskey you can tell this is awkward. You want to ask him to hold you, but you’re scared he doesn’t want it. Scared he doesn’t even want to lay beside you. You are after all just a costumer in his bar. A costumer you know he can’t afford to lose.

You don’t know how long you lay there in silence, his scent surrounding you, the soft sound of his breath lulling you into further relaxation but eventually you drift off to sleep.  

When you wake, he’s gone. A note on his pillow tells you he’s gone to the gym, telling you to take anything you want for breakfast and just leave the keys at the pub later.  

When you close the door behind you you can’t help but feel that something tender happened in there, something important; but you know he doesn’t feel the same.

***

It’s Monday night, as Tom has been so kind to remind you off, and you’re plastered.  

Earlier the pub had been full to rim of football supporters shouting and singing and sharing pints before a big game, filling the entire place with an excited buzz. Now they’ve all gone off to cheer for their heroes on the field and only the patrons remain.  

Harry is bartender tonight, and Tom has placed himself in the back of the pub, a stack of paper in front of him that he keeps leering at. With a drink in your hand and a happy-go-lucky attitude you seat yourself on the opposite side of his table, determent to cheer him up.

“’m gonna write a song about you.” You inform him, voice only somewhat slurry.

“Go on then.” He doesn’t look up at you, just jots something down on the form in front of him. He’s wearing glasses tonight and they make him look so handsome you want to scream in frustration.

“Well, what rhymes with Tom? Rum!”

“Oh, Christ, no. No, I’ve changed my mind.”

“Tom, he serves rum and tequila.” You sing. “Wait, what rhymes with tequila?”

“Please don’t”

“Heliophilia!”

“Okay, ’m literally begging you not to do this.” He’s looking at you now, his caramel eyes filled with both amusement and genuine dread. You don’t listen, no, you sing.

“Tom, he serves Rum and tequila,

he loves the sun, it’s called heliophilia

his pub needs fundin’, he lives in London”

“Wow. That is a hell of a forced rhyme, pop princess.”

“No, no wait!”

“Wait? I will literally pay you to stop”.

But then you start singing for real, in a voice so sultry that it makes him freeze mid motion, hand just about to turn the page over.

“Have you’ve seen my bartender

he’ll serve you whiskey, he’ll pour you rum

so sweet it’ll make you tender

but all the whiskey in Tennessee

couldn’t have that man agree

to ever share a drink with thee

no, all that sweetness’s just for me

cause babe, he’s my bartender

Yes, have you’ve seen my bartender

He’ll hand you wine, he’ll sell you gin

I think it’s a sign when he hands me my wine

When hand’s touching hand, skin touches skin”

Tom seem to be frozen in place when you stop, and over at the bar you hear Harry give a loud whistle. “Fucking hell, popstar” he cheers.

Tom still doesn’t say anything, just observes you, seemingly speechless. And maybe you’re imagining it, but he’s cheeks seem pinker than usual.

"Well, at least I didn’t rhyme rum with cum” you say, trying to get a reaction out of him. And then “I did think about doing it though” and you lift your glass to him as if in a toast before you down it.

He snorts, back to his normal self and stare down at the paper again.

“Now, honestly, Tom. What did that piece of paper ever do to you?”

“Huh?”

“You’re staring at it like you want to set fire to it. You’d like me to do it for you?”

“No thanks, reckon he’d sue”.

“Who is he?” you lean over the table and closer to him and you swear you can practically see him ordering himself not to look down at your cleavage. “Is he god?” you whisper in mock horror. “Cause, I wouldn’t worry too much, Tommy. You see, God can’t sue. Well, someone in America tried to sue Satan once and they couldn’t cause they couldn’t hand him the papers. Turns out Satan hasn’t got an address. Reckon the same goes with God”

He rolls his eyes “oh, this guy definitely has got an address. He lives in Knightsbridge.” And then, in a voice unusually bitter he adds “posh twat”.

“Oy” you warn, jokingly, “those are my neighbourhoods'”.  

A sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh escapes him “Oh please” he laughs “please, you might live in Primrose Hill now, but you’re not Knightsbridge posh. Sorry to disappoint, Pop Princess”.

You glare, but it’s all in good humour. “So, who is this not-God-but-rich-as-God man sending you paper?”

The humour disappears from his face. “Downey, from the bank”.  Then he turns to the bar and shouts, “Harry, hand me a pint, ye?”

“And a whiskey for me, please” you request sweetly.

“No way, Harry, she’s cut off for the night. Tell Sam to make her something to eat” he orders his younger brother who rolls his eyes but obediently begin to head into to the kitchen.

“Not tort -” you begin shouting as an instruction.

“Not tortellini” he shouts at the same time. “And no cheese sauce either” he then adds.

You smile at him and this time you swear he’s blushing.

“Who’s Downey? You ask. And you know you’re prying, but you also know that Tom needs help with something and if there’s anything you can do to help, you will.  

“A bank man who wants me to pay my loans back”. He answers eventually after a long silence, when he figures you’re not going to give up and talk about something else. Harry comes back and hands Tom a pint and then leaves to take care of a costumer at the bar.

“A bank man, who lives in Knightsbridge?” You ask, bemused.

Tom smiles “oh, believe you me, Downey’s not your average bank clerk.” Then, in a serious tone, “look, I know you want to help, but there’s nothing you can do, ye? So drop it”.

“But I-”

“Drop it. Seriously, pop princess, there’s nothing you can do, I’ll figure something out”. He doesn’t sound harsh and the way he looks at you is positively adoring. Then he does something unexcepted. He reaches over the table and pulls a loose string of hair behind your ear. It’s a soft and sweet gesture and you want to reach over and kiss him but before you can he removes his hand and seconds later Harry places a dish of steaming pasta carbonara in front of you. You smile and thank him and he makes his way back to the bar.  

You eat in silence for a while as he continues to read through stashes of papers. You decide to leave the subject, for now at least.

“Yours is better, by the way”. He looks up at you, confused. “Your carbonara” you clarify. “I mean, Sam is an incredible chef and you’re lucky to have him, but yours is my favourite”.  

His cheeks heat up, again.

***

R E A D    P A R T   T W O     H E R E

[romiithebirdie]

From the Furthest Tether: Part Three

Harsh rainfall pelted down from the black sky above, fast droplets hitting Tomura Shigaraki's bare chest that exposed the faint scars littering across his body from the battle at Jaku. Narrowing a hardened scarlet eyes down at the decaying wreckage as he stood high and mighty in mid-air, courtesy of the Nomu who had transported him to Tartarus.

Bullets screeched through the air, some connecting with his skin and blasting his arm into a mangled, bloody mess as crimson liquid spilled over the smouldering brickwork. He barely flinched, immediately activating his Regeneration power that had saved his life on multiple occasions when he was facing the recently disgraced Pro Hero Endeavor.

Behind Father, he spread his chapped lips into a gleeful grin. Oh, how he hoped Endeavor was suffering both physically and mentally in the aftermath. He honestly couldn't wait for Round Two where he'd succeed in reducing the Flame Hero to nothing more than dust in the air.

Jumping from his Nomu's back, he casually strolled past the destruction while rejoicing under the loud blare of the prison alarms that howled out in a melancholic chorus. To the Guards and staff inside, they cowered in fear. But to Tomura Shigaraki? The unbearable sound marked the beginning of his deathgrip on the hero society.

Criminals poured from every entrance and window below his spot above them all, the tattered clothes covering the lower-half of his body billowed in between the whistling air and thick black smoke, like a flag flying high in the night sky.

Tomura's eyes wandered over the stampede, recognising Muscular and other villains crowding together as they beat back a futile stand by a few foolish Prison Guards. A cold shiver ran up his spine which seemed to spike his fury further as he slowly turned around, his senses overwhelming him under the image of All for One standing across the platform.

"Master…" the student rasped, suddenly feeling the urge to scratch at his neck. He glanced down at the body held in All for One's grip with little emotion, noting the small line of blood running from the guard's head.

His teacher began speaking to him, though Tomura could barely understand the words coming out of the villain's mouth as his ears filled with the sound of loud static. A possible reaction to their twin Quirks, perhaps?

"I told you…" Tomura's voice was rough, almost as if it was physically hurting him to speak, "That this is my body, my will, Master…"

"Hmm?" Japan's most feared man glanced down at Shigaraki like he was a small toddler. "You need rest, Tomura," his voice cooed, dripping with faux-warmth as he bared his teeth in a wide grin, "that regeneration Quirk will not work unless your body is at full health."

Don't talk down to me like I'm some weak little child!

Shigaraki's eyes flashed in rage, gnashing his teeth together at the large mocking smirk adjourning his teacher's face.

"I...I am not going to be your pawn," he growled out. Not anymore. He had his own goals, his own desires now.

"Oh?" All for One's grip on the eerily-unmoving guard's jacket tightened. "Now why would you think such a thing? No. To me, Tomura Shigaraki, you are an important successor."

The breathing apparatus floated in the air, held up by an invisible force as Japan's most feared man took another couple of steps towards his protege. "See how those below us desire to submit?" he asked, unfazed by the Tomura snarling at him like a feral animal that had been backed up into a corner. "This will be the story of how I become the greatest demon lord in existence."

His large hands then slowly reached out, akin to a puppetmaster controlling the strings of his lifeless, wooden marionettes…

Until Izuku's eyes shot open, cutting off a gasp which caught in his already-aching throat that felt as if somebody had their hands gripped around it with the intent to strangle him in his sleep.

His blurry vision registered the sickly white-coloured walls and scratchy sheets covering his body…

Ah, right.

He was in the hospital. Recovering from injuries that could- should have killed him back in Jaku. He leaned back against the singular pillow supporting the twinge in his neck.

Tick, tock.

Izuku glanced up at the clock across the room as it clicked back and forth in a monotonous motion. The window blinds of Izuku's ward had been put down, blocking out the strips of orange and red rays of sunlight that left the ward remaining a dark and sombre surround.

He reached forward and slowly picked up his phone that had been left on one of the plastic visitor chairs at his beside. Blinking tiredly with eyes that were heavy from lack of sleep, Izuku found himself slowly scanning over the screen of his mobile device. His thumb was brushing repeatedly over the cracked screen while it continued to illuminate his freckled face with a dull, bluish hue.

He swallowed thickly, still feeling the dizzying wave of nausea hit him every couple of minutes. The teen had been given a large amount of strong medication to minimize his body aches and the sharp throb of surgical stitches littered over his broken body. Izuku moaned to himself softly, muscles protesting the small movements as he slid his phone back on his bedside cabinet.

Since the previous night, he had barely heard from All Might. After his outburst in the middle of the hospital waiting area, he couldn't really blame the retired Pro from steering clear. Deep down, Izuku mused that the hospital staff possibly had more to do with the lack of visitation as it had taken a couple of nurses to return him to his ward the night prior. His mother had followed quietly behind the medical staff as they wheeled her son back towards his ward while trying to conceal her flowing tears.

She'd held his hand while Izuku was hooked back up to his IV, where another nurse had then quickly provided morphine. Whether it was just to help with the pain of his recovering injuries or played a part in settling him down, Izuku had no clue.

