#anyways this related to last post and the one before that where i said i wrote tags that are just too sidetracked to the post lol

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

The only way i could see Canon Katara interested on Zuko is if he somehow did his Heel Turn long before the start of the show and has become a freedom fighter akin to Jet, but without the murder.

Obviously, this is impossible, there is no way that a young Zuko could become a better person without his exile, his enviroment is just not place that encourage

Sorry for the last question i send, i made a mistake and send it sooner than i wanted.

But anyway, what i tried to say that, even if that ridiculous scenario that i propossed where to happen, Zuko would be a very different characther from his Canon self. Plus even if he has become Katara's type, there is no way to know if Katara would be Zuko's type on that scenario lol

***

Once again, guys: pre-scar and exile Zuko was already dealing with a ton of bagagge, and post-redemption Zuko was already a "freedom fighter but without the murder." Katara saw him at this worst during all of book one, at his somewhat less of dick moments (Ba Sing Se), and at his best after his redemption - and she wasn't attracted to him at any of these points.

"I don't support war, genocide and/or murder" is the bare minimum for Katara to not want somebody dead. Compassion is an obligation, not something that immediately makes a guy be a potential boyfriend in her eyes.

We have the answer of what would take for her to be into Zuko, and that answer is not "He can't be a villain anymore" but rather "He can't be Zuko." He can't be a dork that says the wrong thing in a funny way, she'd get mad. He can't want to live in the Fire Nation, there's nothing there for her. He can't be as stubborn as she is, otherwise they're gonna fight (just look at how many times she fights with Toph). He can't take himself too seriously, she'll just mock him for it (ask Sokka).

She wants the guy that literally sweeps her off her feet to charm her, or the guy that notices she's feeling left out at a party, dances with her, and smoothly tells her to ignore everyone's eyes on them because "it's just you and me." She would NOT react well to a guy that screams "SHE'S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" in the middle of their date (just see how well it worked for Aang when he went "I mean, if it was between kissing you and dying")

And we do know what Zuko's type is: Mai. Gloomy yet sweet, bitchy yet unbothered, out-spoken yet doesn't feel she owes anybody any explanations ever, can handle herself but likes being pampered, apathetic yet caring, has nothing prove yet can be quite arrogant, stubborn yet understanding, aloof to the world in general yet obviously crazy about him in particular.

Zuko might catch brief feelings for someone like Jin (nice, sweet and cheery), but long-term he needs someone as messy as himself so he can relate, but with the kind of mess that balances him out instead of encouraging his worst traits - the yin to his yang. He was not kidding when he said "You're so beautiful when you hate the world"

Katara loves life in general too much for her and Zuko to relate to each other in that regard. She doesn't even know what the word "apathy" means. She doesn't have an "unbothered" bone in her body. Girl went through a ton of trauma and still wasn't anywhere near gloomy, quite the contrary. And she has a bad temper, just like Zuko, which they both know is a bad combo, hence them surrounding themselves with more chill people (Aang, Iroh, Hakoda, Mai, etc).

They're not each other's type AT ALL, hence there being no spark when they become friends. Hence them being not just embarassed, but weirded our and uncomfortable when people mistake them for a couple.

There's a reason zutara fics re-write their personalities completely: there's no other way to force them together because they're fundamentally incompatible. The real Zuko would NEVER be attracted to the real Katara, and vice versa.

[martyrbat]

a female character isn't allowed to be a character that is also female. she isn't allowed her own agency and complex motives nor any deeper emotions without it being centered around the male cast around her or a child. even if she's not a mother, she remains one because she could always potentially become a mother or she is the ‘mom character’ to the men/children around her and her actions MUST reflect that. if they don't, she's labeled a selfish bitch. if she is an (actual) mother than that's all she is—she isnt allowed deeper characterization or discussion because thats all she'll ever be, that's all she was made to be. male characters are allowed to be fathers (lireral or in the sense of providing for the people around them) with deeper feelings but a mother? never a mother.

[l0ganberry]

Wally got a bit too excited and fully prepared himself for summer. He does look very happy though.

[caluupin]

[DGS/TGAA 2 SPOILERS]

⚠️Work in progress, this will be the last doodle page then I'LL POST THEM ALL!!!!!!

[lilgynt]

i think the feeling of falling behind while still being actively moving in life is a little funny

[gregrulzok]

I got kinda poet-ish about it in my last post but I need to be more direct:

Genuinely what the FUCK is wrong with Daniel Molloy.

Like okay, yes, 100+ year old broody vampires with incredibly tragic backstories will be hot and a little bit insane. That's literally a given.

Daniel Molloy is a 30-somethings man with a budding alcohol problem and verging on a midlife crisis, and his response to a world-shattering revelation that vampires are real is to go SO fucking off the rails that his 500 year old millionaire stalker that blends rats for fun, reads 70 books a day at mach speed, and once SEWED A YOUNG GIRL'S HEAD TO AN OLDER WOMAN'S BODY AFTER MURDERING THEM has to be like "Daniel you're being weird again".

Like this man.

- Has no backstory as far as I know? Certainly no tragic tale I've ever heard. He'd literally some dude off the street.

- Is one of the only characters to ever be with Armand and NOT fetishize the fact that he looks 17 (hats off)

- BUT he DOES fetishize him being a literal fucking corpse, direct quote "I like kissing. And snuggling with dead things, yes, hold me." so maybe we should place him on some kind of list anyway

- Is literally ADDICTED to vampire blood, and the reason for it is that it gives him fucked up visions of suffering and torment and he's into that

- (I'm cutting him a lot of slack for also being not dissimilarly addicted to having his blood drunk, because this is Tunglr and I think we can all relate to that, but let the record state for real world purposes that's still fucking weird)

- Yells at and berates his deranged vampire stalker WELL before the time they become Lovers, in the MIDDLE of said deranged vampire stalker having some kind of angry meltdown. ("I WANT YOU TO DIAL PARIS, I WANT TO SEE IF YOU CAN REALLY TALK TO PARIS" [...] "WHAT ARE YOU, AN IMMORTAL IDIOT?" This is during a time period where, for all he knows, the deranged vampire stalker is fully comfortable with and even vaguely planning on killing him.

- Hears OVER AND OVER AGAIN how becoming a vampire is nothing but a terrible irreversible eternal curse, sees how every vampire he meets (all... Two of them, to be fair), longs for humanity, and STILL thinks "Nah. I'm built DIFFERENT."

- Like. Listen. He's aware of the pain and suffering he'd bring to others. He fully knows about it because he drinks Armand's blood. And he WANTS TO DO THAT, like that would NOT be an issue for him.

- At best that's a sacrifice he's willing to make so he gets to cuddle his dead boyfriend for all eternity. At worst, and more probably, that's a fun perk for him.

Like Daniel what is your fucking PROBLEM, man.

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (XXVIII)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

🖤Chapter navigation can be found here🖤 Click to browse previous updates.

💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts 💚 (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)

Where we last left off... Danny has another hashtag breakdown! Man, we've got a lot of these, huh? It's YJ's fault this time; whoopsie doodles! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

“Danny,” Diana says from the door.

Danny looks up from his place in the book. It’s definitely aimed at younger kids, but it’s a pretty wordy picture book; there are a couple paragraphs he can’t quite parse, but he’s making pretty good progress on the words he can’t recognize.

It’s a story about a cat who misses its mother. Danny tries not to relate to it too much.

“Hm?” he asks, flipping the front flap of the dust cover over his current pages to mark his place. The book goes back onto the nightstand, beside his space shuttle; Danny uses the railing beside his bed to support himself stepping up and out of his wheelchair, leaning on the railing until he can figure out…wait, where’d he leave his old people walker?

“This walk is long. You will want your chair.”

Well, then. Couldn’t she have said that before Danny did all that pulling? Danny falls back into his chair, kinda peeved. “Fine.”

Diana smiles. She doesn’t have to wear the mask around him anymore— Danny’s pretty sure that his injuries have been declared as clotted, or sealed, or whatever at this rate. They for sure swabbed his ectoplasm and came to some kind of conclusion, anyway, which means he only looks gross, but isn’t, like…actively leaking fluids.

On the one hand, gross! But, well, you know. Nothing for it but bandaids and time.

And her face looks nice. Danny hadn’t known what she’d looked like, before. She smiles when she sees him. Her light eyes crinkle, and her lips turn up… She’s nice. Danny’s sure that she’s only there to be in charge of him in case he gets scary, but she’s in charge of him and she’s nice. She doesn’t have to be nice; lots of people have been in charge of him and been mean about it. There was that one guy who kept holding him—with the taser—

(Time slips away from him, a little. When he gets back to the world in front of him, Diana is carefully looking at his face, the back of her hand stroking the back of his.)

Danny’s in his chair. He’s not…there. He’s in his chair, on a big space station (????) with a bunch of really colorful fighters on it, and Diana is touching his hand (that’s so much weaker and slower than it used to be) and he’s not hungry and he’s only scared because of memories. He’s safe. He’s not being pinned down by the neck so that they can strap down his wrists and hips to the table—they’re not shocking him—he can move his fingers, he’s not stuck in his core—

His core throbs. Danny bites into his bisected lip, and tries not to cry.

“Are you alright?” Diana asks, voice gentled. The soft touch of her hand doesn’t stop. “We can wait. There is no—“

Danny shakes his head, and takes his hand away so he could wipe at his eyes. It’s fine. Bad memories are everywhere: in the walls, in the floor, in the ceiling, in the hands of people taking care of him. That’s not… There’s nothing Danny can do about that. That just. Takes time.

…He think he might have that time. Now. He thought he would die for good in that five by five box, waiting for something that would finally end him instead of just keeping him in a cycle of injuries he never fully healed from.

But now he’s not. He’s here.

He wants to keep going.

“Alright,” Diana says, slow and careful. “Hold on.”

Danny doesn’t hold on—or, well, you know, he engages his core muscles and all that, but he doesn’t cling to his arm rests or to the frame of his chair because he knows that Diana is really, really strong, but she also really, really doesn’t want to hurt him.

She rolls him out of the medical wing and into the space station proper. Danny feels like he’s been here before, but he doesn’t remember it super well. Maybe it was when he was sick or something? Either way, a lot of different people wave at him as they go by—or just straight up stare, if they’re rude—and Danny generally just watches people rush by, carrying all kinds of equipment, and a potted plant, and a…starfish in a jar…?

Oh, the starfish waves at him???? Danny waves back because?? What??

Danny rolls to a stop at a smooth, cylindrical elevator. It looks like a giant test tube.

…Oh boy. Danny takes a deep breath, and holds it. Reflexively. Sure, this elevator probably isn’t like being dunked into water to see if his body absorbs ambient oxygen from the atmosphere or if his biology is truly not oxygen-based, but the memory is. Bad.

They go upwards. Nothing happens but Diana’s pushed button.

Danny exhales.

They get off at a section of the base Danny’s never been to, and it's essentially just a long, somewhat narrow hallway. The walls are actually painted a creamy off-white here, and there’s…like…decorative panels towards the base of his wheels trailing down the hallway? An orange ceiling, too?

Huh??

The rooms are numbered, but they’re not plain steel like in other areas downstairs; some of them have stickers, or drawings, or marker written straight onto the door itself. They look...cozy...? Danny thinks so, anyway, compared to the rest of the ultra high tech space base.

They roll to a stop in front of a door. It’s got a number on it, same as all the others, but there’s a box cutout taped to the front of it. The—

—The print is of the same style of space shuttle Danny keeps next to his bed, inked onto glorious cardboard medium.

Danny stares.

“Gegrapa,” Diana urges, so gentle. Too bad that, uh, Danny doesn’t know that one. He looks at her. She mimes touching the door— Oh. Got it.

Danny leans forward just enough to touch the door with his fingertips.

The door says something in a robotic voice, but the synthesizer is too mangled for Danny to make out the words. The door slides open horizontally into the wall, instead of the way the other doors open like portals or from below, and it’s kind of cool?

Inside is a bedroom. Danny stares.

…No, it’s actually a bedroom. Not a medical wing, not a cot, not a repurposed conference room or—it’s actually got a bed in it. Like. A real one. There’s a wooden headboard and it’s got a mattress on it that’s thicker than a VCR.

There’s constellation sheets on a bed big enough to curl up on.

There’s a nightstand, a small desk on the far wall—there’s a little lip where the bedroom dips into a tiny sitting room, a small television on a table and a small table and chair. It’s kind of…it’s kind of like a little hotel suite.

Danny’s mouth goes dry.

He doesn’t move, and Diana doesn’t wheel him in. “It’s okay,” Diana says, and—Danny almost flinches when she touches his hair, but it’s only Diana, who’s never hit him, and they’re fine. He’s…safe. It’s safe. He’s safe here. “Do you want to go in?”

Danny doesn’t move. His hands don’t touch the wheels. They’re shaking; he puts his hands in his lap and he tries to breathe. “…What?” he asks hoarsely.

