#and ofc blind pilot

[oflights]

Top five songs/lyrics that make you feral?

oh anon, you are speaking my language!!

Glory, Radical Face

A bird, caught in the wires Bleating for help I can't provide, I'm not that big I hope for the best but nothing changes, I'm sorry But I was blessed with bad eyes There's a lot that I miss but I don't mind, I'm not that old I'll find out what broke me soon enough

2. The Trapeze Swinger, Iron & Wine

But please remember me, fondly I heard from someone you're still pretty and Gleam and resonate just like the gates Around the Holy Kingdom With words like, 'Lost and found' and 'Don't look down' And 'Someone save temptation' And please remember me as in the dream We had as rug burned babies Among the fallen trees and fast asleep Beside the lions and the ladies

3. More Adventurous, Rilo Kiley

I've felt the wind on my cheek coming down from the east And thought about how we are all as numerous as leaves on trees And maybe ours is the cause of all mankind: Get loved, make more, try to stay alive

4. champagne problems, Taylor Swift

"This dorm was once a madhouse" I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me" How evergreen, our group of friends Don't think we'll say that word again And soon they'll have the nerve to deck the halls That we once walked through One for the money, two for the show I never was ready, so I watch you go Sometimes you just don't know the answer 'Til someone's on their knees and asks you

5. Servants and Kings, Radical Face

When all was fire, and the weather's out for blood And the boys, still too young to drink, were drownin' in the flood I'd hear you laughing as I'd come on out for air And I'd laugh with you, pretending that we care

[mlqueen89]

Four | Boundaries

Are there some aces up your sleeve? Have you no idea that you're in deep? I've dreamt about you nearly every night this week How many secrets can you keep? 'Cause there's this tune I found That makes me think of you somehow an' I play it on repeat

Do I Wanna Know by The Arctic Monkeys

pairing: jake “hangman” seresin / ofc (top gun: maverick)

rating: 18+ (minors dni)

Warnings/triggers: smut in overall series, mentions of parent death/absence, swearing (let me know if i missed any!)

word count: 8,274 summary: the one where ellie assembles the avengers her team and pulls back the curtain on her tech. jake switches up his approach and ellie grapples with early push back from the pilots. A/N: this chapter and the previous chapter were originally one chapter, but my magnanimous beta kindly told me to chop it in two, which left some breathing room for the wonderful opening scene, of which i’m so incredibly proud. and then i let my fingers go wild, and this chapter got split in two. basically, it’s so clear at this point that i’m gonna need more than 10 chapters to tell jake and ellie’s story properly. these kids are just the most fun, but also, the most stubborn.

this one is plot heavy. this whole chapter (technically 4 & 5) was the most exciting and fun chapter i've written for jake and ellie’s story so far, i hope you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it. i've added a bunch of terms to the glossary, so feel free to head there if there’s something you’re not sure of terminology wise. i really wanted to make this authentic – ya know, as authentic as fanfiction could be. ❥ playlist ♡ masterlist ♡ taglist ♡ glossary of terms ♡ previous chapter ♡ next chapter ❥ 

Midway Park, Lemoore, California — 2005 

The early morning October air was crisp, carrying the faint smell of fresh cut grass and rubber tires as families gathered around the makeshift track for the annual soapbox derby.  

Ellie clutched her helmet under one arm, the other hand resting on the sleek grey soapbox car she and her dad had worked on for weeks with interspersed help from one or more of his old wingmen. Its reflective paint gleamed under the sunlight, a perfect replica of his old F-14 Tomcat, right down to the call sign, now replaced with her name and RIO painted on with the steady hand of her uncle Wolfman. 

She’d excitedly run the race in her head as she tried and failed to sleep, her eyes scanning over every detail of her helmet sitting on her dresser across the room and the olive one-piece flight suit hanging behind her door in the dim glow of the moonlight seeping in through the cracks in her slatted blinds. She hadn’t even eaten her whole breakfast that morning, partly because Wolfman had cracked the egg wrong in the pan and there were shells to pick out of the scrambled eggs, but mostly because her stomach tossed. Her legs swinging impatiently under the table as she pushed her food around her plate and watched her dad read the paper and sip his coffee like he had all the time in the world.  

“Alright, Ellie, here’s the deal, kiddo,” her dad said, crouching to her level. In his aviators, Ellie could see the reflection of her wide eyes before she took a look at the lineup of cobbled together cars and the other kids crowded around the roped off track. “The under-10 category?” he waved his hand, dismissive, “that’s baby stuff. You’re better than that.”  

Ellie frowned, her small hands gripping the curved edge of her old ski helmet, scrawled with uneven, bubbly kid letters RIO. “But I am under 10. I’m eight and a half and...” Ellie paused to count on her fingers, her pink nail polish chipped and barely there, “... two days!”  

Rick tilted his head toward his wingman, Leonard “Wolfman” Wolfe, who stood nearby with a clipboard and a devil-may-care smirk. “Not today, Rio. Today, you’re 10 and a half—officially. Right, Wolfman?”  

Wolfman tapped the clipboard with a pen, his mischievous grin widening. “Right-o, born two years earlier than the records say, 1994. Funny how paperwork can get all... mixed up.” His hand waved in the air, a magician performing a disappearing act, shaking an etch-a-sketch.  

Ellie’s eyes widened as her gaze shifted between the two men. “Dad, is that… allowed?”  

Her dad chuckled and ruffled her hair playfully. “Let’s just say it’s a tactical adjustment. Mid-flight maneuver. Trust me, you’re ready for the big leagues.” He crouched closer, lowering his voice. “You wanna race against kids who can barely steer, or you wanna take on the best and show them what the Nevens are made of?” Her dad tapped the patch with the wings stitched to the left side of her olive coloured jumpsuit, the last name Neven, E. embroidered there.  

Ellie’s lips twitched into a gap-toothed smile, her nerves melting under her dad’s infectious confidence, the feeling of pride blooming in her chest. “The best.”  

She reached up to touch the patch, her tiny fingers grazing the fine stitching. Ellie, her dad and Wolfman had hovered over her mom’s shoulder as Ellie’s thrift store coveralls turned flight suit passed under the thumping needle and thread of her mom’s sowing machine, each stitch pinning the embroidered patch to her uniform. She’d felt the importance of it then and now she carried it like a plate of armour. 

“That’s my girl,” her dad beamed widely before he stood again, slapping Wolfman on the back. “Alright, make it official, Wolfe. She’s in the higher category.” 

Wolfman offered a half-salute before he scribbled something on the form tacked to the clipboard and stepped up to the registration table, where a volunteer in a bright yellow shirt shuffled through forms. “We’ve got an entry for the 10-and-up category,” he said, sliding the clipboard across the table with a pop of the chewing gum in his mouth, a wry smile on his lips.  

The volunteer, a woman in her mid-forties, frowned, gathering the clipboard with a wary look at Wolfman before she redirected her green eyes to squint at the paper. “Eleanor Neven? Didn’t she race in the under-10 category last year?” The woman’s eyes passed between Wolfman and Rick and then stood slightly to peek at Ellie over the edge of the table before they returned to the form, her finger tapping at the birthdate, skeptical.  

Rick flashed a dazzling smile, the aviators reflecting the woman’s face back at her as he clicked his tongue. “Kids grow up fast, don’t they? She’s been eating her Wheaties.” For effect, he patted the top of Ellie’s head and pulled her to his side.  

“Plus, last year was a mistake. Wrong birthdate on the form. Happens all the time with military families. You know how it is—paperwork gets shuffled around, lost.” Wolfman added smoothly, leaning against the table as a line formed behind him with other families waiting to register.  

The volunteer hesitated, glancing between the two men again before she sighed, unclipping the form from the clipboard before she slid it into the appropriate pile and began gathering the numbered aprons. “Well… if the birthdate checks out—” 

“It does,” Rick said firmly, all the while his smile never wavered. “I triple-checked it myself. Wolfman here looked it over too. We were both there when she was born. She’s ten and ready to roll.”  

The volunteer’s eyes narrowed, her gaze passing from her dad then to Wolfman before she quietly handed over the documentation.  

Ellie watched the exchange for a moment before she reached up and tugged on her dad’s sleeve as Wolfman collected the stamped form and they stepped away for the next family to register. “Dad, what if they find out? Isn’t this cheating?”  

Rick crouched again, resting a hand on her shoulder as Wolfman crouched behind her, clipping the numbered bib there. “Rio, here’s the thing about flying—or racing,” he reached out to pat the edge of the soapbox plane’s greyed body, “sometimes, you gotta bend the rules a little to get to where you’re going. It’s not about cheating—it’s about knowing you’ve got what it takes, even if the rules don’t think so. Pushing against the limits a bit so we know where the edge is for next time. Tell you what, when we see Uncle Mav, we can ask him about it, huh?”  

Over her shoulder, Wolfman snorted loudly, before he coughed, clearing his throat as Rick shot him a look before he moved on to wrap a numbered arm band around Ellie’s bicep.  

Ellie’s gaze flicked to the track, where older kids were already testing their cars, their faces set with confidence. She squared her shoulders, set her jaw and nodded, though her fingers fiddled with the straps of the helmet tucked under her arm. “Okay, Dad. Let’s do it.”  

“Atta girl,” Rick said, standing and saluting her before he clapped his hands together, rubbing them in anticipation. “Now, get ready to smoke ‘em.”  

They wheeled the soapbox to the race area, Ellie’s fingers tapping out on the outside of the helmet under her arm, her heart beating hard in her small chest. Instinctively, Ellie walked around the soapbox car, her fingers brushing the frame.  

“Always do your preflight before boarding,” her dad had been gazing at her in the rearview at the red light two intersections before the race grounds. 

“Visual 360, fuel and instrument check.” Ellie had nodded, listing off the checklist; her neck craned from the back seat to see if she could scope out any other racers headed to the track. She unbuckled her seat belt to slide closer to the center console before Wolfman threw her a look over his shoulder. 

“Seat belt in this aircraft, kid.” He tutted at her, sliding his aviators down his nose as he popped his gum, pausing on filling out the registration forms in his lap, “you think we’re rule breakers?” 

“We’re not?” 

“Rule benders,” Wolfman corrected, levelling her with a look until she slid back into her seat and buckled up with a click before he pushed his glasses back up and turned his eyes ahead, “we prefer the term rule benders.” 

Climbing into the soapbox, Ellie settled into the low seat as her dad crouched beside the car, sliding the helmet over her head and clipping the strap under her chin. Wolfman leaned forward and tapped dutifully on the top of the helmet, as her dad adjusted it, tugging at the chin strap sharply. Wolfman grinned at her, but when he spoke, it was for his wingman. “She’s ready for this, you think?”  

Ellie’s eyes found her dad’s through the clear visor as he snapped it down over her eyes, his features softened as she smiled her gap-toothed smile at him and adjust the helmet around her head. “She’s a Neven, Wolfman. She was born ready. Right kiddo?”  

“So, Tilly’s given the a-okay, then?”  

Ellie didn’t miss the look her dad threw at his WSO over his shoulder. 

Wolfman raised his hands and chuckled. “Fair enough. Let’s hope she doesn’t notice we didn’t tighten the steering bolts all the way.”  

Rick’s eyes widened. “Wait, what?”  

“Relax, Hollywood. I’m kidding.” Wolfman chuckled, clapping him on the back. “Mostly.”  

Her dad groaned as the announcer called for racers to line up and he pushed her car onto the pitched ramp, the ready position. Ellie gripped the wheel as her front tires settled against the gate, the countdown echoing overhead.  

Ten.  

Nine. 

“Preflight checks complete, Lieutenant Neven?” He asked, standing at attention beside the soapbox, his voice calm and steady as the countdown reached the last eight seconds. 

Eight.  

Seven. 

“Preflight checks complete.” Ellie’s foot tapped on the break and twisted the steering wheel, leaning over to watch the tires pivot on spot. “Pattern clear?” 

Six. 

Five. 

“Pattern clear, aviator.” 

Four. 

Three. 

“Requesting clearance for take-off, sir.” 

Two. 

“Clearance granted, Lieutenant Neven.” 

One. 

“Go get ‘em, Rio,” she heard him whisper as he leaned over, pressing a kiss to his fingers and slapping them on the call sign stuck onto the front of her helmet. “Let ‘er rip, kid.”  

The gate in front of Ellie’s car dropped, her wheels moving forward and the soapbox rolling down the pitched track. Despite herself, she gave out a squeal of excitement as she gained speed, the wind picking up and whipping the strands of hair that escaped from under her helmet around her face. 

The world around her blurred, the orange, red and yellow hues of fall rushing by her in a wash of colour, thrill of the speed and the race flooding her senses. For a moment, the sound of the wind and the beating of her heart, she felt like she was flying, a small dot in an endless blue sky. Hollywood and Rio.  

On the second turn, as she broke from the pack of other racers, Ellie felt the change, the sudden increase in speed as the wheel in her hands vibrated and rumbled, wobbled and jammed, harder to steer. But then the hill grew steeper, and her soapbox car picked up more speed than she expected. Ellie’s heart jumped into her throat as she tried to remember what her dad had said about staying steady, about procedure if she came up on a problem with the steering. The third and final turn came fast—too fast—and Ellie leaned into it hard, pulling the stiff wheel as far to the right as she could muscle, but she felt when the car beneath her veered sharply, suddenly uncontrollable. When the front wheels hit a natural dip and then sudden bump in the track, Ellie felt it in her stomach. 

The next few seconds were a blur. Ellie’s grip on the steering wheel slipped, the wheel jerking to the right. Ellie felt the soapbox pitch before she left the seat inside, the sting of pavement rubbing a hole in the arm of her flight suit, hot and raw. In an instant, she felt the sharp pain shoot up her arm from her elbow as she tumbled awkwardly, the world around her spinning. 

The prickle of the hay bale stuck through the back of her clothing as the shooting pain in her arm intensified, the world stilled as she looked up at the blue sky above. Around her, she heard the hum of the wheels passing her and the eruption of cheers as the racers crossing the finish line. 

The taste like a handful of pennies in her mouth came next and when her hand went to her lips, it came back red. From where she lay on the grass, she could see the canopy of autumn leaves clinging to the branches, the blue sky filling in the rest of the mural overhead. 

Her head was spinning, and tears welled up in her eyes, leaking down the side of her eyes into her ears, as the pain in her arm intensified. She tried to sit up but whimpered, clutching her arm close to her chest. The finish line taunted her in the near distance, the checkered banner billowing lazily in the breeze. 

Suddenly, her dad was there, dropping to a knee beside her. “Ellie! Hey, hey—are you okay?” His voice was panicked, but his hands were gentle as he scooped her up into his arms, holding her close to his chest. 

Ellie sniffled, tears rolling down her cheeks despite her best attempts to hold it together, the pain in her arm and the sting of losing when she had been so close, the perfect storm that threatened to break her composure. “I-I broke it, Dad,” she managed through choked sobs, her arm cradled against her body, her breaths coming in gulps. As if an afterthought, she traced her front teeth with her tongue and hiccupped a small sob when she found a larger gap there than had been before, “and I lost a tooth.”  

Her dad’s face softened with a mix of something Ellie couldn’t quite map, his brow pulling together into a line as he brushed hair away from her face, tucked it up the lip of the helmet still stuck on her head. “Aw, kiddo, I’m so sorry. We’ll get you fixed up, okay? Let’s get you to the hospital.” 

Shifting her, he fished the car keys out of his pocket and handed them to Wolfman who, without a word, took off toward the parking lot at a clipped pace.  

Ellie could only nod weakly, burying her face in his chest, the familiar scent of his aftershave and coffee settling her, cocooning her. Even through the pain, there was a comfort in his arms, the sound of his heart pounding in his chest, thumping against her tear-stained cheek centering her like the tick of a metronome guiding her back to calm. 

As they headed to the parking lot, each bump or bounce of her dad’s gait a painful jolt to her arm, pushing a hiss from her lips, she heard him whisper softly, against the side of her helmet. “You were so brave, Rio. I’m so proud of you.” 

Ellie nodded with a sniffle as the sound of Wolfman pulling up the van closer, brakes squealing, drew her attention. “Mom’s gonna be mad.”  

“Oh, don’t worry about your mom, kid.” Ellie watched as her dad tried to laugh, but there was also a hesitation there that stopped his lips from turning up into his usually contagious, mischievous grins. “Your mom’s not gonna believe I let you get behind the wheel on the 10 and over track.” 

Ellie let out a soft, watery laugh. Tilly Neven wasn’t one to trifle with. “You’re in trouble.”  

Rick chuckled this time, the sound reverberating through her as he stepped over the curb into the parking lot and Wolfman slid open the door to the backseat, for a second, her dad held her a bit tighter. “Yeah, well… wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last.” 