He glanced down at the cannula attached to his drip with a small whine, regardless of the hospital's reasoning, it had worked a treat last night and still had Izuku feeling like his head was full of cotton wool.

Izuku's phone buzzed atop the cabinet, the volume completely muted to prevent his head from pounding more than it was. Thankfully, his plump pillows gave him enough height to squint over at the name trying to reach him.

All Might.

Complete with a picture of the grinning Symbol of Peace that Izuku had screenshot from an interview stream several years ago. A bandaged hand gripped the phone and swiped across the screen to answer;

"Hello?"

"Ah, good morning, Young Midoriya!" even though Izuku couldn't see All Might's face, he could hear the smile that his mentor was forcing himself to wear. "How are you feeling?"

"Mm," Izuku shifted his legs through the thin bed sheets, legs tangled slightly as he flopped them down in defeat. He'd been way better but; "I'm getting there, thanks."

This response seemed to be enough to satisfy Toshinori from the other side of the phone line as he bobbed his head in a nodding motion before letting out a soft hum of agreement.

Izuku's eyes returned to his bedsheets, thin pupils scanning over the scratchy patterns running across the thin fabric while the retired Pro breathed heavily over the phone, the silence between them soon growing awkward as they both waited for the other to speak up again.

"So," Toshinori let his voice drag along the 'o' sound for a few moments before swallowing thickly, "any updates with the doctors?"

"Mhm, not really," Izuku switched hands, pushing the receiver against his other ear, "I think they're getting Recovery Girl in today."

Izuku hadn't been told that, he'd listened in on a conversation between hospital staff from outside his door. Not that All Might needed to know about his sudden interest in eavesdropping…

"So I think I'll be able to return to the dorms soon."

"Ah, good," Toshinori paused for a second. "Good…"

Izuku frowned, he recognised that tone.

"Is everything okay?"

He heard the hero splutter from the other end of the call, "E-Everything's fine, why wouldn't it be?"

Izuku's bandaged knuckles tightened around the phone, the plastic making small little cracking sounds of protest. Even without using his Quirk, Izuku's physical strength was more amplified due to his daily workout routine to maintain his Quirk-control.

"Well I-" Izuku's claw clicked shut. Could he bring up what he'd seen while he'd been asleep? Shigaraki and All for One...The villains breaking out of Tartarus… Was that even possible?

"Young Midoriya?"

"I saw more of the First User of One for All," Izuku belted out before he could stop himself. He wondered whether or not he should mention Nana Shimura being there too… Maybe it was better to tell All Might in person than over the phone?

"You did?" there was a small rustle in the background.

"But Shigaraki was there," Izuku chewed his lip before continuing; "And All for One."

"Oh?" Izuku cracked a dry smile at All Might's attempt to mask the concern in his voice. "How very...interesting."

"He could see me, All Might," both of Izuku's hands gripped the phone. "All for One."

"I see," there was a brief silence, the only sound coming from a soft buzz of phone static. "Do you recall anything that could have been said?"

Izuku winced, his chest tightening once again as All for One's cruel taunts forcefully entered back into his thoughts.

"No."

"Midoriya…" there was a slight edge to his mentor's voice and Izuku slumped his shoulders, sighing softly while still holding the phone in both hands. All Might knew he wasn't being truthful so what was the point in trying to hide it, aside from his own pride?

"He, uh," Izuku pushed his head against the wall that his bed lined up against, "mainly spoke to the First User but he saw me there and probably figured it'd be fun to mess with my head too."

Which could possibly explain the cause of his outburst last night and waking up from that weird haze-fuelled dream this morning. From everything that All Might had told him and the things he'd witnessed in the past, All for One was an extremely petty individual. For some reason, that scared the teen even more.

"What did he say?" All Might dreaded the answer, while Izuku dreaded reminding himself of All for One's hysterical tirade.

"Could we do this face to face?" Izuku whispered, bringing his knees up towards his chin and shrinking into himself. "Please?"

All Might was silent on the other end, biting his lip due to the fact that he had upcoming meetings with Tsukauchi and the Hero Commission over the recent events in Jaku. Endeavor was still unconscious but an investigation was already underway…

"Young Midor-"

"It's fine. I understand," Izuku swallowed thickly, understanding his mentor's silence. "It's just…"

"Hard?"

Izuku blinked, taking in air sharply from his nostrils, "Mhm," he shrugged, not caring that All Might wasn't able to see him do it, "his words...Struck a nerve, I guess?"

"Young Midoriya, whatever that monster said to you, do not let it deter you from the path you wish to take," All Might suddenly sounded furious. It made sense. All Might was the villain's nemesis, of course he'd know how Izuku was feeling. "He uses his words and power to emotionally shatter people, either to hurt them or to bend them to his own will. Do not let him succeed in doing that to you."

"I won't," Izuku answered, far too quickly for All Might's taste. The blond had a rough idea that he knew exactly what that bastard had said to his successor. After all, he himself had fallen victim to All for One's influence back in Kamino when he had dropped the bombshell that was Nana Shimura's legacy;

"Oh, surely you remember Tomura Shigaraki? My student?" the masked villain had goaded casually, as if he were simply discussing the weather to the Symbol of Peace. "He's Nana Shimura's grandson."

Toshinori had to admit that after hearing those words, he'd almost shattered upon impact, losing momentary composure in front of the demon opposite him. Thankfully, his mentor and father-figure had been there to keep him grounded and that was what Toshinori intended to do with Midoriya. Despairing was what that creature wanted and he wasn't sinking his claws into his student.

"Izuku, listen to me."

Izuku said nothing, prompting Toshinori to continue;

"You are my successor and the rightful owner of One for All. He wants you to feel this way, so that you'll be more likely to attempt to give up your Quirk willingly. Please remember that."

That...actually made sense, in a way.

Izuku knew the cruel taunts wouldn't leave his thoughts right away, but All Might had offered the teen comforting words that he'd needed to hear, as much as he was currently unaware of it.

"I will, All Might," the teen swallowed thickly, eyes prickling as he tried to force his tears back. "I promise."

"That's my boy," Izuku's heart squeezed hearing those words and this time, he allowed his tears to spill down his freckled cheeks. "I'll come and see you as soon as I can, deal?"

Gulping back a small shudder, Izuku's lips pressed into a wobbly smile, "Deal."

"I'll try and make time either this evening or tomorrow at the latest. You take care until then."

"Same to you too," Izuku breathed out shakily, "hey, All Might?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks."

Izuku swore he heard a soft chuckle before the phone was put down and his phone screen shut off. Setting it back on the cabinet, Izuku picked up the remote control to the television inside his ward. Perhaps some daytime television could lift his spirits?

Flicking through channels, he almost dropped the controller in surprise at the sight of a reporter clinging to the wide-open door of what Izuku assumed was a news helicopter that was hovering over a massive smoking island.

A smoking island that felt vaguely familiar to the teenager…

"-Seems to be a surveillance breach at this supposed maximum security prison!" the female reporter yelled over the loud chopping sound of helicopter rotors slicing through the rough sea wind. "Footage shows various villains fleeing the island, including Tomura Shigaraki, the young man who was the ringleader for the devastating attack in Jaku City!"

The remote slipped from his hands and clattered to the tiled floor, pieces of plastic scuttling across the ground along with the batteries that had flung out in opposite directions. One ending up rolling under a medical cabinet while the other hit one of the ward wall's skirting boards.

Tight knots began to curl tightly inside his own stomach as Izuku's pale face stared at the television in utter horror.

He hadn't been dreaming.

They were out. The villains. Probably including the ones Izuku had a hand in defeating.

Overhaul, Muscular, Stain...All for One.

"No, no, no," he whimpered. He couldn't take them on now, for God's sake he could barely move! His eyes moved back towards the cabinet and his hand reached back in the direction of where he had set his phone...

[echo-three-one]

A Forgotten Memory

An Alex x OC Fic

The fifth chapter in the series!!!

link to chapter 1 is here

Prev (IV - Samantha)

Next (VI - Samantha)

Reviews and comments are appreciated as I would like to grow as a writer.

V - Alex

She's still a bit dazed, but who wouldn't be. It was a very close call and Alex was amazed at how quiet she was when they were hiding. He felt hot tears while she was leaning on his chest, and he couldn't decide on how to approach her about it.

Pulling a fresh shirt and sweatpants from his bag, he tossed it beside Samantha, who just sat on his bed, staring at the floor.

"Here. You could freshen up in the shower. You know, wash away the fear." Alex suggested staring at her with worry.

"Max.." she whispered as tears started to form on her eyes.

"We'll find her. Don't worry." Alex tapped her shoulder as she turned to meet his gaze.

"How? Are we supposed to go out there and face those foreign robbers? Are you some sort of hero now?" She exclaimed as waves of different emotions escape her breaking her silence. Alex sighed, debating whether he could tell her a part of the truth or not.

"We could call the cops. They'll interview you and they'll get leads as to why they're after you." Alex suggested, fishing his phone from his pocket.

"No. Please. I don't want anything from the security part of the government involved in this." She begged, as the volume of her voice softens. Alex quickly read her reply, he could easily do that and for once, he actually had a suspicion about the case.

"Okay. Um fine, they won't get anything from you if you don't cooperate anyway." His hands gestured surrender. Boy, she was a tough cookie to crack. If only he could pressure her enough to talk. But she's so vulnerable right now and it's best to let her rest.

"I'm taking a shower." she stood up and grabbed his clothes and walked straight to the bathroom.

Alex just stood there in shock as her mood quickly shifted from one to another, waiting for her to turn on the water so he could begin relaying information to the encrypted line.

"Echo Three One to Actual. Do you read me?"

"Any leads, Echo Three One?" the familiar voice said over the phone.

"She's still in shock. We were pursued. They're after her and not the other way around."

"Bet you're happy she isn't a threat."

"Come on man, I told you I'm working professionally." he remarked.

"See if you can get any information as to why. We're arranging to move her to a safehouse first thing tomorrow. She's now an HVI."

"Got it. I'll do what I can." he said as his head tilted to the bathroom door, worrying about how she'll live after all this is done.

***

Alex peeked at the window as another engine revved across the quiet streets below them. He had his guard up ever since they got here and all Samantha could do is worry more.

"They're not gonna find us here, you know. Quit being so protective." she commented, her tone was almost mad and her arms folded across her chest.

"You can never be too safe, Samantha." he answered, eyes not leaving the streets.

"Any idea they're after you?" he added, wishing she'd answer seriously.

"No, I don't. What about you, do you have any idea why I'm here?" she debated.

"I'm just trying to help out." Alex replied as he turned to her.

"And you happen to feel so calm about that thing earlier. Just who are you?! I'm starting to think you're the one who's causing all this!" she exclaimed, gripping her pillow and burying her face on it, sobbing as she cried about her missing friend.

Alex couldn't help but aproach her, she could feel him close as the bed sank as soon as he sat down. He just sat there, knowing full well that any word that would come out of his mouth would just be a waste of time.