“A rum for my Danny,” Diana murmurs, quietly. Danny’s heart throbs at the possessive. “You are healthier now. You do not need doctors every hour, but only sum hours. You cuðe spenda more time here, all ana.”

Words go by so fast even at Diana's smooth, unhurried pace— and Danny licks dry, split lips. He looks around the room—and the room is small, sure, but they're in space. Space will always be a premium. Even in this small room, though, the furniture is sparse and placed distant from each other…distant enough that Danny can wheel around freely in his chair.

There’s a Moon clock display hung on the wall over the doorway, and Danny can faintly see the outline of what he assumes is the current lunar phase as seen from Earth.

Having the lamp isn’t exactly the same as glow-in-the-dark-stars, and thank goodness for that. If it had been, Danny might have cried.

(Or, he realizes, something burning in his eyes that isn’t ectoplasm, maybe he is crying.)

“...Me?” Danny asks, terrified to know the answer. Is this room for him?? Is he getting a room here? Is he supposed to stay here? On the moon?! Is he supposed to stay with everyone here, in a tiny room, where there’s nowhere to go and nowhere to escape?

…It’s a bedroom. It’s already so much more than the stupid guys in white ever gave him.

“Yes,” Diana says, and lets go of his hair. “Use it, or do not. Sitta here, or sitta in the medical bay, but now you have two choices.”

Okay. So Danny has choices. He swallows his feelings—they taste a lot like snot—and rolls himself inside to inspect the room.

There’s another little fridge inside the sitting area. It’s not right next to the bed like it is beside Danny’s cot, but it is the same style of fridge. When Danny pops the door open, it has the same styles of snacks. Fig Einsteins. Peanut butter squeezies and applesauce squeezies and yogurt squeezies. Protein shakes in bottles. Pedialight. Hummus packs.

Danny might still need someone to open the snack packs for him. That’s kind of a high dexterity food, if he thinks about it.

“If you wish to sitta here, we will visit you all you like. There is a belle at your bed,” Diana says, and walks in with all her purple scrubs and tied-up hair to point to a little button on his nightstand. It’s red. It’s got a little smiley face sticker next to it, and Danny thinks he recognizes the style from one of his nurse’s bestickered name tags. Belle is probably a direct cognate for bell. He’ll be able to get everyone to come up here if he needs help.

…Okay, that’s kind of nice. To have personal space. He hasn’t had that since… Danny’s eyes squint as he thinks; he rubs an eye. Wait, when had he been squatting under a conference table? Was that a real memory??

Diana is very tall, even in the little space, but when she ducks her head, the gesture makes her a little smaller, a little more manageable for Danny’s lower-than-usual-gaze. Now that he can see her expression, she looks soft, and even uncertain, even though she looks stone and strong on the television when she goes out to fight. “Do you like it?” she asks.

Danny fidgets.

He—does. He likes it a lot. The room doesn’t have any windows, but if Danny moved all his things in here, got used to being able to come and go, and people coming in and out…this space could be just another space. It’s quieter than the medical ward. More peaceful.

…The room is utterly devoid of other people.

(Danny thinks of The Box. Danny thinks of being in The Box.)

(Danny doesn’t like remembering The Box.)

��I am scared,” Danny admits to his twitching thumbs, his fingers itching for a fidget toy or one of his physical therapy tools. Diana’s face immediately drops.

“Why are you scared?”

I’ll be alone Danny wants to say, but he doesn’t know the word for alone and he struggled with phrasing. “No…people here.”

“That is triewe. You would have more dīegolnes here,” Diana agrees, and straightens out of her crouch. “Is that good, or bad?”

It isn’t good and it isn’t bad…? Danny isn’t sure how to phrase it. It’s neither. Being alone is just scary.

“You not hurt me,” Danny tries, knowing he’s missing some connecting word in the middle. He ignores how Diana comes back to kneel beside him, because if he looks at her, he won’t say anything. “Do not.”

“No,” Diana says, from beside and below him, gentle, careful. “We do not.”

No. They don’t. Danny swallows. “Bad…hurt me.” He doesn’t know the word for Earth or planet or even downstairs, so he just meekly points downwards.

Diana stills. It’s like watching Vlad’s Maddie cat spot a bird to hunt down. Danny tries not to feel pinned. “On eorþegearde?” she asks, still light, still gentle. Danny can hear a shadow of steel, though, and he counts himself lucky that she’s never treated him like an enemy. Danny quickly nods. His eyes squeeze shut.

“Who?” Diana asks feather-light.

Danny doesn’t want to tell them what he is. Admitting the name of the agency hunting him itself would be given in.

…But maybe if he doesn’t say the name…and they...and they promised they'd help hide him...

He wants to be right. Danny wants to be right that they're nice, and that they want to help him. Danny wants to be right that they want to protect him. As long as he never, nevernotevernever tells them he's a ghost...

Maybe someone will help him. This time.

“Bad,” Danny repeats, because he genuinely has no idea how to translate?? “Wants…hurts me? For…” WHAT WORDS DOES HE KNOW? Danny gives up and just draws a y-shaped autopsy incision on his chest. It goes down from his collarbones to his belly button.

Diana watches. Her eyes are sharp.

“Do you feel safe with the staff dunstæger in medical?” Diana is quick on the ball with the question and Danny nods quickly—he’s never alone there, and no one’s ever hurt him, and people whose job it is to help people are always coming in and out, and Medical helps them too.

“Good,” Danny whispers. “Talk…talks to me.”

“Ealne weg,” Diana affirms firmly. Whatever that means. “We will cepa you safe.”

You safe and we is all Danny needs to hear. He could probably cry by himself, but Danny wants the comfort anyway; Diana lets Danny take her hands into his, and he lets tears fall into someone else’s grip instead of his own.

*

Bruce is halfway to the monitor room before he feels himself be picked up from underneath the armpits.

Usually finding himself at inappropriate heights involves horseplay from Clark. No one else would be so bold as to actually put their hands on him within the professional setting of the Watchtower—and Bruce has worked very, very hard on maintaining a reputation that keeps the handsier of his fellows at bay.

The culprit is not Clark this time. Bruce finds himself looking downward at Diana’s tearstained face, fury and resignation warring in her expression.

Bruce is careful not to sigh. “Wonder Woman. What is the matter?”

“Someone,” Diana grits out, voice carefully modulated to cut out her own pain, “Hurt my charge.”

On the one hand, the situation with their patient is exactly as Bruce had expected. The circumstance is tragic. The circumstance was predictable.

On the other, Diana's new upset means that Bruce now has more information to work with than ever before.

Bruce can work with this.

“Tell me everything.” Bruce’s voice is just as firm—even held midair like a cat. “I will help you in every way I can.”

[jakesduskwood]

even statues crumble if they're made to wait

Pairing: Jake x Fem!MC

Genre: Post-Episode 10 Duskwood, Post-Episode 1 Moonvale

Words: 8,916

Summary: It's been three months since the explosion in the mine. Three months since Hannah was found. And MC's accepted that Jake is never coming back. When she gets roped into another missing person's case, it makes for the perfect distraction. Jake is dead. It's fine. That is, until she finds herself on the phone with Alan Bloomgate who says he has something to show her. But it's fine. Jake is dead.

Until he's not.

EPISODE-1 MOONVALE SPOILERS AHEAD (MAYBE)!

[ A/N: Hello! :)

I know it's been a while since I've done this, but I finished Moonvale Episode 1 and if you've seen the ending (and used its Duskwood code), you know what happened and how excited I was to receive that bit of Duskwood. So, I took it and ran with it, and out came this extremely long fic. I did not proofread this as it took me literally almost 12 hours to write so it is completely and 100% me and my love for Jake and I hope you love it.

Side note: I suck with anything related to timelines, so I made one up on my own. I know Episode 1 of Moonvale takes place over the course of a day or two, but for the purpose of this fic, it made sense to make it longer, so it's not a typo, or me losing my mind, it's just the way my brain processed this.

Enjoy! :) ]

It’s been three months since the explosion in the mine.

Three months since Richy had been killed. Three months since Hannah was rescued. Three months since I had last spoken to Thomas or Cleo or Lilly or…or Jessy. I didn’t blame her then and I don’t blame her now. Any of them, really. I didn’t share the bond they had with each other. I wasn’t from Duskwood. It didn’t matter that we’d experienced a tragedy together—and yes, perhaps them more than me, but I loved Richy too. I had lost Richy too. And Jake—

But mostly, I think they just wanted to forget. To move on. They didn’t want to remember that their friend had been capable of…of that. And I was a constant reminder of that to them. So I understood why we didn’t necessarily talk anymore.

The one person I did keep in contact with from Duskwood, oddly enough, other than the occasional update from Alan Bloomgate, was Dan. We weren’t best friends or anything, but he allowed me to check in on our friends in a way that I didn’t know how to do with anyone else. Maybe because I thought he was the least affected among them. I knew he cared about Hannah, but he wasn’t to her what Thomas or Cleo or Lilly were. And he wasn’t to Richy what Jessy had been.

I’d learned from him that Thomas and Hannah had broken up. There was no bad blood, but Thomas hadn’t quite figured out how to accept the things he’d learned about his girlfriend when she’d been gone, and Hannah hadn’t quite figured out how to re-trust someone after Richy. Even if that person was Thomas. But I’d hoped they would find their way back to each other in the end.

I thought about reaching out to Jessy every once in a while—even just as an apology for everything that had happened. I’m sorry that Hannah was found at the expense of Richy. I’m sorry that he did this to you. I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner. We should have. We should have. We should have. I miss you. But I never send it. I’m not all that sure she’d respond anyway.

Cleo and I were never all that close. She has her best friend back, so I think she’s probably as okay as she can be. Helping Hannah find a new kind of normal in a time where her childhood friend had kidnapped her in order to prove a point. I don’t know how you come back from that—I don’t know how you come back from knowing that you killed somebody at all.

I hadn’t found the courage to ask if somebody had told Hannah about Jake.

Not that I think it would matter anyway. I hadn’t heard from him since before the explosion in the mine, which was, like I said—three months ago. I waited the appropriate amount of time—twenty-five days—before I broke down and concluded that maybe he hadn’t survived. Which just piled a shit-ton of guilt onto my shoulders because it was supposed to be me in that mine. He had gone in place of me and now he was dead.

It was the only explanation that made sense. I was used to Jake disappearing for days at a time, but never as long as he had been now. And he didn’t seem like the type to tell me he loved me and then leave without a single explanation. Not unless he had to. But it had been three months and as much as I missed him, as much as my chest ached with the thought that we would never eat Chinese food out of shitty motels and have that on-the-run ending we talked about, I had accepted that he wasn’t coming back.

I wonder if he had known about Richy or if he had died still thinking Michael Hanson was the one who had kidnapped Hannah. I wonder if his last thoughts were of me. Maybe it’s selfish, but I kind of hope they were, because I’m pretty sure I’ll think about him for the rest of my life.

I wonder what it would have felt like to run my hands through his hair. To kiss him. To spend every waking moment with him and know it was because I loved him. Because I would have. Talking to Jake became about more than just finding Hannah. It became a part of my day I looked forward to more than anything else. He confided in me in a way that told me he never had with anyone, maybe not even Hannah, and I needed that from somebody. I needed somebody to trust in me the way that Jake did. I needed somebody to love me the way that Jake did.

It was strange—and maybe a little ironic—the thought that something so beautiful could come out of something so tragic.

Anyway, my point is: it’s been a long couple of months. Of thinking about my friends. Of thinking about Jake. Of wondering if I should have done things differently. I should have gone to Duskwood to help. Not even with the mine, but sooner. I could have. I could’ve gone when Jessy was attacked on the way home. I could’ve gone when the group made plans to cut out of town and hide away in the house Richy had found. Selfishly, I should have. In that moment, when they were settled around the fire and Lilly called me, I had never remembered wanting anything more. I should have grabbed Jake—metaphorically, maybe even literally—and rode it out with them to the end.

I don’t stop missing them after three months. Of wishing things could have been different. Wishing I could have done more. But exactly ninety-five days after the explosion in the mine, seventy days since I had accepted that Jake was never coming back, twenty-two days since I had last heard from anybody from Duskwood (Dan included), my phone dings with a new message.

And the cycle starts all over again.

It’s somebody named Eric, who claims he needs my help to find his friend Adam, who disappeared while he was waiting for a ride in someplace called Redlog Pines. And much like with Duskwood, I have never heard of Redlog, and the case reminds me way too much of Thomas’ first message to me, so much that it makes my chest ache, but I can’t say no because there’s somebody missing, and if I’d say no the first time, God knows where Hannah would be.

So, I say yes, and I help out where I can, and Eric decides he needs to bring about four more friends in on his little plan and I try my best to stay emotionally unattached because I remember everything that happened the last time and I can’t go through that again. I offer up information when I can and keep my words short and careful because I’m not ready to get attached to somebody else I know I might never meet.

I know how this ends.

