#as soon as I get my printer set up in my new house

[pushing500]

Hey! I just wanna say I binged the whole Mechanitor’s Message saga last night, I just forgot to like the posts as I was going through :P I love the Jones boys so much, I wanna draw Kwahu with his nice braid sometime <3

I'm so happy you liked the story, and I hope you'll stick around to see where things go!! ❤️❤️

If you do end up drawing anything, I'd love to see it if you're up to sharing! 😁

[always-outlander]

Easter Eggs and Spoilers for 7x03 below the cut! 

The Big House

The big house burns - and we learn that Arch Bug had been hiding a secret right beneath Jamie and Claire’s nose. But what I found especially interesting about this storyline (and even more so when I first read the books), was the discovery that their obituary was written in error, and why.

Claire and Jamie remark that it is not January at the time that the house burns down, and it’s clearly not even Fall in the show (in the books the house burns on December 21st). Claire also makes a comment about how newspapers never get anything correct, which is comical considering Jamie’s previous profession as a printer.

In the epilogue of A Breath of Snow and Ashes, we discover that the news of their deaths was reported by a reader of the local paper in Wilmington, and was used to fill a page beneath General Washington’s address to the troops. Spoiler territory, but it was actually Tom Christie who heard of the big house fire and wanted to put a formal obituary in the paper to honor Claire and Jamie. We see that Tom is very much still alive in the preview for this week’s episode, so that will cover the rest of that storyline.

But back to the book epilogue. The printer admits that he was told the news of their deaths in December, but printed the date as January because he had set the page in a specific font which had been missing the November and December slugs, and would have had to type it out in separate letters (which he did not feel was worth it, since after all, they are dead).

1980’s

Back in the future, we are in Inverness with Fiona and her husband and daughters. We briefly see Jemmy and Fiona’s kids playing in the yard, with Mandy in the bassinet and implied to be recovering from her heart surgery. The year is 1980 but it’s implied they have been there for a little while now - I know a lot of people were confused as to why there was such a time jump. Claire and Jamie are in 1776, and while Claire always says she went back 200 years, we will soon learn once Roger begins writing his book on time travel that it’s not exact every time.

There, Fiona gives Bree and Roger a mystery box which had been delivered to Reverend Wakefield’s former address and kept by the bank for over 200 years. In the books, Claire and Jamie deliver this chest to a bank in Edinburgh once they arrive back in Scotland so that one day in the future it would be delivered to Jemmy. So to ensure that no one else would ever open the box at that time, they gave strict instructions that it not be opened by anyone other than the name on the top, and used Jemmy’s full name (presumably so that no other Scot with a similar name could claim it as theirs). We see them writing those letters in this episode to Brianna and Roger, updating them as to what has happened and their journey to Scotland.

In the books, the end of A Breath of Snow and Ashes is Bree reading the letter and line “we are alive”, then the book ends. I like that we don’t have that cliffhanger here and can see this storyline unfold right away as it is one of my favorites from the books. In this moment we were able to get excerpts from a few more letters which are taken directly from An Echo in the Bone, and can see how Jamie and Claire had both taken turns writing to the McKenzie’s.

In the books, the box includes letters, two books, and Sawnee, Jamie’s toy snake from his brother. In the show, they included a musket ball which we saw them making out of the stolen French gold in the episode. Another difference is that in the books, the letter is written on December 31st, ten days after the fire. In the show, it’s written in April.

Bree and William

In Echo in the Bone, the opening scene takes place with Bree and Roger still in Wilmington, and standing with William watching Stephen Bonnet tied up in the harbor (obviously this has been rearranged in the show, since the Bonnet storyline wrapped up in Season 5). It is on the shore that she meets William, and William meets Mandy and Jemmy as well. Then we cut to Lallybroch in September of 1980, where Bree and Roger are continuing to read the first letter from Claire. Having been so immersed in the show, it’s easy to forget how many storylines they have moved around from the books.

Like the books, Roger points out that Bree’s matches are in fact the thing that caused the fire of the Big House while reading Claire’s letter. He points out that in trying to prevent their deaths they had succeeded, and changed the future. This is reminiscent of Claire and Jamie’s journey to France and how their attempts to prevent an event were likely the very thing that caused it.

Ian and William

Back at the Big House, Claire, Jamie and Ian are going through the rubble in search of anything they can recover. Amongst the items are a few of Claire’s books, Jamie’s old tartan, and a piece of the french gold. Young Ian is also able to recover the portrait of William that Lord John had given Jamie.

In the books, Ian had been suspicious of William’s parentage the first time he met him as a child back on the Ridge when he and Lord John had visited. He had recognized his stubborn nature as one that mirrored Jamie’s and his mother’s, but never made mention of it to Jamie. In the show they took this opportunity to have Jamie and Ian share that really lovely moment. You can tell what a relief it has been to Jamie each and every time someone else learns of this secret he has been harboring. And Ian has such a huge role in Jamie’s life as his only true remaining family to be with him now. I really think John Bell is the perfect Young Ian.

French Gold

Arch Bug and Jamie have their inevitable confrontation where he admits that he had been taking it back from Hector Cameron bit by bit each time he was sent to River Run. For backstory and a refresher, Jocasta Cameron (Jamie’s aunt) was married to a man named Hector Cameron, who we briefly saw in a flashback during season 4. Hector, his brother in law Dougal (Jamie’s Uncle), and a third man (who we now know was Arch Bug’s Laird, Malcolm Grant) had the gold and intended to use it to support the Jacobite cause and aid Charles Stuart’s rebellion.

When Hector Cameron and Jocasta fled Scotland after the rising, they took their share of the Jacobite gold with them and used it to fund River Run. It was during that journey that Hector accidentally killed he and Jocasta’s daughter, Morna. Arch felt that the gold was misused and Hector was a traitor to Scotland and the cause. He felt it was his duty to take it back, and in doing so he stole from Jamie’s family. Jamie terminates Arch’s employment at the Ridge and releases him of his oath to him.