"The night before an important presentation at work, I felt hopeless. I began to cry, the fear overwhelmed me and I wasn't able to sleep. Maxine actually helped by sleeping beside me. She knew I needed company at times I felt afraid and dissappointed. And now I feel sad that I can't be there when she's feeling the same thing I felt back then." She said, curling herself into a ball, her eyes peeking at Alex who's on the other end of the bed. Alex could see the helplessness in her eyes. Maxine was all she got and now she has no idea where she is and how she was.

"I met Maxine the night before I met you. I know she's a tough woman. You have to have faith on her. She could survive from her captors." She nodded at Alex's words of reassurance, slowly shifting herself to lie down and go to bed.

"Good Night, Alex." She said as she covered herself with a thick mattress.

"Good Night, Samantha." he replied as he went back to his chair by the window, resuming his night guard duties.

***

Alex turned the shower off and froze, his ears picked something up from outside the bathroom just as he finished wiping himself off with a towel slowly wrapping it around his waist. He tiptoed across the bathroom and creaked the door open, peeking at Samantha.

She was slowly squirming, her head was slightly tilting at short intervals. Alex rushed to her aid as fast as he could.

"Maxine.. please... don't go... hngg. no. dont... take.. me. . get off!" she was having a nightmare. Alex quickly held her cheek, slightly slapping it to wake her up. Her face was sweaty and her brows furrowed angrily, her face frowned convincing Alex that she needed help. Alex quickly kneeled beside her by the bed, pulling her up and wrapping her with his arms.

"Shhh. Shhh. It's all okay. You're safe here." he hushed repeatedly while Samantha struggled to break loose. He could feel her strength fading as her breathing calmed down, then Alex slowly guiderd her back to her pillow.

"You're safe here." he whispered as he saw her smile illuminated by the light outside. He couldn't help but smile too as the peaceful look in her face overwhelmed the CIA Agent.

She shifted to her side as her hands slowly slid on his chest down to his waist, it stopped on his hip and he could feel her slowly grip it as her head leaned on his chest. Her foot moved next as her knee dangerously overlapped on his thigh almost close to his um.. privates.

Alex's heart thumped faster. He hasn't been held like this for a long time and it was making him feel... awkward.

'Think Professionally' he muttered to himself as he felt her leg move once again, he could feel her warm thighs overlap his. And not just that, her calm breaths breeze through his bare chest almost tickling him.

This is going to be one awkward night. he thought to himself.

Alex nervously tried to shift himself away from her grasp as he knew she'll be mad at him the next morning but every inch he successfully moves away was equal to another inch of her snuggling back to him. He sighed in surrender as he leaned on to her making sure she'll be safe all throughout the night. He can't do anything about it and he hoped she remembers that she did this in the first place.

[slapshot-to-the-heart]

Flatbush & Atlantic: part vi

Part vi is here! As always, I love hearing any kind of feedback, so reblogs and inboxes are so welcome!

part i part ii part iii part iv part v

part vi

January 30 

Cass was distracted as she walked into the arena, distracted as she found Mat’s family, and distracted as she sat down. Fiona’s words were weighing on her, and she didn’t know what to do about them. It didn’t help that she hadn’t seen Mat since that morning, he had press and practice and some fan stuff with the league. It was maybe ten minutes before puck drop, and Cass didn’t know where her head was at. She was picking at a loose thread on the hem of her jersey when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Looking up, she was surprised to see that it was his mom. 

“Are you okay, love? You look distracted.” She asked, concern clear on her face. 

“Yeah?” Cass responded, almost like a question. 

Nadia gave her the “mom” look, the kind that pierces through your soul and knows all of your secrets. “I know you don’t know me all that well and I won’t make you talk about it if you don’t want to, but I can tell something’s on your mind, Cassidy. And I have a feeling it has to do with my son.”

Cass let out a defeated sigh. “Yeah. It’s just...everything’s piling on top of each other, and it’s hard to sort out what’s important and what’s just...static, if that makes sense.”

She nodded wisely. “What kind of things?”

“Outside opinions on us, on Mat and I’s relationship. People thinking that they have a right to make a judgement one way or another. People thinking that I don’t belong here, or with him, because of who I am, and how I look, and what I do.” Cass paused from her monologuing for a moment. “And it’s not always done out of spite. I’ve got a friend at school who just texted me basically asking if I’m sure that my priorities are in the right place. And I know she means well, she’s a wonderful person, but it’s just…” She trailed off.

“Tiring,” Nadia supplied. Cass nodded. “Well,” she began, “Obviously I’m not an expert. I’ve never been in a relationship with a professional athlete, and I’m not you. But I know what pressure feels like, and I know Mat.” Cass gave a watery chuckle. “And I know that my son is head over heels for you. He thinks the world of you, he really does.”

“But, all due respect, it’s not like I’m his first girlfriend or anything.”

“True,” she started carefully, “but I’ve also never seen him like this. I won’t insult your intelligence and say that there haven’t been other girls, because there have, but he’s never been this wholeheartedly invested in someone before. Did you know that you’re the first one he’s introduced us to since he moved to New York?”

Cass shook her head. “No, I didn’t. He never told me.”

“And why would he? Mat’s a good man and he’s got a good heart, but sometimes he can be remarkably dense. Doesn’t always notice what’s right in front of him.”

“Believe me, I’ve noticed that much,” Cass said, laughing. 

Her thumb ran across Cass’s shoulder. “I guess this all just goes to say that you’ve got to talk to him. He cares about you, a lot. He’ll listen. And if he doesn’t, you send him to me, okay?”

Cass smiled. “I will.” The players had just come out, and the anthems were about to start. Cass rose from her seat, hand over her heart and Mat on her mind. 

The score at the ten-minute mark was 3-3, and Cass had to constantly stop herself from chewing her nails down to nubs. The 3-on-3  format made it easier to keep track of the puck, but there was so much open space on the ice it was sometimes impossible to tell where the players were trying to go in the first place. There were three minutes left, and Mat had just nabbed a pass from Konecny. Skating down the ice, he caught a breakaway. Faked to his left, skated to the right, and poked it right past Vasilevsky in the far corner. Half of the arena exploded, half sunk to their seats and groaned. Cass cheered loudly, cupping her hands around her mouth and hugging the rest of the family. He skated over to the side, hi-fiving the guys on the bench before taking his seat for the next shift. 

Metro division ended up winning 8-6, and Cass shot off a quick congratulations text to Mat, knowing that he probably wouldn’t be able to read it until after the final. She half-payed attention to the Western conference semifinal, only enough to know that the Pacific division won. She couldn’t even say by how much. 

The final was close, much closer than the first game had seemed, with no more than a single goal separating the two teams at any time. Late in the game, it looked like the Metro team would be able to run away with it, but Tkachuk sniped from the blue line, pulling Pacific ahead and giving them the win. She followed his family down to the hall where everyone was waiting, internally cringing at the thought of how Mat might be taking the loss. He had gotten better, a lot better, after they had made it clear that communication was a priority and something that needed to be worked on in their relationship, but he wasn’t perfect, and neither was she. 

So needless to say, she was more than a little surprised when he came out of the locker room with a smile on his face, embracing his family and giving her a kiss on the head. The group walked outside as they said their goodbyes — Mat’s family had an early flight back, Miami to Vancouver wasn’t exactly an in-demand route — and Mat’s sister hugged Cass, turning to her brother after and sternly telling him “don’t screw this up. She’s way too good for you.” 

It was pretty late, and a beautiful night, and most of the fans had left, so Cass and Mat walked hand-in-hand back to the hotel. “What’s on your mind, pretty girl?” Mat murmured. So I guess we’re going to have this conversation now, Cass thought, on the sidewalk in an Islanders jersey in the middle of Sunset, Florida. 

“You really can read me like a book, can’t you?” Cass asked softly.

Mat shrugged. “That, and the fact that you keep glancing between me and the street. Might have been a little bit of a giveaway.” 

“The interview from the other day’s been on my mind. I know it seems kind of stupid and childish, but it’s getting to me. What he said about me not being a ‘typical’ hockey girlfriend.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Mat said dismissively. 

“I know that, you know that, but it’s the perception, Mat. Either that I don’t support you or your career because I have my own things to deal with sometimes, or that I don’t occupy the ���place’ I should by pursuing education and a career. By pursuing a male-dominated career, especially. I’m worried I don’t…” She took a breath. “I’m worried I don’t live up to the expectations everyone’s setting for me.” Cass was annoyed, not at Mat or at the interviewer, even, but at the situation. At the thought that she had to continually prove to people that she was enough and she had earned her place. 

“Fuck expectations,” Mat said abruptly. “I want you. All of you.” He stopped for a moment. “I’m so, so proud of you. I know I’ve said it already, and I hope you don’t get tired of hearing it, because it’s true. You have this incredible future ahead of you, and you’ve worked so hard to get to where you are. Everyone sees it. You’re going to do such good work, whether it’s bailing dumbass hockey players out or defending immigrant kids. You’re made for this.” Cass had gone into law school thinking she wanted to go into immigration law, motivated in no small part by the fact that Alejandra, her best friend down in Texas, was a DACA recipient. She had legal status for the time being, but it broke her heart to think that she could be forced out of the only country she had ever known. And when Cass was pissed off about something, she wasn’t the type to keep her mouth shut. 

“People will want to write you off,” he continued, “because maybe they’ve never seen anyone do what you do, but that just makes it all the more incredible and impressive that you are able to do it. To have it all.”

Cass let out a humorless laugh. “Have it all, sure.”

“What else happened?” Mat asked, getting the sense that there was still something she was holding back. And he was right. 

“Fiona sent this text checking up on me,” Cass said, not quite sure where to start. 

Mat’s eyebrows furrowed. “But isn’t that good? That she wanted to catch up?”

“I mean, it would be,” Cass sighed, “but she was saying without saying it that she’s not sure my priorities are in the right place since I’ve started seeing you. Almost like you’re...I don’t know. Distracting me from school or something.”

“But—” She cut him off.

“Don’t be mad at her. She means well, I know she does,” Cass replied sharply. Even frustrated, she was still protective of her friends. “And she’s right in the fact that I’ve had more things taking up my time now, and maybe I’m not spending quite as much time at school or the library or wherever as I used to. But that’s fine. Right? Because I’ve been working hard, and I’m still getting good grades but this is making me worried that everything I’m working so hard for isn’t going to pan out—”

“Are you happier?” Mat asked abruptly. 

Cass turned to him, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Are you happier now than you were before we met?” She could see his Adam’s apple bobbing. He was nervous. Mat had taken a gamble asking her the question, and he wasn’t sure of the answer. 

“I am,” she said softly. 

Mat squeezed her hand. “Then what else really matters?”

They arrived back at the hotel some twenty minutes later, dropping their bags on the floor and grabbing a change of clothes. There was a party at a bar downtown, and everyone was invited. By everyone, that meant all the players and whoever they decided to bring along. “I don’t actually know who booked the place,” Mat said, pulling one leg through a pair of black jeans. “Segs, maybe?” Out of anyone she had met that weekend, Tyler Seguin renting out a bar would surprise her the least. It was kind of sweet, she thought, zipping up her ankle boots, that the teams could check each other on the ice and then go celebrate together after. Being in the hockey world was really just like having a weird, dysfunctional family. 