Two days in, Ash, one of Eric’s friends, brings up my Duskwood past and the unhealed wound I’ve been trying to mend breaks open again. She asks about Richy, and about the mine, and then because I’m me and I can’t help myself, I tell her about Jake. She tells me the news never mentioned another body and I shove that thought to the back of my head because hoping for something that will never come true will kill me.

Four days into Adam’s disappearance, and the police not giving a shit—as Charlie, somebody who reminds me far too much of Richy for comfort, points out—my phone beeps with an incoming call from somebody I haven’t spoken to in a while.

“Go for [MC].” I answer my phone.

Ever since Hannah had been found in the mine and Jake had…you know, my phone had been more silent than I’d gotten used to. Until this new case. But even that—it was only a few days old and I didn’t want to go down the same path with them that I did with my friends in Duskwood. We didn’t really know each other that long, sure—even though sometimes it’d felt like it—but it felt like I’d finally been a part of something. Like, I had found these people who had chosen me for me.

And originally, maybe they had. Maybe they’d had every intention of keeping me around, but then Richy was the Man Without A Face and Alan Bloomgate had rescued Hannah and nothing was the same as it had been when we’d met each other. We knew too many secrets about each other by the time the town settled. Secrets we would have to take to the grave.

Or maybe I’m losing my mind a bit and I had really only been a means to an end.

Either way.

“Alan?” I raise my voice when there’s nothing but breathing on the other end of the line. “Did you mean to call me?”

His tone is clipped. “I found something.”

“You found something.” I repeat.

My heart clenches. For all I know, it might fall into my stomach. As far I know, from watching the news, from what Ash told me, Jake’s body was never found. Richy’s was. Or what was left of him to find, anyway. I had assumed that there just hadn’t been enough of Jake left. The thought left me nauseous, but it was better than hoping for something I knew I could never have.

“I’m sending it to your phone now.” He responds. “Let me know what you think of this.”

And then he hangs up.

That was a riveting conversation, I think as my phone dings with a message. I do my best to ignore my other messages—contacts from Duskwood I’m still not ready to acknowledge—and click Alan Bloomgate. He sent me a video that looks like—oh God.

Immediately, I’m overcome with emotion as an all-too-familiar forest pops up on my phone. It’s a video of Alan’s bodycam footage. He’s searching the Duskwood forest. A forest I’ve seen too many times in the background of other video calls.

I watch as he stumbles upon an object that’s too dark to make out at first. When he gets closer, it’s clear that it’s a backpack. It’s simple. Black. Nothing about it that screams this is mine and I left it here about anybody in particular. You stupid, stupid idiot, I tell my heart when it rattles against my chest in hope. He’s dead.

Alan stands and treks away from the backpack—I want to scream at him to go back, to open it and look through it and tell me if it’s what my heart aches to believe, but I can’t, because this is a video and I’m simply watching with wide eyes, waiting for…for something. But then. But then, he moves further into the forest and I watch as he stumbles upon an object that makes my knees tremble and tears rush to my eyes and my hands shake. A black hoodie. It looks like it’s been through hell, with holes scattered up the sleeves and dirt cakes into the hood, but it’s unmistakably his.

And then—Alan lifts the hood and picks up something that makes me sink to my knees with a sob that wracks my entire frame. Because I’m staring at Jake’s mask. The mask he doesn’t go anywhere without. The mask that protects him. And so my relief is short-lived, because I realize that even if he’s alive—which seems like a very big possibility at this point—he’s alive without the things that he needs to survive.

And then the anger kicks in. Because if he’s been alive, on his own, for three months—why has he not contacted me? Unless he survived the mine but he didn’t survive the after. But that didn’t make any sense. So, okay, he wasn’t dead. But that didn’t make any sense either. He told me he wouldn’t let them catch him. Because catching that meant he would be apart from me. Did something happen that prevented him from being able to reach out and tell me he was at least okay? A quick text that said didn’t die in the explosion in the mine, you don’t need to mourn me, by the way, going off radar for another year. Did he think I would have given up on him?

I wipe my eyes and shoot a message to Alan.

ME: Recently?? Did nobody search the forests before?      

ALAN: Searched the forests for what, [MC]? The logical assumption seemed to be that if anybody was inside the mine when Richy set the fire, they would have perished alongside him. Officers were stationed outside every known entrance and exit. Besides, after the story you and your friends spun around this town, do you think anybody would have gone back into its forests?

ME: But it’s possible?

ALAN: I would say these items had been there for some time. But I would say it is likely he ditched them when he fled the mine, yes.

Another sob tears through my throat. Jake is alive. I don’t know quite what that means for us as of now, but I know it’s the best news I’ve heard since Hannah was found. Jake is alive. He’s out there somewhere. And even if it’s been three months, and even if I’m a little bit mad at him right now, I know that if he was here, I would throw my arms around his neck and hold on to him until someone dragged me off, and even then—I would fight kicking and screaming.

I close out of my messages with Alan and pull up a conversation I haven’t had the heart to look at in quite some time.

ME: Jake’s alive.

LILLY: …

LILLY: Have you spoken to him?

ME: Alan called. He found some of Jake’s things in Duskwood. I don’t know a lot of details. But I know he made it out of the mine.

Lilly types for a long while, but she doesn’t respond. I don’t take it personally. I think it’s probably hard for her to be happy that her brother’s okay while also trying to accept that her sister may never be okay again. Her sister, who had once-upon-a-time been kind-of-sort-of in love with their brother she didn’t know she had. I think that would probably mess with any family’s heads. And on top of all that, you throw in manslaughter and a kidnapping. I wouldn’t wish anybody, not even my worst enemy, to have had to go through what the Donforts had.

When it becomes adamant that Lilly isn’t going to respond, I start scrolling through messages with the rest of the group in Duskwood. I click on Jessy. I’m here if you need me. That had been the last thing I sent to her, a couple of days after Richy’s death. She hadn’t responded. I click out of Jessy’s contact and click on Thomas’ instead. Thank you for everything. That had been his last message to me after we found Hannah. I’d liked it. I hadn’t expected at the time it would be the last thing we’d ever say to each other. I click out of Thomas’ and click on Richy. So, you want to turn yourself in? I’d asked. That was before he called me. Before he lit a match and burned himself and the mine to the ground. Some people would call that heroic. I mostly call him a coward.

I click on Jake’s name. It’s been a while since I read messages between the two of us. Maybe before I had accepted—thought—he was dead. In that twenty-five-day period when I’d hoped with all I’d had that he would come back. I love you. That was the last message he sent me. I’d responded with I love you too, Jake. Then, four days later: Are you okay? A week later: Jake, please, you’re starting to scare me. I know you said you would contact when you could, but it’s been a week. After twenty-five days, when I had finally accepted our fate, I’d sent one final message: I hope you know that I love you, and I will always care about you, but I think it’s time for me to move on. I’m so sorry that I sent you into the mine. It should have been me. And I will probably feel the guilt from that for the rest of my life. Thank you for everything. Take care of yourself, wherever you are.

After that, I had closed out of our messages and hadn’t looked back. Partly because I couldn’t bear the pain of it. It felt like I had given up on him. I hadn’t—if I had thought for a second that he was alive, if I knew then what I know now, I would have never sent that message. But holding out hope for somebody who I thought was a ghost at the time? That was slowly killing me.

It’s only then that I notice the screen flickering. Much like the way it used to whenever Jake would hack into my phone. I don’t think he’s much in the mood to be hacking right now, but somehow, I know it’s him. When had he done this? Recently? If I had opened our messages, would I have seen this ten—twenty—even fifty days ago? It hadn’t looked like this the last time I texted him. Did he see my last message about needing to move on? Was that why he hadn’t reached out to tell me that he was okay? Because he thought I was moving on happily without him?

No, my brain supplies. He wouldn’t. He would reach out anyway, because he knows how much the thought of him not being okay would have destroyed you.

The screen flickers once more and then a message pops up, bright and blue-tinted and clear as day on my phone.

[MC]

I WILL FIND YOU

And the world around me shifts.

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

Maybe it sounds crazy, considering I’ve never seen his face before, but I always thought that if I’d ran into Jake one day, maybe on the street or at one of those motels he stayed at or maybe even in Duskwood, surrounded by all our friends, I would know it was him. I would, because it’s him, and it’s me, and we’re the only two people who understand each other quite the way we do.

I still believe that.

I believe it when I book my flight to Duskwood (or rather, twenty miles outside of town, which is the closest airport). I believe it when I board the airplane and find a seat next to a mother with her screaming child and when I shoot off a quick text to Eric to let him know I’ll be MIA for the next few hours, but to message me if he needs anything—and I think about how much easier this case would probably be to solve if we had Jake.

Maybe it would have been harder to find Hannah without me, but I know damn well they would’ve never found her without Jake.

Dan picks me up from the airport. I haven’t told the others yet. Something about it felt off—like I shouldn’t message them and say hey, I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but I’m booking a flight to look into why my maybe-slash-not-really boyfriend left his belongings in a forest we really wish we could forget about, and by the way, can I crash at your place?

It’s quiet on the car ride back into town. I’m looking through my messages from Eric and the group from Redlog Pines and thinking about how I’m Duskwood with this group and I want so badly to laugh because it’s ironic, but Dan wouldn’t understand. He might just call me crazy. Better yet, he would ask how I manage to get myself into these situations, and really, I don’t have an answer for him.

“How have you been?” I ask, just to break the tension, as Charlie, in my messages, tries to persuade his friends to head back into that creepy cave in the middle of the forest. He’s going to get someone killed, I think.

Dan looks over at me. “Are you still with Hackerman?”

My chest squeezes. “His name is Jake, Dan. And we were never really together.”

“Hm.” He nods like he doesn’t quite believe me. “You already know mostly everything that’s been happening here. Thomas and Hannah called it quits. They say it was some mutual decision, but it’s hard to find them in the same room together. Jessy hasn’t been out with us since. I think we remind her too much of Richy. The group’s all changed.”

“And you?” I ask.

He gives me a cheshire-like grin that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m always the same.”

We make it to Duskwood just as the sun’s going down. Much too late for me to try and trek through the forest and retrace the steps Jake might have taken that night. Not that I think it would help give me any clues as to where he might have gone, but mostly because I wonder if it will make me feel closer to him. We’ve never been in the same place before, and even if he’s not there now—he once was.

“Can you drop me at the police station?”

Dan blinks. “The police station.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“We answered their questions for weeks, [MC]. I don’t think anything you have to tell them at this point is going to help. The investigation’s closed. Everybody knows Richy did it. He died with the fire in the mine. Everybody’s trying to move on from that.” He works his jaw. “Did you come here to open old wounds after all this time?”

I try not to show the hurt look on my face. “This isn’t about Richy. Look, Alan called me. He asked if I could look at some things. I figured it was better for me to do it in person. That’s it. Nothing to do with Richy. Nothing to do with Jessy. Nothing to do with you.”

He sighs, and I’m not entirely sure he’s going to abide by my wishes until we pull in front of a tiny building—tinier than most—that says Duskwood Police on the sign. Duskwood must not have that much crime. Well, not until this, I suppose.

“Thank you.” I tell him as I reach over to undo my seatbelt and climb out of the car. “This is a nice ride, by the way.”

He raises a hand in some mock-salute. “Need me to pick you up?”

“Nah.” I shake my head. “Think I’ll explore the town for a little bit.”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugs and then he’s off.

I square my shoulders and take a deep breath before opening the door to the police station. It wasn’t like Alan asked me to come down here. He hadn’t. Even during the investigation into Richy’s death and Hannah’s kidnapping, when he questioned us, he never asked me to come to Duskwood. We’d done way too many video calls and phone calls and at one point, I had asked if he thought it would be easier for me to come to Duskwood, to which he responded back, are you ready for that?

No, I hadn’t been. I’m not even so sure I was now. But knowing that Jake was alive, that here was the last place was, I had to try.

“Can I help you?” The woman at the front desk asks.

I clear my throat. “I was wondering if I could speak to Alan Bloomgate. I’m one of—I was involved in the Hannah Donfort case. My name is [MC].”

Her eyes widen. “Give me a moment.” She stands and heads to some back office—which looks to me more like a closet—and then returns with a clipped smile. “He’ll be right out.”

Apparently, she isn’t lying, because not two minutes later, Alan is stepping out from the same door and staring me down. I hold his gaze and hope it says that I’m not here to argue. I will tell him my truth, but only my truth, not Hannah’s, not Jake’s, not anybody else’s.

“I was wondering when I would see you.” He says.

I shrug one shoulder. “Isn’t a few months later better than never?”

“Let’s go into my office.” He says, and leads me around the desk and back into the closet space he had come out of. He sits behind the desk and motions for me to take a seat opposite him. “I’m just going to guess you’re not here to talk about Miss Donfort.”

“I want to see them.” I tell him. “His things. I want to see them for myself. And whatever you want from me in return, I’ll give to you.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game here, [MC].”