Ellie had never been good at public speaking. She’d never joined a debate club or been the first to volunteer her ideas if it meant a presentation.  

Once she’d received the text from Tony, confirming the tech upgrade and the program installation in the jets, she’d relaxed, but only slightly. It still meant that she had to do the part of her job she disliked the most, “the elevator pitch”. 

She’d have to face the men who would be flying her tech and say Hi, I’ve added a hunk of metal and some wires into your jets. It’s going to help, trust me. Ask them to put their trust in her, their lives in her hands. It won’t malfunction according to these computer simulations. It won’t leave you hanging in a dogfight. Pinky promise. 

She didn’t expect it to go off without a hitch. She didn’t expect them to cheer and lift her up on their shoulders. 

All she needed was a chance, a small bit of faith before they leapt. 

Ellie stood at the front of the briefing room, her hands resting lightly on the podium, her gaze scanning the faces of the four pilots clad in green flight suits seated before her. The air smelled of stale coffee and old leather, the scent of a room that had seen countless debriefings, strategy meetings, and quiet moments of reckoning.  

She had spent years developing this technology, refining it, arguing for its place, its relevance, in the future of aviation. She’d tweaked it here, twisted its usefulness there, bridged a gap when she’d been turned down at one turn and climbed through windows when doors closed in her face. Now, standing here in front of the men who would be the first to fly with it, she had to vault this hurdle too, convince them it was worth trusting with their lives. Standing here, pitching for their faith in her, was more nerve wracking than presenting in front of Admiral Simpson and Rear Admiral Stark. 

Taking a breath, Ellie steadied herself, ignored how Teak and Lover scuffled between each other in their seats, how Hangman’s eyes never left her, the feeling of his gaze, eyes focused, hot on her even when she wasn’t looking at him. Rooster sat behind him and kicked his chair with a well-aimed boot, the sudden jolt of his seat enough to knock Hangman out of his stare. 

She didn’t ask for their attention, didn’t wait for them to notice that she was ready to begin. With a click of the remote in her hand, the screen behind her flickered, displaying the blueprint layout of an F-18, its labelled components taken straight from the NATOPS handbook. “Gentlemen. I assume Captain Mitchell has already given you a brief overview of what to expect, so I won’t waste your time on introductions or small talk and formalities.”  

From the corner of her eye, Ellie could see Mav fold his arms across his chest, his eyes trained on her. He’d given her the floor immediately without preface, without introduction. 

“You’ll recognize this as the wireframe of your F-18,” Ellie continued before she clicked to the next slide. An overlay slid into place, the standing systems overlaid with a complex web of radar signals, AI pathways, and electronic warfare integrations—her tech, on full display, laid bare. If she was expecting a reaction, they didn’t give her one, just silence. 

“What you’re looking at is the next step in avionics evolution,” she pressed on, her voice steady, turning toward her audience. “A fully integrated, adaptive system that combines radar, AI-driven threat assessment, electronic warfare, and seamless data-sharing into a single interface. Instead of relying on separate, often outdated systems, this package will allow you to fight, evade, and communicate with a level of efficiency we’ve never seen before.” 

If her heart wasn’t beating in her ears, she would hear the silence that met her words. She’d recognize it as the silence that wasn’t the good kind, the kind of silence that led her to over-explain herself. But she didn’t. 

Rooster, sat forward, his forearms on the table as he studied the schematic with an unreadable expression. Lover was nodding slightly as he squinted between the screen and scribbling notes in a small flip notebook he’d pulled from the breast pocket of his flight suit. Hangman lounged in his seat, fingers laced behind his head, smirking, carefully flipping a toothpick in his mouth. And Teak—Teak sat back, arms folded over his chest, a look Ellie recognized as the tell-tale look of skepticism written across his face. 

Ellie paused, her eyes drawn down to her notes. Pause for pushback, she’d written. She didn’t have to pause for long., 

“So, what?” Teak drawled, tilting his head slightly, waving at the screen. “You want us to trust some... glorified autopilot to make our decisions for us?” 

Unflinchingly, Ellie met his gaze, actually looking at him for the first time. Teak’s jaw flexed; the sharp lines of his cheekbones and nose lending him a striking appearance. His eyes, an intriguingly particular shade of cerulean, not unlike a clear September sky, studied Ellie as she took her time to process the response. “No. I want you to have every possible advantage when you’re up there. The AI isn’t replacing you—it’s making sure you have all the information you need, exactly when you need it.” 

Ellie clicked the remote again, and the screen shifted to a simulation. Two aircraft maneuvered through a contested airspace, one operating on traditional avionics, the other using her system.  

The first fighter responded only to what its sensors could detect, reacting to threats as they appeared through visuals or radar. The second fighter’s system anticipated missile locks before they happened, evaded before the pilot even registered the danger visually, and counter-jammed enemy radar before the target was painted. “It’s all based on data, numbers. But right now, those numbers look very good,” her eyes turned to the screen and watched the simulated planes for a moment, observed as they streaked through the mock mission, data readings popping up on what looked to be a pilot Heads-Up Display. 

“This system isn’t meant to fly for you,” she continued, turning back now as the simulations continued to play on loop on the screen behind her. “But it will see threats before you do, adjust possible countermeasures dynamically, and ensure your radar stays clear even in a fully jammed environment. In short? It gives you an advantage over the enemy, helps make sure you have a better chance at coming home.” 

Hangman broke the silence next, the sound of his low whistle drawing Ellie’s attention as he leaned back in his chair, his open legged posture, relaxed as ever. “Well, damn. That’s one hell of a sales pitch.” 

Rooster, his eyes still flicked across the data readings displayed on the screen behind Ellie, his fingers tapping absently against the table. “How fast can it adapt if an enemy starts throwing curveballs? Let’s say a bogey or SAMs or laser guided missile systems.” 

Ellie clicked again, dismissing the simulation and bringing up another set of figures. All colourful charts and data sets. She’d come prepared for this line of questioning.  

“Milliseconds. It’s built on machine learning models trained on thousands of real-world engagements. The more it’s used, the smarter it gets. If someone tries to jam your frequency in one way, it recalibrates instantly. If an unknown aircraft enters your airspace, it cross-references flight patterns to find weaknesses, predict its next move before you would have to react. It shows you possibilities.” 

“So, you’re saying it levels the playing field against fifth-gen threats?” Lover was sitting up now, his pen tapping against his open notebook, his broad shoulders rolling forward as he pointed at the data set. Ellie thought she read excitement in his hazel eyes as he thumbed his nose. 

“I’m saying it not only evens the playing field, but it tilts it in your favour.” 

Silence stretched between them, charged with something between curiosity and uncertainty. 

“Sounds like a lot of fancy tech that can get hacked, fail, or—oh, I don’t know—override pilot input at the worst possible time,” Teak said flatly, Ellie could almost detect the chortle behind his words. Convincing Teak would be a challenge. 

Ellie forced herself to pivot—she had dealt with resistance before from officers ranking higher than Teak. Early on, she had learned pilots didn’t like change, especially not changes that altered the way they had trained, the way they had survived. Wolfman had told her as much the first time she’d passed the idea by him, Mav had all but told her what to expect from every level of Naval officer, so she wasn’t about to let skepticism derail the entire briefing. Skepticism was a given. 

“It has redundancy systems,” she said evenly. “If one function is compromised, the AI reallocates resources to keep the essentials running. If something catastrophic happens? Manual override is always in your hands. It’s a tool, an aid, not a replacement for skill.” 

Teak scoffed before he loudly popped his chewing gum. “Yeah, well, forgive me if I don’t put my life in the hands of an algorithm.” 

Hangman chuckled, tilting his head toward Teak who sat a row behind and to his left, a lazy grin growing on his face. “Teak, buddy. You sound like my granddad bitching about GPS when it first came out. Relax, old man.” 

Rooster huffed out a quiet laugh. Lover fought a smirk. Teak’s jaw ticked as if he swallowed his words. 

Ellie let the moment settle before she spoke again.  

“Look, I know this is all new. And I know change isn’t easy to trust. But the fact is this system isn’t here to hold your hand. It’s here to keep you alive in environments where traditional systems would leave you blind, deaf, and dead in the water.” 

She let her words sink in before she continued. “I don’t expect you to trust it yet. That’s what testing is for. But I do expect you to fly with it and see for yourselves, let it speak for itself.” 

Ellie scanned the pilots before her; Teak’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing more. Rooster sat back, nodding slightly, still mulling it over. Lover shrugged, casting a quick look around the room, eager. Hangman just grinned, his eyes never leaving her. 

“Well, sweetheart,” he said, the amusement in his tone clear as he adjusted his seat in the chair, “I do love a good test drive.” 

Ellie rolled her eyes and ignored him, clicking the remote one last time to pull up the first test flight parameters. 

“Good,” she said. “Because you’re all wheels up in about 30 minutes.” 

Maverick clapped his hands together, rising from his chair. “Alright, aviators; suit up and make your way to the tarmac. Let’s see what this tech can really do.” 

The room stirred to life, chairs scraping against the floor as the pilots stood, some stretching, others already discussing the upcoming test amongst themselves. Ellie stayed put, gathering her laptop and notes, methodically shutting everything down. 

The pilots filtered out one by one. Rooster passed the podium, tapping out a quick rhythm on the edge and shooting her a small nod on his way out, and Lover muttered something about looking forward to seeing it in action as he tucked his notepad away before air drumming with his pen. Teak, however, barely spared her a glance as he brushed past, his shoulder grazing hers a bit too close for comfort. 

Ellie exhaled, letting the tension in her shoulders ease. That had gone about as well as she could’ve hoped, a little (expected) pushback, but three out of four pilots being open to try it wasn’t too bad of a ratio. She’d had worse before. 

“Nice job, Rigby.” 

She blinked, glancing up. Hangman was still there, standing a few feet away, hands on his hips, the toothpick sticking out the corner of his mouth, and that ever-present smugness dialed down to something… different.  

Ellie hesitated before she responded. “Thanks,” she said, closing her laptop. “Though I’m sure you’ll find something to critique once you’re in the air.” 

Hangman chuckled, that familiar twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, sweetheart, sounds like you know me better than you think.” But there was something almost appreciative in his expression, something that lingered a beat too long. 

Ellie’s fingers curled around her MacBook, as something unreadable settling in her stomach. 

Then, movement near the door caught her eye, breaking her from the moment. 

Teak. 

He hadn’t left after all. He lingered just outside of the briefing room in the hall, his sharp gaze passing between her and Hangman pointedly, assessing. Ellie wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but judging by the way his expression flickered—something tight, something almost knowing—he’d seen enough to form some kind of opinion. 

Jake winked at her, clapping a hand on the edge of the podium as he stepped past her, “see you on the tarmac, Rigby.” 

Ellie forced a nod, schooling her expression as Hangman stepped out, his hand grabbing Teak’s shoulder and giving it a shake, “c’mon granddad, I’ll show you how all those buttons work.” 

Teak shook Hangman off, his lips pulled into a tight line as he lingered, just a second longer. Ellie’s eyes met his for a beat, a moment when he held it. Then, just as quickly, he was gone. 

From the control tower’s observation deck, headset on, fingers drumming against her folded arms, Ellie listened the comms chatter. 

From her vantage point, she could see the three jets taxi into position, the Californian sun sitting high in the blue, cloudless sky. It was as perfect a condition as she could have hoped for, at least the weather was cooperating. Around her, the Control Tower hummed with the activity of the staff, coordinating clearance with the ground crew and flight patterns of aircraft already in the air. 

For years she’d imagined standing here, envisioned a time in the future where she’d be watching as her tech did its thing and the numbers started rolling in. Now, actually standing here, her heart beating in her throat, she found herself overrun with the need to fidget, the chew her lip, to bite her thumbnail. 

Down on the runway, she watched as the jets roared to life, sleek bodies glinting in the afternoon light. Rooster, Teak, Lover, and Hangman. All of them sitting in cockpits wired with the most advanced avionics package ever put into a single system. If this worked—if it really worked—it would change everything. On the other hand, if it failed... well it didn’t bear thinking about, not right now at least. Ellie felt her foot tapping out on the tiled floor as her fingers dug into her arms. 

“Alright, gentlemen,” Maverick’s voice crackled over the comms from somewhere in the sky, the feedback from the cockpit scratchy in her ears. “Today’s a simple test. We’re looking for a baseline. The system is going to integrate with your HUDs and onboard AI, feeding you the real-time data and making sure you have everything you need to stay alive. Your job? Fly how you normally would. My job? Try to kill you. Hard deck is 5,000 feet—let’s keep it clean, nothing fancy.” 

“Clean and ‘nothing fancy’ ain’t exactly in my wheelhouse,” Hangman drawled, his accent cutting through the frequency, his voice sounding isolated, in a tin can. Ellie resisted the shiver that rolled up her spine. Though he was hundreds of feet away, a small spot on the runway, his voice in her ears sparked something in her. 

Ellie rolled her eyes, mostly at him, but a little at herself, instead choosing to focus on the screens in front of her, hovering over the shoulders of the techs sitting in front of the radar equipment which beeped dutifully. 

Rooster’s sigh was deep as he cut in over the frequency. “Just try not to break anything before we even get started, Bagman.” 

“No promises, Rooster. No promises.” Ellie could hear the smirk in Jake’s voice. “Lover, you ready to walk your old man through this?”    “I swear to God, Hangman,” Teak shot back, quickly, his comms fizzling to life. “Keep running your mouth—” 

“Easy, easy—” Jake responded without missing a beat, the clicking of toggles being flipped dull in the background behind his voice, “no need to get feisty now, just say the word if you need me to break it down real slow for you.” 

“Knock off the chatter,” Maverick cut in. “Wheels up in thirty seconds.” 

Down on the flight line, the engines surged, afterburners flared, and one by one, the jets launched down the runway, blurs of speed that streaked into the sky like silver bullets. Ellie’s gaze shifted, watching their flight paths on the monitors in front of her, the integrated system humming to life as it started pulling in data, linking each aircraft into the seamless digital web one by one. 

“Telemetry looks good from here,” Ellie spoke into the headset, her eyes took in the data as it began streaming to the screen in front of her. “All systems online and reading normal. How’s it looking up there?” 

Rooster was the first to respond, his familiar voice filling Ellie’s ears. “HUD’s crisp. AI’s already starting to flag heat signatures and terrain. Feels intuitive.” 

Ellie could feel the prickly of excitement before she schooled it back; too soon to start celebrating. 

“Same here,” Lover added, a smooth calmness in place. “Looks good from where I’m sitting. Got anything nice to say, Teak?” 

“System seems a bit chatty. Lots of information to sort through. Feels like it’s thinking for me.” Teak’s voice came through on cue, predictably, less enthusiastic. 

Ellie bit her tongue, she’d make a note to address it later in the debrief. She’d carefully remind Teak that the whole point of the system was to boost and enhance their decision-making, not replace it. As with anything new, it wouldn’t seem natural or easy in the beginning but would benefit them in the long run. Old dogs, new tricks. 

Hangman’s voice came last. “It’s good, I’ll give you that. But let’s see how it handles when I put it through the wringer.” 

Suddenly, a spike of data jumped on Ellie’s screen. Hangman’s jet shot forward, pushing past the planned test parameters before Ellie could yell out a warning over the comms. Outside, Ellie could see his jet as he yanked into a high-G turn, rolling hard, his plane screaming through the sky at an angle that should have stalled out lesser, greener pilots. 

Alarms flared on Ellie’s screen, screamed in her ears, so loud she instinctively lifted the headset off one ear. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered, already flipping through the diagnostics filling her screen, her fingers flying over keys to manually redistribute the generative thinking, fast. 

“Hangman!” Rooster barked, his voice booming over the screaming of her tech in her ear. “You trying to rip your own wings off?” 

“Relax Rooster,” even as Hangman grunted through another high-G cartwheel, strained against the force that pushed him back into the seat, Ellie could hear the playfulness in his tone, “just seeing if this fancy tech can keep up with me. So far, it’s keeping pace.” 

Barely, Ellie thought, her mind scrambling as she worked through the manual controls, pulling the recalibration coding from the back of her mind as her heart threatened to pound right out of her chest. The system was compensating as best it could, shifting power away from instruments and recalibrating to track Hangman’s sharp, unexpected turns and dives, climbs and rolls. It was working—but Ellie could already see stress indicators creeping in, the red signals flickering in the corner of her screen, the warning signs of a catastrophic failure. She hadn’t coded the parameters today for bullshit. If Hangman kept pushing, he might overload the AI’s allocation process before it had the chance to adjust and provide the baseline she was looking for. 

Her tech picked up Maverick on her screen as he joined in. 

Maverick’s jet came in fast from above, dropping out of the sheltered glare of the sun like a streaking missile. Ellie could see the system flag Mav on Hangman’s HUD in an instant, feeding Hangman a collision path before Mav entered weapons range. 