In the books this moment is substantial because the Bugs are less of background characters and we have seen how much they mean to the Frasers. The show isn’t able to capture that properly, and even more so with Mrs Bug. It isn’t until An Echo in the Bone where Mrs. Bug returns to the Big House in search of the remaining gold where she is mistaken for Arch and is killed by Ian. She was a grandmother figure to Ian whom he deeply loved and appreciated so this was heartbreaking in the books. I suspect in episode 4 we will see Ian and Rachel meet and perhaps by the end of this first half of season 7 we will have Arch return. In the books he goes after Rachel a few times, as Ian is in love with her. William is the one who saves her a few times, and I’m looking forward to him and Ian interacting with one another for the rest of this season.

Return to Scotland

Back on the Ridge, time has passed (as made evident by Claire’s hair). Jamie and Claire discuss where they might set out to build another house, and they share a conversation about where they would like their body’s buried should either of them be killed which is direct from the books. Jamie tells Claire that he wishes to first return to Scotland, as he had promised Ian and Jenny that he would return young Ian to them. With the war looming, it is now or never. They agree that they should go and begin making plans to travel back across the ocean to Lallybroch.

In the books he does not admit that to Claire right away but instead says his reason for returning is to fetch his printing press. The Ridge is no longer a safe place for them while there is so much unrest regarding Malva and now Mrs Bug. Claire thinks they can go live with Fergus and Marsali in New Bern, and it is then Jamie tells her he wishes to bring Ian home and have him avoid the war.

That night, while in bed, Claire can hear Jamie praying. In the books, he leaves their room and goes to a small pool or water near their cabin to pray, and Claire finds him there only to pick up on him praying to God to let him be enough. I enjoyed how this scene was shot in the show better, to be honest. And rolls perfectly into the following morning when Jamie tells Claire of his most recent dream.

The frequency of Jamie’s dreams of the future seem to be increasing, and this time he tells Claire that he saw the McKenzie’s. They were walking up to a house, and looked happy. He is able to tell Claire the name of the woman speaking to them both, Fiona, which Claire knows she had not shared with Jamie before. He also tells Claire that Jemmy was trying to talk to him through a box he’d never seen before, and she tells him it is a telephone.

To hide what was left of the French Gold, Jamie uses some of it for musket balls and the remainder he puts into a chest. He and Claire then return to a cave that we find out he used to come to with Jemmy. Inside the cave, Jamie shows Claire the remains of a Spanish man who died there. This is later important in Jamie’s cryptic letter to Roger and Bree which reveals Jemmy holds the key to finding it. The storyline with Jemmy in the future gets very interesting, and I feel like the cliffhanger for the end of this first half of the season might be his kidnapping.

A New Knife

Back on the Ridge, Jamie and Claire share a scene straight from the books where he gives her a new knife for their journey. There are lots of direct quotes from the books, minus a few dirty comments from Jamie. The two blood the blade and call back to the iconic line from their wedding, “Blood of my Blood” with a reworked version of their theme song.

I loved this parallel to their wedding, where Claire was not given a choice to share her blood and partake in this act. Now, we see her blood her own blade willingly and choose Jamie once again. The theme of Echo and the Bone is definitely heavy on Jamie’s self worth and Claire choosing him over and over again. Their strength as a couple will be needed more than ever this season, so I like that they are reinforcing that with these scenes.

Lallybroch

At the end of the episode, Bree and Roger drive up to Lallybroch. Ironically they were filming at when I was in Scotland last year and my tour was cancelled because they ended up extending filming due to rain. While there, Bree explains to Roger how much he would have loved the house in its hay day. They cut to a shot of Bree sitting on the steps looking through the gate like Claire had back in season 3 imagining Jamie there. Worried they are trespassing when another car arrives, they learn that the property is actually up for sale. When we see them in the future again in the books they had already purchased it, so I liked getting to see this scene in the show. The house is so central to their storyline and feels like a strong return to seasons 1 and 2. When Jamie and Claire go back to Scotland this season the two couples will be at Lallybroch simultaneously across time and I think that will be incredible to watch.

Wilmington again

Claire and Jamie travel to Wilmington (doesn’t it feel like they just left and were only home on the ridge for a long weekend) and along the way Claire spots Adso. She knows she cannot take him with her and sadly leaves him in the woods to live out his life at the ridge. She has a moment where the reality of their home being gone again hits her all at once and they have a really touching scene where she sees the stake that Jamie first put down in season 4 when they arrived at Fraser's Ridge.

She asks Jamie if they will make it back there one day, and he admits he never thought he’d see Scotland again but the Ridge is where they are bound, so they will. This ties back to his conversation with Bree where she tells him that the freedom gained in this war is worth fighting for, so Jamie knows he must take part. To wrap a nice bow around the episode, Claire says to him that he will always be enough for her, and it was the sweetest moment as the two ride off towards their next adventure in Wilmington as they prepare to travel to Scotland.

A good episode, pacing is still quite quick, but I’m enjoying this season a lot.

[xtrablak674]

Make Mine Apple

Let's be clear I never had a computer growing up in any of the homes I resided in, whether my mom's apartment, my god-grandma's house or my paternal grandparents home. Computers weren't a thing even considered or even a forethought. But I have been fascinated with computers since I was a child and more widely technology. I wouldn't be as bold to say I was a futurist, but I loved the idea of a future where humans used technology in smart ways. This is a philosophy that I still hold on to today.