“You ready to go?” Cass asked, grabbing a jacket. 

“After you,” Mat said, opening the door. They met a handful of others in the lobby, and the group grabbed a pair of Ubers over to the venue. It was packed by the time they got there, most of the players hanging out in the roped-off section  towards the back. Mat helped her up, grabbing them a pair of what she’s pretty sure were whiskey sours, and introducing her to everyone they ran into. She couldn’t keep track of all the names, there was Nathan MacKinnon and Seth Jones and the Tkachuk brothers and a half dozen other players she didn’t recognize. “Please, for the love of God, shave the mustache,” she said to Auston, sipping her drink and staring at him judgily. “It’s not a good look.” He waved her off good-naturedly, and she smacked his shoulder as she walked back to Mat, wrapping her free arm around his front and kissing his shoulder. 

“Let’s dance, chou,” Cass said, shucking off her jacket and leaving it on a spare chair. Mat smiled, taking her hand and guiding her out to the dance floor, where a mix of hockey and decidedly-not-hockey couples were gathered under the bright lights. Ah, sweat, the great equalizer. 

“Do you think any of these Florida men are, you know, Florida Men?” Mat asked over the noise. Cass threw her head back laughing, remembering their first real conversation. 

“Absolutely. We’re going to get pulled into their gator cult.”

It was Mat’s turn to laugh. “I’ll protect you.”

“I’m swooning,” Cass replied. “You’re my knight in shining armor, Mathew.” 

Cass sat down her second drink of the night onto a nearby table, draping her arms around his neck. His hands snaked around her to the back of her waist, pulling her up against him, pulling her closer. She couldn’t even say what song was playing, some dance remix of a top-40 hit that the DJ in the corner was more than likely butchering, but she didn’t care. All she could think about was Mat’s hands on her and how he made her feel. For once in her life, Cass felt like she didn’t have any pressing responsibilities. For one night, she didn’t have the weight of the world on her shoulders. She was 24, and she was going to party like she was 24. 

Cass leaned up to Mat, kissing him, whimpering when his tongue slipped between her lips. In a normal context, Cass never would have done something like that in public, and maybe it was the alcohol talking, but she finally couldn’t care less what people thought of them. “I don’t think the girls behind us know I speak Spanish,” she murmured, his face still so close she could feel him breathing, “because they’re all talking about how hot you are.” Mat laughed, letting his hands down a little more than was respectable. “Soy mexicana, hablo español,” she said over her shoulder, raising one eyebrow as the girls blushed and hurried off. “Now where were we?”

They kissed for what felt like hours, until her lips were starting to get puffy and she needed to come up for air. “I’m going to get another drink. You want anything?” 

“Gimlet?” Mat asked hopefully, giving Cass a peck on the cheek as she made her way to the bar. Waiting among the throngs of people vying for the bartender’s attention, she threw her hair up in a high pony. It may have been January, but it was still Miami and they were still in a club — it was hot as hell. Five minutes later, she had finally shoved her way to the front, ordering Mat’s gimlet and a mojito for herself. Cass scrolled through her Instagram feed as she waited, sensing someone who she assumed was Mat off to her right side. 

“Hey,” she said, looking up, expecting to see her boyfriend. It wasn’t her boyfriend. The men was a little taller than Mat, blond instead of brunet, and any other time, she probably would have been all over him. She wished she hadn’t started a conversation.

“Hey,” he said, resting an elbow on the bar. “What’s your name?” 

“Cassidy,” she said, flashing him a tight smile. He didn’t deserve the nickname. 

He nodded. “Cool, cool. That’s a beautiful name. I’m Justin. Can I buy you a drink?” He was clearly a few in himself, not enough to be drunk but more than enough to engage in a spectacularly poor decision-making process.

“I’ve already ordered one, thanks.” Cass was trying to negotiate, walking the fine line between politeness and interest, hating that she had to talk to someone she didn’t want to just in the interest of safety.

 “You from the area?”

She had to stop herself from rolling her eyes, willing the bartender to come back with the drinks. “No, not really. Just visiting. Leaving tomorrow,” she said, hoping that that would be enough of a hint to get him off of her back. As it turned out, that would be simply too big of an ask. 

“Then I guess we’ve got to make the most of tonight, huh?” Gross, she thought. She wasn’t leading him on, wasn’t doing anything more than making polite conversation so he wouldn’t get even more pissed at her, so what gave him the right?

“Listen, Justin,” she said, finally turning and facing him. “That’s not my style. And I have a boyfriend.”

He cracked a smile, clearly not buying it. As subtly as she could, she tried to find Mat, but she couldn’t. Maybe he had gone to the bathroom? And she didn’t want to leave without having gotten their drinks, cocktails didn’t come cheap and she didn’t want to throw her money away. “It’s okay, babe, you don’t have to play that game with me. He’s not here.” 

“I’m not interested.”

“Hey, come on,” Justin said, inching closer and growing more aggressive by the second. “I was just trying to be nice. Don’t have to be such a bitch about it.” She took a deep breath, about to flag down the bouncer and tell her that this guy just wasn’t taking no for an answer, but she didn’t have to. 

“What’s going on here?” That voice, she recognized. That voice was Mat. Cass let out a sign of relief, gladly moving to the side and letting Mat step in between them. 

“This the boyfriend?” Justin asked with disdain. 

Mat arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, I’m ‘the boyfriend,’ but it shouldn’t matter. She’s not interested, and you’re having trouble respecting that.”

Justin huffed. “Fine, She wouldn’t have been worth it anyway.” Cass had to grab Mat’s wrist to stop him from going after the guy. 

“God, I wanted to punch that guy,” Mat said, running a hand through his hair and visually inspecting her. “You okay? Did he do anything?”

She shook her head. “No, thank God. A little shook up, but nothing serious. He just didn’t know how to take no for an answer.”

He kissed the top of her head, grabbing the drinks from the bartender, who had just slid them over. “You good to stay?” He wouldn’t have blamed her if she wanted to leave.

Cass shook her head. “No, I’m good. Liquor me up.”

“As you wish,” Mat said, handing her the glass. 

The two made their way back to the cordoned-off section, where Cass downed the entirety of her mojito in under 10 minutes. She wasn’t in a sipping mood. Then someone from the Pacific Division — maybe they were on the Sharks? — bought the whole room a round, then she finished half of Mat’s Whiteclaw. Then somehow, she was goaded into body shots. 

“You cool with this?” Mat asked as she scrambled up onto the table. Cass nodded quickly, trying to control her giggles. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’m good,” Cass said, scrunching the bottom of her shirt up, trying not to think about what her mom would think if she saw her right now. 

Someone had obviously made a run to one of the bars, returning with a bowl of limes and a saltshaker. She tried not to think of how good it felt when his tongue ran over her stomach, licking up the salt, tried to distract herself when his head was ducked just above where her shirt barely covered her bra, throwing back the tequila, and definitely didn’t want to think about his lips just barely touching hers to grab the lime wedge. He threw away the wedge and bro-hugged a few of his onlooking friends, collapsing over Cass in laughter and kisses while he helped her off of the table. 

A little under an hour and a few more drinks later, most of the group had finally decided to call it quits. To put it technically, everyone was shitfaced. A few people luckily still had the wherewithal to call Ubers, and they split up with Instagram handles written in eyeliner on hands to cars grouped by hotel. It was her, Mat, Seguin, and someone’s little sister packed into a white Honda Civic, Mat lazily kissing Cass’s neck, shoulder, anywhere he could reach. They tipped the driver  — very well — before stumbling into the elevators, saying goodbye to Tyler, who was the floor below them. She barely managed to wipe off her makeup and brush her teeth before falling into bed with Mat, who immediately draped his arm over her waist and pulled her into his chest. Even drunk, she wasn’t complaining. 

---

Jan. 31 (sun)

 Cass groaned, her head pounding as she looked she rolled over in bed to grab her phone, looking at the time. 9:22. Great, their flight was at noon, so there wasn’t any time for self-pity before they needed to leave. Mat was up too, rubbing his eyes with a grump look on his face. He leaned over, giving her a kiss good morning. “How are you feeling, babe?” He asked. Mat’s head wasn’t hurting too bad  — he knew he could hold his liquor just fine  — but he had never seen Cass drink as much as she had last night. 

“Ugh,” Cass moaned, pressing the heels of her hands to her temples. “It was so much fun, but I’m never doing that again. I don’t think I’ve been this hungover since the SAE color party junior year.”

“Oh yeah,” Mat mused, “I forgot you were a sorority girl,” he said in sing-song. 

Cass huffed. “I was president, thank you very much.”

“Does my sorority girl need an Advil?” Mat asked. 

“Your sorority girl will punch you if you keep saying that, but yes. Advil would be much appreciated.”

Mat padded away, returning from the bathroom a moment later with the bottle in his hand. He shook two out, grabbing her water bottle from the nightstand and unscrewing the cap. “Here you are.”

“Thank you,” Cass said, flashing him a small, begrudged, but genuine smile. “You’re really too good to me, Mat.”

He kissed her shoulder, pulling a t-shirt over his head. “You deserve it.”

---

Feb 13 (sat)

 Cass’s hair was thrown up in a messy bun as she padded through the aisle of the grocery store. Shopping duties rotated every week, and it was her turn for errands. She handed her card over to the cashier, pulling out her bag-of-bags and beginning to separate. Fridge. Fridge. Pantry. Freezer. Pantry. Errands had always been somewhat of a soothing activity for her; Cass liked just being able to listen to her music and drive around and go into stores for a reason, not just to kill time. As much as she loved spending time with Mat and her roommates and her friends at law school, the constant human interaction could get draining sometimes, and the precious few free hours were alone time she craved. Loading all the bags into her trunk, she set off for the CVS. The bathroom was running out of soap, she needed a box of tampons, and she had gotten a call that the refill on her birth control was ready. 

It was also the day before Valentine’s, which hadn’t always been the best time of year for Cass. It seemed like most of her Valentine’s Days had been filled with sitting alone in her room or binge-watching Bachelor reruns with friends. Or, in the case of her junior year of college, it was crying in her bedroom at the sorority house over the fact that Alex, her boyfriend of a year, had broken up with her two days prior because a relationship was just “too much work.” And Cass was all in favor of self-reflection, but that didn’t mean the rejection stung any less. They had been together for almost a year, and even though she had had other boyfriends before, he was the first one she loved, the first one she really saw a future with. So, needless to say, her track record wasn’t the best. Which she told Mat, that she didn’t want anything elaborate or extravagant, especially since he was leaving for a roadie the day after and would have to get up early. 