“Bogey incoming,” Ellie heard the AI voice warn in Hangman’s ear, on her end, she could see the system scanning, populating his HUD with information on the unknown aircraft. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Hangman muttered. “Breaking left. You got eyes on him Rooster?” 

He rolled hard to evade, dipping lower into the valley, barreling toward the 5,000-foot Hard Deck, forcing the system to compensate for rapid altitude changes, environmental shifts, and G-force strain all at once. 

Bitching Betty dinged through the cockpit, through Ellie’s headset. Altitude. Altitude. Pull up. Pull up. 

Ellie’s pulse ticked up as the warnings started going off again. 

“Break right, Hangman.” Rooster was in through the comms now, “I’ll get tone if you’re out of the way.” 

“Hangman, ease off,” Ellie cut through on the comms, her voice carefully controlled and calm but firm. She tried her best to keep the panic out of her tone, “You’re overloading the processing core. The AI needs time to redistribute resources, give it half a second to think and do what it’s there to do.”  

“Sounds like a ‘me’ problem.” Hangman was into another roll, breaking right as Rooster’s jet streaked in to assist and Hangman tumbled into another evasive maneuver, Mav hot on his tail. 

“It will be when you lose your radar feed,” Ellie shot back, around her the Control Tower Operators calmly diverted aircraft around the training area. “If you don’t—” 

The screen flickered on Ellie’s end, the system’s red flashing code stuttering, reflecting the same blip on Hangman’s HUD on the top corner of her display. 

A half-second glitch. 

A data delay. 

Not long enough to crash the system—but long enough to be dangerous if this were a live, life or death dogfight. 

In her ear, Hangman cursed under his breath as Mav capitalized on the momentary hiccup, his jet screaming in with impossible speed, locking a missile tone before Hangman could fully react, adjust. 

“That’s tone. Fox Two!” Mav’s voice cut through the comms, calm, collected. 

A simulated missile strike. If this had been real, Hangman would be punching out right now. 

The comms fell silent for a beat before Maverick’s voice came through, even and unreadable. “That’s a splash.” 

Ellie let out a slow breath as the system regulated, the red indicators disappearing from her screen as the system isolated the issue and rerouted, recalibrated. The system had held. Barely—pushed into the red, hanging on by what seemed to be a simple line of code. 

Hangman, to his credit, was quiet for a moment. 

“Well,” Jake began, the huff of exertion from the laundry list of evasive maneuvers and the strain of the resulting G-force on his body, “guess I found the breaking point.” 

Ellie pinched the bridge of her nose, the tips of her fingers turning white, closing her eyes to breathe out a noisy, measured breath. 

“You found it immediately,” Rooster at least had the decency to sound as exasperated as Ellie felt. 

Lover hummed in agreement. “Kinda impressive, Hangman, honestly. You always go around breaking your most expensive toys?” 

Ellie exhaled sharply, evacuating all the air from her lungs before she breathed it in anew. Patience.  She’d need to practice patience or take a vow of silence to keep herself in check. “Hangman, get back into formation. The rest of you, continue the test as planned. And for the love of fucking god, stick to the parameters this time.” 

“Copy that,” Rooster said. 

“Got it, Boss Lady,” Lover added, his voice light. 

Teak, gruff as ever, just muttered, “Knew this was a bad idea.” 

Hangman sighed, pulling his jet back in line. “Alright, alright. I’ll behave. For now.” 

Ellie didn’t believe that for a second. 

Ellie pushed open the control tower door with more force than necessary, so hard it swung back against the outer side of the building with a heavy slam as she stepped onto the sunbaked tarmac at a clipped pace. Her boots hit the pavement hard as she strode across the flight line, headset hanging loosely around her neck, her pulse still elevated from the way Hangman had handled the test. 

She’d expected the first test flights to be bumpy. What she hadn’t been expecting was that the bumps might come from Hangman. After his tone in the briefing, Ellie had expected pushback from Teak, had been waiting for him to act out, but Jake? This was just him being a cocky son of a bitch, and she wasn’t about to let it slide. She couldn’t. 

The rest of the test had gone according to plan, but the baseline readings had been skewed because of Hangman’s hadn’t followed instruction. Today had essentially been a wash for anything except for redline readings. 

As she approached the line of jets, she threw her hand up to shield her eyes against the dipping sun, catching the last pilot climbing out of his jet—Rooster. He caught sight of her immediately, his pace shifting, angling himself in her path before she could storm clear across to the hangar and into the locker room and rip into Hangman in front of everyone. 

“Cool it, Rigsy,” Rooster murmured, hands up in a peacekeeping gesture as he tracked backward while Ellie pushed forward. Against his 6’1 frame, Ellie looked small, and the wall of his body blocked her trajectory. “You look like you’re on the warpath.” 

In the reflection of the aviators over his eyes, Ellie could see herself, eyes narrowed. “Move, Bradshaw.” 

Rooster didn’t budge, shifting as Ellie tried to step around him when she realized he wasn’t going to clear the path. “Not until you take a breath, or maybe seven.” 

Ellie let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “Oh, trust me, I’ll breathe just fine once I’ve had a word with Seresin.” 

Rooster exhaled through his nose, arms folding across his chest as Ellie stopped abruptly. There was no way he was moving. Fleetingly, Ellie wondered if being stubborn was a requirement for flight school. “Yeah? And what exactly are you planning to say? Because from here, it looks like you’re about to walk in there and lose it in front of the entire locker room.” 

Ellie clenched her jaw. “He went off-script, overloaded the system immediately. Forced it into a failure point before I could even establish a baseline. That’s not testing limits—that’s recklessness. You have to establish the baseline before you—” 

Rooster shook his head. “That’s how he flies. You knew that.” 

“That’s how an asshole flies,” she shot back, a flare of anger, not unlike the flickering lick of a solar flare, rising inside of her. 

Rooster’s lips twitched, almost as if he might laugh, but in a moment, he was composed again, not taking the bait. His hands were on his hips now, helmet tucked neatly under an arm. “Look, I get it. Maybe better than anyone. He’s frustrating. He’s cocky. But he’s also one of the best pilots in the Navy, and trust me, you want him pushing this thing to its breaking point. Better him than someone out there getting shot at when the stakes are high.” 

Ellie’s arms crossed tightly over her chest, the muscles of her jaw working to bite back the words she really wanted to say. It took her a moment, carefully choosing her words before she spoke again. “That’s not what this was about. He didn’t do that for the sake of the test. He did it to prove he could break it. That’s all he cares about—looking good, coming out on top. He doesn’t give a damn about the work that went into this.” 

Rooster studied her for a long moment, his eyebrow quirked high. “That’s a lot of assuming for someone who works with provable theories and data sets for a living.” His jaw ticked as if he was clenching and unclenching. “You don’t know him.” 

“And he doesn’t know me,” Ellie shot back. She wanted to say that Jake didn’t know what it was like for her, he didn’t know how many pieces of her life and her time and her blood, sweat and tears had gone into every fiber of this tech. She wanted to say that he didn’t know why she was doing this. Instead, she shifted her weight and tightened the fold of her arms across her body. She could be stubborn too—it practically ran in her DNA. 

Rooster sighed, shifting his weight. “I guess you’d better get used to being pissed off then, because he’s not going anywhere.” 

Ellie pressed her lips together, her frustration still simmering, but Rooster wasn’t done. “Look,” he said, more measured this time, “I told you before—Hangman will follow if you make it clear who’s in charge. But he’s got to respect you first. And right now? You’re just reacting to him. He pushes; you push back. Wash, rinse, repeat until you both die. He thrives on that. I tried it that way. It doesn’t work.” 

Ellie narrowed her eyes, studying Rooster for a moment, before she rolled her eyes and threw her hands up. “And what exactly do you suggest? That I just let him run the show?” 

Rooster shook his head. “No. I’m saying he’s testing you just as much as he’s testing the system. You want to keep him in check? Show him you can handle him.” 

Ellie’s fingers twitched at her sides. She hated that he had a point, hated even more that Hangman would probably enjoy knowing just how much he was getting under her skin. It took a measured breath and a focused thought with intent to push down the anger into her toes. “How do you suggest I do that?” 

Rooster shifted his weight, as if he were trying to pull something out of his hat. “Maybe start by coming out tonight?”  

Ellie huffed, the sun starting to heat the back of her neck uncomfortably. She didn’t shoot it down right away and so, likely sensing an in, he continued. 

“Hard Deck. Might help your case if the guys see you as something other than what they’re pegging you for now.”

Ellie arched a brow, she didn’t want to engage Rooster right now, she hated that her anger was ebbing away, if only slightly. She hated that there were politics she had to play into to get her tech where it needed to be. “Oh? And what exactly are they pegging me for now?” 

At that, Rooster smiled. Ellie knew Rooster knew her well enough by now to see that her anger was dissolving. “A mysterious, tech-obsessed hard-ass who spends too much time in her office and not enough time pretending to be human. Also, someone trying to make their lives harder.”    Ellie huffed a laugh despite herself, shaking her head. “Great. Love that for me. Is it terminal, doctor?” 

“Not entirely, it’s fixable at this stage,” Rooster teased as she watched his shoulders relax. “Couple rounds at the Hard Deck, let ‘em see you’re not a soulless drone, and suddenly you’re one of us. I’ve seen you with Nic, I know you can be fun, or at least fun-adjacent.” 

She gave him a skeptical look, choosing to ignore the comment about her being fun. “I don’t think drinking beer with you guys is going to make Hangman and Teak be any less of pains in my ass.”    “No, but it might make Teak less of a pain in my ass if he stops thinking you’re some uptight, out-of-touch scientist trying to change the way he flies,” Rooster pointed out. “Might be worth it.”    Ellie exhaled, considering. “What about Hangman?” 

“You mean the way he flies or the way he’s been trying to flirt you into submission since he laid eyes on you?” 

Ellie felt her stomach dip and she took a careful, measured swallow. “Both.” 

“Not sure that’s curable.” Rooster hissed, perfect bedside manner for delivering a terminal prognosis. 

Ellie huffed and set her hands on her hips. She wasn’t the type to care what pilots thought of her—she built tech to save their lives, not to win their approval. But Rooster had a point. If she wanted them to trust her system, they had to trust her first.  “Alright,” she said finally, pushing back from her desk. “One drink. But if any of them start talking about ‘mansplainy’ shit, I’m out.”  Rooster nodded, the grin on his face. “Fair deal.”    Rooster waited for a beat, stepped back and waited another, as if he were testing to see if Ellie might sprint past him on her way to the locker room anyway. When she didn’t move, he offered her a small wave and turned, stalking down the tarmac and peeling parts of his flight gear off as he did so.  

As his figure shrunk, Ellie sighed and rubbed her temples.  Great. Now she had to go pretend to be human. 

a/n: i mean, does ellie even have a mom/dad with wolfman and mav stepping in? not me cackling as i imagine wolfman in an apron making scrambled eggs, terribly. anyone wanna crack that with fanart? haha

if you love this series, reblog, comment, like! chapter 5, the technical ending of this chapter will be up tomorrow!

tags:  @hookslove1592 @mrsevans90 @avengersfan25 @jbennsquared @dempy

@obsessed-fan-alert @djs8891 @lunatygerqueen @khouse712 @alipap3

@yuckosworld @marvelouslyme96 @luckyladycreator2 @lovelylndskies @cardi-bre91

@whatislovevavy @qutequeersstuff @tgmreader @writergirl28 @literal-tv-menace

@queenslandlover-93 @fantasyfootballchampion @marrianena

taglist if you want to be added/removed!

[sparkriel]

thinking about hearthian biology on a planet with such a fast night and day cycle… about their sleep cycle mostly but also some stuff about the two sets of eyes! headcanons below ::3

Hearthians are of course naturally equipped to handle the conditions of the planet they evolved on! I think in this case it would manifest in a few ways. I’m also considering hearthian days to last a little longer than they do in canon (three days in 22 minutes) just cause days in video games are always sped up for playability, so maybe a hearthian cycle is more like 40 or so minutes.

- Hearthians have sleep-wake cycles like cats napping and waking throughout the day and night! They don’t sleep every time the sun goes down and get up every time it rises, but they sleep in short bouts every few hours, maybe on average waking 4-6 hours and sleeping 2-3. the concept of a “day” to hearthians is generally just really different from how we consider it on earth, it’s undoubtedly used for timekeeping but it would be really inconvenient for a productive technological sentient species to have to bed down every like 20 minutes. other smaller creatures like fish or bugs may adhere more to the actual light/dark cycle

- ofc the village is full of lanterns and strings of light for the dark, but they also have blackout curtains or dark windowless rooms for sleeping! or even a plain and simple eye mask. they don’t all universally sleep at the same times but taking a sleep together is an intimacy activity

- the “night sleeping under the stars” every new space pilot does as tradition before their first solo flight is in fact not a full sleep period, but simply a nap :) hence why Slate was up tending the fire the whole night and watching over you. it might have only been like a 20 minute nap but for a creature that sleeps in short periods that’s not an insignificant amount!

- Hearthians can fall asleep very quick and easy. You could say this is kinda supported in canon too by how you can doze off at any campfire in mere seconds and meditating will also make you fall sleep (confirmed by the DLC), so it’s not much trouble for them to quickly transition between up time and down time

- they have better night vision than humans do! going quickly back and forth all the time between light and dark lighting conditions could cause eye strain or difficulty seeing comfortably while their eyes have to be adjusting constantly, especially if they’ve been awake for a while and are tired—so one pair of eyes is equipped with more rod receptors (light and dark) for night vision and the other pair has more cone receptors (color) for day vision! They’re using all four eyes simultaneously, but each pair has their turn to rest a bit while the other becomes dominant for the period of light or dark.

- Timber Hearth is VERY bright and sunny during the day- the sun so close is HUGE in the sky overhead. there’s more than enough lumens to go around. so in order to help them not go blind, the lower, smaller eyes are the more light sensitive ones; a tiny bit extra shadow, and more importantly a lot less surface area to collect light and easier to protect during the day. because of the smaller size their dark vision is not as spectacular as, say, something like an owl or a squid with ginormous eyes, just superior enough to navigate the frequent dark.

- the larger upper eyes on the other hand are more color sensitive; in very brightly lit environments high color differentiation is more useful, and the larger eyes can take in more light without being harmed as much from the extreme brightness of the close sun, since they receive much more in cones than rods.

- since they do have decent dark vision lighting up the village is not expressly necessary, not as much as it would be for human eyes, but it is a comfort and makes color vision at night better. also it’s pretty

- I like to think that sometimes though the village will gather for a stargazing event and turn all the lights out to see the sky best ::)

[hollow-lime-green]

Other T/b anon again! I'd also love to know your personal opinions on t/b dynamics in stsg, because you seem to have very intelligent and well-thought out ideas about this and I'd love to hear them. No worries if that's too personal or something ofc

obligatory: none of this matters and t/b preference in real life can and probably does have nothing to do with your other character traits

with that said, yes, i do have thoughts. unfortunately i have lots of thoughts. (every time i say "i'm thinking..." my brother likes to interrupt me to say "uh oh!")

personal preference: i'll read anything. i like to push the boundaries of new and exciting ways to put dick in ass.

characterization preference: here's where it gets messy, so under the cut we go.

one reason i think stsg t/b discourse gets so heated and toxic is that jjk has bad writing sometimes, and mr geto suguru, people's princess that he is, gets some of the absolute worst of it.

i actually don't blame gege for this. it's fine for your vision to change between your pilot and the actual series. this is what happened, imo, between JJK0 and JJK. we ended up with very, very different characters between the two. (geto's jjk->jjk0 transformation actually reminds me of goro majima, but imo it makes more sense in Y0)

so i think if you want to treat t/b as a character study (which i think is fine as long as you don't go out on the street, point at a gay man (prob just a metrosexual), and say 'i bet you like to take it up the ass as a way of expressing vulnerability')

if you want to do that, then it really depends what time period you're working with. I am going to give what I think are the most obvious interpretations, and then what i like about each dynamic.

Student Era:

Most Obvious: Switch

it is very clear that in this era, gojo sees them as equal and not opposite (despite the black and white motif of it all - this is his six eyed blindness). i think gojo would very explicitly want to do both as part of this. this era is also pretty young for them to have/know fixed dynamics though. i have some pretty specific takes for FIYM specifically, but that is due to backstory. if i put that in this post it's gonna be too long so someone will have to twist my arm to talk about those in another post 👀.

themes if u wanna do that:

Switch - See above

All others - you can do some fun things focusing on either one of them here with inexperience and fun new experimentation, baggage or attempting to force intimacy after star plasma vessel, or internalized homophobia/identity struggle. a lot of these themes and motivations work well on both of them in this era.