Apple Macintosh SE

My first computer was an Macintosh SE, sold by Apple from nineteen eighty-seven to nineteen ninety. I got one used from my friend Ricardo 'Campi' Guzman. I can't recall how much I paid him for this very classic Mac but I never regretted it once. It traveled with me on my four month European tour and was a staple in the publishing of my early nineties zine Fashion Fag Magazine. Based on this that would mean I got it from him sometime around ninety-four when I signed the lease for my first apartment, and I gave it back to him as payment for removing the carpets in my current apartment in ninety-seven. The three best years of my life with my first Apple computer, which for all intensive purposes was a portable computer albeit it nearly weighed twenty pounds. I remember when we traveled on tour I always insisted to the flight attendants that I always board with my computer and my Apple Stylewriter printer that was also in the bag I got from Campi.

Apple Powerbook 5300

Part of the goal of my ninety-six European tour was to save up for a laptop and I had my eye on the 5300 released in nineteen ninety-five. I didn't realize at the time that this was not only the first of Apple's Powerbook series but also the one with the most manufacturing problems that lead Apple to replacing mine with an Apple Powerbook 1400c

Albeit this being a black mark on Apple it was very exciting for me as a customer and a fan to have purchased one Apple laptop and then a few months later get a brand spanking new Apple laptop for at no additional cost.

Apple Powerbook 1400c

This Powerbook was sold from ninety-six to ninety eight and as I said replaced my fifty-three hundred. I still have this laptop today and it still works. I briefly lent it to my grandmother who used it as a word processor for her church projects. At nearly seven pounds it was half the weight of my SE and it found itself a lot of the time traveling around with me in the hard-plastic German children's backpack that I had acquired during my European tour.

If I recall correctly this fourteen hundred was the very laptop I was pretending to work on when my supervisor at Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners extended my temp assignment indefinitely having learned that not only did I know how to use Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator but was quite technologically savvy with all of the Microsoft Office applications also. I want to be clear I deliberately did this in an effort to illustrate my value beyond someone who can just set up food for a meeting which is why I initially was recruited.

On this laptop I would produce my last issues of Fashion Fag Magazine and also create The Streetwalker a newsletter for the New York Peer AIDS Coalition the non-for profit that I volunteered at after leaving GMHC over creative differences. It was a golden time for me with the burgeoning of the internet I would soon need to upgrade to something for a more modern time. America Online was cute, but the beginning of the end of dial-up internet was coming.

Apple iMac G3

This all-in-one desktop computer was sold from nineteen ninety-eight to two thousand and three, I acquired the tangy orange one and used this quite powerful and underrated model to launch my design firm specializing in websites, branding and product design. It also was my partner in my fledging fine art photography career being the first of my computers in which I started to archive and edit my photos with the very adult applications like Lightroom.

Before I lent this computer to my late brother and his wife, where it would meet its demise, it was present as I first started exhibiting my work publicly transforming from a graphic artist to a fine artist. This computer was present for my first and last long term relationship and my exploration of high speed internet with DSL and consequently Cable. Those previous laptops had been all about that dial-up life, something I had now left behind me for the faster speeds of Internet 1.0.

Apple Macbook Pro

Introduced two-thousand six I acquired mine in early 2008 a fifteen inch I remember it cost around three thousand dollars this was not just a computer but an investment and one that paid off for me in triplicate.

Wow, this laptop was with me through my return to corporate America now as a freelancer, my various art exhibitions including my New York Times reviewed show, presenting my work nationally, internationally and at museums. It came along with me for my trips to India and Africa, it entertained my nephew during his visits, edited my fledging dabbles in video, and my first short film.

I have Adobe's Creative Suite on here Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash and Lightroom, Microsoft Office, Excel, Adobe Acrobat and of course Apple's own iMovie, I never did learn Adobe Premier just never having the opportunity. I felt like I could do anything with this computer and I did. I stepped up my pussy game creating the most impressive proposals for my art, letterhead for my fine art career, impressive graphics, promotional materials, and the highest resolution for the birth of my art into the real world.

This would also be my last proper computer. After this baby I wouldn't need as much power and would move my computing to the iPad (3rd Generation) then my first iPad Pro 10.5" and now my iPad Pro 11" which I am writing this missive on with my Apple Magic Keyboard, which has seen better days.

Unlike a nibling of mine who must own stock in Apple and owns, the Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, Macbook Air and AirPods I have always found its best to limit myself to my technology especially if I can find everything in one device I don't need the redundancy. I stopped wearing a watch years ago, I have been adamant I never want a cellphone, as I just said my days of heavy lifting are over so no more need for a laptop and I have never liked things in my ears. Besides my iPad Pro can make phone calls and tell the time, I don't need it tracking my biometrics.

I also think I am from a generation who actually enjoys mono-use appliances. I own a turntable and a set of Yamaha studio speakers for my return to vinyl. I ditched my microwave for an induction cooker, and utilize a humidifier every winter and sometimes a space heater. There are no smart devices in my home, which is why I was annoyed when the landlord recently moved our intercom system to an app, when the analog version worked fine for decades.

As a person who loves technology I still like to be smart with what I use and what I don't use. I am not the person to run out and get something just because its trendy like Fitbits which had their moment like Tomagotchi's in the nineties. You won't find a landfill with a bunch of electronics that come out of my house yearly. It took me nearly twenty years before I gave up my flatbed scanner, and my Canon color printer I sold on eBay after I didn't need such a powerful printer anymore. Oh and I have never owned a television my entire adult life.

Up until the last few years I still was hangin on to that free PC by Compaq I got nearly twenty years ago even though I had discarded the monitor and keyboard a while ago. If there's one thing even as just a asterisk that I would like to be remembered for its my technological savvy and design aesthetic. Personally they were both creative aspects of my personality, and as everyone knows the best brand for creative folks is Apple, and we've been friends since I got out of college.

[Photos by Brown Estate]

[awkwardlycaffeinated]

Day 1 of holding myself accountable for a digital diary.