But they say love makes people do crazy things. And Mat didn’t want her memories of a day that, commercialized as it was, was supposed to be about celebrating love and commitment and admiration for your partner. And anyone who knew Mathew Barzal knew that he was stubborn as hell with a heart of gold. But if Cass didn’t want anything big, he wasn’t going to do anything big; as much as he would have been absolutely willing to rent out the entire damn Empire State Building just to shout from the rooftops that he was absolutely, unequivocally in love with Cassidy María Cabrera Shaw, but her comfort came before anything. He’d bend over backwards to make her know how much he cared. But this was also Mat Barzal, and Mat Barzal never did anything halfway. 

So it really wasn’t a surprise at all when, just as Cass pulled into her parking spot and killed the gas on her car that her phone lit up with a text from Mat. Picking you up at 5:30 tomorrow. Dress like you’re going to a diner. 

[iamrealbuilder]

Bill Buchalter interview

Bill Buchalter was a level designer for Sunstorm Interactive. He’s worked on 3 official add-on of Build Engine games: Cryptic Passage for Blood, Suckin’ Grits On Route 66 for Redneck Rampage, Caribbean Life for Duke Nukem 3D. Interview, November 2020: Corentin: Can you introduce yourself?

Bill Buchalter: My name is Bill Buchalter. I’m an avid gamer of all kinds – video games, board games, and especially tabletop RPGs. I’m currently a freelance writer for AAW Games (Adventure A Week Games) writing mini adventures for Dungeons & Dragons 5E. I live outside Indianapolis, IN with my wife Jane, our three kids, and our dog Roxi. When I’m not gaming, I also enjoy music, playing guitar, hiking, and camping.

C: With Sunstorm Interactive, you're credited for level design on Cryptic Passage, Caribbean Life and Route 66. How did you start working with Sunstorm and what do you remember from that time?

BB: In the mid 90’s, maybe around 1995 or 96, I was very into playing Duke Nukem 3D. Like most PC gamers at the time, I had played Castle Wolfenstein and Doom, and Duke Nukem just blew me away. Back in those days, when we played online, we would use a 3rd party program called KALI. You dialed up on your modem, logged onto the internet, and then used KALI as a portal to chat with other gamers and find someone to play with. The KALI software would then allow you to network together over the internet and play PVP matches. It was crude, and the lag could be horrible, but we didn’t know any better at the time and we loved it!

I remember I was in a B. Dalton bookstore in the mall one day (another relic of the 90’s that is long gone!) when I found a book called the “Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook”. I was intrigued, and as I flipped through the pages it talked about a program on the Duke Nukem CD called Build, which allowed you to create your own levels. I had no idea Build existed, let alone how to use it. I bought the book and spent the next couple weeks diving into learning how to use Build. I was hooked!

Making my own maps quickly became an obsession. I would share them with my friends on KALI and I quickly earned a reputation for making user maps. I remember there was a map building competition, but I don’t recall who sponsored it. A guy named Robert Travis won the competition. When I saw his maps, I was blown away! His designs were so much more advanced than mine. He was using tricks I had never thought of to get lighting effects and set moods. I had to reach out to him to pick his brain.

Robert responded and we began talking and quickly figured out that we both lived in Indianapolis. He was working for Sunstorm at the time and invited me to come to their office to discuss level design. I met him there one evening, and he showed me some of the stuff he was working on. We ended up playing Duke all night on Sunstorm’s network with some of the other guys in the office. I was in heaven!

Robert introduced me to Anthony Campiti, the lead producer on Sunstorm’s next project – Cryptic Passage, an add-on for a Build engine game called Blood. They invited me to design some levels for the game and I jumped at the chance. Robert assigned me to design an opera house level and immediately I got pictures in my head of the theater scenes from Interview with a Vampire. I went home and worked furiously on designing the level. I was still rough, but with Robert’s help I tweaked things here and there and slowly learned his techniques. In the end I was really pleased with the level I’d designed. Robert and Anthony were happy too and asked me to design a second map specifically for deathmatch.

The next project Sunstorm was working on was Suckin’ Grits on Route 66, an add-on for another Build engine game called Redneck Rampage. Robert again asked if I’d like to be a part of that team and assigned me to build a truck stop level. Using a lot of the things I’d learned on Cryptic Passage, and the campy feel of the Redneck Rampage game, I had a lot of fun designing that level.

The last project I worked on for Sunstorm was Duke Nukem Caribbean Vacation. By this time Duke’s popularity was beginning to wane, and Quake was taking over. Robert was already starting to experiment and learn how to use the Quake engine. I was a new dad at the time (my first daughter had just been born) so unfortunately, I didn’t have the spare time to devote to learning a new engine. I barely had the time to design my level for Duke Caribbean, but I did manage to finish the casino level for that project. I do recall that Robert ended up going through in the end and changing a lot of the aspects of my level to fit the theme they had in mind. I remember being a bit disappointed and not really feeling like the level was “mine” because of so many of the changes. It was the last project I worked on for Sunstorm.

I kept in touch with Robert and Anthony for a while after that. They were branching out, working on other projects, and even trying to develop their own FPS game that I don’t think ever really got off the ground. Sunstorm was having the most success with their Deer Hunter line of games that at the time were selling well in Wal-Mart. Sadly, I eventually just lost touch with those guys.

I’m sure this is WAY more information than you were wanting (I’m a writer… I can’t help but go off the deep end!) but you dusted off some fond, old memories for me, so I apologize for walking so far down memory lane!

C: I see that you're still making maps, different kind of maps! This makes me wonder if maybe you were involved with W!Zone (a pack of maps for Warcraft 2 released by Sunstorm). Can you tell us a bit about that if possible?

BB: I didn’t have any hand in the W!Zone project for Sunstorm, but I loved the Warcraft series. As was common for many video gamers like me, who had roots in fantasy games like D&D, I played a lot of Warcraft and eventually got sucked into the world of MMOs with Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft! If only I had back the time I sunk into those games!

These days I’m exclusively writing and designing for Dungeons and Dragons. I started about ten years ago writing for D&D Organized Play in a campaign called Living Forgotten Realms. I co-authored two adventures for that with my good friend, Michael Pearman, and authored a third adventure on my own. As you know from tracking me down via AAW Games, I’ve now authored six adventures for them, five of which are already published and one that is still in the works but should be released soon.

When I do manage to find time for video games, Diablo III is my game of choice these days. I’m looking forward to Season 22 starting here shortly, and like many others, I’m really hoping for something great with Diablo IV. I’ve been a huge fan of the series since the beginning, and even wrote an entire campaign for D&D 5E that translated the story of Diablo III into Dungeons and Dragons for the players in my home game! Thanks again for the opportunity to share some of this history. It was fun putting it all down and reliving those days!

C: There are two signatures in the Truck Stop level for Route 66. Do you remember anything about that ? There also several levels with no known credit : Fun Park, House of ill Repute, Mystery Dino Cave, Bigfoot Convention.

The signature on the truck stop is Route 66 was a joke! I was the only designer on that one. I just signed it "Billy Joe Jim Bob Buchalter" as a joke for bad redneck name. I wasn't the kind of guy that had to sign my maps the EXACT same way every time. :)

Other than the truck stop, I don't recall designing any other maps for Route 66. I pretty sure none of those you listed below were mine, but I don't recall whose they were.

Finally, here are some final comments Bill made after reading through some forum posts:

Wow, I am really quite humbled that you guys looked so deeply into my work! The fact that you could recognize my build style is pretty cool - I didn't even know I had a style! LOL. The truth be told, the reason you probably had so much trouble telling my levels from Robert's is because he was a big influence on me. I learned a lot from him and incorporated a lot of that into the stuff I built.

Its funny how reading through that thread you linked brought back memories... I remember now that my biggest disappointment from Duke Caribbean was that my only level in the game ended up being a secret level - that some people wouldn't even find it or ever play it. I was actually pretty excited about that level. I was the one that suggested a casino because my folks had retired to Vegas, so I'd been in a lot of the casinos there and had some great ideas for the map. I'd forgotten all about the restaurant I worked into it, and the big fish tanks.

There seems to be some debate about Robert. From what I remember, he was a really good guy. Maybe a bit tough to work for, but only because he really strived for our designs to be the best they could be, and he demanded that of both himself and the other designers. As I said before, I learned early on to accept criticism and critique and not take it personally. It was just Robert doing his job. I'll be the first to admit that I designed better levels thanks to the stuff I learned from Robert.

Someone on the message board made a very astute comment, basically to the effect that "Bill had to have other work out there. Sunstorm wouldn't hire an unproven guy off the street." But truth be told, that's exactly what they did! I hadn't done a single thing before working there. But I think a few things played in my favor. First, I lived in Indy, just 15 minutes from their office, so it was easy for me to go in and work directly with Robert. Second, while I didn't have anything officially published, I did have a disk full of the maps I'd designed on my own, and Robert thought I showed promise. I would design at home a lot, then go into the office a couple times a week and sit with Robert while he critiqued my work and offered advice on how to improve it.

I'll be honest - I'm blown away at the number of people STILL playing these old maps we made so many years ago. I watched a couple YouTube videos of a guy playing and reviewing Duke Caribbean and Blood Cryptic Passage. His high praise of both Full House and the Opera House really made my day. It's nice to know that people enjoyed my work.

_____________________________

Thanks a lot to Bill Buchalter for taking the time to answer these questions! Thanks also for sharing... “Big City” !

A Duke Nukem 3D map he created back in the day before joining with Sunstorm Interactive which was never released before! Screenshot:

Map download:

https://msdn.duke4.net/bigcity.zip

______

External link: Duke4 forum blog megathread: https://forums.duke4.net/topic/11471-blog-interviews-of-build-engine-video-games-developers/page__pid__353013#entry353013 The forum posts Bill read, mentionned above, can be found here: https://forums.duke4.net/topic/9418-duke-caribbean-multiplayer-levels/

[fuckyeahalexjo]

I know this is a stretch but here me out. Could you write a fix of jo receiving a call from the cops saying that they rescued Alex. Like he was kidnapped and then Jo rushes to the hospital and tells him about the letter and he tells her that it was all a load of crap?

Oh anon, I loved this prompt and couldn’t wait to write it! I love this idea :)

Jo tried not to react to every sign of abuse she saw. The teen was understandably jumpy and startled with every movement. Jo was attempting to move slowly to not frighten the young woman unnecessarily, “Okay Cindy, I’m going to press on your belly a little.” She nodded slightly but held her hands up protectively as Jo palpitated her abdomen, noting some irregularities in the upper right quadrant. Jo smiled reassuringly, “Okay, let me take off your cap so I can check for injuries on your head. Cindy tentatively reached for the ball cap, Jo gasping slightly when she saw the hair, suddenly remembering her from a few weeks back when DeLuca had tried to convince others that she was being trafficked. Jo regained her composure and began looking through the knotted and filthy hair to determine if there were any breaks in the skin, “You were here a few weeks ago weren’t you?”

The younger girl barely nodded, “Yeah.”

Jo finished her exam of the head and met the young woman’s eyes, “So you didn’t get the surgery you needed and there have been some injuries since then, haven’t there?” Cindy looked around anxiously, not yet responding causing Jo to look sadly at the cuff marks on her wrists, “Cindy, I promise I can help you and protect you. I know it didn’t go right the last time, but I swear….”