Adult Era (JJK0):

Most Obvious: Geto Bottom or Switch

look, I don't know what yaoi juice gege was chugging when he wrote and drew this but i know this geto has like seven BadDragon dildos. i know he is taking curse dick up the ass. i know the sex cult is egalitarian and woke.

the way geto is written here is very coy and trickstery in a way that just makes you wanna see him get railed, or that makes you believe he is frequently getting railed. and gojo here is written to be extreeeeeemely stoic and controlled. it's flawed to assume that it means that he's topping, of course (see disclaimer), but you can see how people get there.

themes if u wanna do that:

Geto Bottom: guilt/repentance, self-perceived inadequacy/inequality with gojo, and of course the sly vixen manipulating appeasement angle

Switch: hatefucking nasty, cat and mouse hijinks behavior, what the hell is larue doing with that-

Geto Top: greed/power hedonism, delusion of power, performing cruelty/dominance. also i think unhinged JJK0 geto just lends himself well to extreme monsterfucking in any dynamic.

Adult Era (JJKS1):

So, alternate timeline kind of - IF we take stsg at the kfc breakup and carry those versions of the characters into adulthood, I think we end up with a different gojo and geto than we got in JJK0. sillier gojo, like S1, and a more somber, conflicted geto, like he acts in mimi/nana flashbacks.

Most Obvious: Gojo Bottom or Switch

so on the flipside, this gojo seems a lot more willing to let his hair down and take some dick up the ass compared to JJK0. again, while flawed, people associate that whimsy and cheery twunkiness with bottoming, so you can see how people get there.

themes if u wanna do that:

Geto Top: liberated (maybe even nihilistic) hedonism, power accrual and pride, and on the side of Gojo Bottom: performing weakness/submission to repair his shattered dream of equality (and peace)

Switch: nostalgia for their younger days (perceived mirror equality as discussed above), separating love/intimacy from their day job of conflict to get freaky with it, more depth in their shared trauma in this characterization in general

Geto Bottom: truce mechanics/stronger trust than JJK0 geto, allowing himself nonverbal ways of expressing authentic feelings he can't actually reveal to gojo, acceptance of the power gap, highlighting gojo's unique position as the only one to top him (given the sex cult)

So yeah, anyway, there's a lot you can do with this ship if you want to use t/b as characterization. it works in all directions. t/b can say all kinds of different things, or nothing at all. i think-

[SIRENS BLARING]

wait what's that?? it's the

DAILY DOUBLE!

Gojo Side (All Eras)

so 'side' is still a pretty niche term even in woke fujo sex-addled fandom spaces. to quickly define, side means 'does not prefer penetrative sex', not top, not bottom, just 'can we do something else'. and like every preference, this doesn't necessarily mean he's t/b-repulsed, it might just not be his fave.

this is my favorite interpretation, because a.) when you are not forcing yourself to drink the 'penetrative sex is the peak of intimacy juice', you end up with more interesting sex scenes imo. and b.) dude, it just works so well with the six eyes oversensitivity stuff, he's a great character for this. and geto has a whole hidden inventory of tools and curses, so he's also a perfect character for writing some nontraditional sex.

i won't go into depth on FIYM here (twist my arm though, push me over with a light breeze, though), but if you are reading along, you know this is sort of what we're working with.

until next time!

[wolvereaux]

rules: put your “on repeat” playlist on shuffle, share 10 songs, then tag 10 people!

tagged by @come-mist-eternal >:3c

I've added in my favorite lines from the songs when applicable, but that's not a requirement~

1) You and I - PVRIS (reaching out) but for now we stay so far (can't feel you now) 'till our lonely limbs collide (reaching out) I can't keep you in these arms (can't feel you now) so I'll keep you in my mind can we meet in the middle? bodies and souls collide dance in the moonlight when all the stars align for you and I for you and I

2) Lion - Hearts & Colors there's a lion in the wardrobe and a wolf at the door I might never get to heaven but I've been there before 'cause when she's lying in my sheets in that new tee shirt I bought - ain't no place that I gotta be, still two steps back from where I wanna be

3) Earthrise - Starset I still fall for you like suns do for skies cerulean pouring in from your eyes just a hollow moon that you colorized so powerful, I feel so small but so alive like watching the Earthrise

4) Kill the Crown - 2WEI

5) Holy Smokes - Bohnes I'm gonna pray to your body, pray to your body like it's my religion I'm gonna pray to your body, pray to your body until I'm forgiven

6) Babylon - Barnes Courtney dreaming and lost alone, far from your mother's home the madness in your bones it's boiling in your blood an endless sky above, these deserts that you roam what planet are you on? what constellation? you're floating like a ghost out here in the unknown what planet are you on? cosmic phenomenon stars in the millions - oh holy golden sun

7) Ocean Eyes - American Avenue I've been walking through a world gone blind can't stop thinking of your diamond mind careful creature, made friends with time he left her lonely with a diamond mind it’s no fair you really know how to make me cry when you give me those ocean eyes I’m scared I've never fallen from quite this high falling into your ocean eyes those ocean eyes

8) Breaking My Bones - Friday Pilots Club and we fashion our souls for the likes of a ghost for all the stars to come down yeah, all of the stars to come down (let's talk) happiness or vanity - where do you find your clarity? how do you get off, who do you call god? never mind, just stare at me let it kill you then tell all your friends pretty people make the pages of the DSM

9) Eurydice (Dan's Demo) - Bastille but I, I, I I wanna breathe your every breath be the truth and be the myth through the days and through the nights through the bitter life, oh I 'cause you're my life and you're my death you score the music in my head through the days and through the nights through the bitter life, oh

10) Home to Me - Devil and the Deep Blue Sea on the day you left me, you'd promised you'd come back I don't know who taught you how to live like that all the fences in your way have to crumble in the wind, one day how dare you love me like you've never known fear you've got more troubles than minutes in the year and a voice like your father's tells you 'nothing good's for free' well, that may be but you're walking home - that may be but you're walking home to me

tagging: @abidethetempest, @nopewhynopewhy, @angstyavocado, @liopleurodean, @nonsensicalramblings79, and @nachosncheezies!

no pressure, ofc!

[j0eyj0rdis0n]

SONGS THAT REMIND ME OF THE CREEPS

with playlists (ofc)

MASKY

Happy Pills - Weathers

Heavydirtysoul - Twenty One Pilots

Trouble - Cage the Elephant

Morph - Twenty one Pilots

Down In A Hole - Alice in Chains

Numb - Linkin Park

Breaking the Habit - Linkin Park

This Is How I Disappear - My Chemical Romance

Stalker - Badflower

Duality - Set It Off

HOODIE

Another Way Out - Hollywood Undead

Fairly Local - Twenty One Pilots

Message Man - Twenty One Pilots

Sucker for Pain - Various Artists

My Blood - Twenty One Pilots

Cut My Lip - Twenty One Pilots

Breezeblocks - altJ

Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met…) - Panic! At The Disco

Hypnotized - Set It Off

Church - Fall Out Boy

“TICCI” TOBY

Don’t You Dare Forget The Sun - Get Scared

Medicine - Hollywood Undead

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead - Set It Off

Pain - Three Days Grace

Keep Myself Alive - Get Scared

Never Too Late - Three Days Grace

Animal I Have Become - Three Days Grace

Horrible Kids - Set It Off

Mama - My Chemical Romance

Back from the Dead - Skillet

CLOCKWORK

Shatter Me - Lindsey Sterling, Lizzy Hale

Decode - Paramore

I’m So Sick - Flyleaf

I Miss the Misery - Halestorm

Enemy - Imagine Dragons, JID

Playground - Bea Miller

Catch Me If You Can - Set It Off

Ironic - Alanis Morissette

Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac

Body Talks - The Struts, Kesha

EYELESS JACK

From The Ground - Hollywood Undead

Get Out Alive - Three Days Grace

Monster - Skillet

Dead Bite - Hollywood Undead

The Phoenix - Fall Out Boy

My Demons - STARSET

Sarcasm - Get Scared

Pet - A Perfect Circle

Somewhere I Belong - Linkin Park

Twisted Transistor - Korn

JEFF THE KILLER

Chalk Outline - Three Days Grace

So Called Life - Three Days Grace

I Can’t Decide - Scissor Sisters

Killer - The Ready Set

Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) - Marilyn Manson

Kill Everyone - Hollywood Undead

A Little Piece of Heaven - Avenged Sevenfold

To Catch a Predator - Insane Clown Posse

Dark Side - Blind Channel

Just Pretend - Bad Omens

JANE THE KILLER

Bring Me To Life - Evanescence

Damage - Fit For Rivals

Tear You Apart - She Wants Revenge

Tourniquet - Marilyn Manson

Unbreakable - Fireflight

I’m Gonna Show You Crazy - Bebe Rexha

Hit and Run - LOLO

Get Jinxed - Djerv

La Seine - Vanessa Paradis

Let’s Kill Tonight - Panic! At The Disco

NINA THE KILLER

Heather - Conan Gray

Get Well - Icon For Hire

Oh No! - MARINA

Pretty Little Psycho - Porcelain Black

Partners in Crime - Set It Off, Ash Costello

Backstabber - Kesha

DONTTRUSTME - 3OH!3

You’re So Creepy - Ghost Town

This Little Girl - Cady Groves

Guys My Age - Hey Violet

BEN DROWNED

Turbulent - Waterparks

Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) - The Offspring

Dirty Mind - 3OH!3

Riot - Hollywood Undead

oops! - Yung Gravy

Fashionably Late - Falling In Reverse

parents - YUNGBLUD

Hell of a Ride - Bo Burnham

Teeth - 5 Seconds of Summer

Bad Girls Club - Falling In Reverse

SALLY WILLIAMS

Hayloft - Mother Mother

Tag, You’re It - Melanie Martinez

Little Game - Benny

Teen Idle - MARINA

Where Do I Go - Anna Blue

Silent Scream - Anna Blue

Lolita - Lana Del Rey

Dollhouse - Melanie Martinez

All The Things She Said - Poppy

Burning Pile - Mother Mother

[avastrasposts]

Hi there, I'm glad you made it here and I hope you'll enjoy my writing!

All my writing is 18+ so make sure you are. I love talking about my fics (who doesn't?) so asks and DM's, comments and reblogs are always welcome.

Need recommendations for long fics? Here is a list of recommendations that will get you through long travel hours or just a dull evening: Long fic recs

I crosspost on Ao3

Enjoy!

Master List

Pedro Pascal characters

A Baker's Dozen - Series Master List

(featuring pretty much all of the Pedro boys)

Din Djarin (The Mandalorian

The Exiled Heart - Series Master List (complete)

Francisco Morales (Triple Frontier)

Almost; Always (complete)

Frankie Morales x Santiago Garcia

Big Sky Country - Series Master List

Work in progress

The Pilot and his girl - Series Master List

TLoU/TF cross over - Completed. Long, full of fluff, angst and smut. Frankie x Reader)

Drabbles featuring Frankie

The Blind Date - A short, fluffy one shot about that one time your friend Benny set you up on a blind date, Frankie x Reader

Swimming lessons with Catfish - A smutty drabble set in an alternative, no outbreak, version of the The Pilot and his Girl universe, Frankie x Reader

The Accident - Angsty fluffy one shot that will probably be given a part two down the line, Frankie x Reader

Frankie & Din - A funny, I hope, one-shot with Frankie & Din at the air fair

Frankie to the rescue - A one shot drabble about Frankie welcoming you home after a long day of travelling, Frankie x Reader

Six and a half minutes - Frankie's version (a smutty one shot where Frankie interrupts your holiday baking, Frankie x Reader)

Come in, Atled Air, come in - a short and fluffy one shot about Pilot!Frankie and AirController!FemReader.

Not an Easy Man to Find - my first m/m fic featuring Pope x Frankie

General Marcus Acacius

Bona Dea - Complete Series Master List

Marcus Acacius x Reader. A one shot that's developed in to it's own little series. 4 out of 5 chapters are published.

Pero Tovar (The Great Wall)

The Guard Dog - Groundskeeper!Pero x female reader written for Studioghibelli's writing challenge.

Rosemary & Lavender - Mercenary!Pero x female Reader one shot

Memories made, memories lost - Mercenary!Pero x female Reader one shot written for @burntheedges Roll-A-Trope challenge.

Javier Peña (Narcos)

Snowed In - Javier's version (a one night stand with Javier Peña as he's snowed in at a hotel. Javier x OFC)

Pickled Interruptions - Part of the Pickled Peña writing challenge @pickled-pena

Joel Miller (The Last of Us)

Gun Cleaning - Joel's version (a smutty one shot when Joel walks in on you cleaning the guns, Joel x Reader)

Marcus Pike (The Mentalist)

When was the last time you lived? - a short one shot for the Summer Lovin 24 challenge.

Karl Urban characters

Éomer (LotR)

The Tack Room (super fluffy but not complete)

Billy Butcher (The Boys)

The British Connection (slow burn with very little fluff, a chunk of smut and lots of plot)

Six and a half minutes (smut drabble)

Dear Reader (smut drabble in two parts)

Snowed in (smut drabble)

Gun cleaning (smut drabble)

Ellie just gets to have a lot of sex with Billy Butcher (4 part series, the title is pretty self-explanatory. No, it's not about TLoU Ellie... )

[tessa-quayle]

spotlight on the OFC

(fanfiction recommendations) :)

the reader insert, the second person, the y/l/n convention (which, for me, can disrupt the text and i haven’t gotten used to it - not criticizing those who do it - i'm the problem, it’s me 🤪) are all the rage in fanfiction.  i get the immersive appeal, and many of the fics i love and enjoy employ the second person.  

richly drawn original characters draw me in and capture my attention. I appreciate how creative folks get with their OFCs, the headcanons, and how they have fun showing off these OFC’s quirks and strengths and interior lives and histories.  it’s a joy to read.

here are a few great OFCs in the Pedro Pascal Character universe.  the stories are engaging and this is a fairly diverse list of OFCs (by that I mean race/ethnicity, life experience, nationality, disability).  as always, each author issues their own warnings.

listed in alphabetical order by writer:

@iamskyereads - Ezra (Prospect) x OFC Beatrice 

ongoing series (Compulsion).  love the sci-fi world-building in the first chapter. Beatrice is a sharp and compelling protagonist who’s suffered a traumatic brain injury and has PTSD.  

@intheorangebedroom - Frankie (Triple Frontier) x OFC Gabrielle 

complete series (Pleased to Meet You).  angsty intercontinental love story between everyone’s favorite pilot and a cool French woman.  the descriptions of different cities are vivid.

@jazzelsaur - Frankie (Triple Frontier) x OFC Ellie

complete series (Between the Raindrops).  the slow burn here is a smolder in the best sense.  Elliot (Ellie) is a widow who lives next door to Frankie.  the weight of grief and angst in this series is remarkable. 

@jomiddlemarch - Joel (The Last of Us) x OFC Grace

loose-fit series (On Call for the Apocalypse).  crossover with Ted Lasso.  set in Jackson WY between seasons 1 and 2, Grace is a snarky doctor (scratch a cynic, find a romantic) hanging out with Joel and Ellie  (format better on AO3)

@julesonrecord and @lunapascal ( @stardustandskycrystals) - Dieter (the Bubble) x OFC Andie 

ongoing series (Curls).  we’re rooting for Dieter and Andie amid all the drama and shenanigans surrounding a pregnancy and a wedding.  this reads like a novel you finish in one sitting.  

@ladamedusoif - Mr Ben (SNL) x OFC Lydia 

ongoing series (Visiting).  Lydia is a European art historian who goes to teach at an East Coast liberal arts college and meets the dashing Mr Ben.  delightful and smart (and I'm not just describing Mr Ben).

@radiowallet - Marcus (We Can Be Heroes) x OFC Amy

ongoing series (Eyes Open).  Single parents Marcus and Amy find love in the workplace, HR be damned.  Amy contains multitudes and the portrait of her as a mother is especially real and sweet.

@whatsnewalycat - Din (Mandalorian) x OFC Charlie

ongoing series (Passenger).  Gritty, dark, cool AU where Din Djarin is a trucker/bounty hunter and Charlie is making her way west.  this fic has a lot of postmodern energy.

@yespolkadotkitty - Pero (Great Wall) x OFC Jade

complete series (Fighting Blind).  Fun, winsome adventure between a museum curator and our favorite Spanish warrior.  Love the time-travel element, the nod to the Asian diaspora, and the rich world-building.  This series is stay-up-past-your-bedtime reading.

feel free to share your fic recs and favorite OCs/OFCs (your own and/or others)!  ❤️

[fandomdaydreamer]

Of a Sun and Flower

Pt. 2 You Fit Me

Pairing: Pedro Pascal/OFC

Summary: Conflict induces a positive development when Nini meets the right person at the right time.