“He isn’t a game to me.” I snap back and then sit back and try to relax. “I appreciate that you called me. It’s—I helped you find Hannah. I would do it again. Even with knowing the things that we do now, I would do it all again. That’s how much that group means to me. That’s how much he means to me. I’m not asking you to break any rules or to lie for him or to—to let him hide in your basement for the next five years. I’m just asking you to show me what you found.”

He stares me down for a moment. Then, he sighs, says “wait here for a minute” and disappears to another room. When he comes back, it’s with an evidence bag in his hand filled with the objects I saw on his bodycam footage. My breath hitches in my throat.

“I can’t let you touch them.” He says as he lays them in front of me.

I stare into the eyes of the mask. “Did you tell anybody that he’s alive?”

“I don’t know that he’s alive,” is all the answer he gives, which is an answer to my question. I slide my gaze down to the black hoodie, to the dirtied sleeves and muddy hood, and think about the fact that Jake wore this. I’m so close to him.

And yet I’ve never been further away from him.

“Thank you.” I tell him. “For—for this. And for listening to me about Hannah. If you hadn’t, I—I don’t know what would have happened. How much longer he would have gone on for. If he would have ever stopped.”

Alan’s silent for a minute. Then, he clears his throat. “You know, it was strange to me. Both Hannah and yourself swore to me that neither of you knew the other.”

“I don’t.” I swear.

It was one of the (albeit many) things that didn’t make sense to me. How Hannah got a hold of my number. How she sent it to Thomas. She’d told Alan she hadn’t really remembered texting him my number at all.

“I believe you.” He reassures. “I just think it’s strange. One mistake, if you can call it that, and you throw yourself into a missing persons case to help a stranger.”

“They’re not strangers.” Even though Hannah is kind of still a stranger.

“But they were.” Alan reasons. “You had no reason to say yes to helping Thomas. I doubt anybody would have held it against you if you turned the other way. But you decided to follow this until the end. To make sure they found Hannah. And you care about them. Maybe that’s why I find that I’m more lenient with you than maybe I should be. Why you’re sitting across from me right now calling the shots. Why I’m not asking you about the hacker.”

“I wouldn’t tell you if you did.” I look him in the eye so he knows I’m telling the truth.

He returns my gaze. “Maybe that’s the other reason.”

“Hm.” I acknowledge before I turn my gaze away—from him, from the objects that I know belong to Jake and it takes everything in me not to snatch them up and run. “Well. Thank you for allowing me to steal some of your time. For letting me—” I cut myself off before I say something that makes me break down in a fit of tears in front of him. “—just thank you.”

Leaving the station is easier than coming in. I’m still not any closer to knowing where Jake is than I was when I arrived here, but there’s a comfort in knowing he walked these streets. I wonder what he would think if he knew I was here. He hadn’t wanted me to come to Duskwood when everything was happening…but now that it was over, would he be happy that I was here? That I had come to Duskwood to piece together where he might have gone? Would he track my location and come to find me and…or was I grasping at straws?

It felt like I had just gotten him back. Not really, not entirely…but knowing that he was alive, that he was out there somewhere, maybe thinking of me and looking for ways to come back, to live the life we talked about when he asked me if I was sure…that was worth it. The thought that we could maybe someday have that—even if it was a twenty percent chance.

I check my phone again to see a new message from Ash. She’s asking me if I’ve heard from Charlie in the last few hours. Apparently, he’s AWOL, and I want to help, really, but…it doesn’t really feel like that’s where I am at the moment. Not just physically—obviously—but mentally. We got lucky with Hannah. And that was really only because we had Jake. Adam didn’t have a Jake. Or…maybe he did and I just hadn’t met him yet. But I already had a Jake and I didn’t want another one.

Maybe—if I found him, I could convince him to help. That was a big maybe. Not because I thought Jake would say no. He would say yes to anything I asked of him. The maybe was whether or not I could find him. More likely, the maybe was whether or not he would find me.

Three months ago, I would have been able to come to Duskwood and have no shortage of things I wanted to do and people I wanted to see. Now, as I stand outside Duskwood’s police station, I feel nothing but loneliness. Nobody knows I’m here. I could pass Thomas on the street and he wouldn’t even know it. I could run into Jessy at the library and she would walk by me without even a second thought. Why would they? I hadn’t told them I was here.

So, with nothing left to do, I walked. Toward the town center. Toward the library that Jessy showed me on our walk through Duskwood. Toward the Rainbow Café where I knew that Cleo and Hannah had spent a lot of their time. Toward the Black Swan. Toward—

Ah, what the hell.

I had nothing better to do and The Aurora seemed like a great place to drown my sorrows. To think about my next steps. To figure out—now that I was in Duskwood—what I planned to do. The thing about Jake being so secretive (and on the run) was that I couldn’t retrace his steps. I wasn’t able to ask if anyone had seen him. One, because he would make sure nobody had. And two, because three months was a long time to forget somebody’s face if you didn’t know who you were looking for.

I pull open the door to the bar and step inside. Immediately, I’m hit with the stench of whiskey and a handful of chatter. Duskwood’s a small town. And The Aurora definitely proves it. The bartenders move melodically around each other, serving patrons on the other side of the bar. If you walk down further, there’s a handful of tables.

And dead in the center is a table with my friends. Or, some of them. Dan and Cleo and Lilly. Could I still call them my friends? Ex-friends, maybe? Acquaintances? I didn’t know what they were. Or how to address them. It wasn’t like we had gotten into a fight. We didn’t stop talking for any reason other than that we did. We stopped talking.

I make a beeline for the bar to avoid a confrontation and plant myself on one of the stools. One of the bartenders—a girl cute with bleach blonde hair and brown Bambi eyes—asks what I want and I channel my inner Dan to order a whiskey—neat.

Looking over my shoulder, I focus on the table of them. On Lilly, who’s smiling at something Cleo said. On Dan, who’s the only one of them who actually knows I’m here. But even he’s focused on the conversation they’re having. It’s strange—to see Dan a part of something I’m not sure he would have been before. It’s nice.

“[MC]?”

I turn my head away from the table of my friends and focus my attention across the bar on someone I should’ve expected to see. “Phil.”

“I thought I recognized your voice from when we talked.” He smiles. “I wasn’t sure, but I saw you staring longingly at them—” He nods towards Dan and Cleo and Lilly. “—and I knew. What brings you around here? I expected you to show up maybe a few months ago, but by now, I thought you’d moved on without us.”

I was tired of the words move on. Like I’d had a choice. Like the people from this town might open their arms and welcome me back into their lives. So I’d been part of the group who’d saved Hannah Donfort. So had a lot of people. It didn’t make me special and everyone here knew it.

I offer him a smile in return. “I’m looking for somebody.”

“Anybody I know?” He asks.

I shake my head. “Nah. At least nobody you would recognize.” I pause. “How’s Jessy?”

“She’s—Jessy.” He answers, like that is an answer. “I don’t know if she’ll ever really be okay with the way things happened with Richy. I wouldn’t expect her to. Obviously. But I don’t know. I think I just thought she would have gone back to her normal life by now. And then I remember that most of her life revolved around him. He was her best friend. She worked for him. And I’m trying to be patient about that. But—” He shakes his head. “Maybe you should talk to her.”

“She doesn’t know I’m in town.”

“Okay.” He hums. “So, you’re not in town for my sister. And you’re not in town for your group of friends because they’re over there and you look like you’d rather be anywhere else. There’s always Hannah, but I don’t think you knew her that well. Or at all. Would I be right to assume this is about a certain hacker who helped to find Hannah?”

“He didn’t help find Hannah.” I defend. “He was the entire reason we found Hannah. I would have never been able to do it on my own. Even with the others’ help. He’s the only reason we found out about—” I pause before I say something I maybe shouldn’t. “It doesn’t matter. He’s the only reason we found her. Everything I did was just dumb luck.”

“That wasn’t what the news said.” A voice cuts in and I turn my attention from Phil to focus on the stranger that slides into the seat beside me. Not too close—a couple inches away. I don’t recognize him. I don’t know him. But I don’t know every person in Duskwood. Maybe a total of like nine or ten. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But I heard you had a lot to do with finding Hannah Donfort. The news said you were some kind of hero.”

I offer him a tight smile. “That’s nice of them. But…if they knew my—friend—knew what he did to find her, I don’t think I would be as much of a hero as everybody says.”

“That’s noble.” He says, eyes meeting mine, and it strikes me at once how handsome he is. He has dark hair. Bright green eyes. Focus, [MC]. I scold. You have a…a someone.

My phone buzzes.

ERIC SENT A PHOTO.

ERIC: What do you make of this?

I sigh and click on the photo. It’s of—some object. Much like the one that was addressed to me on the envelope in Adam’s glove compartment. The image is a bit different—but I don’t know enough about what it means to have an answer as to why.

ME: Was this one addressed to me?

ERIC: Nope. Ash.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks.

I clear my throat. “I’m a popular person—apparently.” A thought strikes. “Have you ever heard of a place called Redlog Pines?”

Phil frowns. “No.”

I turn to look at the stranger. “You?”

“Redlog Pines is a small town about two hundred miles north of Duskwood.” He answers. “Known for their wooded forests, much like Duskwood.”

“Why are you looking into a place with forests as creepy as ours?” Phil asks, incredulously. “Didn’t you get enough of that with Hannah’s case?”

“Yeah.” I sigh. “You would think.”

“Hey, [MC]!”

I wince at the sound of Dan’s voice. Shooting Phil a look that screams please help me to which he shakes his head amusedly, I turn and plaster on a fake smile as I take in the shocked looks on Cleo and Lilly’s faces. I should have known better than to come to The Aurora and talk to Phil when the three of them were having a conversation across the room. I should have known they would sooner or later see me. I just hoped it was later.

“Hey.” I hop off my stool and make my way across the bar to them. “It’s, uh, fancy seeing the three of you here.”

“What are you doing here?” Cleo asks.

“I haven’t really figured that out.” My eyes meet Lilly’s. “It sounds crazy to say it out loud. But I was hoping that—I’m not sure if Lilly told you—”

“That Jake’s alive.” Cleo nods. “None of us ever really thought he wasn’t.”

I don’t think she means it as a dig—but it still feels like one. Like she’s saying you gave up on him you gave up on him you gave up on him even though she’s not and she didn’t really know him and the only person I can talk to at this table who even might understand is Lilly and even—Jake didn’t confide in her the way he did me.

“Right.” I acknowledge. “So I thought that maybe if I came here, I could trace his steps from when he was here and—I haven’t really thought that far ahead. It’s not like I thought he left me any clues in the forest or anything like that. I don’t think he expected me to be here. He hadn’t wanted me to be the last time we talked. But that was before everything happened.”

Lilly’s eyes track behind me. “Does Jake still have Nymos on your phone?”

“Uh.” I furrow my brows. “I think so. I hadn’t heard from him in a while, but I went back and read through our messages after I talked to Alan and…my phone glitched, like it used to when Jake had hacked it. And then this message appeared on my screen.”

“And by chance, can Nymos track your location?”

“What—” I shake my head. “Maybe. I don’t think I ever really asked him. It didn’t seem necessary at the time.”

“Uh huh.” She focuses on me once more. “Let’s say, for one minute, that Jake has access to Nymos who has access to your location.”

Cleo must catch onto something I’m not sure of. “Jake didn’t want you here.”

“Uh, thank you?”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” She waves me off. “He didn’t want you in Duskwood. He had been adamant about that when we were talking about the mine. That’s why he went. If you showed up in Duskwood—”

“Nymos would have alerted him.” Dan finishes.

“Okay…” I’m not entirely sure I’m on the same page as them. “So—you think that Jake found out when I came to Duskwood.”

“Correct.” Lilly beams like she just solved life’s greatest mystery.

“And you think he would—come find me?”

She smiles sympathetically at me—like I’m the world’s biggest idiot for not realizing what she has been trying to say sooner. “I think he already has.”

“You think Jake’s in Duskwood.” I deadpan.

“[MC].” Cleo grabs my shoulders and turns me around. “We think he’s in this bar.”

Stranger, as I had nicknamed him—AKA the guy sitting beside me at the bar, with Phil and Redlog Pines (which he probably only knew about because of me) and the whole Hannah being kidnapped and not taking any of the credit thing—was looking back at me. So was Phil. Like they thought I was the crazy one. Like it would’ve been so hard for him to look and me and say it’s me or anything that might have clued me into the fact that—

“Jake?” I whisper, because I’ve lost quite a bit of sleep over the past couple of months and I’m not one hundred percent sure what—or who—I’m seeing is real. “Are you here?”

He tilts his head and smiles at me. Actually smiles. A bit shyly, like it’s something he’s not used to doing, but maybe like it’s something he could get used to. And I think about how terrible I probably look right now because I’m not wearing makeup and my hair is tousled from constantly pulling at it and my clothes are wrinkled from the plane and the police station and I look like a mess. But our relationship has never been about looks. Clearly. I didn’t even know the person I’d been talking to until Lilly and Cleo and even Dan pointed out the obvious.