Adjusted an STL file for 3d printing.

The printer failed because the film was expired.

Ordered the new film.

Browsed tattoos briefly because that's an item on my bucket list this year that I need to finish. I like the bee below, and I'll get something like it on my left wrist.

6. I drafted a scene for another book.

7. Organized errands for tomorrow and my house clean-up efforts.

8. I researched mold solutions for the walls. Mold-killing paint may be possible. How much effort do I want to put into a house I plan on leaving? My mom is set on it when the divorce finally settles, but how much is a broken-down mobile home covered in bricks really worth?

9. There's a driving school locally. I need to drive tomorrow and look into classes as soon as possible now that I have a job.

10. What's a cure for insomnia? I need to start waking up at 4 a.m. for my job. Do I have time to research that tonight?

11. Write....Write like my life depends on it-

12. 8:00, I scroll through Zillow to look at housing locally. I see everything out of my price range. I scream into a pillow.

13. Dinner with myself. ( I can't cancel that again...)

[aristre]

my love bug, sugarplum, jellybean. pls write me some getou x reader where he is alive and doesn't die thank you <3

my adoration insect, honeypear, puddingpea i will do anything for you. if you asked me to i would circumsize myself with nothing but a sheet of printer paper 8.5x11. i would gladly enroll into ls7c (but not ls7b) if it were your desire for me. be it far from me to let my human limits stop me from achieving anything you wish from me. enjoy..........

geto x reader where he is alive scenario

It’s midday when Satoru sends you a text; one message, succinct, simple, and it takes you five minutes to bother checking what it is.

Suguru’s coming over, he says.

What?

Don’t open the door. But as you run your tongue over your chapped lips and pick up your phone again to reply something quizzical enough to explain to him just how confused you are—three knocks rap against your door. 

Satoru texts again, Don’t open the door, I’ll be over there soon—but you flip your phone over and stumble over to where the knocking has ceased and you swing it open on his hinges. 

"Hey," says Suguru.

"Hey," you repeat after him, and hold his face carefully in your sight. "Is something wrong?"

He smiles and says, "Not much."

“Do you want to come in?”

"No, I won’t be here long," he assures you and hovers at the doorway. You think about inviting him in once more anyways, if only to see him gone from the space between you and the outside world, but he settles a hand against the doorframe and you swallow back the thought. “I was just saying—hi." Surely there is a world of understanding between the two of you then and there, so as Suguru turns to leave you grab his sleeve.

"I'll go with you," you tell him. "I don't care where we go. I don't care what you do. I'll go with you."

Suguru looks at you, about to turn you down. But he must see the stern set of your lips and unflinching gaze of your eyes, since he swallows his words and says, "Okay."

By the time Satoru gets to your house, all that remains is an open door. He will see that nothing's been taken out, save for a single photograph from your photobook. He won't realize until months later, but the photo you took was one of you, him, and Suguru on the beach at Okinawa, the last time the three of you were happy together.

The first few months together on the run isn't so easy. In between trips to villages, the two of you sequester together in cheap hotels. Suguru, more than anything, feels indebted to you. In the mornings you take on some new part time work, and at night you sneak back to where Suguru is. You can change your face enough times so that no trace is left behind, and once you flee to a new city you begin anew.

It gets better after the two of you garner enough allies and settle down with an organization. "You don't need to work anymore," Suguru tells you one night after you return to your shared bedroom. "We're getting enough funds from those monkeys now."

You smile at him. "I don't mind. It gives me something to do anyways, and I like that I'm helping you in some way." Suguru smiles too, and as you cross the room to the bed he reaches his arms out to encircle you.

"Thank you," he says, "for coming with me."

"I told you," you assure him. "I would've gone anywhere with you." That seems reason enough for him to drag you into bed with him, and indeed, the topic of working or not working doesn't come up again that night.

The night before Suguru's plan to capture Special Grade spirit Rika, you curl up beside him. "Are you ready?" you ask him, more a formality than anything else.

He looks so nonchalant. "Haven't I always been?"

"Satoru will be there," you murmur.

"That's fine."

Offhandedly, you comment, "I hear he's a teacher now."

Suguru snorts. "Seems like it. He's always been doing his own thing. I can't imagine what he sees in those students of his."

You know. You know very well. Satoru wants to change this world, just as Suguru does, but he wants to work his way up and Suguru wants to work his way down. This is why they're best friends, you think, because the two of them have always wanted for the same things and gone about it different ways.

"I hope you know," you tell him, "that I love you."

"Of course I do." He brushes the hair past your face and presses a kiss to your forehead. "Who else would've been reckless enough to throw away their life to join me here?" He sounds proud, but you know there's guilt somewhere he doesn't quite admit to.

Suguru has always been kind, even in the cruelty he enacts. And you have always been unkind, despite how you present yourself, so on the day Suguru's laid out for his attack on Jujutsu High, you slip out of the compound and make your way to where he is.

Your footsteps echo against the paved floor as you turn the corner, making your way towards the exit. But just as you stumble forward, so too do you hear the languid steps of the man behind you.

Satoru Gojo, in all his omnipresent glory, stops you in your place with the magnitude of his presence. You need not even attempt an escape now, but hidden by the shadows, you smile to yourself.

"I guess there's no point in running now, right?" you say out loud, and turn around to face him. From within the folds of your robes you withdraw Yuta's student ID and toss it Satoru's way. "Return that while you're at it."

"So that was you too?" The grimace on his face barely lasts as he pockets the thing, and then his expression calms into a stillness so quiet you can hear the melancholy in his voice. "Any last words?"

"You were my only friend," you say solemnly as you take a seat on the floor. "That's all."