“Jo! We need you in bed three.”

Jo instantly felt enraged, feeling as if she was getting somewhere with the poor girl. She turned to see Meredith gasping in the doorway, “Get someone else, I’m in the middle of something and can’t leave.”

Meredith narrowed her eyes as Jo turned back to her patient, “Did you really just tell me no?”

“I can’t right now.” She then moved slowly to the ultrasound machine, “Okay Cindy, this is going to be a little cold, but I want to check if you have some injuries other than that hernia, okay?”

“Karev.” Jo looked up, this time to see Bailey standing next to Meredith looking almost ecstatic, which was weird for the middle of a massive influx of patients. Bailey then shook her head, her smile widening, as her tone became more motherly, “Jo….bed three needs you. Richard will take over here.”

Jo shook her head, still not picking up their tones, “No, I’ve got this.”

“Ma’am?” At this Jo looked up to see a uniformed officer and sensed Cindy tense beside her. She turned to comfort the young woman when the officer spoke again, “Josephine Karev?”

This caused Jo’s eyes to snap up, “Yes?”

“May I speak to you for a moment?”

Jo looked down at Cindy then back up, conflicted as to what to do when Teddy entered the room, “I’ll take care of her, Karev.” Jo then met the older doctor’s eyes to even see that she was holding back excitement, “You should go.”

Jo looked down at her patient, “You’re in good hands, Cindy. I will check on you later, okay?” She then addressed Teddy, “I was about to order a head CT. No external bleeding but on exam appears there may be some head trauma. Also was about to do an ultrasound on the abdomen. She was here a few weeks back for a hernia, but I believe there may be some fresher injuries as well.” Jo then walked out to meet the officer, feeling off balance by the behavior of her colleagues, “Did you need a statement? Because she really hasn’t told me anything specific.”

She looked at both Bailey and Meredith who seemed to be anxiously awaiting something when the officer spoke, “Ma’am, we found your husband.”

At this, Jo’s head snapped up to meet the officer’s gaze, as she crossed her arms over her chest defensively, “There’s been a mistake. My ex-husband is in Kansas.”

“Jo,” Bailey interjected softly and waited for Jo to look at her, “He’s here. He...he never was in Kansas.”

Jo felt her eyes widen slowly as what Bailey was saying sunk in. The officer spoke again, trying to fill in the gaps for her, “Apparently this human trafficking ring took him a couple of months ago and held him against his will. We’re still trying to piece together why. We’ll need to interview him, but the doctor treating him advised us to wait until tomorrow due to his condition.”

Jo looked up sharply, suddenly unable to breathe, “His condition?”

Bailey took her hand as Meredith put a hand on her shoulder, “He’s malnourished and dehydrated. He was assaulted while trying to get out of there today. Hunt is examining him and may take him up for surgery soon. It looks like he’s been through a lot.”

A sob escaped Jo as she put her hand to her mouth, “He’s really here? He….he’s been here the whole time?”

Meredith started to rub her shoulder in comfort as Bailey smiled sadly, “Like I said, Bed three needs you.”

Jo felt herself start to hyperventilate, suddenly gasping for air as she bent over the nearest cart she could find, “I thought he left me!”

“We all did, Jo,” Meredith pointed out comfortingly, “There will be plenty of time to figure all that out but right now, he needs his wife.” When Jo looked up stricken, Meredith smiled, “He’s been asking for you non-stop since Ben loaded him up in the ambulance.”

Jo suddenly felt much stronger and began walking in the general area, her gait uneven as she tried to quell the nausea that had come on. But once she caught a glimpse of him she stopped dead in her tracks. Alex was looking down at his IV while saying something to Hunt when he glanced up and did a double take, breaking out into the widest smile she had ever seen. Jo didn’t care anymore where she was or who was looking and ran the last several yards to crash into his chest, her arms wrapping him in the tightest hug she had ever given in her life. Alex reached up to stroke her hair and she believed she heard a sob catch in his throat, “You know, I’ve dreamed of this moment every day and none of what I imagined was as good as this.”

Jo pulled back to look at him, her hands reaching up to caress his face, noting how sunken his cheeks were, “You’re really here?” When Alex nodded, she shook her head, “What the hell happened?”

“They took me to keep me from reporting an incident I noticed at Pac North. Then decided to keep me around to take care of the ones they had taken for….well taken.”

Jo shook her head as she lowered herself to sit on the bed, “I thought you were in Kansas with…”

Alex smirked and placed his hand on her thigh, “They got nervous when some people wouldn’t stop texting and calling.” He then seemed troubled as he took her hand in his, “They knew where we lived and I couldn’t….I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. So I made up the one story I knew would piss you off enough to stop trying to track me down.”

Jo laughed to herself as she shook her head and reached up to wipe a tear, “Well that definitely worked.”

“I see that, Mrs. I-only-take-my-rings-off-for-surgery.” Jo straightened immediately and tried to hide her hand between her legs causing Alex to smile, “It’s okay, Jo. I just hope you didn’t actually file the divorce papers.” He looked up to see her giving him an odd look, “Or maybe you want to after all this.”

“Of course not. I never wanted to be divorced from you.” Jo reached up to caress his chest, feeling herself get distressed at how frail he really was. Wishing to lighten the mood, she tilted her head and gave him a flirty smile, “Well maybe the third time we get married will be the charm.”

Alex grinned, “Hell yeah it will be.” He then pulled her down to kiss her properly, Jo feeling all kinds of butterflies in her stomach, still in disbelief of how quickly the pieces of her life had fallen back into place and how amazing it felt to be back in his arms.

[jaceyneedsabetterusername]

Family and Fantasy

Pairings: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: Y/N finally gets the life she’s been dreaming of with the man she’s in love with but it’s not all it appears. 

Warnings: Supernatural typical violence, bad writing as always

____________________________________________

The sun shone brightly on your face, warming your skin, as you leaned against the warm sun-heated Impala. A light breeze rustled through the leaves of the forest that surrounded the clearing you were in and across the field of mixed weeds and flowers. Dean always insisted they were weeds at least; you thought that it was all beautiful. 

A large smile spread across your face as you heard the squealing laughter of your three year old son, Marcus, “Daddy stop!” He giggled, Dean chasing him in small circles with a big grin. You watched the two of them run around in the middle of the empty dirt road in front of your home.

“I’m gonna get you!” Dean said, closing in on the little boy, snatching him up in his arms and swinging him around. Laughter filled the air as Dean tossed him in the air and and ran up to you. “Now let’s get Mommy!” 

You put your arms up, jokingly shielding yourself as Dean and Marcus came running towards you, Marcus’s hands outstretched. His bright green eyes - his father’s eyes - sparkled with glee. Marcus squealed excitedly. “No!!!” You teased. Suddenly, Dean thrust Marcus into your open arms, “throwing” him at you. 

“Got you!” Marcus giggled, throwing his slightly chubby arms around your neck. Dean came up besides you, wrapping his arms around your body and squeezing you and your son into his arms. He kissed the top of your head and you snuggled into his neck, taking in everything. The feeling of his skin against yours, the scent of him and his cologne on his shirt, the slight scratch of his ever-so-slightly scruffy face on your cheek as he nuzzled against you, the squirming of your son as he vied for your attention over Dean. Most importantly, you looked up at Dean and you saw him smile. He actually smiled with genuine happiness and contentment. 

You looked up lovingly at him and watched his gaze scan across the scene in front of him: from the luscious green forest around a field mixed with grass and flowers to the dirt road that doubled as your driveway to the large dirt driveway that led to your home then back to your son, who there was no denying was his just by looks. Finally, his gaze drifted down, beautiful green eyes meeting yours as he kissed you gently, “I love you.” 

______________

Dean rushed into the motel room excitedly, setting the bags of take-out on the half-broken table. It was a good night. It was his night to take the bed instead of the floor and he had just gotten back from getting a double bacon cheeseburger. What wasn’t to love? “I HAVE PROVIDED!” He announced, throwing his arms in the air triumphantly for doing a basic human task like getting food.

He reached into the large brown paper bag, pulling out his burger before looking pu and noticing that nobody was getting their food. “Don’t all get up at once.” He commented sarcastically, looking at Sam, Cas, Jack, and… oh. That’s what was off. “Where’s Y/N?” 

Sam leaned back from his laptop, “Y/N’s not back yet.” 

“What do you mean Y/N isn’t back yet?” He asked. 

“I mean she isn't back. She left this morning to go check in on the girl we wanted to talk to about the potential case here but she never came back. She stopped responding to my text messages five hours ago. She won’t answer her phone.” 

“Maybe her phone died?” Dean suggested, trying to push aside the panic that was rising in his chest. 

Cas shrugged, “That’s what we assumed too but she’s been gone for almost twelve hours. Even if her phone did die, she should have been back by now or at least told us she went to go do other things. It’s nearly eleven o’clock at night. And nothing in this town is open past eight as far as I can tell.” 

Dean thought for a second, “Okay… so what do we do? Where do we start? What do we know?” He rambled. 

“I’m not sure,” Jack started, “But she went to interview someone who knew the vic right? Maybe we should go talk to the girl she interviewed? See if she knows anything?” 

Cas nodded, “That would be a good place to start.”

Before Cas even finished agreeing, Dean had the keys pulled out of his pocket and was heading towards the door, “Alright, let’s go.” 

__________________

“Excuse me boys but what exactly do you think you’re doing?” You questioned, hands on your hips, as you watched your three year old sitting on the granite kitchen counter next to your husband, both of them looking like a deer in headlights. Marcus quickly ripped his hand out of the pack of cookies he and Dean were sneaking into while Dean continued to look at you, mid-bite into his chocolate chip cookie. They knew they were caught. “I just got back from the store to make dinner! It is not time for cookies!” You exclaimed, not actually mad, just irritated at Dean for spoiling your son’s appetite. It was hard enough getting him to eat his veggies sometimes. 

“Daddy! Mommy’s home!” Marcus very obviously scream whispered, panicking. 

Dean leaned over, “Yeah, thanks buddy.” You cocked an eyebrow at him. After a second, Dean stood a little straighter, looking at you defiantly and finishing biting into the cookie. 

“Dean Winchester! Don’t make me fight you!” You threatened, reaching over to pick Marcus up off the counter. 

“Is that a promise or a threat?” Dean asked with a smirk and cheesy eyebrow wiggle. 

Your eyes widened as you cleared your throat, motioning to the toddler in your arms. 

Your husband rolled his eyes, “Awe c’mon, he’s three. He doesn’t know what I mean.” You rolled your eyes back at him, setting Marcus down. 

After watching him run into the other room, Dean moved a little closer to you, grabbing your waist and leaning close to you, his scruffiness scratching seductively up your neck, making your knees weak. “So… maybe we can get him to bed early tonight and we can make that a promise?” 

______________________

“Hello, Miss. Peyton Wilson?” Sam started, the girl nodding in response, “I’m agent Cole and this is my partner agent Wanek,” He gestured to Dean, “Another agent came by this morning to speak with you about your brother’s death, correct?” 