“If I—” I close my eyes and open them again. Nope. Still there. “I need you to still be there by the time I reach you because it’s been a—” I sniffle. “—it’s been a rough few months and I don’t think I could handle you disappearing again.”

He stands from the stool he was sitting on and shuffles his feet. Like he’s not quite sure where he’s supposed to stand. If he thinks about moving, I’ll tackle him onto the floor of The Aurora and then apologize to Phil later. It feels like everything I wanted is right here in front of me. And I’m scared to death that it’s not real.

“What’s one thing you would take with you if you were stranded on an island?”

His smile stretches. “My computer.”

And that—that’s what breaks me. I think I might start blubbering like an idiot but I don’t remember the time it takes for me to cross the measly twenty feet between us. All I remember is grabbing his black hoodie—because of course—and dragging him to me. I don’t kiss him, despite how much I want to, because I don’t want our first kiss to be tainted with my snot and tears. Instead, I bury my face in his collarbone and wrap my arms around his neck and hold on for dear life.

Because I can. Because he isn’t dead.

“Y—You’re here.” I pull back and cup his face with my hands. “How are you here?”

“You came to Duskwood.” He responds, and then—hesitantly—he presses his lips to my forehead in a kiss. “Alan called you.”

“He found your things in the forest.” I whisper back. “He said they’d been there a while. The police hadn’t searched the forest because they assume you died in the mine.”

“They aren’t looking for me here.” He confirms. “I didn’t expect it to take so long for them to find my belongings, but I anticipated that you would find out. At the time, it wasn’t safe for me to reach out and contact you. They kept on my trail for a while before they assumed I died in the mine with Richy.”

“Why didn’t you contact me then?” I ask. “Is it because of what I last messaged you? I didn’t mean it—I swear, I thought you were dead. If I had known you were alive, I would have waited, however long it took. I wasn’t trying to give up on you.”

“Hey.” He places both hands on either side of my face. “I know. I know that, [MC]. That was never why I didn’t reach out to you. I know you said you wanted this life with me. But I didn’t want that for you. But I was selfish. I couldn’t let you go. So I was trying to find a way to make both of those things true. But I was always coming back to you.”

“And did you?”

“Come back to you?” He asks.

I sniffle. “Find a way to make both of those things true.”

“Not entirely.” He admits. “Nymos alerted me you had boarded a plane headed in the direction of Duskwood and I—” He shook his head. “I knew I would find you here.”

“You could have found me sooner.”

He lets go of my face and he feels like he takes my skin with him. “It wasn’t that easy.”

“It could have been.” I demand.

I’m angry again. Now that I know he’s alive and okay and that he could have found me, I’m angry that he didn’t. I told him I would choose that life with him. Over and over and over. He didn’t need to make the decision for me. He didn’t need to try and protect me. And yes, maybe the fact that he did makes my heart flutter a tiny little bit, but that’s besides the point.

“I told you before you left me.” I tell him and I’m aware it sounds like we’ve been in a relationship for five years and I’m aware that everybody in here is watching and listening in on our conversation and they probably all know we’re who we are, two people involved in helping to find the kidnapped Hannah Donfort, and maybe that’s all we’ll ever be in this town. But I would rather be the girl who found Hannah Donfort in Duskwood with him than be me anywhere else. “You told me you would let me go with you.”

“That was before I told you I loved you.”

My heart skips a beat. It screams I love you I love you I love you back, but I say— “What does that have to do with anything?”

He looks somewhat amused. Like he knows I would never hold it against him. It’s clear to both of us that I wouldn’t because even though I’m glaring up at him with my furrowed eyebrows and my lips pouted, I’m still pressed tightly against him. His hands—even though they’ve moved from my face—are now resting on my hips. Pulling my tighter to him. There’s no space in between us. If it was up to me, I’m pretty sure there never would be again.

“[MC].” He says, and oh god I wish he would say my name every day for the rest of his life. “Have I—in the short time we have known each other—ever struck you as the type of person who says I love you? But with you…” His words are a whisper against my lips. “It’s easy to fall back into old emotions with you.”

“I want to be angry with you.” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.” I agree. “But I might be if you don’t kiss me.”

He brought one finger underneath my chin and tilted it up until our lips were separated by a fraction of an inch. My eyelids fluttered. I didn’t care that everyone in here was about to see just how much Jake meant to be. I didn’t care because I had waited too long for this. And then—just as I’m leaning toward him to press our lips together, he whispers— “[MC]?”

“Hm.” I acknowledge.

“Who’s Eric?”

My eyelids crack open and I shove at his chest. “That’s what you’re worried about right now? Here I am, in front of you, covered in snot and tears and who-knows-what-else because you’re here right now, and you’re worried about some guy I don’t even know?”

“Who’s Eric?” He repeats.

“Ugh.” I run my hands through my hair and take a step back. “I don’t know. He’s the other side of Thomas or whatever you want to call him. If we lived in a different town.” I glare back at him and try not to admit that I think his jealous side is a little cute. “He messaged me. Thought I picked up his friend from some parking lot and I didn’t, but his friend sent him my number, and it was Hannah all over again. I’m trying to help them.”

“This Adam has been sending you a lot of videos.”

“You know I hate when you hack my phone.” I complain, even though I really don’t. Even though I had prayed for him to help me with this case. “I really don’t know Adam. Like—even less than I know Eric.

“But you know Eric.”

“For like a week.” I reassure. “He added me to this group chat with him and like three other friends of his. They’re desperate to find Adam who has apparently dropped off the face of the earth and I don’t know what to do. I had you with Hannah’s case. And you knew her. And they—” I look over my shoulder at Cleo and Dan and Lilly, who are pretending like they’re not listening in even though I know and Jake knows they are. “—they knew her. And obviously Adam’s friends must know him but I don’t and you don’t and there is no Jake in Redlog Pines.”

“I don’t trust him.” He shakes his head. “Any of them.”

I laugh. “Jake, you didn’t trust half the people in this bar when we first started talking.” I look over at Phil and then Dan. “It doesn’t mean they committed a crime. If I had backed off when you asked me to help you find Hannah, we may never have.”

“I thought that was all thanks to me.” He sounds smug, like that little smiley face he loved to annoy me with (AKA make me fall in love with him). “Did he flirt with you?”

“No.” I deadpan. “I think he was focused on his missing friend.”

“I was focused on my missing sister.” He shoots back.

I close my mouth. Alright. He has a point. But I wasn’t flirting with Eric. He was focused on finding Adam and I was focused on mourning—and then finding—Jake. Maybe it felt like Eric and I were two sides of the same coin. Maybe that’s why I agreed to help him. Because I didn’t want to happen to him what I thought had happened to Jake—to me.

“You’re being ridiculous.” I say instead. “How do you think I could ever entertain the idea of being with somebody else when for the past three months—more than that if you count the time we have actually had together—I’ve been focused on you? On discussing Hannah with you and then talking to you about anything and everything and then worrying about you and then hating you a little for convincing me you should me the one to go into the mine and then mourning you when it was hard to even think about you and then finding you?”

His eyes are wide. I think I’ve rendered him speechless. Which—serves him right. I know he’s not somebody who serves their feelings up on a silver platter. I know that. Obviously, I knew that from the first time I spoke to him. Back when he was nothing more than ??? and I was almost convinced that Dan was right and he was the Man Without A Face—a thought that I now hate with everything in me. But I need him to trust me. Jealousy streak and FBI and the missing persons cases aside, he needs to trust me.

“Trust me.” I cup the sides of his face again. “He’s nothing like you.”

He swallows. “Some people might consider that to be a perk.”

“I don’t.” I say.

And then I’m kissing him and it feels like coming home.

[hazybisou]

❛ HYBE BOY ❜

🧸🩰 i’m a lucky fella, i’ve just got to tell her that i love her endlessly

summary - quinn hughes, captain of the Vancouver Canucks, is dating model, y/n y/l/n and hard launches his relationship leaving people shocked at how beautiful she is and making his brothers question how he managed to pull her.

pairing - model!f!reader x quinn hughes

side note - miranda kerr will be used as a faceclaim for the ig posts. but like she’s so beautiful omgggg 😻😻 *careless whisper starts playing* anyways uni is going so well. my professors are so chill like literally it’s amazing. i barely know anyone here (yes after a whole month here, i only know like 6 people). but uni is amazing my roommate is the best and it’s js a great experience!!

✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫

_quinnhughes

liked by lhughes_06, user01, trevorzegras, and 81,920 others

_quinnhughes i’ll keep this one, thanks. 😃

tagged: @/y/n.y/l/n

view comments

colecaufield found in the wild 🐗🕵️

_quinnhughes ❌

user81 Y/N Y/L/N DATING A HOCKEY PLAYER??!! MY WORLDS ARE COLLIDING 🥲🥲

jackhughes 👁️🌊🫵

user17 jack what is this??! 😭😭

user38 he’s weird

user82 he js built diff

trevorzegras quinnifer got (no) game??!

_quinnhughes at least i have a girl where’s yours *looks around* oh i forgot 🥲

trevorzegras you’re my girl @/_quinnhughes don’t worry 😘

jackhughes AYE!!

_quinnhughes @/jackhughes @/y/n.y/l/n idk what he’s talking abt 😥

y/n.y/l/n trev wishes 😔😔

user93 NOOOO😭!!!!

user72 sad day for us quinn girlies 😔

user57 trevor and quinn are umm…

y/n.y/l/n weird and not okay i know and also very much in love with each other???

user57 yes

y/n.y/l/n have you fixed the bed yet??

_quinnhughes no..

lhughes_06 the beds broken?? oh 😐

y/n.y/l/n he jumped on it to hard and made a leg break

jackhughes YO WHAT

_quinnhughes @/jackhughes in my defense she was chasing me

y/n.y/l/n @/_quinnhughes you caused that to happen when YOU THREW A PILLOW AT ME

_quinnhughes @/y/n.y/l/n IM SORRY TAKE ME BACK

y/n.y/l/n @/_quinnhughes YOURE NEXT TO ME STUPID

trevorzegras ☕️☕️

user92 SHES SO PRETTY OMGGG 💕💕

user29 new wag alert!!!

user69 girlie so fine 😻😻

bradytkachuk emma said to stop forcing her to say you guys are together

ehtkachuk yea bc she’s MY wife not YOUR gf

y/n.y/l/n @/_quinnhughes ^^

_quinnhughes @/bradytkachuk @/ehtkachuk @/y/n.y/l/n why are you all after me 😔😔

colemcward mama y papa? mama. papa.

y/n.y/l/n my son is all alone 😭😭

_quinnhughes he’ll live

colemcward @/_quinnhughes no i won’t

lhughes_06 @/y/n.y/l/n why is he your son and not me???

y/n.y/l/n @/lhughes_06 bc you’re the annoying little brother i wished i had growing up

elblue6 my beautiful daughter 💕💕 and her interesting bf

_quinnhughes i’m your biological son??!

y/n.y/l/n quinny shh 🤫 ALSO MAMA EL 😘😘♥️

user48 parents so cute 🥰🥰

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y/n and quinn had been together in michigan for a week now and his brothers were yet to meet her. she had met his parents a couple months before and they’ve loved her ever since. ellen treated her as if she were her own daughter. they would talk about quinn and his behavior and quinn would be in the back, getting offended. jim was like her second father. he was protective of her and was his little girl even if they weren’t blood related.

the couple were on the couch, all cozy and cuddling when they heard a car pull up outside. quinn looked down at y/n who had her eyes closed, trying to go asleep after being out that day. “babe,” quinn heard a mumble come from the girl, “they’re here.” she grumbled in response.

quinn had told her last night that they would arrive at the lake house tomorrow evening. she was half asleep when he told her so all he got from her was an “okay,” before he began to hear soft snores come from her mouth.

“quinny, let me sleep please,” y/n whispered, “i’ll meet them later.”

quinn just smiled and leaned down to kiss her temple. he rested his head on top of hers and closed his eyes, hoping to sleep as well.

unfortunately, in this household, a good nights sleep was never a thing. that was proven as the front door suddenly burst open which quinn jumped slightly at the action and caused y/n to stir in her sleep, letting out a small whine.

“honey, we’re home!” an, oh, so familiar voice announced.

quinn turned his head to the side and peaked over the couch. as soon as he saw his brothers, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes at their antics and go back to trying to go to sleep.

he heard chattering and the padding of footsteps get closer, indicating they were coming his way. he began to think of a way of how he would get up without waking up y/n. there was no way.

quinn reopened his eyes and saw two figures standing in front of him. “what the fuck?” he questioned and his brothers laughed at his face.

“i see you’ve been having fun.” luke said and his eyes traveled down to y/n’s sleeping figure and he raised an eyebrow at quinn. “like i knew you had a girlfriend but she’s way out of your league.”

quinn let out a fake chuckle. “get the hell out and let us sleep.” he commented and wrapped his arms around y/n, his arm covering her face from jack and luke.

“but we just got here.” jack pointed out and luke murmured in agreement.

“then go up to your rooms.”