Satoru returns a few words in exchange, but you don't listen to them. You wait, instead, for an impact to come. You only hope that you've taken enough time out of the esteemed Satoru Gojo's schedule. You only hope that you've done enough.

Hollow Purple rips through your remaining arm first. It is akin to instant death, but you hold on long enough to release your cursed energy and see the way Satoru's eyes widen.

"Why is it you?" How proud you should be of yourself for tricking him, your former classmate, your former friend, but instead you succumb to silent numbness instead.

"He's gone by now," you barely spit out, blood gushing from your mouth as it spills down your chin. "Sorry, Satoru..." I couldn't let you kill your only friend too, you think to yourself, but the light has already left your eyes and you think, ah, how nice it was I could at least let him go this time.

By the time Satoru drags your corpse to Shoko, all of your disguise will be gone. He will have your ashes collected in a urn and placed securely within the Jujutsu High compound. And when, one day, there are reports that a break-in has only resulted in the loss of your final remains, he will turn a blind eye.

[airandangels]

Ever get your period a day or two before a trip and wish you could just shove the vacuum cleaner up there and get it all out in one go and not have to deal with that nonsense away from home and your own washing machine and so forth?

Look, I have to say I am not unappreciative for my good fortune in assorted ways but 2023 needs to pull its fucking socks up. First we spent the first week of the new year with COVID-19 cutting a swath through the household. My dad tested positive on New Year’s Day, his actual birthday. Long-time tumblies will be aware that my dad is a man of multifarious shortcomings but I really don’t think he altogether deserved that. So we’ve spent the week in semi-isolation with the weird feature that as the only adult who didn’t seem to get it, it’s like I’ve been quarantined in my room. (Tested negative daily the entire time, a rare feat for my generally very basic immune system.) There is nowhere to sit except the bed so I’ve basically been bedridden, while ACTUALLY PERFECTLY HEALTHY but endeavouring to avoid my closest relatives’ plague, and I’ve managed to fuck up the traitor muscle on the left side of my shoulder/neck/back axis due to inactivity/odd positions. The best thing that’s happened the entire fucking week is Little Nephew and I went out with masks on to buy Red Niece a new raincoat (Green Niece fits and loves his old raincoat but there’s only one of it) and had ice-cream/a milkshake before we went home, that was the fucking highlight. (Green Niece’s raincoat has a pattern of sharks. Red Niece’s raincoat has a pattern of butterflies and that is exactly what they are like as people.)

(It’s so interesting yet also sad to consider how different Little Nephew’s stillborn twin Harrison would have been from him, had he lived. I sometimes imagine two copies of Little Nephew scampering around here, but Harrison being as different from him as Red is from Green. I wish I could have known him and seen his individual ways. However, I also think “Christ Almighty, two sets of them would break us,” so it’s a bit of a thing all in all and I don’t share that thought with him or my sister obviously.)

My Red Niece comes to see me every day to demand an extremely specific My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic picture be printed off to be stuck to cardboard and cut out for her to play with rather than my sister having to source and purchase MULTIPLE discontinued toys from an earlier generation, and quite frankly even the current generation is not easy to find in New Zealand stores! We have been carefully preparing her psychologically for the fact that there is no printer at the beach house we’re going to for five days next week and she will have to make do with the ponies she’s got. I probably need to put in more time on this but it makes me a bit sad that other than describing the pictures she wants, she doesn’t really discuss FiM with me and as you know, I’ve got thoughts. And a purple wig I’ve worn to cosplay Human Rarity. I wonder where that is, or if I got rid of it in a fit of “The world has changed and this is never going to be my life again”? Because it was a cute wig and we’d make a swell Rarity and Sweetie Bell.

I’m sorry, you know I love Rarity (sobbing) so much

Also, am experimenting on myself and discovered that, per the neurologist’s suggestion, alcohol does reduce my leg tremor problem! Of course it also renders me unfit to drive and possibly to work, but that’s interesting to know, isn’t it!

And the weather’s been verily shit, so rainy, and forecast for rain every bloody day but one in the location we’re going to. There’s always hope for it to be nicer than forecast, I’ve certainly experienced that at times, but still, 2023, get your fucking act together! This is not good enough! You are going to be the Year of the Rabbit soon! Is this good enough for Sailor Moon? No! It is not!

And Little Nephew is having some manner of pre-pubescent hormonal surge that is apparently pretty common in eight-year-old lads and is on an emotional roller coaster which at times renders him dia-bleeding-bolical, my God, the fucking DRAMA

And I’ve just started my period and we’re going away the day after tomorrow

And I would just very much like 2023 to get its fucking shit together because it’s not easy for anyone but WE ARE BLOODY WELL TRYING

[multifandomweirdo11]

Hello! This is my intro post for this Blog! 🎄🕎

This post will cover the fandoms I’m in and what I post on here.

•DNI ❌•

Zoophiles, MAPs, Proshippers, Xenophobes, Racists and Homophobes/Transphobes

• INTERACT PLZ 🫶•

Fandoms of these types of media;

YTTD — I LOVE YTTD. ONE OF MY FIRST DEATH GAME HYPER-FIXATIONS. (KeiSara and KaiSara shippers, especially, DNI.) WOULD LOVE TO DIVE DEEPER INTO THIS GAME, BUT SPOILERS SO.

Amphibia — I love this show SO much! The dynamics between Sasha, Anne and Marcy are immaculate and play off of the frogs, toads and newts so well; you have to watch this show if you haven’t yet. This goes for the whole list BTW. ^^

Owl House — I love this show, but I feel less of a connection than Amphibia because I watched Amphibia first ;-; THE BEST thing about this show is the characters. Amity, Raine, Hunter, Luz and Gus are the best characters IMO.