Warnings: alcohol, drug use, a psychoanalysis by someone who is not in any kind of medical field (me), symptoms of anxiety and depression, mentions of past abuse and overdose, domestic fights (with resolution, phew)

Notes: Well well well, if it isn't my late ass. Sorry, is all I can say. Life gets in the way and this chapter was fkn hard to write. Actually, I'm working on making Book 1 a real novel now, might be a real published author. Wheee

Also find this fic on Ao3 -here- or the series' Masterlist -here-

Length: 8.8k

~

You Fit Me

The floor was littered with old chewing gum and spilt, sticky puddles of alcohol when I lowered my gaze at my mechanically piloted feet. It was hot, too hot underneath my wig, too hot between these strange bodies. With nothing but numbness in my mind, I made my hips sway to the rhythm of the heavy beat, felt the base resonate in my chest and alter my perception as my nostrils filled with the scent of people's sweat, cheap liquor and the stale dampness of the fog machines.

My eyes wandered into the dark corners of the club, where hidden figures were locked in a passionate kiss or lived out their high with their mouths wide open as they gazed into the flickering lights. They were but quick illuminations of limbs and faces, pale picture frames of colourful people dancing to a heavy electronic beat. A hypnotic voice was singing and people upon people danced to it like they were in a trance. The air was thick and condensation threatened to drip from the ceiling. It was easy to be sucked into their midst, give in to the alluring promise of forgetful hedonism and just float into the river Styx. Float into another dimension while fate would handpick the gluttons who would descend into the third circle of hell.

What would Pedro say if he saw me like this? Not having fun and denying myself any peace. Was I pretending to push myself into a nihilist universe to chase fatalism and toxicity? A blind person would have been able to see it.

Maybe I wasn't drunk enough to stop my mind from constantly wandering back home and wane between regret and anger. However, I was intoxicated enough to tilt my head into the sticky air, close my eyes and remain in the eternal Asphodel meadows for a little while longer. I felt so alone yet free of all that I knew. An anonymous, ordinary soul drifting through the night.

My state in limbo felt complete until a slimy touch seized my hip and I was promptly forced to take a step away. "No!" My protest fell on deaf ears.

"C'mon, baby. You gotta try this!" A guy in a gay club of all places forced a shot on me. He waved a friend over who brought more glasses that were filled with some kind of dark liquid.

I batted his wandering hands away and yelled at him to leave me alone.

"Fucking fa-." I could read the slur from his lips before he took another leering step towards me. How easily his words shattered against the heavy armour I had braced my soul with.

"She said no, dickface! Fuck off!" A woman with rhinestone eyebrows stepped in. Her shrill voice was loud against the music and she shoved him away. She flipped the man off and cackled at the range of slurs he threw back at us. "You okay?" My saviour hollered in my direction once he'd left us alone on the dance floor.

"Yeah, thank you!" I yelled back. I had seen and gone through worse things. Infinitely worse. "I'm sorry-" I gestured aimlessly when everything became too much anyway. In an attempt to escape, I made my way through the crowd and to the bathrooms.

I had no clue how much time I spent trying to sober up inside the stall that was plastered with graffiti and scribbles. A stick figure lay horizontal with x's crossed over instead of their eyes and memories of last summer flashed through my mind. Overdosed eyes had glazed over into a blur and I recalled how scary it had been to not be able to move my body as I nearly choked on foam and vomit. In a hazy fever dream, Pedro had found me just in time and in the worst way possible. How terrified he'd been. How stupid I felt about the way I behaved again.

In my overwhelmed state, I kept ignoring my phone as it buzzed for the millionth time this night. Pedro's ID blinked up again, the pet name I gave him mocked me along with all the hearts we'd sent back and forth in our recent past. Such a stark contrast to his currently unanswered texts. I wasn't tone-deaf to their urgency.

01:34 - Baby, I just need to know if you're ok, then I'll let you do your thing. Promise

Can you please pick up?

02:04 - Where are you? I can come and pick you up, wherever you are. I'm not mad at you

02:11 - Please just tell me you're safe

02:50 - Leonie, this has to stop! You've made your point ok?

03:00 - I swear tfg, the least you could do is answer! You care at all??

03:01 - *(Angel deleted this message)*

03:02 - Pick up the fucking phone.

The last text, I imagined he had written before pulling his hair out in sheer frustration. A full stop. Yikes.

"Fuck." I whispered to myself.

Inside the filthy stall, I closed my hands over my eyes and slumped over with my elbows resting on my knees. I tried willing my cramp to go away or at least deal with the pain of heavy guilt setting into another part of my stomach. "I'm such a fucking fraud," I admitted to myself in a moment of clarity and regret. Impulsive and short-tempered Leonie van Fleet, the misophonic asshole who doesn't know what she's doing, everyone. Round of applause.

A voice in the stall next to mine ripped me out of my thoughts. "Does anybody have a tampon?" They asked obnoxiously above the dull sound of thumping music.

"I do! Hold up." I yelled back immediately, pondering on my last one and deciding giving it away would limit my time here but maybe having no other choice was a good thing. "I'll trade you for some toilet paper." I put my hands through the bottom of the stall door and crouched down, hoping I wouldn't lose my balance when chipped white nail polish met equally broken black polish as they grabbed for the tampon.

"Thank you so fucking much. My night is saved." They said, made the exchange and I felt dizzy when I decided to end my crisis and finish up myself. "No problem, that's what uterus pals are for." I slurred before flushing and walking up to the sink. I felt a little more drunk than I had originally thought.

"What was that you were saying?" The voice sounded nasal like it's been through quite a bit of crying before. "You're a fraud? What do you mean by that?"

Nosey, this one.

"I mean uh... I'm pretending to be this destructive version of myself. Or what am I doing here?" I was reeling with thoughts while washing my hands with barely existent soap. With no option to dry them in sight, I let the water drip as I stared at my reflection. A stranger stared back, a vision of everything gone wrong.

"Sounds like you've put a lot of thought into it." The voice ripped me out of my tunnel vision again.

I crossed my arms and the words somehow kept flowing out almost too easily. "I just keep making the wrong decisions," I spoke above the sound of the distant, thumping beat. "Just don't know why. Maybe just to punish myself for my perfect life." I narrated my unthought-through, impulsive actions and concluded my crisis with the afterthought of a selfish brat. "You know what? What's worse is that all I do is punish the person that matters to me most."

"Huh." The toilet flushed and out the stall came the same woman from earlier and a look of recognition washed over our faces. "Oh, it's you!" We burst out at the same time. She was of similar height, maybe in her early forties but it was impossible to say with that skincare routine she had going for her. Apart from the eccentric decorations on her face, she had black shiny hair and red-painted lips. "The self-punishment over a hypothetical would make sense if you think you might not deserve the positive things in your life. Have you been through some shit? Apologies for assuming-" She washed her hands messily and also noticed the lack of soap. "I'm drunk."

My brain caught up with her a second later. "Yeah, horrendous stuff." I dramatised in my tipsy state and leaned my weight against the neighbouring sink.

I lacked the ability to comprehend how she could have been so spot-on at first sight. Maybe my cry for help was painted above my head as obvious as the neon sign of this club. The woman spoke with an equal amount of compassion and anger. "Many of us have. Bullied and chased out of our homes. Fewer rights as a marginalised group. It's worse even for the trans community. So many places where you must have felt not accepted. I'm sorry, that had to be tough."

"I'm... Yes, that's true but I'm not trans." I informed her with a smile, amused she'd thought I was.

She froze like an elephant in a porcelain shop. "That wig-"

"It's a wig, yes." She had a fair point for assuming. It was a high probability in a queer scene club like this and my heavy makeup and a wig I hadn't even glued on.

"Well..." She grinned, making it obvious to me that my hairline was crappy enough for me to not pass as a woman. "Anyway then, your partner, she's the best thing in your life and you're emotionally dependent on her?" She asked before bending down and took a sip straight from the tap.

Feeling like such a fraud again, I suddenly felt ashamed. I was out of place. "He is. I hope I'm not but the truth is, I couldn't live without him. He's the best thing in my life." I corrected her and she coughed into the stream.

"Damn, I assumed you'd at least be part of the L in the alphabet mafia. What were the odds?" "No, it's fine. We're in a queer club so... I'm sorry for invading this space. I guess I just wanted a peaceful night out. Can't escape men anywhere though. Surprise." I chuckled at her before being serious again. "Karma. I haven't been treating my partner well these past couple of months." Suddenly admitting it felt devastating and my voice quivered so much, it made her turn her entire body and meet me with a worried frown. "I had a very abusive dad and I'm afraid, so fucking afraid I'm the abuser now." I was taken aback by my confession, for it was so unlike me to bring up my past, let alone to a stranger. However, there was something about this woman. Something so comforting and familiar, I had to reveal a well-hidden part of my life to an equally drunk stranger in a filthy bathroom.

Yet I received nothing but her entire attention and while her presence felt comforting, her voice was clear and cool as ice. "My best guess is you have tried to cope with everything yourself, depending on whatever distracted you and fed your love deprivation." She deducted.

I gaped at her. "How-"

"Do you mind?" She pulled a cigarette from a battered package and I shook my head 'no' when she offered me one. "I think I get it now. Wait for it-" She climbed onto the heater and blew smoke out of the tiny window. For a moment, she digested the first drag, smoking in a kind of club where nobody would bat an eye anyway. I felt like a lost little kitten, staring up at her with big hungry eyes. It nearly seemed she gathered information by scanning me from head to toe. "You have some kind of European accent, maybe you were new here at some point and lonely. You're a petite, pretty little thing with daddy issues in a queer club, still unable to escape that predatory behaviour from earlier. So in theory, you know how to protect yourself because you had trauma to deal with but you feel deep hurt all the time. Plus, a loving partner and a domestic fight, equals the fragile state you're in. Babe, you're trying to run away from happiness. It's called self-sabotage."

My throat hurt from having swallowed too hard. Mind completely blank from unadulterated surprise, I stuttered. "Self- self-sabotage... is that what this is?"

She clicked her tongue. "It's a behaviour that makes you think you have control over the negative outcome of your actions and be in charge of your pain. It's not real. You're just calming yourself with predictability." She had opened her arms like she had presented me with a magic trick and I was the stupified spectator who couldn't appreciate her art form. Although, what she said, sounded perfectly logical.

Impressed by her quick mind, I stood there with a frown between my brows while I took my time to process. "I was not expecting free therapy at three in the morning," I said numbly.

"Surprise." She grinned like a Cheshire cat despite the thin veil of tears that was still evident in her eyes.

"Are you in a psychological field of any kind? You seem so..." I tried to think of a better word than 'intelligent' and a kinder word than 'crazy yet wise. "Analytical."

She disposed of the burning cigarette through the crack in the window and hopped down to me. "Psychiatrist in crisis." She winked before turning to the mirror and giving her lips a fresh coat of red paint. A burst of frustration made her voice quiver. "But I have come to the realisation my work is fruitless in a world where people keep having normal fucking reactions to toxic post-capitalism. I'll never accomplish anything." She stopped doing her makeup to let go of her rage as she reenacted a conversation with one of her patients. "Oh, you're having a burnout and you live in a constant state of anxiety? You're a single mom working two jobs and you still can't pay rent let alone your medical bills but sure, you must have problems because Mercury is in retrograde." She was close to crying again and angrily tossed her lipstick into her purse. "I'm supposed to help people but all I see are unsolvable problems and stupid shit." She stared ahead in a nearly manic way and then breathed out like she was trying to get it out of her system.

Our tearful eyes locked in the mirror and I felt we had bonded in that moment. "I'm Giulia." My new companion introduced herself then.

"Nini." We shook hands and I came straight back to the point with something she said that had bothered me. "How did you know I have some unresolved issues?"

She didn't conceal an ironic smile. "You were talking to yourself in a bathroom stall. That's not a tough one to guess." She was right and my eyes started to become blurry before she interrupted me with a suggestion. "Wanna go outside? Dr Oswald will see you now." She offered with the grin of a siren who seemed to lure me in with a promising song of mental stability. After a short consideration, I sighed and nodded.

My path tonight had brought me to a club with a bright pink neon sign buzzing above its entrance. This hole-in-the-ground club's heavy electro-dance beat could only be revealed when its doors swung open. After falling shut, the soundproofing reduced the thumping music down to a dull ache in my memory. Some friends had shown me 'Nomi's' a few years ago and my disguise was either good enough to remain anonymous or simply nobody was bothered by the fact that a celebrity, and a hetero-normative one at that, was floating through an LGBTQ scene. The buff goth lady simply nodded at us before setting us free into the cold night.

Giulia poked me in the arm. "You hungry? I'm starving."

I shuffled about in the cold, considering if my anxiety was treatable with some food, then everything would be fine again. "I could eat."

"Wanna get kebab or pizza?" She held onto a street light and swung around playfully.

The corners of my mouth turned down into pathetic pout. "Chicago pizza?"

She smiled and frowned at the same time. "Yeah, why not? I know a place that's still open."

We talked on our entire way to the pizza place, shared our worries and doubts and she listened like we were two old friends who had finally reconnected but had never grown apart. The more she poured her interest into my problems, the more she lit up and somehow, I had overshared my entire trauma history. I was free to pretend to just be someone ordinary while in reality, I was opening up to a past life my public persona only dealt with when ugly rumours after a speculative peer-review turned into invasive interview questions. Giulia on the other hand had no idea who I was. To her, I was just another lost person.

The buzz of the alcohol had somewhat lessened during our cold morning walk. Some delis were already opening their shops for the day while the pizza place served their last customers.

A chosen New Yorker claiming Chicago-style pizza was superior was a dangerous opinion to have. Yet, I never felt more certain of it when the cheese string connecting to my piece seemed to never end. I chuckled darkly and groaned in delight while Giulia gave me an approving "Yeees, get in there."

"All I needed was some damn pizza." I sighed lowly, and yet again, battled my crisis with humour. "Can you believe that my ex-therapist advised me to go on a crash diet? All he wanted to talk about was my weight and my sex life. He wanted to stop me from being a massive kinky bitch and why would I want that?" Both of us cackled.

"Shit." She frowned, the doctor having a habit of leaning into me when she found something interesting. "I don't get how someone like that is able to keep a license."

"Yeah! Right?" I cried out, mouth full of hot pizza. I found enjoyment in being a hot mess when I mimicked his voice. "Oh, doesn't matter if you have a drug history. I have you under my wing, this is completely safe. Now here's some Ketamine. And boom, I'm dealing with withdrawal, cheers. Thanks a lot, dickhead."

"You weren't safe with him. Therapy shouldn't be manipulative." Dr Oswald stated.

"I swear, I have no verbal filter anymore. Being off meds is the worst." Though I had conveniently left out the part that I was famous, I remembered we were still in public and I shouldn't talk about too private things. I stared into the starless night above Manhattan and missed them as much as my sanity. "I can't help missing this... howling loneliness and complete lack of ego inside what was just mind fog." There wasn't any other way to describe ketamine to me. My nose clogged up at the pain and struggle of it all. "My sweet boyfriend- I was so mean to him and I know I'm also on my period and extra mean and the sauce I made was way too runny!" I sobbed at this point, nearly inarticulate, drifting off towards a point that was still very important to me.

"I'm sure it wasn't that bad." "It was practically water!" I sobbed out at the memory of our unsatisfactory dinner last night, shoulders shaking from crying.

"No... I meant what you said about being mean." She clarified while I suppressed a threatening hiccup. "What's your underlying concern?" Doc redirected our conversation with an annoyingly stereotypical therapy question but I guessed that had to be part of it.

"You know, I lost my cat-" A gulp broke my speech and I breathed until I got it together. "And it shouldn't feel this marginal but watching her die and realising I wasn't over my mum's death and feeling this profound sense of grief made me realise that maybe I don't want to be loved like that when I die. This much." Thick drops of tears streamed down my face and I knew I must have not made a lot of sense. "Never expressing this much love again. Feel the way I'm feeling... in that moment. I never stopped grieving and I figured, if he'd hate me, that would be easier."

The look she gave me was one of full understanding. "Go on, you got this." She encouraged me with a firm hand on my shoulder.

I wiped my face with my sleeve, snot, tears and makeup got stuck on the black fabric. "You know what my angel said? He said he could never hate me and he would never regret loving me, that I taught him that." I stifled myself with more pizza.

"Sounds like your person is there to help you navigate your pain," Doc said. "Maybe you're looking to become the people who would rather love like no one has ever loved before than to avoid the greatest suffering."

It seemed Pedro and I kept growing together. Through good and bad times. Despite the hardship, we still remained a unit and maybe that was all that mattered.

I soon rediscovered that food made everything better again and I filled the hole in my soul with cheese until my phone started buzzing in my pocket. Pedro was calling again.