“but we want to meet your girlfriend.” luke stated with a fake pout.

quinn glared at the pair. “she’s sleeping so leave,” he stated and closed his eyes, protecting y/n from their view.

“we’re coming back when you’re both wide awake.” jack pointed a finger at quinn before he and quinn went to the front to get their bags and head upstairs.

quinn shook his head and went back to sleep, awaiting the moment of when y/n wakes up.

the couple had surprisingly slept for an hour and a half. it surprised quinn since he knew his brothers and the amount of noise they made whenever one of them were sleeping.

y/n had begun to wake as she had begun to squirm in quinn’s hold. he let out a groan and held her closer to his body, her squirming subsiding. “q, let go.” she mumbled into his chest. he held her tight. “quinn.”

“go to sleep, princess.” quinn whispered, his eyes still closed.

y/n started to squirm once again. “no, i have to meet your brothers as i said before.” she really wanted to meet luke and jack but with quinn’s hold keeping her restrained, it was impossible.

“they can wait.”

“no we can’t.”

quinn snapped his head towards the voice and y/n lifted her head and looked towards the boy. “why are you everywhere luke?”

luke shrugged, “i don’t know,” he sat at the end of the couch, “i just am.”

quinn rolled his eyes and looked down at y/n. “well you’ve met luke,” he told her.

“and the other?”

“i have a name.” jack.

y/n turned towards the boy, “yeah i know. sorry jack.”

jack shrugged and sat next to luke who gave jack a look. “what?” luke stared at him for a second before using all his force to push jack off. he fell with a thud and quinn, luke, and y/n laughed. “asshole.”

“man whore.”

jack looked up at luke. he got up within a second before he pounced onto luke. the two began to fight, jokingly, of course. jack had an arm wrapped around luke who let out a scream. “get off of me.” luke managed to get out despite jack’s arm suffocating him. luke continuously slapped jack’s arm in an effort for his older brother to let go.

“no.” the two continued to fight and quinn and y/n just stayed there laughing at the two.

“well you’ve met thing 1 and thing 2.” quinn said as he looked down at y/n. “i don’t know how they haven’t killed each other in jersey yet.”

y/n looked up at him. “you have a wonderful family.”

“aren’t we just lovely?” luke asked as he wriggled under jack’s hold. “also one more question,” y/n and quinn looked at him, “did quinn force you to get with him?”

jack’s head perked up at this. “oh yeah, did he?” he let go of luke as he turned towards his older brother and his girlfriend.

y/n only chuckled and quinn gave them a death stare. “no, i didn’t. she simply fell in love with me.”

jack and luke looked at each other. suddenly, the two bursted out laughing. both quinn and y/n were confused. they had a look on there face as the younger pair continued laughing. “what?”

“oh, we’re sorry but how is it that a girl like her, take this in a good way, would fall in love with a guy like you?” jack said and luke was still too busy laughing.

quinn looked at them, offended, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“she’s beautiful! and you’re just..you.” luke exclaimed. “like let’s be real here.”

y/n turned to them, “i didn’t fall in love with him because of his looks, i fell in love with him because of his personality,” she looked towards quinn before looking back at the younger brothers, “although sometimes he’s a little interesting.”

“what do you mean interesting?”

“a wet cat.”

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i fucking hate this so much like actually wtff 😭😭 anyways here’s my monthly post and hopefully some of you enjoy it. uni is my new home and umm it’s great!! now my roommate and my friends are making go to a frat tmrw so uhh hopefully it goes well (ik it won’t) wish me luck 🤞

[cheriladycl01]

Ghost - Oscar Piastri x UnknownDriver! Reader Part 3

Plot: Reader is the first female F1 driver of the century, however no-one knows that as you are a ghost on the grid. You started in 2022, coming in P12 in the championship. You get moved to Red Bull Racing in 2023 with the off year for Sergio Perez.

Standing up on the podium, not being able to do anything as you watched Oscar run off was torture. You had to stay there while your national anthem played that should have been amazing considering it was you, Lewis and Lando all up there together.

And of course, there were no breaks for you afterwards. Everyone wanted you, from SkySports, to F1, to Netflix. Everyone was throwing questions at you and asking how different your achievements feel now knowing that your the first woman to have completed many of them.

You were fine answering them, because like they said. All of your previous achievements were now bigger than they were as Ghost. People could tell that you weren't fully with them, you were a little spacey and sometimes struggled with hearing and answering the questions.

Most of them put it down to the post race fuzz of the win and revealing who you were, but upon getting to the Sky Sports Team who consisted of Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg, Natalie Pinkham and Danica Patrick questions turned sour.

"So Y/N aside from racing we caught light of Oscar Piastri's quick depart after the reveal, any insight on this?" Danica asks, making you look down.

"I don't think these questions are necessary" Jenson says just as the Red Bull PR manager was about to ask for racing related questions only.

"Yes please stick to racing questions only" the Red Bull PR backs up, nodding before taking a step back. You look back up, straight to Nico who had a soft look on his face.

"I'm just interested, you raced for Alpine last year when he was a reserve driver... for Alpine and you've been promoted to Red Bull this year while Piastri's made the move to Mclaren. Can't help but wonder if its underlying sexism that's made him this mad, you all cant deny he was blunt and rude in his interview with us earlier" Danica pushes and you head snaps up. You feel a hand on your shoulder as if to stop you from what your about to say but you go ahead anyway.

"I've hurt a dear friend. So how dare you stand there and try to victimize me, when he is the one that I've hurt. He knew me as Ghost's assistant and media manager... we were close and I've not been truthful to him for obvious reasons. So don't stand there and try to make him out to be a misogynistic twat when he isn't. I don't know what you experienced in NASCAR Danica but in F1 all I've experienced today is love and support. Just because your sport sucks doesn't mean mine does" you snap, and recoil shocked that you'd just said all of that. She looks at you also in shock, Jenson and Nico were trying to stop their laughter.

"Well, some strong opinions there from Y/N Y/L/N" Jenson says as he watches you turn away and walk off. You were done with interviews for the day. You just wanted to find Oscar and talk to him now.

"Lando! Lando" you shout as you see the curly haired boy ahead of you walking into the Mclaren motorhome.

"Hey, Y/N or should i say Ghost" he smiles before pulling you into a hug.

"I was not expecting that bombshell today, and I will admit I'm sorry for assuming you were some ugly guy... your very obviously not" he laughs.

"Where's Oscar" you ask, you didn't want to seem rude but of course he was your priority right now.

"Y/N, I don't think its a good idea to see him right now. I think maybe just wait for him to come to you. He's upset and" he starts but you look him dead in the eye.

"He upset me too, he just ran off... at my first race win" you say as selfish as it was... but he also ruined that experience for you.

"I know, but you did like lie to him for just under 2 years" Lando says softly not wanting to rattle your already unstable cage of self hatred.

"And what was i supposed to do Lando, tell him a secret that Red Bull had me sign an NDA over and break my contract and risk loosing my seat?" you ask, hoping he would start to understand.

"Look Y/N you really should go..." Lando pushes looking around the area you were currently in. He put a hand on your lower back as to guide you back out, but you planted yourself still.

"No, I'm not leaving till i talk to him" you grunt.

"Y/N I'm telling you this as your friend and your co-worker. You need to go" he says, you'd actually never seen his eyes this serious before and it had your head cocking to the side in confusion.

As your about to ask him why the hell he's being so twitchy, two people stumble out of the next room a little disheveled and both laughing. You eyes lock on them.

"O-Oscar?" you ask in shock, the girl looks up at him confused and his face turns red but also a sour expression comes onto his face.

Before any of them can say anything your turning away from them, everything feels slow motion, all the voices around you blur and your heartbeat comes erratic.

You couldn't understand why it hurt so much, the thought of him not even for a moment being happy for you up on a podium that he come here to be with some other girl ... or was it because in the time you'd spent with him you'd fallen for the racer.

You round the corner, stumbling behind the Mclaren motorhome so that you could just breath. You crouch down, your head leaning back against the side.

"Fucks sake" you say to yourself, once you'd calmed yourself from the initial shock you fully sat down on the metal edging outside the Mclaren motorhome.

"Y/N?" you hear a voice ask, your head peaks up and you spot Alex and Logan.

"Oh, hey guys. Great Race today!" you smile.

"Why are you just sat outside the Mclaren motorhome?" Logan asks raising an eyebrow at you.

"Oh, erm no reason. I just got lost on my way back to Red Bull" you smile standing up and walking to the long strip and turning left.

"Your still clearly lost, Red Bull's that way" Alex says pointing to the right hand side, that you weren't facing.

"Right, yeah i knew that" you smile, turning round and scuttering off the other way.

To say that the UK was the start of something spectacular was an understatement. You didn't go out and celebrate that night, you stayed in with your family.

The next race was Hungary where you proceeded to take the win away from Max in the last 3 laps, being on the fresher tires. They asked you to let Max take the win but you begged for them to let you fight it out. You shared the podium with Max and Lando, in Spa you came second, sharing the podium with Max and Charles and in The Netherlands you came 4th.

Throughout all of this Oscar hadn't reached out to you. You'd kept in contact with Lando, asking how he was and what had been going on. However Monza changed things.

An article came out about an interview Oscar had done about you and how you hadn't spoken to him since. He hadn't spoken very nicely about you when all you'd done was stick up for him. You guys got into a massive argument outside the garages that of course people caught on camera.

You had a really bad qualifying, the car just didn't have pace and your mind wasn't in the right place. So you were starting P14 on the grid, after a cry to Christian that you were so overwhelmed and him assuring you that it was today that really mattered.

You had turned off everything when you got in the car on the Sunday. No thoughts in your head just the racing. On the start you managed to get yourself to P12 overtaking Liam and Nico right of the bat.

"Excellent start Y/N lets keep pushing"

Martin Bundle - I have to say that Y/N is incredible with these races where she starts down in the back of the grid, and she gets those amazing starts where she slips in the middle of the two drivers ahead and is able to confidently get herself up too places

"Okay, and Alonso are ahead, you have DRS" your engineer tells you, and you are able to overtake Yuki who doesn't go as aggressively into the chicane as you do. You have a little spin but recover enough to pull up aside Alonso on the straight, going for the overtake.

"Amazing Y/N, that's P10 right now. Keep pushing"

Eventually you were left fighting Carlos, Max clipped a tire and was now down in 4th fighting with Charles.

"Y/N this has been a fantastic race, from P14 up to P2, Carlos is 1.8 second ahead. Lets get him and bring home a double podium. Max is fighting for P3 right now. 5 laps to go" he advises.

"Tell him to speed up, I'll give him DRS we can overtake Sainz together so its a 1.2" you advise looking seeing the Ferrari behind you. You slow down on the hairpin, breaking early, which Charles didn't expect where he was concentrating on defending from Max. You speed up, watching as he spins out a little leaving room for Max on the inside.

"Okay, Sainz has sped up there's now a 2.6 second gap"

"Copy that" you say, Max was using your slip stream, but didn't go for the overtake, you easily defended from Charles together while gaining on the other Ferrari.

"Okay last two laps, Sainz, 0.3 second gap"

"Yeah i can fucking tell I'm riding his rear end" you say, the minute you get onto the straight you and Max both go either side of Sainz, sandwiching him in as your about to go into turn 11. He breaks early falling back leaving you to take the optimal racing line and get ahead of Max.

"Is Max fighting this last lap?" you ask.

"He's been told is free to fight. Mode push and bring us another win" your race engineer advises, you breeze through the final lap, it was a close call but you came first.

"Y/N Y/L/N winner of the 2023 Italian Grand Prix" your race engineer says a big grin coming onto your face as you flip up the visor holding your fist up as you see all the Red Bull crew cheering for you on the fencing.

"Where did Oscar place?" you ask, you hadnt thought about him up until now. Even as you passed the orange 81 car, it was just another car then.

"Not a good race for Piastri, P12 behind Lawson"

"Okay. Thank you for the great drive today. Thank you Christian" you say before preparing yourself for the podium.

Would Oscar be there?

Taglist:

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[racinggirl]

furthest from truth

Lando Norris fic - requested

My inbox for requests

a/n: I'm baaack! It's been a while, I have to admit. But after having 3 new requests today, I got motivated again and I decided to write the ones that were yet to be posted on my page. I hope you like it! I've added some spice to the end of the chapter 👀 Don't forget to follow me so you won't miss my other stories! 🫶🏼

Sun. Beach. Sand. Friends.

It might look cliché, but it’s what filled your hearts with joy.

‘’Norris! Give me a hand, will ya?’’ Your lips pulled away from those of your boyfriend the moment he got up to help one of your friends with preparing the jet skis.  

‘’Finally,’’ your best friend, Ava, laughed as she took a seat next to you. ‘’Now that your lips are no longer glued to his, what do you think of grabbing a drink, I’m in a desperate need for a Frozen Daiquiri.’’

She pulled you up on your feet after you agreed on getting drinks. It was your holiday, after all, and even though it was just your first day of the 3-week holiday here in Dubai, you were planning on making it the best holiday yet.