Deltarune — OMIGOSH PLZ TALK TO ME DELTARUNE FANS. TELL ME ALL OF YOUR THEORIES AND HC’s. If you cannot tell, I love Toby Fox games. Especially this one. I am Noelle (real) /j. Love all of the characters in this game. Not one I don’t like. (Maybe King -7-)

LOVE UNDERTALE. Don’t think I have to say that since they’re probably connected, (sorry Toby i just don’t trust you when you say that they aren’t ;u;) I will post about Undertale when we get news relating to the game!

Walten Files — Woah, if you’re reading this part this probably means you at least know what this is. Yeah that analog horror videos on YouTube. Also TW if you watch this… Uhh, used to be really into this one, but my interest has faded. I will be all over TWF4 whenever it comes out, but until now I’ll be posting about it scarcely. (SOPHIE AND JENNY KINNIES I SEE YOU OUT THERE.)

Disventure Camp — YES, THIS IS BETTER THAN TDAS, TDPI AND TDA. And yes, that was my opinion ofc. Anyway, more about Disventure Camp… ALLY, TESS AND HUNTER ARE ALL IN A POLY-RELATIONSHIP. Again, my opinion, but it makes so much sense! I’ll ofc respect your opinions. Also Aiden and James all the way.

Also I will interact with some Total Drama content, but not heavily. (Dave, Cameron and Sky IRLS DNI.)

Danganrompa Another — SORA AND YOUROKO IS MY COMFORT SHIP. Respect to Weeby Newz (YT) for getting me into this amazing fangan. So much better than the Source material. I recommend this fan-game for everyone but HUGE TW for the first game and a even bigger one for the sequel. We all meme on Mitch here. (Anyone glorifying Mitch Higa without being ironic DNI)

Danganrompa Edens Garden — OOH THE PROLOGUE LOOKED SO GOOD. If you’re looking for a alternative from the problematic air around the Main Danganrompa games, look no further than this game. ME AND JETT DAWSON ARE LITERALLY DATING. but … if I can’t have him cause he’s not real … he can date Mark. BUT I WONT BE HAPPY ABOUT IT. /j (I’m also a MarkDawson shipper so <: )

Inanimate Insanity — POSSIBLY MY OLDEST AND FIRST HYPER-FIXATION?? Bright lights forever! Anyway,,, Plot and Pacing: 2nd Season. Quality: 3rd Season. Sorry not sorry, the First season is problematic and unfunny. Anyway Cabby can marry me. (/hj) This animated YouTube series is so good!

I also do like other Object Shows! BFDI and ONEhfj are some I love. the ones I will post about will probably II and TPOT

Dead End: Paranormal Park — I NEED THE BOOKS AHHH. Love this show for the amazing Rep alone. THAT ALSO GOES FOR THE OWL HOUSE AS WELL. The story is great. It’s somehow Realistic and Supernatural at the same time!!?!

Omori — I like this game! The story is intriguing and heartbreaking </3 My Omori phase is passing away, sadly.

More Info About me:

If you’ve scrolled this far, you prolly wanna know more.

I’m Gay (MLM) and use They/it/he pronouns ofc!

I’m into Graphic design and MIGHT be getting a vinyl sticker printer soon!!!

I draw on paper and IBIS Paint X. I do have a drawing tablet, however it’s difficult to set up, it doesn’t help that I have a pitiful dell computer that’s on the edge of deaths door ;^; xd

anyway, like just ask to talk! Always open to that. <3

[pbandjesse]

Today was a sleepy day but it was a good day. I feel a lot better then I did this morning. I was so dizzy and tired this morning.

I slept pretty well though. I was in a good mood. James joined me after Brandon left and we were laughing when I was being dramatic about the sandwich to milk ratios. And how there would be hell to pay if I ran out of my drink before I finished eating my sandwich. Very silly.

I woke up this morning and felt not great. I tried really hard but I was just really dizzy tired. I got dressed and James made me a little breakfast. And eating helped a little.

I was able to do three rows of knitting for my temperature blanket. I still have three to go to be caught up but after the hour those three took me I was just. Done. I was exhausted.

I went and laid in bed and ended up sleeping until 1. I woke up in a little bit of a panic because I thought I slept through our wedding walkthrough with the caterer. So that was a little jarring. But I did not miss it.

James was just getting cleaned up after a bike ride. And after a few minutes sitting on the couch we were off.

Jess suggested we bring a notebook and that was a great idea. We got there and they (David and the catering rep) kept commenting on how well prepared we were. Felt very validating.

We went through all of my questions. I got a lot of clarity. James took a lot of notes. They had questions for us too. I was slightly unsure about the venders and about who is going to be in charge of what. Like which friends are going to be bringing what and what family is setting up when. We have more clarity now but there is still work to do. And we got to pick the table cloth and napkin colors so that was cool.

It was just a nice time and made me feel more excited. And like figuring out how my dad will comfortably get in the venue. And about lighting and things. I am feeling good.

We left there in a great mood. And decided to not go home yet. Instead we went to run some errands.

We went up to target. We got two of the boxes for our decorations. We need to get at least one more. So we'll do that soon now that we know what we need to store. And James got me two more of the mole car figures and I got two new ones. I am very excited because they continue to be so stupidly cute.

We helped out a guy outside in the parking lot. He was struggling but we had something to give so we did. I hope him and his baby are okay.

We decided to go have a late lunch or early dinner. We were going to go to somewhere in harbor east, but the restaurant we used to go to closed?

But we went to harbor east first so we could go to lush. I got a face oil (it's a solid and I'm so excited about it) and a shampoo bar. And we got a whole bunch of samples. The woman was so nice and complimented my hair. And got a special wash for James's face and beard. Love samples.

We went to whole foods for a fancy juice next. And then off to dinner at tambers, the diner near James's parent's house.

And it was a good meal. It started raining but we were just cozy in our booth. We watched videos about cooking and had a milkshake to share. We got sandwiches and it was fun. I felt happy.