"That's him?" Giulia asked with a look at the caller ID showing that 'Angel' with a load of heart emojis was calling. I showed her a picture of him and me together from our last New Year's celebration and she cooed at our big smiles. "I miss him," I admitted.

"He looks sweet. A bit... older than you, I guess?" She slurred back.

Bless her heart, she didn't recognise him either. "A bit." I downplayed our eighteen-year age gap. "Truth is, I am lucky to be with this treasure of a man, he's kind, sexy, smart and so talented." I gushed over him.

"But you've not communicated about your argument?" A slight smile spread on her lips despite her seriousness and somehow, I saw someone competent past those rhinestone eyebrows.

"No. I ran. Like always." I said in pure disappointment in myself. "I don't know if I fucked up for good this time. I can be such a bitch these days. But imagine me going home after this, what the fuck." I chewed slowly. "He already worries so much." I already knew my eyes were puffy and my lips were swollen from biting them. "Pedro thought he'd get a fun and bubbly, nurturing girlfriend but then he met my insecure dramatic traumatised and needy ass. What if I can't give him everything he deserves? He somehow still settled for me." A fresh tear ran down my cheek, this time I thought it might have been a happy one.

"You don't think your relationship is healthy?" Doc asked with a cough and I shrugged my shoulders. My fingers played with my sea glass necklace. "Do you think it's bad that... I don't feel like I'm not constantly on fire?"

"You think about the mind games that kept you interested?" "Don't call me out like that." My eyes narrowed.

"Let me ask you something. Does your relationship feel like an up-and-down roller coaster?"

I felt stupified and stammered out. "No?"

She kept insisting. "When someone has a hard time, do you make time to be there for the other? Not to improve things but just to be there."

"We can be miles away from each other at times but... yes. He's my lighthouse." I smiled widely despite her not getting the reference.

Giulia licked sauce off her thumb. "Do you bring the inner child up in each other?"

"Always." I laughed with tears in my eyes at every happy memory. I recalled our Christmases, birthdays, interviews and public events or simply the ordinary evenings just between the two of us.

Dr Oswald's shoulders relaxed with a sigh. "I think your relationship is more than healthy. Healthier than average couples. Don't let your insecurities talk you down, grow from them." With that, she shoved her last bite of pizza into her mouth and clapped her hands-free from crumbs.

My eyes skipped between her and the floor awkwardly. "Thanks, I guess."

She hummed before sharing an amused memory. "When my ex was fed up with me, I made her a sock puppet and tried to talk about it. She never called again." She demonstrated it with her glove. "Why don't you trust people?" She voiced her hand.

I gave her a fond smile as we began our walk back. "You're weird," I said with a chuckle as I retrieved a pre-rolled blunt from my purse and held it up to Giulia in an offer.

She grinned before passing me her lighter. "You're a cliché." She watched me light joint and take a practiced drag of the spicy herb.

"You're the one who said she dismembered Barbies as a kid." I countered with a deep exhale.

"Don't pretend you're not just as weird. You probably tortured your Sims or played with scary spiders or something." Giulia assumed, judging by my goth outfit by all accounts before taking a drag herself.

I couldn't help but play a joke on her. "There were indeed only spiders in the basement to play with," I commented dryly and her eyes closed while mine widened. Having just listened to the story of my sad childhood and the fact that my father used to lock me up in the cellar, she choked on the smoke. For a moment we were both shocked by my words until I noticed she was slowly breaking into laughter. She tried to keep it behind her hand but now we were both finished trying to hold back and instead of trying to work through and process my trauma, we let go of a hollering laugh. She at least tried to remain decent. "That's not funny. That's so not... funny."

I thought I was allowed to think it was. "It's a bit funny." She shook her head no, tearing up when she gave me my weed back. "See, you helped me already. I could talk about my dad without having an emotional breakdown. It's been easier already but I haven't felt this... relieved in a long time." I blinked away my tears stubbornly, finally admitting to myself that I was not fine and I was constantly reacting to my trauma. I decided then and there that if I would ever mistreat a future child of mine, I would not deserve to waste any more oxygen on this world. "You're really good at this. Knocking sense into people." I said sincerely.

"I appreciate you trying to end my lost cause. You made me feel like I'm not a total failure after all." She said on our way back through the calm side alleys. Our steps echoed from the red brick stone walls as we passed the joint back and forth.

"Are you kidding me? I appreciate your work so much. You do matter. This was... this was really helpful. I mean it." I saw her bottom lip trembling at my promise.

"Thank you. You're very nice."

Like a cool cat, I flicked the joint away. "I have my moments." She let me drape my arm across her shoulders as we made our way out of the last alley.

The night was slowly lifting and my mind felt light as a feather when the club came back into view. "I don't think I'll go back inside again." I said at the end of our journey.

Giulia turned and her hands clapped onto her sides with a sigh. "Now imma tell you what I'd say as a therapist and imma tell you what I'd say as a parent from an Italian household." She took a step closer and lowered her voice, her concern sounding far from patronising. "I would very much like to test you for PTSD and bipolar disorder and I want to break down generational trauma and introduce you to the right medication and progressive, beneficial habits because you girl, are not making wise choices." She finally put her finger down. "Second, and this is my nonna speaking-" Suddenly she raised her voice and I jumped. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE? GET YOUR ASS HOME, PRONTO." She gestured like her Italian grandma and I chirped out a laugh.

"O-okay." I was met with a passionate grin I had to somewhat dampen. "PTSD has kind of already been diagnosed though." A deep intuitive feeling matched and I somehow knew she would be able to help me.

"No depression?" "It's more of an anxiety disorder." "Shame. People with depression have the best Spotify playlists."

I blinked at the sound of her disappointment. "I would very much like to become your patient." I decided then and there.

"Fantastic." She wrestled her hand into her boot in return to give me a white business card with a font that promised a brutalist interior design. 'M.D. G. Oswald' written on it with an office address in Manhattan not far from here.

"Fancy," I noted and tucked it away into my bra. She seemed genuinely happy at the encounter. "God knows, I've made my partner age ten years tonight. After this-" I began to walk backwards towards the street. "I owe him a lifetime of happiness... and no more runny sauces."

"Try creme fraiche next time." Giulia advised me and the only thing I could do was comment with an awkward 'ah.

I shifted my weight from one to the other foot, pointing in the direction of an approaching cab. "I should probably... I'll give you a call." I turned one last time after I had already managed to hail it. "Hey Doc, one more thing."

"What?"

I couldn't have addressed her with a sterner tone as I stood by the open door of my ride. "If you ever tell me I need to forgive my dad, I'll be out the door." I threatened and at first she looked puzzled, but then saluted me in understanding and we smiled at each other.

I was already inside the taxi when she whistled sharply with her fingers and provoked me to roll the window down. "Ey, one last word of advice." She began as she stood in front of the door back where our journey had originally started. "Make up with your fella. If he's mad, suck his dick. He'll get over it."

"Amen!" A bunch of suddenly cheerleading people roaming the club's entrance in their colourful outfits contributed with loud and some lewd additions.

I nodded and sank a little deeper into my seat with my cheeks heating up at her thumbs up. "Thanks." Giulia slapped the roof of my taxi for goodbye and as I drove off, I looked back to see her going back inside the club.

~~~

At around five in the morning, the house was dark and perfectly quiet. Everything seemed to go according to plan if it meant Pedro had finally gone to sleep. The key and wind chime at the door hardly made a noise when I crept inside, yet having to greet a pathetically whining Edgar who had been waiting for me on the doormat required an advanced level of discreteness. "Hey, good boy, hi! Oh, dear. Oh, dear." I went over to pacify our boy before I snuck inside bare feet with my shoes dangling from my fingers.

Completely parched, I passed into the kitchen, unloaded all of my belongings onto the counter and fumbled at my earrings with a sigh. My mouth tasted weird.

I was stretching towards the glasses when sudden bright headlight illuminated the entire room and scared the living hell out of me. His sudden appearance had been nearly enough to drop my glass before I could even retrieve it from the cupboard. "Kut, fuck! You scared me!" I cursed after swishing around to see one particular unpleased Pedro in the French doorway. His frown only deepened and he gave me a thin-lipped stare as he leaned against the frame and crossed his toned arms over his chest.

I knew I had to look like an absolute mess, yet I gestured around as if I couldn't see what the point of him busting me like a naughty teenager was. This was terribly like a bad childhood memory of my father doing practically the same thing, the only difference was that I wasn't scared of Pedro. He was dressed in his old pyjamas and his hair was adorably ruffled post-shower but his softness was entirely replaced by harsh tension. Deep bags cast a shadow underneath his eyes and it was then that I noticed the sheen of tears in their hardness, something between pure anger and also, relief.

"Hi." I gulped, sensing I was in deep trouble regardless. I slowly pulled my wig off my head, discarding the long black strands as they flowed off my shoulders. He didn't echo my greeting as usual.

My eyes skipped to the floor at the sight of his obvious disappointment in me and I wondered if I would manage to raise any kind of reaction from him other than eyes that stared daggers into my soul. Pedro's anger was a chilling thing to behold. It was rare.

His chest first expanded and he tore his hand over his mouth like he needed to stop all the necessary curses from tumbling out with his next exhale. "How was it?" He asked instead, ironically with a sharp edge to each word. His eyes radiated a kind of severe heat that promised this was merely the calm before the storm.

I forced myself not to stutter but my heart beat out of my chest. "It was... nice. I feel good. Really good. Better um... I thought you'd maybe be asleep by the time I get home."

"Oh, really?" He parroted with dripping sarcasm, finally stepping down the few stairs and stalking intimidatingly closer. I shrunk underneath him and bumped into the counter, wincing at his proximity more than the impact. "Where were you?" He growled, jaw clicking.

Irritation glared up at me at his patronising tone and I realised I wasn't done provoking him after all. It was like I couldn't stop myself. With an attitude, I raised my chin and snarked up at him. "Why does it matter? I'm no longer there."

"Did you take anything?" He turned my face into the light above with force and I blinked, irritated at the examination. The light was too bright and his grip pinched my cheeks a little too harsh for his gentle character. He held heated eye contact that made my pride resolve and finally crumble. "Leonie, did you take anything?" He bit down at me after he couldn't detect something unusual about the dilation reflex in my pupils.

I freed myself from his grasp. "No, I didn't! Let go of me." I pouted childishly and he let it be for the moment, stepping back and letting me go like my touch burned him. "I'm fine!" I added when he walked away from me.

He faced the garden, his broad back casting a shadow onto the blueish-hued floor when I dared to speak up again. "I'm... I'm tired. I think I should just go to bed." I tried to sneak my way out but he was quicker to strut to the couch and toss me a pillow.

"No, you're not." He ordered, clearly insinuating I was sleeping here tonight.

"Fine." I bit out and aggressively fumbled with a blanket while he turned around and didn't take another look at me. A gush of air pushed through his nose when he walked past me.

I could only watch as he went to leave, a rush of sympathy and guilt provoking me to finally do the right thing. "I'm s-"

He broke off my apology. "Go to sleep and sober up. We'll speak in the morning."

A heavy stone settled in my heart. "Pedro."

He went to go upstairs and not once turned to look at my sad, lost form that waited in vain for a sign of forgiveness.

~~~

When I woke about five hours later, it was by the sound of items banging in the kitchen. The smell of something delicious sizzled in a pan but my stomach dreaded it and my head felt like it could burst. The first wave of sickness crashed into me when I remembered the resemblance of hatred in Pedro's eyes. Mine opened to the sight of his chocolate curls bouncing as he chopped something with a knife. His gaze was still turned down even though he must have seen that I was up and the more I told myself that he didn't care for me anymore, the more I felt like I deserved it.

The smell of bacon suggested that the thick tension hanging in this house was merely a delusion. Normally it meant something different. A cosy breakfast with a newspaper and coffee, loving banter and plans for the future.

Pedro discarded something into the bin when I sat up and disturbed Edgar, who had been sleeping cuddled into my side.

Pedro sighed and tossed the towel he'd been using over his shoulder. It was like he needed to brace himself before acknowledging me with a side glance and a tight pull of his moustache. I threw my blanket off and felt nothing but awful at the sight of the fatigue on his face.

"Good morning," I muttered meekly and got up to go and sit at the table with my hands folded sheepishly in front of me. I didn't even dare to walk up to him and get myself a cup of coffee. Pedro on the other hand, knowing me inside and out, fetched it for me and the creamy liquid sloshed over the rim at the force he used to slam it down in front of me. A plate with a croissant followed next with a harsh clatter of porcelain on wood. Before this 'talk' I dreaded more than anything would ensue, he waited for me to examine my favourite breakfast that I still adored him for. "Thank you." I barely managed to say.

He watched me dunk a piece of buttery deliciousness into my coffee, slip it into my mouth and treat him to a careful smile. I knew he had gone out of his way to get me fresh croissants but I couldn't tell if it was a peace offering or should merely act like a little sugar to make the medicine taste not so bitter. I braced myself for the latter. "D'd you sleep well?" He muttered tiredly and I nodded.

"The couch is pretty comfortable, actually." I attempted to make an insignificant observation before returning the question and receiving a hardly noticeable shake of his head as he brushed it off.

"Pedro, talk to me," I begged him, still hoping I could fix this. "Please."

Yell at me, throw something. Just anything.

I could hardly swallow as he stalked through the room. He took deep breath before his agitation finally unfolded. "Do you have any idea-" he spoke slow and patiently. "-how worried I was all night?"

Finally, his eyes met mine and it was nearly devastating. A heavy gulp forced my food down and I inhaled to start with an apology but he stopped me from making even the tiniest approach. "I was frightened, I didn't know what to do. You just... storm out after we had a fight, I have no idea where you're going-" The heat still radiated from his eyes when his voice turned a mocking tone. "The problem is you don't fucking care about anything! I wait for a fucking sign of life from you but you ignore my texts, you don't answer my calls-" His voice rose in volume with each word. "And then, finally at five in the morning, you come home, reeking of alcohol and weed and I knew-- I knew that would happen. Who else but you would just disappear, then pop up like nothing happened?" He had bent over the table, hands splayed out across when he spoke to me in calm anger. "You know what you did? You mixed painkillers with alcohol and drugs, you're lucky you didn't end up in the ER! And don't get me started on the scandal you could have caused when you walk around fucking wasted like that." He shook his head at me and I decided to keep it to myself that I had been to a gay club on top of that. "Irresponsible, stupid, impulsive girl. Give me one fucking reason why I shouldn't think you're a fucking danger hazard to yourself!"

"I was 'not' wasted," I muttered under my breath, but he looked past my antics and the flaw of design I called self-medication. He was speechless. "I'm sorry, okay?"

"Oh, you're sorry?" he chastised me, louder this time, ready to berate me a little more. "I'm sorry is not fucking good enough this time!" He was breathing irregularly.

"I needed a little bit of freedom, Pedro!" I cried out.

Maybe emotion made him irrational at this point too. He didn't care Edgar was whining at us. "Oh, remind me again how horrible living in LA was and make me feel guilty about it."

"I begged to come with you, to just leave New York, remember? Poen died and I wanted to leave." I yelled back, frantically wiping away the first couple of tears at his fury. "I love you, wherever you go, I go!" I sobbed. Silence hung in the room like thick fog clouding us.

He sighed, holding back the severity of his anger when he realised he had made me cry. Finally he sat next to me at the head of the table and with a terrible sigh, ruffled his hand through his hair.

He sounded so tired. "I was so fucking mad. Still am. You treat my concern like it's nothing. I get you're searching for yourself and what's good for you but call me out on my delusion if I assume it's not in self-medication but right here." He told me with his eyes closed. "Honey, I'm so invested in helping and supporting you and I also know you won't find that sort of thing while going out and risking your wellbeing. I have... a lot of empathy for what you're going through. Be selfish, by all means, but I am 'not-" he fixed my eyes with his and put his index finger onto the table. "deserving of being treated like shit. Trust goes both ways. If I can't convince you to do what's best for you, I trust that you at least won't disrespect my compassion."

Finally it sank in and I was struck by so much shame, my eyes stung violently and I hated myself for ever hurting him. Even if unintentionally, he was the only one who could stop me on my way down because he was in control of my heart. I was the first to break our tense silence. "I need help," I admitted in tears. "I want to get better."

We finally seemed to understand each other's dire struggle, for when he grasped my hand, it meant the world to me. "Maybe you want to try this clinic I found. I heard it's-" He began but I interrupted him and tried to conceal my disgust at even the mention of rehab.

"I already found a new therapist," I announced and he leaned back in a puzzled state. "Good, eh... good. What?" He stuttered.

"Last night." I finished and watched his jaw drop. He gave me a look like he was finally done with my bullshit and the hand he'd previously held so comfortingly let me go again. I aimed to pacify him before he could say anything. "A good psychiatrist, I met her in the club and I got a free session but I'm already a hundred per cent sure, she's the right one for me. She is... incredible."