You and Lando had been together for a little over 5 months now, the two of you bumping into each other at last year’s Christmas Market in London. You spilled your bottle of water over your shirt, and he was determined to win you a teddy bear so he could make it up to you.

After that Christmas Market, you went on a ton of dates. In London, but also in Monaco, as that was where he lived. You attended 3 races before he finally asked you to be his last summer, and obviously you said yes, otherwise this story is kind of weird, isn’t it?

Anyways, you knew who he was when you met him, having watched a few races here and there, along with your friends.

The moment you told your friends Lando had asked you out on a date, they couldn’t contain their excitement and practically forced you to go out with him. So, you did. And here we are, almost a year later.

‘’Two Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri, please.’’ Ava ordered the drinks for the two of you and once you felt the cold glass in your hand, you immediately took a sip.

‘’Urgh,’’ you groaned, your eyes closed. ‘’Best drink ever.’’ You giggled.

‘’Lando! Oh my god watch out!’’ Your grip on his life jacket was tight as he was riding the jet ski with you on the back. ‘’You idiot!’’ You laughed, hands gripping his shoulders firmly when you felt him go even faster – if that was even possible.

‘’You’re riding a jet ski with an F1 driver, love. Did you really think I was gonna go slow?’’ You groaned at his reply, and you simply held onto him like you could fall off any moment, which was probably the case.

Everything sport related was a game to him, and he was very, very competitive. He hated losing, which is why he tried his hardest to make you his, with success.

‘’Okay, okay, enough speed for me, let’s go back to the shore and have dinner, I’m starving.’’ You breathe, Lando’s hand moving over your leg slowly. He lifted his hand till it rested on your outer thigh, whilst still steering the jet ski with one hand. Slower, though, thankfully.

‘’We will, love, we will.’’ He said, but you could hear the amusement in his voice, his tone, teasingly with a smirk.

‘’Lan-…’’ You couldn’t even finish your sentence before your boyfriend pulled the right handle towards him, the two of you flying over the water. He made sure to keep an eye on you, but he knew you enjoyed this, and he wasn’t wrong.

You might tell him to stop going fast, heck, even in the bedroom you’d tell him to stop, but it was always with that flirty and teasing tone. He knew that tone, and he knew it meant you did not want him to, in fact, stop. So, he kept going.

‘’I should have thought better before signing that contract about us.’’

You were fully drenched, Lando obviously pushing the strings too hard which caused you to fall off the jet ski. Nothing harsh, it was all playful, and the two of you were laughing when it happened.

‘’You’re an idiot.’’ You smirked, rolling your eyes playfully as you squeezed the salty water out of your hair.

‘’I know, but you like it.’’ He teased, slapping your ass lightly as his hand moved its way towards your hip, his lips pressing a gentle kiss to your temple. ‘’I love you.’’

Dinner, which was absolutely insane – mostly because you were starving, but definitely because it was one of the best restaurants here in Dubai.

‘’Ehm..’’ Ava shoved you her phone, and you immediately let your eyes wander over the tweets, the Instagram posts, and the articles.

Lando saw the worried look on your face, so he cut off the conversation with his friends and pointed his attention to you, causing his friends to do the same.

‘’What’s wrong, love?’’ He asked, his thumb drawing small circles on your knee as his gaze went from you to the phone, back to you.

You showed him the articles, and a heavy sigh escaped his lips. You could see his jaw clench, the apple in his throat bobbing as he swallowed thickly. ‘’They really need to make rumours about everything, don’t they?’’ He sighed and pressed a kiss to your temple.

‘’Don’t worry, Y/N, I’ll fix it, we’ll post a statement on Insta, alright?’’ He said, his arms wrapping around you which caused you to relax.

You felt guilty, because you were aware of the eyes that were on him now that his contract with McLaren was coming to an end. You knew his contract was getting renewed, but the world didn’t, and you didn’t want to cause issues.

People blaming McLaren for not renewing his contract, and how this. People blaming McLaren for forcing Lando to be in a relationship with you, a PR relationship, which was the furthest from the truth. You loved each other so much, and McLaren had absolutely nothing to do with the two of you.

‘’Come here.’’ Lando’s arms made his way around your shoulders, his strong arms pulling you even closer to his chest. The bed was comfy, soft, but the tension in your face was apparent, especially to Lando.

‘’I just, I feel so stupid for saying that.’’ You sighed but Lando reassured you immediately.

‘’Babe, it’s not the first time we say this, it’s our joke, and people don’t get it, apparently. You know how the media is, they exaggerate everything to get those views and clicks, so they probably overheard you saying that, but did not see the look on your face, or your beautiful smile when you said that.’’ His voice was soft and calm, like he was not stressed at all about this.

‘’But the image McLa-..’’

‘’No, baby, no. That’s not your fault, okay? They should have probably announced the contract extension sooner, yeah, but that has absolutely nothing to do with whatever you said at the beach, okay?’’ He said, stern, but gentle. And you believed him. Of course you did, you believed everything he would tell you because you knew he was right.

‘’Now let’s make that post so people will stop complaining about things that are the furthest from the truth. That, and so I can take you tonight because I really, really want to.’’ He whispered the last thing with a voice so deep, you felt chills all over your body.

landonorris added to his story

landonorris & yourusername

liked by user1, user2, user3 and 1,273,710 others

I love you more than anyone imagine. Nothing can stop us, I promise you. Best decision I've ever made 🧡

view all 39,264 comments

user1 I feel ashamed

user5 as you should user3 we all should. how could we think it was just a PR. they are in love in love.

user2 You are so so so cute together!

‘’Lando, fuck, stop!’’ You breathe, hands pushing against his chest as he looked into your eyes, his bright ones a few shades darker than usually. He smirked, wetted his lips before thrusting even harder… Just how you asked.

[insanelyadd]

#LetSansRest Day!

Hello everyone and welcome to year two of Let Sans Rest Day! Same as last year it's August 9th.

Before we get into some prompts, a little bit of a mission statement. Last year I said this day was for everyone who's a fan of Sans Undertale or anyone who's tired of every image they see of him being him Suffering. This is still true, but I do want to additionally address something I saw a few different people mention.

I have actually received criticism for daring to suggest that Sans not be tormented to the point of insanity, and that this day where I implore people to make realities where Sans doesn't become a creepypasta insane murderer man from the agony he is subjected to, isn't a stand against ableism like Let Papyrus Say Fuck Day is. *stares in bipolar psychosis and PTSD directly into your eyes* Obviously that's a load of shit, and even though Sans is more popular than Papyrus (I say, as a Papyrus Enjoyer) a lot of the content around Sans is very specifically about him suffering. So simply out of spite for these comments (including someone who saw last year's announcement and directly commented "No <3" on the post) I will be continuing this holiday indefinitely, just like LetPapyrusSayFuck Day. Die mad about it.

Just like how I have ADHD and relate to Papyrus and see the way the fandom treats him as the infantilization of neurodivergency like autism and ADHD, I can look at works in this fandom of Sans that demonize traits of mental illness like trauma, hallucinations, delusions, and mania. And I can say these are both bad actually. Not going to call anyone a bad person for engaging in these things, of course, that would be a bit goofy of me, I'm just saying the imagery used for these things is Very Loaded and a lot of people are mishandling them.

So anyways August 9th is the day we let Sans Undertale out of his Torment Nexus so he can:

Have lemonade at the beach or pool

Go stargazing while camping out in the woods with friends and family

Get smothered in cute baby kittens and puppies

Go to therapy and play with one of those magnetic sculptures all therapists seem to own

Take a nap on an inner-tube on a lazy river

Get to see the leaves change color for the first time

Play basketball with Papyrus

Fall asleep in a basket of freshly dried clothes

Go to a public greenhouse to look at all the different flowers on the surface

Perform stand-up for humans who all love his terrible puns

Please tag the post with #LetSansRest, #Sans, and #undertale as well as any other applicable tags for characters, relationships, etc. This day is primarily for classic Sans but it's not like I can stop you from drawing Fell Sans not being subjected to his own, personal, goth-themed Torment Nexus.

This is meant to be a day for everyone who wants Sans Undertale to go to therapy and feel better. People who want to put him in a hamster cage with plenty of things to prank for enrichment. People who want to win him one of those massive stuffed animals at the county fair.

If you want to participate please be mindful of some things:

I will be monitoring the tag to reblog things! I have ptsd and would appreciate if ships involving Papyrus or Frisk (and similar) with Sans are avoided. This is simply for my mental health and I greatly appreciate it. <3

Do Not post angst to the #LetSansRest tag. It is meant to be an angst free tag for him.

Don't worry if you can't participate on the exact day! Just like with #LetPapyrusSayFuck Day you can use the tag and post to it any day! :>

Hope you're able to participate and have fun! <3

[serv0z]

RAHHH a drawing of all the sillies currently occupying my brain right now. Funny thing is!! My last LN related drawing was posted almost exactly a year ago!! how funny! Close-ups and yapping under the cut

I'm running on 3 hrs of sleep bc i stayed up till 5am to make this and then i had a neurologist appt at 8 so!!! (i got officially diagnosed with adhd or add we win, i already forgot which one he said but i get my meds tmrw!!) I might take a nap after this im so exhausted. ANYWAYS.!!! i love. flowey and clover friendship no one start yelling at me abt how flowey didnt care!!! theyre best friends to me!!!! and it works out as im a clover kinnie nd floweys been my comfort character for years now. we win. I don't think monsters really had binders at first (dont use bandages btw guys, dont be like Starlo was!!11) I think the first time one fell into the trash dump or wtvr someone picked it up and then once figuring out its uses just!! boom!! business!! figuring out how to safely make more and!!! finding ways to accommodate certain monsters with different body types!! esp with the spikes and such. Ceroba def helped Starlo out with his bandages often before they were able to get him a binder. the one where clovers drawing is !! an idea of revived!clover or clover staying in the underground in hiding. Martlet got him that shirt :)) and obv the bell earring is from Ceroba. sorry to all my cotl followers i STILL have no colored the 5 body refs of both narinder and lambert. I picked the colors here on a whim so uhmmm it's not official!!! not yet anyways!! i do like what i used for Narinders fur tho, so that might stay idk yet i hte coloring BNJKNKSD i colored this whole thing on a wild impulse.. thus staying up all night. I think clover would really enjoy waterfall if they were ever able to visit it after or during the whole soul thing. It's peaceful and beautiful and also one of my fav areas in base game sooo :) i missed my LN kids. I reread Raccoons on ao3 and remembered how much i loved them and their silly lil dynamic. im a #1 six defender btw i WILL throw hands if u say some wrong shit abt her. mono, less so bc i think a lot of people have a good grasp on his character now but six is ALWAYS villainized. Has been for years nd it ticks me off bc?? she was right for her actions kinda?? not really?? ofc both characters made bad choices that lead to it but dont disregard her feelings either? idk its a whole thing i cant get into on THIS post. a lot of the doodles are just random moments like Six in the Maw with their bigass keys and locks, maybe its one of the ones to the kitchen and thats why she's rushing :D? Mono isnt really. he wasnt meant to be in the end game room but i wanted funky lighting so do with that as u will. Silly stuff with RK and Six, RCG I DID NOT FORGET ABOUT U HUN <333 I JUST DONT HAVE A DESIGN FOR YOU YET!!! same for Low and Alone </3 RK with the nomes my beloved <333 nd ofc the last dance based on the animation on youtube!!! do not tag any of the ln kids as ship!!! and do not tag clover and flowey as a ship either!! only two im fine with in this drawing is staroba or narilamb oki goodnight

[centrally-unplanned]

Saw this really cool post of a 1982 "SF" (Science fiction but in Japan that included things like anime, manga, tokusatsu, etc at the time) magazine that did a survey of active fan groups/circles at the time - ~woo, precious data! Lets see what we got:

Love to see a good gender breakdown - as is often the case in these things, while it is of course majority men the number of women participating is very strong. You do notice the age imbalance there - many women in their teens and college-aged, but it drops off quickly. I suspect that this is primarily because this survey is right in the middle of the first wave of the "pop SF boom", where more approachable works like Gundam and new manga subgenres were rapidly growing the community. So the older cadre was more heavily men, while the new group is more balanced. However, this is the early 1980's - it might just be that when a woman graduates college she was expected to marry and "settle down" still, inhibiting participation in these kinds of groups. I think it is primarily the former, Japan had pretty rapidly changed in the 1970's and female creative types were commonplace by then, but I won't pretend the latter players no role.

The writing on this page just contextualizes the piece, not much to report, though it does note that "3 people replied 'other' for gender...as a joke!" Sure, jan!

Anyway, on to page 2, what is our poll question of the day...

ロリコンについてどう思いますか? What do you think about lolicon?