Peyton looked as if she’d been crying for days, her eyes puffy and hair messy, “I already talked to the police. But no, nobody from the FBI came by.” 

“No?” Sam asked, fear flashing in his chest, “Okay, well I’m sorry for bothering you so late. We’ll be back tomorrow at a more reasonable time to speak with you about the incident. Have a good night.” 

“So she never made it here?” Dean thought out loud as they walked towards the impala where Jack and Cas were. 

From the back, Cas said, concerned, “Then she’s been missing for longer than we thought.” 

“So where do we start then?” Dean asked, needing something productive to be said. He felt like they weren’t getting anywhere. 

In the backseat, a thought occurred to Jack, “What if whatever we’re hunting here got Y/N too?” 

Dean groaned, “Then we better find whatever it is fast. We don’t even know for sure what we’re hunting. But whatever it is, it’s not good and she probably doesn’t have much time.” 

“Three known victims so far, all completely drained of blood. So we’re down to… what? A vamp or a djinn?” Sam thought through before sighing, “Either way, it’s not good.” 

“And where’s the nest then?” Cas asked. 

Out across the dark, rainy street, what looked like a teenage girl walking down the sidewalk caught Sam’s attention. She walked straight ahead, shielding herself from the rain by pulling her coat over her head. Sam watched, noticing that she kept glancing behind her nervously. “Hey, guys…” Sam mentioned, drawing everyone’s attention to the young girl who was quickly looking more and more scared. The girl completely stopped, looking around and taking out her earbuds when suddenly a man appeared out of the bushes next to her. Within less than a second, his eyes glowed a bright blue, illuminating his heavily tattooed body, and he snatched her into the bushes, the both of them disappearing silently. 

All four of the men jumped out of the car, rushing towards where the girl and djinn just stood. “I guess we know which one it is now.” As they approached where they were, they couldn’t find where they went. Dean rustled the leaves around, trying to figure out where the djinn could have possibly taken the girl. That’s when he saw the opening behind the bush. 

“Right here guys!” He announced, ripping away the branches and diving straight into the tunnel, gun drawn. It was dark and entirely concrete, walls, floor, ceiling, and all. Water leaked from cracks in the ceiling, small weeds peeping through the seams between slabs on cement. The tunnel itself only went about fifteen feet in before opening into a medium sized room lit only by the sporadic, nearly-burnt out candle. 

Dean cautiously scanned the room, nodding his head silently to let the other three men know it was clear. They all entered, guns readied. Broken furniture littered the room except for the occasional mostly intact couch or table. The men spread around the room, each looking in different areas for either the man or the girl he took or (preferably) you. 

Jack followed along one wall, seeing a hallway that led off to the right. He rounded the corner, gasping when he saw the scene in front of him. Across the room, he saw a row of people strung up by rope around their wrists, feet barely touching the floor (not that it mattered considering they hung limp and unconscious anyways.) There were three people in total: one older gentleman, a younger man- the one who’s disappearance drew you all to the town in the first place, and you. Each of you were hooked up to an IV system, deep red blood flowing from your arms into a bag that hung next to each of your bodies.  “Dean! Sam! Cas!” Jack yelled, alerting the others. 

______________________________

You couldn’t help the slight quiver in your legs or the flutter in your chest as Dean’s lips dipped below your jaw and just behind your ear, knowing every spot on your body that made you weak. His rough hands gently crept under your shirt, calloused fingers resting on your soft skin, as he pinned your body between his hips and the granite kitchen counter. You tilted your head, giving him better access to exactly where you wanted him. A whimper escaped your lips as he sank his teeth into your delicate skin before soothing over it with his tongue. 

“Do you realize how beautiful you are?” He asked, pulling away from your neck to look into your eyes with all the love and adoration that they held five years ago when you first fell in love. 

Gosh, the way this man made you feel. He had the power to make you feel like the strongest most badass woman in the world but he could also make you feel like the most beautiful, loved person on the planet. 

“Do you realize how much I love you?” You responded, hoping your eyes conveyed the exact same message his did. Before he could respond, you pulled him close to you, hand resting on his neck before craning your mouth back up to meet his in a fiery kiss. Dean’s large hands trailed down from your hips to your thighs, lifting you up onto the counter. He quickly closed the gap between you, hips coming flush with you. Your legs instinctively wrapped around his hips as you pulled him impossibly closer, earning a grunt from Dean as the bulge in his jeans rubbed against your clothed core. 

Your lips still crashed passionately as his hand snaked around your lower back and he leaned forward, catching you off guard as you suddenly found yourself leaning back. Before you could lie all the way down, your hands shot out in panic, trying to catch yourself in a momentary panic despite the fact that Dean had you supported the whole time. In your panic, you accidentally knocked a small pile of books off the counter and they came crashing to the ground with a loud thud. 

You and Dean both froze, listening for Marcus to see if he woke up. After it was decided it was safe, you giggled at your mishap. Dean looked down at you and poked your sides in humorous aggression, “Gotta be quiet princess or you’ll wake him up! It’s already been so long.” He growled the last part, diving back into your neck, trailing hot kisses down into your cleavage and across your breasts, pulling your tank top down further to expose your supple skin. His teeth grazed over the tender flesh pulling a whimper from your lips. 

“You sound so sweet princess.” Ohhh that nickname. It really did things to you. His hands came up to massage your breasts , pulling your shirt and bra down, completely exposing you, and you found yourself arching your back into his rough palms. “You have no idea how badly I’ve missed this.” He groaned in your ear, grinding his hips into your heat and you could feel everything. 

“I’m pretty sure I have an idea.” You teased, your words broken by breathy moans. Slowly, he moved his left hand from your breast and down to your heat, massaging you through your shorts. 

“Oh Dean-” You moaned in ecstasy. 

_______________________________

“Dean…” You groaned quietly. 

“I’m here! I’m here Y/N. C’mon wake up.” Dean told you, panicked, as he and Sam ran over to you. Dean checked your pulse while Sam whipped out his knife and began sawing through the ropes that held you up. It didn’t take long to cut all the rope and your weight crashed into Dean’s arms. He gently lied you on the ground, kneeling over you. 

“He’s dead. Is she okay?” Cas asked, looking over from his own work of cutting down the elderly gentleman. 

“She’s alive.” Dean announced, “C’mon Y/N, wake up!” He shook you slightly. Gosh, you were so pale and your skin was cold and clammy. Your lips were chapped and he could’ve sworn they were almost purple. His eyes trailed down to where the IV was and he quickly removed the tape, gently removing the catheter from your arm, blood squirting down your arm from the lack of pressure. “Jack! Help!” 

Jack quickly ran over to you and swiped his hand over your body. His eyes glowed bright amber and a warm energy flowed from his hands into your body, stopping the bleeding in your arm and trailing up. As he worked his way up, you slowly regained some color and your breathing became more regular. 

Before he could finish though, Sam yelled, grunting as he was tackled to the ground by a man. Jack stopped and stood quickly, his attention turning to Sam who was being attacked by the same man that had taken the girl earlier that night. The man choked Sam, his hands gripping tightly around his throat. “Jack-” He choked out, hands trying to pry the man’s grip off. As Sam met his eyes though he noticed them glow bright blue and saw the tattoos all over his body do the same and Sam knew right away what he was dealing with. 

With a flick of his wrist, the man was thrown off Sam by some invisible force and sent crashing into the cement walls. Sam rolled over, gasping and coughing loudly, managing to croak out, “It’s a djinn!” 

The tattooed monster didn’t stay down for long though and before the boys knew it, he was back up. The djinn rushed towards Castiel, who turned soon enough to take a blunt tackle to the chest. He found himself pinned against the wall. Cas struggled hard against the pressure but the djinn wasn’t budging. Again, he glowed bright blue and brought his fingers up to Castiel’s forehead. When he did, Cas’s eyes glowed as well and he stared off as if he were in a trance. 

Before the djinn’s magic was completely though, Sam rushed up from behind, running him through with the angel blade. His blue glow flickered before completely dimming and he crashed to the ground. Cas fell as well but quickly regained consciousness, the djinn’s magic having not worked entirely. 

“Jack!” Dean hissed, snapping a distracted Jack back to his previous job of healing you.

“Right!” Jack knelt back down next to you and ran his hands over your still body. Slowly, you began moving again, even if only a little. 

Suddenly, your eyes shot open as you gasped and sat up, nearly knocking Dean’s head with yours. You leaned back against your hands as you gasped, looking around at your surroundings.

How the hell did you get here? What happened? Where were you? Two seconds ago you were in your very happy home, doing very very pleasant things with your husband when suddenly you were jolted to wherever the hell this was. You really thought you were done with all that hunter stuff… 

“Y/N?!” A familiar voice gasped, “You’re okay! We’ve got you!” 

You looked over to see Dean crouching next to you but this wasn’t your Dean. This was the Dean you’d first started dating back when you were hunters. “What’s going on?” You asked, looking around frantically. Dean, Cas, Sam, and Jack all stood around you with worried looks on their faces. 

“You were taken by a djinn,” Cas explained, turning to the boys, “Her confusion is probably caused by suddenly being jerked from whatever fantasy he had her in.” 

Fantasy. That was just a fantasy? “It all felt so real.” You sighed sadly to yourself. You wanted that to be real so badly.

Dean took your hand gently, “Believe me, I know. I’ve been zapped in by one of those suckers too.” 

“Let’s get her back to the hotel.” Sam suggested. 

Everyone nodded in agreement and Dean reached down to help you up. The second his skin touched yours, your heart sped up and you gasped, still feeling hot from his touch in your dream. Dean noticed and looked at you with a concerned expression, “You okay?” 

You nodded hurriedly, avoiding eye contact with him. It was all too weird. You’d been in love with the man for months and you finally had everything you’d dreamed of. You’d been with him in ways you could only imagine being with him in real life and now it was as if none of it had happened. Because none of it had. 

“I can do it.” You stated, pushing yourself up with wobbly arms. They were still sore despite the fact that your wounds had been healed.

Together, the five of you made your way out of the room you were in, along with the girl they’d saved. Once outside, you made quick work of making the scene look like a typical kidnapping-murder. Dean called it in to the police that you’d all been working with as FBI and told them that you’d found the victims. 

As soon as all of that was done, you’d gotten in the Impala and made your way back to the motel. Everyone noticed you were uncharacteristically quiet but chose not to push it. They had no clue what hallucination you were stuck in. 

But Jack, of course, with his child-like naivety and thirst for learning looked at you innocently in the backseat, “So you were stuck in a dream?” He asked. 

You nodded, trying to hide the sadness, “Apparently so.” 

“And he was feeding off of your blood while keeping you trapped in a dream?” He pressed, innocent curiosity all over his face. 

“Yes, Jack.” You stated simply, really not wanting to explain all of this right now. It wasn’t as if you’d just been strung up and drained of your blood all day or anything. 

He shifted in his seat to look at you, “So what did you dream about?” 

You stopped, unsure what to say. Silently, you looked up to the front seat to look at Dean, hoping with every fiber of your being that maybe that dream was some premonition, “It actually wasn’t bad,” You explained with a small smile, “It was everything I’ve wanted my life to be for a long time.” 