Pedro was still too baffled to even process this piece of information. "That's... that's-" Pedro didn't know what exactly this was, he tried to think about his words but failed. He put his palm to his forehead to relieve the headache that had to be forming there. "I feel like you forgot everything I just said. You don't get it." Pedro looked at me, puzzled.

"I do." "No, I begged you to make more sensible decisions and then you barge in with this." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "God, you're a piece of work."

I tried not to take that past comment personally. "I mean something good came out of my manic episode. I realised important things. For example, that I'm self-sabotaging."

"Okay... okay. Let's think this through." Pedro had calmed down somewhat and ran his hand over his beard in an attempt to try and start over. "Does this therapist have any credentials? What's her background? References? Do you have any idea who she is?" His questions were all reasonable but I had no answers to them. All I knew was that none mattered because I had a good feeling I about her.

"She's extremely smart and empathetic, she's boisterous, a lesbian and she's a socialist. You'd like her." I explained and he blinked at me. Dumbfounded, he folded his hands and I felt free to tell him the entire story of how Doc and I met.

Even after I was done explaining, he was still not convinced. "You know can't have a personal relationship with your therapist. This meeting while going out... thing and smoking together doesn't sound good at all. Who parties with their therapist?"

"I know, I know we can't be friends. She already said something like that. That and, that I should suck your dick if you're still mad at me." His frown seemed edged in stone, causing my innocent expression to crumble bit by bit. "You don't want that." I assumed, quietly.

"No, I don't." He dismissed, low and pointedly. "This is a bad idea. And this... therapist suggesting a blow job would fix this-" he looked up with a spark of humour I fixed my hope on. "Maybe."

I raised my eyebrows and he pointed a finger at me. "No, I was joking." "Okay, jeez." "I'd appreciate it if you took this seriously."

Maybe it had dawned on me or my manic episode was finally tranquillized by cold sobriety but my eyes stung with tears and my voice cracked when I spoke under my breath. "I am taking it more seriously than ever." I tried and was met with a look of love and pain in his eyes that nearly broke my heart.

"Don't say that if you don't mean it." He begged quietly.

A heavy gulp got stuck in my throat and for several moments, I gathered the right things to say. "I know... I know you have a good reason to be angry with me but I felt... so helpless." I choked up. "So unseen."

For several long, insufferable beats, we stayed mute until the quietness became too much to bear. "I'm sorry if I made you feel that way." His voice had cracked mid-sentence. "Just the thought anything could happen to you... and it would have been my fault. When I didn't hear anything from you, I was so angry."

When his eyes filled with tears, I reached over the table to gently try and loosen the arms he had crossed in front of his chest. Reluctantly, he opened up and let me hold his hand.

"Baby, I know it's been hard. I know-" My voice quivered while he tried to compose himself and meet my eyes. He was right, I hadn't been myself lately and I was so sorry for everything. For last night, for what nearly happened in LA. He was the one person I wanted to keep trying for and I made a promise with the only words that mattered. "I'll do better."

Pedro nodded, the flicker of warmth in his moist eyes. He believed me. "Okay." He decided and merely the thought of ever disappointing him again broke my heart. Never in my entire life had I felt such shame. The tears that had gradually been filling my eyes spilled over and I watched them fall into my lap when I couldn't hold them any longer.

He cupped my cheek when a sob shook my body and raised my chin so he could look me in the eyes and make something clear. "I was scared, for you. And you- you don't understand how much it hurts when you run out the door like that. Please, at least let me know you're okay next time." He admitted quietly.

"I'm so sorry." I cried out.

"You were right, I was too controlling. And I'm sorry for letting you sleep on the couch and being too harsh on you." He sighed, wiped first mine, then his tears away before he regained his composure. "If you need time for yourself, I won't stop you."

"Not... time away from you but-" I sighed. "Maybe I just need to get back to work. Do my own thing again and work on some music."

"That's a very good idea." He smiled for the first time and it was soothing, even though something seemed to still weigh on his mind. "Can you promise me something?" His eyes snapped back up from our entwined hands and I braced myself to receive an expectation I would have trouble meeting. "Promise you'll tell me when you feel like I'm smothering you, so you won't start to resent me?"

Finally, the consequences of my actions had an impact when I realised he was definitely the more mature person about this. The fact that I made him worry about that deeply saddened me. "I could never resent you." I squeaked out, finally broken.

Pedro breathed out a relieved sigh when I threw myself into his arms and I could hold him tight. His shoulders sank low as he hid his face in the crook of my neck and hugged me close. He needed me as much as I needed him, right here and wrapped up in his arms.

"Lost my fucking Duolingo streak." He grumped, spoke muffled into my shoulder and triggered a peal of laughter to bubble up between us.

"I'm so sorry, angel. I really am." I replied nasally but somewhat relieved of all tension. Looking back at him, I wiped away the moisture underneath his eyes.

"It's okay now." He promised. "I promise it'll be okay."

I revelled in his gentle touch. "I'm sorry for being all wrong in the head." My voice thinned out.

He caught my chin between his finger and thumb. "Hey, hey, you're not. Look at me." I did, looking into his still glistening, beautiful brown eyes to see him sniff and brace me for some uplifting words. "You think there's something wrong with you? There's nothing. Absolutely nothing is wrong with you. Anxiety and depression fucking suck but you're gonna stop being so hard on yourself. It gets better, I promise. And when we fight, we fight hard but we love even harder." His eyes were so soulful and he was in every way, kindness and beauty while I was ashamed of the way I looked, felt and behaved. Somehow he made me feel deserving again just by looking at me.

"You don't know how much that means to me." I was hardly able to say through my throat closing up in tears as I held his face in between my palms. "I'm sorry, Pedro. My sweetheart." Gazing into his shimmery, yet determined eyes and finally seeing no sign of irritation in them lifted an enormous weight off my heart. A desperate need for closeness forced its way into our embrace. It was nearly too harsh, the way he pulled me closer when his fingers tangled into the roots of my hair like he'd lose me if he didn't but I needed it to survive.

He held me close for what felt like forever and again, I felt the need to just disappear within him. "Hey, I don't want a mentally stable partner. That's boring." I said in an uplifting tone and I nearly giggled. "Because that's not fun. It doesn't fit me. You fit me. I want you, with all of your issues. To me, you are perfect." He placed many, loving kisses on my head and made his devotion and immortal support finally resonate within me. I was a path without an end and he was happy to keep treading on it.

~

Part 3 - Coming Soon

~

Translation notes:

(it): nonna - (eng): grandma

(it): pronto - (eng): now

(dut): kut - (eng): cunt

[voidplume]

hi second era i hate myself theres so much

actually quick fun facts before this round

-his wings showed up after the zariman void jump and the shape is based off the Peregrine Falcon!! yes this also means his flight pattern and style is based off them as well

-he self medicated with kuva to "calm down" (basically a sedative) although it keeps him from using transference for a few hours after use

The Drifitng Army

so lets go back to the zariman. following the void jump, the young rigel often seemed very "out of it" and for good reason. when the zariman took its first steps and the decline started to happen, he sort of split in two? not in the way lazarus is Two Guys in one, but more in reverse. like hes one person spread across multiple bodies. drifter rigel and tenno rigel existed on the zariman at the same time, able to see and speak through both of them.

this is the main reason hes able to pilot so many warframes with ease. hes been doing it literally the moment he got his tenno powers but with HIMSELF. the difference btwn them is young rigel manages to get off the ship and loses this weird mental contact with his older self once he does. drifter rigel continues living on the zariman (THANK YOU ETERNALISM!!!!!!) and eventually slips into the spiral hell fest that is Duviri.

see i have a very Fun very Cool headcanon that each tenno has their own flavor of duviri. the only way i can explain it is like each tenno's duviri is like a sheet of paper. and the Duviri as we know it is a huge book comprised of these sheets. now the void is fickle and stupid and these sheets clip into each other like a fun bethesda game sometimes, but thats a joke for another time.

rigel tried to make his duviri as much of a paradise as he could. the characters from the book pretty much wrote themselves, but he added bits in the margins. wrote his own chapter in the back pages. added the king's advisor, Larimar. a mary sue creation of a mary sue, he made Larimar based on dreams he would have of someone he knew was very dear to him but didnt remember the name of. all he knew was that both him and this person were obsessed with each other, and so he echoes this in Larimar.

ofc like eahc of the tenno, dominus gets possessive and jealous. etc etc he takes over as the creator and ruler of Duviri. instead of taking his anger out on this tenno, he ends up keeping rigel as a living art piece. calls him the Angel and covers his face with a mask that resembles the swirling void in the Undercroft. and for YEARS it stays like that. drifter rigel dreaming of his life in the origin system through broken, out of order scenes. larimar pining and scheming behind his king's back the return the Angel to his side.

rigel quickly becomes numb to dominus's humiliation, but it snaps quickly once his duviri clips into laz's. suddenly he's found him! that weird blind fucker from his dreams!!! larimar is less than pleased, seeing the guy he was modeled after get far more attention all of a sudden. dominus, however, is THRILLED.

this starts a new fun chapter for rigel that i like to call relationship trauma any% half A press speedrun dumpster fire. basically to get a reaciton out of rigel, dominus just royally (haha) fucks over laz in anyway he sees fit. INCLUDING MAKING RIGEL TORTURE AND KILL HIM. initially, this doesnt work. rigel just ends up killing himself over and over instead. very boring. thrax does not approve.

it takes laz BEGGING him to just "finish" him off and "give thrax what he wants already" for rigel to finally cave and like. actually kill him. its gut wrenching. its explosive. theres more to this but thats for the next post, sorry.

rigel takes a very rapid turn both during and after the new war. during, his "nurturing" of the lotus feels more out of obligation than anything. he kind of... doesnt know what to do with himself. hes so used to being told what to do that once he has the freedom to choose he CAN'T. so he kinda just follows the motions of helping the lotus and hunting the archons.

at the fight with ballas, he has a... very Strong reaction. not to immediately plug my Bullshit again, but i wrote out the fight in a google doc here if you'd like further reading. this is his first like..... Self Aware iteration of what we'll be calling Raphael. he has no fucking clue who this bitch is or why the fuck hes here, but it feels INCREDIBLE to be so powerful and indestructible.

yadda yadda he kicks the shit out of ballas and all is well in the world. okay maybe a bit too well. rigel kinda goes on a fucking bender with his new obsession with freedom, breaking off from the clan and laz for a while as he chugs kuva and fucks his way around the system.

eventually, he returns a fucking blubbering mess into laz's arms, talking some weird shit about angels and brothers and The Master or whatever. laz tries to get him to elaborate when hes sober but rigel genuinely has no fucking clue what hes takling about.

and then the fucking zariman blips back into the system. great fun, good times. poor thing genuinely has no idea why theres still people on it, but the entire fucking thing is deeply, PAINFULLY uncomfortable for him and he doesn't know exactly why.

okay its the angels. the fucking angels are why. hes seen them attack immediately once woken and even chase tenno throughout an entire mission, but they NEVER seem to bother him. theyve NEVER attacked him unprompted. in fact they seem more friendly than anything...

"vik you wrote about this didnt you" YES I DID

post more rigel lore... please... they're so cool

RI IS SOO SO SPECIAL TO ME!! this ask made me so excited when i saw it thank you anon!!!!!!!

rigel is vik @helmofhades ’s beautiful boy!! he’s his tenno oc and laz is his right hand arm man. his everything. his confidante. his silly rabbit. (does he call him that? no.)

for serious though rigel is so cool. he’s a void angel! he’s a one man army! he’s a slut! he’s an overwhelmed single dad! he chugs more kuva than the average kuva lich (he’s just self medicating, trust him on this)!! he’s even PURPLE!!!!!! he’s got it all!!!!!!!!

i’m gonna pass the mic over to vik so he can elaborate, because rigel has a lot going on and i knwo i won’t do him justice on my own. check that out in the notes soonish (and go follow him while you’re at it! wtf!!!)

[intheorangebedroom]

Pleased to meet you (a fairy tale)

Series, complete.

Summary: You meet Frankie Morales. Twice.

A 20-year-old French student, you're spending the summer of 1999 in New York with your best friend. When she drags you to a party in Brooklyn, you meet an aspiring pilot and the two of you spark an instant and intense connection. Separated by unfortunate events, you waste the next 15 years of your life longing for what you've lost, only to meet him again when your new boyfriend Benny introduces you to his best friend.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x Gabrielle Tourneur (OFC)/French fem!Reader with a dash of Ben Miller x Gabrielle Tourneur (OFC)/French fem!Reader

Written in reader format but Reader is an OFC. There are sparse but still present physical descriptions, she is French and has a thorough background, and a name.

Rating: Explicit 🔞

Note: In 2023, I will stop apologising. Maybe. And anyway, I make no excuse. I'm in love with this pilot and obsessed by this movie so I'm making it everyone’s problem. This story is nothing if not a self-indulgent exploration of the soulmates ideal. Expect a lot of angst, and smut.

Every chapter is explicit and you should be 18+ to read this. The American university system remains a mystery to me, I googled "how to become a US Army pilot", and visas are not a thing in this AU. English is not my first language, but one I adore.

Welcome to the orange bedroom, hope you'll enjoy 🧡

Chapters

Chapter 1 - Lovesong

Chapter 2 - I Feel You

Drabble (chapter 3) - What lingers (you)

Drabble (chapter 4) - What lingers (Frankie)

Chapter 5 - Boy meets girl

Drabble - Proud Mary (Ben Miller x you)

Chapter 6 - That Brooklyn bathroom

Chapter 7 - Frankie

Chapter 8 - Shuffle Your Feet

Chapter 9 - The Way Young Lovers Do

Chapter 10 - The Deal

Chapter 11 - Sunday Morning

Chapter 12 - The Drive Home

Chapter 13 - Perfect Day

Chapter 14 - Love is blindness

Chapter 15 - Flaming June

Chapter 16 - Plainsong

Chapter 17 - Auf Achse

Drabble - What lingers (you&him)

Epilogue - Songbird

Drabbles

Road Trippin’ - inspired by one of Wildemaven’s beautiful weekly moodboard writing prompts 🔞

The ties that bind us

To Bring You My Love

More Than a Feeling

I <U SO - coming one day for sure

Headcannons

Frankie's high school locker

The TF boys' favourite things in life and how they like it done.

Benny and Gabrielle (better read between chapter 14 and 15 to avoid spoilers)

A PTMY Halloween 🎃

Playlist

[guess-my-next-obsession]

Frankie Morales Masterlist

all fics marked with * are explicit and are 18+ only—all minors interacting will be blocked

oneshots

power outage* — frankie and reader find a good way to kill time during a storm. 1.5k

blind dating show — reader finds herself in a local bar’s dating game-show, the contestants Will, Benny, and Frankie. only one man can walk away with the prize, and we all know the perfect pilot for the job. 2.5k

blind dating show p.II* — part two of ^ where reader accepts an invite to frankie’s barbecue. things get spicy. 3k

oblivious — reader and frankie are the best of friends until a fight on a camping trip reveals things that neither of them ever dared to admit. fluff follows. 3.7k

cabin in the woods* — frankie and reader decide to rent a cabin for the holiday, but neither realize they’re walking into a “haunted house” courtesy of the rest of the TF boys. 2.9k

i’ll be home for christmas* — Frankie comes home after a long month of work just in time for the holidays. 2.5k

a new friend (1/2) — reader gets lost in the woods and frankie shelters her from not only the storm, but her shitty relationship. 4k

when we were young — reader sees their ex, frankie, i’m a bar after five years. 2.5k

series

august* — frankie x ofc. Rebecca Herrera goes on her annual family vacation and meets a handsome stranger. Only problem is, that stranger just so happens to be twenty years older and her uncle’s close friend. (CANCELLED—WILL NOT UPDATE)

meet me in the hallway* — frankie x ofc. when Dylan Jones, the struggling owner of a start-up bakery, lucks out and finds a cheap room for rent, she finds more than she could have ever expected in her group of four male roommates: friends, family,…love? Follow along for a New Girl-inspired will they/won’t they to see if they in fact do! (CANCELLED—WILL NOT UPDATE)

ivy & stone* — victorian au!frankie x ofc/javi g x ofc. Lady Florence Bell lives an idyllic life—summers in the countryside, autumns in the city, a wealthy bloodline, and unparalleled beauty to top it all off. After having spent last summer in an affair with her family’s handyman and gardener, an older gentleman named Mr. Francisco Morales, Lady Florence is reluctant to join this season of Court, her heart already set on her secret lover. But when a famed painter and old family friend from Paris makes a rare appearance in London, Lady Florence is forced to face her old crush as an adult—and her competing affections.

drabbles

the addams family* — part of Spooktacular ‘22. frankie gets turned on by wife!reader in a morticia costume.

facetime movie night — part of Spooktacular ‘22.

christmas cookies — decorating christmas cookies w frankito.

dressing room tears — reader struggles with weight gain and finding jeans that fit her, frankie is there to remind her how beautiful she is.

i can take it* — edging with sub!frankie.

lost in love* — frankie likes the way you look beneath him.

just a dream — reader struggles with infertility and has a dream that feels frighteningly real.

caught* — reader is dating santi, but frankie urges her to tell him about their affair.

real love, baby —plus size!reader meets frankie in a bar. fluff fluff fluff.