....*siiiiiighs* guys I didn't, I didn't look at the second page before typing this up! I just wanted to report the gender data! This just happens to me, I swear -_-

But I can't back out now I guess:

It actually splits the question by gender - men are asked "are you a lolicon" while women are asked "what do you think of guys who are lolicon" - sexists, way to erase the female lolicon. Not actually joking there, it is a quite a thing due to its overlap with rape and dubcon fetishes - but I won't pretend I have expertise on the prevalence of that in 1982 Japan's SF community, even if it you see it today. Anyway, most men are not lolicons (the tallest line), though others fall on a spectrum from interested to "graduated", certainly a choice of words one could make.

Funnily a good dozen say they are called that by others, but not themselves - I believe that is related to the vague line between loli & shoujo aesthetics at the time. Which is important to emphasize, as I always do on this topic - sometimes the word lolicon just means "youthful" or "cute", sometimes it means like high schoolers, and sometimes it means real-deal underage stuff, and you won't know without context.

Meanwhile two women label lolicon men as "cute!", good for those two living their truth, while others are broadly tolerant but have Opinions. Which is fun, because the rest of the page is people sharing said opinions, sorted into "good" or "bad"! Some choice ones:

★ It's a symptom of modern civilization’s sick parts, but also an inevitable phenomenon. It’s better than having a rabbit or cat complex. Don’t lay hands on young girls. Lolicon must remain platonic. (♂/19/)

You see this theme a bit, "symptom of modernity", the new sexual fetishes are a product of a changing world. Certainly up for debate, but also very "in vogue" for the 80's & 90's to worry about that sort of declinist narrative. Then again, guy is a catgirl and bunnygirl hater, not sure we should listen to their shit taste.

On the flip side you get the "natural way of things" types, of which this is my favourite:

★ There’s nothing abnormal about having a dream involving an uncontrollable urge towards pre-teens. Even Romeo and Juliet would have made Romeo a lolicon given Juliet’s age (14), but people don’t think of it that way. Only at that age can girls love and respect men without ulterior motives. (♂/19/)

That last line, you are telling me so much about you with that one!! You can see how this is discourse, right? Like if one side says you are a "symptom of modernity" you ofc respond with "this is how all guys are" and with callbacks to traditional culture.

The "bad" side has a lot of ruthless condemnation, with more than one call for the lolicons to simply die or labelling them worthless scum. The magazine's writers do try to keep the tone breezy but I do think this topic being actually contentious in the community pokes through here. Though this serious one really did undercut herself a bit at the end:

★ I can understand why one person of the same gender might feel admiration or affection for a child or young girl, but for a man to only be able to love much younger women? That’s a mental illness! If they aren’t willing to fix themselves, they might as well die. They’re enemies of women. It's not going to turn out like Nabokov's Lolita. (♀/20s/)

I mean they did also kill jesus Humbert Humbert in Lolita. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. like i understand where you’re coming from here but they very much did kill the Lolita guy.

There is an editorial at the end, and it echoes something one of the comments also states; that the lolicon boom was seen as coming from "hard" SF fans, the people who did the really nerdy stuff. There is a word they use actually which is neat: 根暗/Nekura, meaning someone with a "gloomy root". It began seeing use as a slang for hyper-serious, boorish people in the late 1970's and became a fad to use in precisely 1982 - here is a live record of that! They associate "hard SF" fans with these sort of gloomy types who can't take a joke or appreciate hanging out with the buds at a bar, that kind of thing. From there, and here I am reading between the lines, these fans like a sort of "idealistically sterile" world, and lolicon as a preference (in comparison to Real Adult Women) flows naturally.

I mention this because astute readers might be going "oh, like otaku?" and that word was only just buzzing around at this time - it is typically dated to 1983. The editorial writers note that these nekura-types are nowadays proud of that fact, wearing it like an identity:

A: I’m not really sure why, I don’t fully understand the inner workings of the SF world, but it’s like, out there, hardcore SF fans are considered gloomy. Maybe that’s why there’s this connection to lolicon? B: But surprisingly, everyone’s actually pretty cheerful. In today’s world, the 'dark and gloomy tribe' is trendy. It’s like they’re enjoying calling themselves gloomy, almost as a fashion statement.

So yeah, I can totally see proto-otaku discourse going on at the edges here.

There is a third page but it continues in a similar vein. A bunch of mentions of Hideo Azuma, who I am growing increasingly convinced was more of a lodestone for the lolicon boom than is currently appreciated - he is the ur-reference everyone makes. More discussion of girls in sailor uniforms as a gateway drug, yeah yeah, "is fine as long as its fiction", of course of course, one of the magazine editors remarking he wants "a wife for practical uses but a daughter as a pet" yeah okay we can call it we're done here, no more survey data anyway.

Not the topic I expected to find, but still this is really valuable "primary source data" - you can't trust the literary class fully on these things, having first hand quotes from community members on otaku culture in the era is always valuable.

Sorry if you got tricked into reading this - in my defense I did too!

[soaps-mohawk]

Okay so in case you were wondering why I turned anon off, and won't be turning it on probably for a while, I'm here to deliver receipts.

This is a long post so I'm putting it under a cut

There's been a few cases over the last week or so of people purposefully using other anon's emojis to send asks (not all of these were questionable or malicious. If you accidentally used one already claimed, this post is NOT about you.)

It was brought to my attention by a few anons that asks were sent that were not them. A lot of these asks weren't malicious or harassing which makes it hard to tell. As is the nature of anonymous asks, I cannot tell who sends them without some kind of sign-off or emoji, hence the use of emojis. While I believe not all of these were on purpose (see above), some of them absolutely were.

This started before the debacle about a week or so ago with ♾️ anon (which it has been confirmed that the person who asked to use that emoji was not behind the anonymous asks using that emoji) harassing me about not answering their ask. I took a screenshot of said ask, and this was what they were harassing me about

When I had anon on, I'd get a lot of asks. Sometimes as many as 20 or 30 a day. I am one person running this blog, and it takes me a while to get through asks sometimes. Most people who have ever sent asks to popular blogs (which still pains me to call this one popular) knows it can take sometimes days to get an answer because we get a lot of asks constantly.

Honestly, I wasn't going to answer this one anyway because...it's odd. Especially the timing because this was sent after chapter 29 was posted, right before chapter 30, in which neither chapter had smut in it. I know some people really love angst though so I didn't want to yuck anyone's yum, it was just very odd.

So, as I do, I start with the bottom of the inbox where the oldest asks are and I work my way up to the most recent (there are exceptions in the case of asks related to a post I just made, or asks that are easy to answer with just a few words or a gif versus a long thought out answer).

Anyway about a day after that ask was sent, I got others from that anon asking if I got their ask.

Then I made a post mid-breakdown about life sucking and the horrible position I was in (See here)

They then sent in THIS ask and got publicly shamed as they should.

A day or so goes by and I start to get a flood of asks in my inbox. Some are normal-ish, kind of odd but I'm used to kind of odd questions.

Then I start to get these

Obviously those aren't those anons. Figured that out pretty fast after a few hours of them sitting in my inbox.

Soon after I get this ask as I was getting ready for a job interview and went off because I was already stressed as fuck about the interview.

And then of course after I posted that I get this in response which I took a screenshot of and answered before blocking that anon.

And as I kind of had an inkling about, those asks above as well as several other strange ones in my inbox disappeared after blocking that anon. So it had been one perpetrator behind those at least (which was not the person who claimed that emoji that was a big misunderstanding on my part and that has since been solved and resolved.)

BUT that is not the end of this story.

As the weekend happens and the chapter is posted, I continue to get asks sent in by anons with emojis and continue to get messages from either anons saying they are that emoji anon and they didn't send that in, or those anons privately messaging me and saying they didn't send those in.

So we were having several cases of emoji stealing.

I also continue to get questionable, downright harassing asks, including these two.

That last one is what broke the camel's back and what made me turn anon off. I don't know if I'm the only one getting anons like this or if this is some new fart anon trend or what, but...look. I'm all for getting horny in my inbox. But things like this?? These kinds of things border on sexual harassment and honestly, they made me feel gross. I literally felt gross after reading those.

I don't mind being told a change of panties was necessary after smut chapters but after an angst chapter?? The timing of it was what made me suspicious. If they had sent that about three chapters ago I might not have looked twice at it.

You wanna tell me you had to pull out the willy stick for a chapter, cool. Just don't tell me what hole it was in and how long. I don't need to know that much detail. You wanna send that about fictional characters?? That's what we're here for. But I don't need to know that about YOU. I have boundaries and I'm going to add this to my rules list.

These asks definitely felt like someone very immature (and likely underage) sent them which makes me feel more disgusted about it.

I blocked that anon and the ones above. I just got pushed over the edge by people not being respectful and KNOWINGLY using others emojis making me not able to trust that an anon is who they claimed to be. Between that and the harassing asks above (which were just a select few) I decided to turn anon off indefinitely. Sorry to all my anons who aren't comfortable coming off anon but I just can't do it anymore. If you previously were an anon and are comfortable sending asks, you can still use your emoji. I don't mind that at all.

So yeah, that's the long story of why I turned anon off, and the receipts of the disgusting harassing asks I was getting. Hopefully having anon off indefinitely will make those sickos grow bored of waiting and force them to reevaluate their lives or mature enough to realize they were being stupid (cautiously hopeful but probably not.) If the internet has taught us anything, it's that trolls are gonna troll into adulthood and they will never reach the point of maturity to realize they're just being stupid. That's why they live in their parents' basement alone with no friends.

[scoobydoodean]

Okay so in 1.03 Dead In The Water, there's this exchange Sam and Dean have at one point in regards to Lucas—the little boy who watched his dad drown, who Dean connects with during the episode:

DEAN Andrea said the kid never drew like that till his dad died. SAM There are cases—going through a traumatic experience could make people more sensitive to premonitions, psychic tendencies. DEAN Whatever's out there, what if Lucas is tapping into it somehow? I mean, it's only a matter of time before somebody else drowns, so if you got a better lead, please.

And the last time I watched this episode, I went "Oh cool! A little Psychic!Sam Easter Egg." Right? Sam goes through the traumatic experience of losing Jess, and he's tapped into "whatever's out there" (the yellow eyed demon) and he's having premonitions about what he's going to do next. Which definitely makes a lot of sense.

But when I was gif-ing stuff from 1.03 today, I realized that... funnily enough, within the context of this episode we also have some fun stuff relating to the "slightly psychic Dean" posts that have gone around this year... Or if you prefer, Cassandra!Dean. Cassandra, in reference to the prophet in Greek myth, cursed by Apollo to utter true prophecies but never be believed.

Dean often knows when bad things are going to happen in Supernatural. He doesn't have visions—but he has "bad feelings" and makes predictions that turn out to be scarily accurate at times. Of course we can infer that Dean is just good at 1) reading people and 2) understanding how sequences of events tumble one by one in a row like so many dominoes. It's another sign of his incredible intelligence. But it IS fun to think about Dead In The Water as the first indication of Cassandra!Dean.

First, because Lucas has premonitions, and Lucas and Dean are paralleled and connect on an emotional level.

Dean and Lucas have similar traumatic childhood experiences. Both watched a parent die and both lost the ability to speak afterwards:

DEAN You're scared. It's okay. I understand. See, when I was your age, I saw something real bad happen to my mom, and I was scared, too. I didn't feel like talking, just like you. But see, my mom—I know she wanted me to be brave. I think about that every day. And I do my best to be brave. And maybe, your dad wants you to be brave too.

Dean is able to connect with Lucas through their shared traumatic experience. He's the only one who's able to get through to him—and after a short conversation and just drawing together for a while—much to his mom's shock. Dean is able to understand what Lucas is feeling without Lucas saying it.

Second, because Lucas has bad feelings that tell him the locations where the spirit will strike next, but no one listens to/believes him.

...Kind of like people usually don't listen to/believe Dean's bad feelings.

DEAN Anyway. Well, maybe you don't think anyone will listen to you, or, uh...or believe you. I want you to know that I will. You don't even have to say anything. You could draw me a picture about what you saw that day, with your dad, on the lake.

Of course, this line is just Dean paralleling Lucas with himself and his own reasons for not speaking, but it must hit home, because Lucas begins communicating with Dean through drawings.

Further, despite Sam also knowing Lucas is having premonitions, when Lucas reacts with extreme distress to the idea of going home and clings to Dean desperately, Sam still... doesn't think it means anything. He thinks the case is over.

Third, Dean has a bad feeling that the case isn't over, and Sam doesn't believe him.

The sheriff had just threatened to arrest them if they stayed in town, so of course going back to town is a big deal. When Dean turns around based on a bad feeling, Sam thinks he's just being paranoid.

SAM But Dean, this job, I think it's over. DEAN I'm not so sure. SAM If Bill murdered Peter Sweeney and Peter's spirit got its revenge, case closed. The spirit should be at rest. DEAN All right, so what if we take off and this thing isn't done? You know, what if we've missed something? What if more people get hurt? SAM But why would you think that? DEAN Because Lucas was really scared. SAM That's what this is about?

Dean sticks to his guns, and they arrive just in time to save Lucas's mother from drowning in a bathtub.