“Doesn’t sound like a bad way to die,” Jack commented, “Y’know, stuck in a perfect dream world where you can’t feel yourself slowly being murdered.” 

You cringed a little at the way he explained it, especially since he did it with his boy-like smile. “I guess you’re right, Jack.” You chuckled. 

“Well now that you saw your perfect life, maybe you can work on making it real!” He chirped excitedly. 

Again, your eyes found their attention on Dean and the way the moonlight and headlights highlighted his features in the night and the way he occasionally peeked back at you to make sure you were okay. How could a girl not fall for him? “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” You said with a smile. Maybe he was. 

[kingjasnah]

Is there the full list of brandersons favourite games reposted somewhere?

i dont think so? or not that ive seen. u can literally just sign up for the newsletter on his website but screw it ill just post them for u. it sure was a TRIP scrolling past these to get to the interlude though. undertale is on this list.....im shakign at the thought that adolin was based off ff10 tidus but i cant get it out of my head now

#10: Katamari Damaci

I love things that make me look at the world in a new way. Katamari did this in spades. It is an imaginative, bizarre vision with unique gameplay. It is like nothing else in the world and I love it for all its strangeness and occasional lack of gameplay polish.

I was transfixed the first time I played it, and have looked forward to it being remade and rereleased on multiple different consoles. I love the cute—and somehow creepy at the same time—storyline. It feels like a fever dream more than a game sometimes, and is probably the closest I’ll ever get to understanding what it’s like to do drugs.

#9: Undertale

This is an oddball on this list because I think it’s the only game that is not a franchise from a major studio—but is instead an indie game, which I believe was originally funded on Kickstarter.I loved how this felt like a novel as much as a game. It was one person’s vision; a single story told really well, with a huge amount of personality. The humor was just my kind of wonderful/terrible, and I was instantly enamored with the characters.That probably would have been enough, but it is a nice deconstruction of video games as a medium—and has not one, but multiple innovative gameplay mechanics. Together, the package left me enamored. This is a work of genius that I feel everyone should at least try, even if it ends up not being for them.

#8: Fallout: New Vegas

I have played all of the core Fallout games, and I was one of the (it seems few) who was really excited when it moved from turn-based tactics to first-person shooter. While Fallout 3 was good, it didn’t have the charm of the first two.New Vegas delivered on everything I was hoping to see. The charm was back, the writing sharp, the quests imaginative. The gameplay was engaging and branched in a variety of directions, the gunplay was solid, and the atmosphere immersive. I of course love the first two games in the series—but New Vegas combines everything I like in gaming into one package. (As a note, I own the Outer Worlds, and am looking forward to digging into it. Consider this item on the list a recommendation of other Obsidian games—like Knights of the Old Republic Two—regardless of genre, as I’ve found them universally to be superior to their contemporaries.)

#7 Super Mario World

When I was eleven, I flew (alone, which was very exciting to me) from Nebraska to visit my uncle Devon in Salt Lake City. Before I left, my father gave me $200 and told me to pay for my own meals while on the trip—but of course, my uncle didn’t allow this. At the end of the trip, I tried to give him the money, which he wouldn’t take.I mentioned my dad would take the money back when I got home, but that was okay. Well, my uncle would have none of that, and drove me to the local mall and made me spend it on a Nintendo Entertainment System. (This uncle, you might guess, is an awesome human being.)Since that day of first plugging it in and experiencing Mario for the first time, I was hooked. This is the only platformer on the list, as I don’t love those. But one makes an exception for Mario. There’s just so much polish, so much elegance to the control schemes, that even a guy who prefers an FPS or an RPG like me has to admit these are great games. I picked World as my favorite as it’s the one I’ve gone back to and played the most.

#7: The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3)

I kind of miss the golden age of adventure gaming, and I don’t know that anyone ever got it as right as they did with this game. It is the pinnacle of the genre, in my opinion—no offense to Grim Fandango fans.This game came out right before gaming’s awkward teenage phase where everything moved to 3-d polygons. For a while after, games looked pretty bad, though they could do more because of the swap. But if you want to go see what life was like before that change, play Monkey Island 3. Composed of beautiful art pieces that look like cells from Disney movies, with streamlined controls (the genre had come a long way from “Get yon torch”) and fantastic voice acting, this game still plays really well.This is one of the few games I’ve been able to get my non-gamer wife to play through with me, and it worked really well as a co-op game with the two of us trying to talk through problems. It’s a lovingly crafted time capsule of a previous era of gaming, and if you missed it, it’s really worth trying all these years later. (The first and second games hold up surprisingly well too, as a note, particularly with the redone art that came out a decade or so ago.)Also, again, this one has my kind of humor.

#6: Breath of the Wild

I never thought a Zelda game would unseat A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda, but Breath of the Wild managed it. It combined the magic of classic gameplay with modern design aesthetic, and I loved this game.There’s not a lot to say about it that others haven’t said before, but I particularly liked how it took the elements of the previous games in the series (giving you specific tools to beat specific challenges) and let you have them all at once. I like how the dungeons became little mini puzzles to beat, instead of (sometimes seemingly endless) slogs to get through. I liked the exploration, the fluidity of the controls, and the use of a non-linear narrative in flashbacks. It’s worth buying a Switch just to play this one and Mario—but in case you want, you can also play Dark Souls on Switch... (That’s foreshadowing.)

#5: Halo 2

Telling stories about Halo Two on stream is what made me think of writing this list.I’m sometimes surprised that this game isn’t talked about as much as I think it should be. Granted, the franchise is very popular—but people tend to love either Reach or games 1 or 3 more than two. Two, however, is the only one I ever wanted to replay—and I’ve done so three or four times at this point. (It’s also the only one I ever beat on Legendary.)It’s made me think on why I love this one, while so many others seem to just consider it one of many in a strong—but in many ways unexceptional—series of games. I think part of this is because I focus primarily on the single-player aspects of a game (which is why there aren’t any MMOs on this list.) Others prefer Halo games with more balanced/polished multiplayer. But I like to game by myself, and don’t really look for a multiplayer experience. (Though this is changing as I game with my sons more and more.)I really like good writing—which I suppose you’d expect. But in games, I specifically prefer writing that enhances the style of game I’m playing. Just dumping a bunch of story on me isn’t enough; it has to be suited to the gameplay and the feel of the game. In that context, I’ve rarely encountered writing as good as Halo 2. From the opening—with the intercutting and juxtaposition of the two narratives—to the quotes barked out by the marines, the writing in this game is great. It stands out starkly against other Halo games, to the point that I wonder what the difference is.Yes, Halo Two is a bombastic hero fantasy about a super soldier stomping aliens. But it has subtle, yet powerful worldbuilding sprinkled all through it—and the music...it does things with the story that I envy. It’s kind of cheating that games and films get to have powerful scores to help with mood.The guns in Two feel so much better than Halo One, and the vehicles drive far better. The only complaint I have is that it’s only half a story—as in, Halo 2 and 3 seem like they were one game broken in two pieces. And while 3 is good (and Reach does something different, which I approve of in general) neither did it for me the way Two did, and continues to do.

#3: Final Fantasy X

You probably knew Final Fantasy was coming. People often ask if the way these games handle magic was an influence upon me. All I can say is that I’ve played them since the first one, and so they’re bound to have had an influence.On one hand, these games are really strange. I mean, I don’t think we gamers stop quite often enough to note how downright bizarre this series gets. Final Fantasy doesn’t always make the most sense—but the games are always ambitious.Ten is my favorite for a couple of reasons. I felt like the worldbuilding was among the strongest, and I really connected with the characters. That’s strange, because this is one of the FF games without an angst-filled teen as the protagonist. Instead, it has a kind of stable happy-go-lucky jock as the protagonist.But that’s what I needed, right then. A game that didn’t give me the same old protagonist, but instead gave me someone new and showed me I could bond to them just as well. Ten was the first with full voice acting, and that jump added a lot for me. It has my favorite music of the series, and all together is what I consider the perfect final fantasy game. (Though admittedly, I find it more and more difficult to get into turn-based battle mechanics as I grow older.)

#2: Bloodborne

Those who follow my streams, or who read other interviews I’ve done, probably expected this series to be at or near the top. The question wasn’t whether Souls would be here, but which one to pick as my favorite.I went with Bloodborne, though it could have been any of them. (Even Dark Souls 2—which I really like, despite its reputation in the fandom.) I’ve been following FromSoftware’s games since the King’s Field games, and Demon’s Souls was a huge triumph—with the director Hidetaka Miyazaki deserving much of the praise for its design, and Dark Souls (which is really just a more polished version of Demon’s Souls).As I am a fan of cosmic horror, Bloodborne is probably my favorite overall. It really hit the mix of cosmic and gothic horror perfectly. It forced me to change up my gameplay from the other Souls games, and I loved the beautiful visuals.I am a fan of hard games—but I like hard games that are what I consider “fair.” (For example, I don’t love those impossible fan-made Mario levels, or many of the super-crazy “bullet hell”-style games.) Dark Souls is a different kind of hard. Difficult like a stern instructor, expecting you to learn—but giving you the tools to do so. It presents a challenge, rather than being hard just to be hard.If I have a problem with Final Fantasy, it’s that the games sometimes feel like the gameplay is an afterthought to telling the story. But in the Souls games, story and gameplay are intermixed in a way I’d never seen done before. You have to construct the story like an archeologist, using dialogue and lore from descriptions of in-game objects. I find this fascinating; the series tells stories in a way a book never could. I’m always glad when a game series can show off the specific strengths of the medium.In fact, this series would be #1 except for the little fact that I have way too much time on Steam logged playing...

#1: Civilization VI

This series had to take #1 by sheer weight of gameplay time. I discovered the first on a friend’s computer in the dorms my freshman year—and I can still remember the feeling of the birds chirping outside, realizing I’d been playing all night and really should get back to my own dorm room.That still happens, and has happened, with every game in the series. I have a lot of thoughts on this series, many of them granular and too specific for this list. (Like, it’s obvious AI technology isn’t up to the task of playing a game this complex—so could we instead get a roguelike set of modifiers, game modes, etc. to liven up the games, rather than just having a difficulty slider that changes a few simple aspects of the game?)I’ll try not to rant, because I really do love this game series. A lot of people consider IV to be the pinnacle of the series, but after V unstacked units—and VI unstacked cities—there was no way I could ever go back. If for some reason, you’ve never played this grand patriarch of the 4X game genre, it’s about starting with a single stone-age settler who can found a city—then playing through eras of a civilization, growing your empire, to try to eventually get offworld with a space program. (Or, if you prefer, conquering the world.)It’s a load of fun in the way I like to have fun, and I feel like the series has only gotten better over the years. My hat is off to the developers, who keep reinventing the series, rather than making the exact same game over and over.Now, about that request for difficulty modes...

there are runner ups but for the sake of anyone whos on mobile and cant get past a read more (first of all omg im SO sorry) ill refrain. anyway he thought WHAT loz game was the best before botw?