But I also felt tired. Fried food makes me cough a bit. And that made me tired. But we headed home and we got to work packing up our decorations.

We also worked on wiping down all our brass candlesticks so they could go in the box. A few need the wax removed but we packed all of them away that we could. In the next box we'll put the glass ones. But they will be more fragile we well have to be more careful.

James worked on some organizing of the wedding stuff. And I got to work on setting up my new table stuff for the market on Sunday. I have an extra little table to put some new stuff out. Jewelry and totebags. Some new pins and stuff. I will make more price cards for them but so far so good.

I did some work in my studio. I also got to set up our new photo printer. And I'm really excited about it. The films expensive like the Instax but I'll keep working on finding cheaper per print places to buy the paper. I added the best deal I've found to our wedding registry too so maybe people will buy it for us.

I took a bath. And used my new face oil. And now me and James are hanging out in bed. Watching videos and chilling. I don't feel dizzy anymore, just normal tired.

Tomorrow I don't have to do anything really. So I will catch up on knitting and finish my totebag and maybe make a few more. I just want a chill day. I hope you all have a good day too. Take care of yourself! Love you all!

[scotianostra]

On 24th August 1947 the first Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) of Music and Drama opened.

Rudolf Bing, an Austrian impresario who had fled Nazi Germany, wanted to create an international festival in the UK. After various searches Edinburgh was proposed by Henry Harvey Wood of the British Council, supported by both Sir John Falconer, the city’s Lord Provost, and Lady Rosebery. In 1945 a festival committee was formed which decided that 1947 would be the earliest possible date - and that the Festival would be a chance for Edinburgh to create a new post-war identity as ‘the cultural resort of Europe’.

The first Edinburgh International Festival began on 24 August 1947, with an aim to ‘provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit’ by bringing people and artists together from around the world. One of the highlights of the first year’s programme was the reuniting of conductor Bruno Walter with the Vienna Philharmonic and Walter’s comments set the seal on the future – ‘What you have done in Edinburgh is one of the most magnificent experiences since the war. Here human relations have been renewed.’

The “Festival” as it simply known in Edinburgh is now the world’s biggest arts festival, in over 300 venues, thousands of shows from around the world entertain people from, well around the world too, it is said the population of my hometown more than doubles at Festival time.

It’s not all comedy, and theatre, there are now many aspects to the festival, first you have the Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama, that’s the one that started on this day 73 years ago, it’s the professionals who get paid for being on stage in what ever guise they don, the thing was at the beginning it was invite only, and only eight companies were invited, so some set up their own shows, hoping to not just entertain, but hopefully earn a few quid in the process, this took the name The Fringe, it was been so successful it soon became bigger than the “Official” Festival and over the years most acts just wanted to be in Edinburgh, any chance of earning a crust went out the window, many performers save up all year just to come to Edinburgh and appear, sometimes in front of only a handful of people, if you’re lucky!

There was no real organisation during the first years of The Fringe, it wasn’t until 1951 when the sign of any communal activity occurred in 1951 when Edinburgh University students opened a drop-in centre at 25 Haddington Place. This was used by many Fringe performers as it provided cheap food and a bed for the night, oh to be able to find a cheap bed nowadays!

It was 1954 before Fringe groups held their first meeting to discuss the possibility of working together. “We are cutting each other’s throats” was a quote from one of the groups.  It was the logistics, the non-performance aspects, that they saw as a problem and the establishment of a joint box office and publicity mechanism were given high priority. The first Fringe programme was produced in this year by C. J. Cousland, an Edinburgh printer, as seen in the second pic. The Fringe now outstrips the EIF by an insurmountable amount, but as I said earlier most shows struggle to make a profit.

Eventually, the Festival Fringe Society was set up in 1959. A constitution was drawn up, stating that elected officers should oversee the running of a box office, produce a programme brochure that would include every event that was not on the International Festival, and run a club where performers could meet, eat, drink until late, and generally feel involved.

This post is, like the Fringe, getting to large, I like to keep them short so having covered the main two, here is a quick run through of the rest of the Festival, as we know it now.

Pipes and dancing took place on the Castle Esplanade, and in Princes Street Gardens, from 1947, the year of the first International Festival. It was eventually superseded by The Edinburgh Military Tattoo in 1950. Under the direction of Brigadier Alasdair Maclean, there were eight items in the first programme.  There were no stands in that first year, the audience watching from the side of the Esplanade. Stands were erected from the following year, growing to its current size when it houses an audience of around 9,000.

The Edinburgh Art Festival is a fixture in the International Festival programme, the early 1950s arguably being the golden period.  However, funds were withdrawn in 1973 and the visual arts were relegated to “associates”, i.e. linked to but not directly part of the International Festival.  In more recent years the associate tag gradually disappeared and it began to rely on The Fringe programme to provide external advertising of its wares. Most Edinburgh folk will remember the Ingenious  Campbell soup cladding on the pillars of the Scottish Royal Academy for the Andy Warhol exhibition in 2007, it’s certainly my most memorable memory of the Arts Festival.

The Jazz & Blues Festival is a 10 day festival, spread over a dozen venues, which spans late July and early August. It began in August 1979 at the Adelphi Ballroom, Abbeyhill, which had a capacity of 500, and it was held over a single weekend. Like all the festivals it has grown over the years and for a short time they had “Jazz on a Summer’s Day” which attracted a bigger crowd than any other single jazz event in the UK, it was held in Princes Street Gardens, but the commercial folk that run things in Edinburgh basically fucked things up by allowing a Spiegeltent event to take over the space in the gardens in 2010 and that aspect of it has not returned since, which is a shame.