EXTRAS

my frankie playlist

[xamaxenta]

Ooh… but the Sabo returns moment would be bangin as a small comic idea

the South African shatterdome has sent over transfers, more pilot candidates and engineers in exchange for foot soldiers from the SEA shatterdome to assist with the rebuilding efforts around africa and the middle east, the last Kaiju “Sleipnir” CAT III wrought true blinding destruction there before it got put down by the Spanish Jaegers: Aguila Negra and Romeo Salvaje

Ace, Marco and the other off duty Rangers and high ranking officers are assembled to greet this exchange party, and its a smooth process, it has all the poise and properness of any military procession

That is until the mechanic/engineer division enter the hangar, Sabo is part of this division — traumatic kaiju attack = lost all his memories except for his knowledge on jaeger programming, and ofc general human existence (talking reading writing and in this day and age combat) he just forgot about Ace and beinf a pilot and being MARRIED!?!?

Well its a huge commotion when Sabo sets eyes on Ace… Ace who at that particular moment wasnt looking at him rather looking at a very interesting spot above Whitebeards shoulder (theyre standing in formation opposite to each other) and then theres chaos

Major Outlook— whats wrong!??!

Outlook?

Ace hasn’t heard that surname in a very long time (seven years to be exact) and as far as he can remember, all of Sabo’s family died in the second coming breach—

And then there’s the heavy sound of running footsteps and Ace is bodily taken off his feet by a taller man, blonde— his hair is longer (Sabo always used to have his hair cropped short—) sabo? And they’re speaking to him in disjointed japanese and Ace realises that weird ass accent— his his husband—!!

(Ace is half Brazilian half japanese, same as Luffy, his preferred speaking language is japanese but he is fluent in english, Sabo is british canadian and learnt japanese when he was at the jaeger academy, Marco is American with spanish roots and only speaks english, knows disjointed chinese and some japanese thanks to Ace)

And Ace claws into Sabos mechanic overalls, holds him tightly, realises that he was alive and Sabo’s trying to explain what happened and he can sense Marco hovering over them in concern

Aufhfhf it would be very emotional and confusing for them all 🥺

Basically Sabo got rescued by coast guard and was then taken to another survivor encampment, there he followed the refugees to the south african shatterdome to heal and seek work, here he remembers instinctively (cuz all shatterdomes are kinda the same) how to get around and how to do stuff TM, its where they assign him — Dragon is the SA marshal — to the jaeger engineering department because Sabos in no mental state to pilot

[magpie-to-the-morning]

My Moodboards ❀❀❀ Send in a request  ❀❀❀  AO3

Hello lovely readers. My name is Emma and I’m a multifandom nerd with a love for fanfic. I’m open to requests, although it may be awhile before inspiration hits. Feel free to send one in though, or just come say hello!

My blog and my stories are all intended for readers 18 and older - no exceptions. I currently write for various Pedro Pascal characters and Moon Knight. I’ve also written a bit for Stranger Things and House of the Dragon. You can find them under the cut!

Always Toward the Sunshine - Completed

Pairing: Frankie Morales x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: A series of seasonally themed domestic fluff and spice with our favorite helicopter pilot.

Taste Like Heaven - Oneshot

Pairing: Frankie Morales x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: Impending parenthood is not without its challenges, but Frankie’s always got you covered. Late night pains turn to a new experience for the two of you.

Insatiable - Ongoing

Pairing: Santiago Garcia x Frankie Morales X OFC (second person POV)

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: You’ve travelled the world looking for home, but what if it finds you? A wolf shifter AU.

Pull the Blinds - Ongoing

Pairing: Javier Peña x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: Work is hard and you could both use a break…

In from the Cold - Completed

Pairing: Jack “Whiskey” Daniels x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: You’re a bartender with a love life that’s completely DOA. Maybe this charming new regular will turn things around?

With a Twist - Ongoing

Pairing: Jack “Whiskey” Daniels x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: When Whiskey agrees to join you on a weekend at a fetish convention, you both get more than you bargained for.

Howdy, Pumpkin - One Shot

Pairing: Jack “Whiskey” Daniels x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: A sweet and spicy autumnal collab with @radiowallet

On Fire from Within - Oneshot

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: You’re a newish crew member on the Razor Crest, helping out on a bounty hunting mission when you get hit with a laced dart at a shady brothel. It’s a sex pollen fic lads, you know how this goes!

Stay with Me - Completed

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Rating: Teen

Summary: You jump into the fray of a hunt to help Din out, and things deteriorate from there.

Come Back to Me - Ongoing

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: Highwayman Din historical AU.

Catching Snowflakes - Ongoing

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: Din crashes onto an ice planet with his latest bounty. Can the two of you learn to trust each other for long enough to survive?

Crescent - Ongoing

Pairings: Steven Grant x F!Reader, Marc Spector x F!Reader, Jake Lockley x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Summary: After being forced into the darkness, how will you find the light?

Stone Heart - Completed

Pairing: Steven Grant x F!Reader

Rating: Teen

Summary: Maybe Steven’s one-sided friendship isn’t so one-sided after all… AKA a Moon Knight Pygmalion AU

Wild Child - Oneshot

Pairing: Eddie Munson x F!Reader

Rating: M

Summary: The Queen of Hawkins High can’t be seen with Eddie Munson... can she? Can also be read as Eddie x Chrissy.

Prompts, Requests, and Drabbles

Miscellaneous Thoughts, Thots, and Headcanons

Character banners by @acrossthesestars

[blindchandelure]

1, 4, 6, 12, 18, 26

1. If you could only listen to one band for the rest of your life.. which would you pick?

That’s so hard! 😨

….But ofc I will say Blind Channel, because they’re my special interest rn 😂

4. You’re stranded on an island with your favorite band..but have to banish one member? Which one gets the boot?

I would never want to leave that island 😏

I’ll kick Tommi out, because he’s the least attractive. (Sorry Mr. Bear…..I like my boys androgynous, your burly manliness is too much for me 🤭)

6. Does a artist/bands political opinions bother you?

Yeah, ofc I’ll stop supporting them if their opinions are shitty. Like, I stopped listening to Twenty One Pilots after the “platforms” controversy.

If you’re not hip: in the summer of 2020, George Floyd was murdered by the police, leading to Black Lives Matter protests around the globe. Fans encouraged Tyler Joseph to “use his platform” as an artist to speak out in support of the protesters.

He snapped a photo of his platform boots and captioned it “there! I’m using my platforms lol”

….Not funny, Tyler. People were dying.

12. Would you buy something you fav endorsed? Even if you liked it or not?

I guess that depends on what it is??

Like. I’ve thought about buying the same Bleak World hoodie that Joel has, because it looks cool. I think it’s neat that Bleak World started use him as a model on their website and everything.

But if Joel endorsed something random like, idk, multivitamins, ofc I wouldn’t buy that.

18. Your celebrity crush has a sex tape leaked.. you watching it?

I would be tempted, because ofc I want to see Niko naked, but no, I wouldn’t actually watch it.

I remember when Pete Wentz’s dick pics got leaked. Someone sent me the link and I swear to y’all. I only clicked on it because I thought my friend who knew I had a crush on Pete, was trying to RickRoll me.

When I realized it wasn’t a prank, and nope, that’s his actual dick, I felt guilty. Because Pete was so upset and embarrassed by it! He didn’t consent to show his dick to thousands of random people. He was betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. 😞

26. Describe your favorite artist/band in 5 words or less.

Younger, hotter, Finnish Linkin Park.

[thisweekingundamwing]

This Week in Gundam Wing (Aug 29 - Sept 11, 2021)

That’s right folks!  Because of the long weekend last weekend, you all get a two-for-one this round-up!  Lots of excellent stuff from the fandom the last two weeks, so take a look and show your fellow fans some love!

--Mod LAM

Fanfiction

Dirty Computer (CH 11/?) by @doctormegalomania​ 

Pairings: Heero x Duo, Wufei x OFC

Characters: 5 pilots

Rating: MATURE

Tags / Warnings: minor violence, espionage, unreliable narrator, post-war, reference to past injury, implied/referenced self-harm

Summary:  Years after the war, nothing is what anyone hoped for. Peace reigns supreme.

Man Lion Thing Dude (CH 14-16/?) by @anaranesindanarie​

Pairings: Trowa x Duo, Triton Bloom x Duo

Characters: full cast, original Trowa Barton, OCs

Rating: EXPLICIT

Tags / Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, whump, blood, alternate universe, supernatural, were-creatures, family problems, arranged marriage, mentions of torture, smut, magic

Summary:  Duo Maxwell is estranged from the last of his remaining family who are demanding that he return home for an important announcement. Meanwhile, Duo has been having strange encounters with 'wild' animals, all of whom seem to be hunting him.

The Life of the Immortal Jellyfish (CH 15-16/35) by @lemontrash​

Pairings: Duo x Wufei

Characters: 5 pilots + Relena, Hilde, Noin, Une

Rating: MATURE

Tags / Warnings: post-canon, post-Endless Waltz, UST, roommates, Preventers, slow burn, insomnia, friendship

Summary: Is it chance that lands Duo and Wufei in the same university dorm room? They’re not stupid enough to believe that but too tired to fight it. Duo’s dragged himself back from the brink of going too far and remains teetering on the edge while Wufei’s doggedly trying to prove himself to the ‘good guys’ in the aftermath of the Eve Wars. Sleep and normalcy eludes them both. As they become increasingly aware how damaged they are, they start to edge towards friendship, or something more, but all too soon the peace seems jeopardised by a new and manipulative threat.

Prompt Fic by @gemstonecircles​ for @bryony-rebb​ 

Pairings: Wufei x Sally

Characters: Wufei and Sally

Rating: PG

Tags / Warnings: flashbacks, future fic, tropical diseases, best partners evar

Summary:  “I’d come for you”, he said. “No matter what, when you need me, I will be there.”

Prompt Fic by @gemstonecircles​ for @boxofhatebrains​

Pairings: Duo x Quatre

Characters: Duo and Quatre

Rating: PG

Tags / Warnings:  music, friendships, concerts, foul language, complicated relationships with faith, cherry-picking manga

Summary: “You free Saturday night?”

Prompt Fic by @gemstonecircles​ for @heartensoul​

Pairings: Duo x Relena, Heero x Trowa

Characters: Heero, Duo, Trowa, Relena

Rating: MATURE

Tags / Warnings: REO Speedwagon, future fic, receptions, reunions, getting together, smoking, shotgun kisses, first kisses, cherry-picking manga, FT what FT, look at my life look at my choices

Summary:  The reception, at least, was a welcome reprieve from most of the events that she’d been forced to attend in the last half-dozen years.

Prompt Fic by @gemstonecircles​ for @noirangetrois​

Pairings: Duo x Relena

Characters: Duo and Relena

Rating: Teen and Up

Tags / Warnings: stargazing, criminal trespass, future fic, FT what FT, discussion of panic attacks and mentioned ptsd

Summary:  “Well, guess we’re here until the solar storm clears,” Relena sighed...

Prompt Fic by @gemstonecircles for @seitou

Pairings: Heero x Trowa

Characters: Heero, Trowa, Relena

Rating: MATURE

Tags / Warnings:  1+R friendship, dates, home cooking, future fic, beers, fade-to-black sex, sweet dumb men in love, everyone ships it

Summary:  “I have good MREs that I was saving for a special occasion.”

Katahimikan by @ktsskb / katopiyoon AO3

Pairings: Duo x Quatre

Characters: Duo and Quatre

Rating: General

Tags / Warnings: post-Blind Target, Pre-Endless Waltz, non-confessions, pre-relationship

Summary:  “I’m just taking a little rest,” Quatre smiles. He lets himself get slightly more comfortable, loosening his posture.

Orgel by @ktsskb / katopiyoon AO3

Pairings: Duo x Quatre

Characters: Duo and Quatre

Rating: General

Tags / Warnings:  alternate universe, fantasy elements, established relationship, injured character

Summary:  Duo comes home late with a gift.

Fanart

Doodle Prompts (1x3x5) by @seitou

Heero x Relena (elf AU) by @lokineko 

OZ Military Ball (13x11) by @keiko1183

Zechs and Duo Hairbraiding by @keiko1183

Several by @gundayum

Wedding Bells (3x4)

Snuggles (1x2) 

Trowa’s a Pathetic Clown

Duo as the Little Mermaid 

King of the Hill (Heero, Relena and Bobby/Mariemaia, and Trowa)

Kinbaku WIP (3x5) by @2pcbart

Relena as John Cena by @farshootingstar

Quatre learning to knit by @farshootingstar

On the Wing by @theboringbluecrayon

Snuggles (3x4) by @circusoftrash

GW Crack by @circusoftrash

Heero EW Redraw by @mei-jimenez-art

Relena FT Redraw by @mei-jimenez-art

GW Kiddo Doodles by @lemontrash

Jellyfish Fic Art (2x5) by @sparkchemy for @lemontrash

Summer (1xR) by @alphaikaros

Zechs and Relena by @alphaikaros

Belated MerMay Relena by @serenestorm

Sexy Trowas (Part I, Part II, Part III) by @serenestorm 

Summer Duo by @owlinpajamas

Relena and Heero by @darksharinganz

Other Fanwork

Gunpla and Cosplay

Duo Maxwell Cosplay (Part I and Part II) by @itsjesskage​

HGAC Wing Zero by @macks-mechas​

Headcanons and Discussion

The Accidental (?) Seduction of Trowa Barton (3x4) by @a-river-of-stars

GoL Thoughts with @kittykatz​

Dorothy and Treize, Cathy and Trowa

Treize and Zechs

Treize, Dorothy, Heero, and Epyon

Lieutenant Trant Clark

Other Fun Stuff

GW Sims 4 Portraits by @eslanes​

Power Stances, with Zechs and Treize by @the-reanimated-bhg​

Quick: look pensive with gloves by @the-reanimated-bhg​​

@incorrectgundamwingquotes​ still making us laugh (example)

Memes and Macros

This is my boyfriend’s boyfriend (Rx1x2 and Hx1x2) by @portrayalmuse​

Dad Jokes Zechs (Part I and Part II) by @bonmotfic

Heero’s Romance Novel by @the-reanimated-bhg​

Coffee Puns with Cathy by @the-reanimated-bhg​

Requesting Leave with HR by @the-reanimated-bhg​

Zechs, the master of pick-up lines by @the-reanimated-bhg​

Spaghetti Westerns by @the-reanimated-bhg

Calendar Events

@gwcocktailfriday​ is back with this week’s prompt!  Be sure to post your responses on Friday (September 17) between 3-5PM EST!

@gundamzine has opened up the mailing list, so be sure to register to get your FREE PDF on October 1!  In the mean time, be sure to follow the account so that you can learn about the stellar 2021 Zine Crew members. Also consider donating to the team’s chosen charity, World Literacy Foundation (donations are optional, but encouraged).  In the meantime, check out some of the previews, with more to follow.

September is National Prostate Awareness Month and @expewrites​ and @boxofhatebrains​ are hosting a GW Prostate Health Event at @prostatehealth-gundamwing​ beginning September 1.  More info is available on the Event AO3 Page but in brief, options are to (1) create something or (2) donate to your prostate health organization of choice.

Sign-ups are officially open for the 2021 Holiday Gift Exchange with @thisweekingundamevents​!  Sign-ups close September 30, and participants will get their assignments in October, followed by the creation period November-December and finally posting in early January 2022.

@/ficwip (Twitter) is hosting a “Rise of the Dead Fandoms” event. Contributor sign-ups end on September 30, so be sure to register soon! Creation period runs September-October; posting will be in November. More info at their FAQ.

The @weedgrandpacookbook is an homage to the fanon of Mike Howard as the Gundam Wing’s chillest Weed Grandpa. Check out the Zine Calendar and  FAQ for more info and be sure to complete the interest check before September 30.

Spooky prompt idea generation for the GW Hallows Event will kick off mid-September, and posting period will happen in October.  Stay tuned to @thisweekingundamevents!

Keep an eye on @gwoc-october​​ while you’re at it for news on the GW Original Character (OC) October Event.  You can expect a prompt calendar to go live in September with posting in October…but you can also just use the month to showcase works with your original GW characters!