Edinburgh International Book Festival was first held in 1983 and was an instant success with 120 authors attending, including John Updike and Anthony Burgess. The 17 day festival is now  sited in Charlotte Square Gardens, at the western end of George Street, converting it into a tented village for the duration. The 2016 festival, with an attendance of circa 230,000, boasted of appearances by over 800 authors, poets, illustrators, journalists and politicians from 55 countries.

So there you have it,  small beginnings from the ashes of world war two, I thought that things would be back to normal this year, after last years cancellation, but it is a curtailed Festival this year, I only managed to get across once, the place isn’t the same without the full thing, hopefully next year we will all get back to a more normal, normal. 

[nostalgiahan]

Still Into You

genre: songfic, fluff, smut

pairing: graffiti artist!changbin x afab!reader (gender-neutral language)

word count: 2k

warnings: drug use (cannabis,) trespassing, oral sex (f,) car sex, little dialogue, changbin and reader run from the cops lol

a/n: i was listening to still into you by paramore and this just kinda. came into existence. it’s also very song focused so if you’ve never listened to 2000s alt rock... i’m sorry lmao. the sugarmill in the story is also a real place that my friends and i used to visit and smoke take pictures at, although the cops never found us there haha. anyways enjoy folks.

Your nails had been tapping on the windowsill enough to wear them down to nubs by the time Changbin pulled up in front of your house. When his beat up Subaru pulled up next to the curb, you just about jumped out of your skin from excitement. Today was your fourth anniversary, as well as Valentine’s Day, and the adrenaline rushing through your blood was a sign that you were more than looking forward to whatever fun plans he had up his sleeve.

Compared to most couples on Valentine’s day, your outfit was pretty plain and not at all glamorous. Practical boots, jeans, an old band hoodie and Changbin’s dark green parka were your clothes of choice, but you knew that your boyfriend wasn’t going to take you to some fancy restaurant. No, you two were going adventuring.

As soon as you hop in the passenger seat of the car, shoving a couple of receipts into the foot well, Changbin reaches into his hoodie pocket and gives you a card. It’s crude, made of a folded sheet of printer paper and hastily scribbled on in pen but it’s very fitting for him.

“You better enjoy the card,” he says with a smirk, “because it came to me in a dream. This is pure, undiluted Changbin, packaged for your enjoyment and convenience.”

Giggling, you open the card. Inside is a barely legible “i love you so much y/n” surrounded by hearts, and in the corner is a drawing of a cow dressed in a lab coat and holding a beaker labeled “Moorie Curie.” It’s perfect, but what else did you expect from him?

“Happy anniversary, my love.” When you look up at Changbin, he has the widest smile on his face, cheeks dotted with flecks of paint and eyes crinkled up into little crescents. He’s dressed similarly to you, hair sitting in a pile on top of his head, clearly not having been paid attention to before leaving the house. It doesn’t matter, though, since the both of you will be wearing hoods over your heads anyways. You lean over the center console to give him a quick kiss, although it takes a couple of tries to get his lips since you’re both smiling so hard.

Changbin kicks his old car into gear as he sets off towards his destination. He’s explaining where you’re going, but you can barely hear him over the car speakers blasting Simple Plan and Green Day.

“So yeah, it’s this sugarmill that caught on fire in, like, 1910, and they never renovated it. There’s a bunch of cool abandoned shit around there, too. I think there’s, like, three fucked up couches.”

As you listen to him talk, you stick your fingers through the gap at the top of the side window. It’s permanently cracked open like that, and you have vivid memories of trying to throw cigarette butts through the gap when the two of you were bored.

After a while of listening to pop punk and playing with Changbin’s fingers over the gear shift, you arrive at your destination. Several charred brick buildings sit in the middle of a field, dead trees framing an open area in the center where someone has set up some logs and rocks to form a makeshift circle. Your boyfriend’s eyes scan the landscape, looking for his next canvas. Eventually, he tugs your arm and leads you towards one of the buildings, smiling back at you. “C’mon, let’s go explore this place.”

The two of you wander for a while, over rickety walkways and up staircases, taking pictures with your Polaroid and holding hands the whole time. Eventually, Changbin finds a stretch of wall big enough to start his work. Setting his duffel bag on the ground, he beckons you over and crouches down, inviting you to hop onto his back.

He pulls out a can of white spray paint, shaking it and popping the cap with his thumb. As he starts to paint, making large, sweeping motions with his arms, you really wished he had worn something sleeveless, however impractical. After lighting a slightly crushed joint you’d fished out of your pocket, you nestled your nose into his shoulder, holding the joint up to Changbin’s lips. He takes a few pulls as he works, the previously bland wall turning into a beautiful blend of blues, purples, and whites. It’s always fascinating to see how he works, seemingly not thinking before laying down a line of paint, yet each stroke seems to perfectly fit in with the others.

As he’s switching colors, Changbin lets you off his back, settling his hands on your sides. He stares at you for a bit, trying to study every bit of your face that isn’t covered by the oversized hood of his jacket. After a while, he smiles, pulling you close and kissing your forehead. Changbin always called you his muse, but you never expected him to take it as literally as he did, often staring at you or asking unrelated questions when he was stuck with a piece. He sways gently back and forth, pressing little kisses to your head, as Good Charlotte emanates from the tiny phone speaker in his back pocket. Occasionally, he’ll pull back just a tiny bit to really study your face, kissing you softly and muttering something along the lines of “i really can’t believe how fucking incredible you are” or “i love you so much it’s unreal.”

It’s not until a few more songs have ended that he pulls away, inviting you back onto his back as you light another joint. The piece is almost done, the tag “SPEARB” painted in blobby letters, shining artificially. All he has left is the outline, but his work is cut short when you hear the faint sound of sirens approaching and the light creeping in from the broken windows flashes a faint red and blue.

What happens next is like clockwork. You hop off of Changbin’s back, putting out the joint on the wall and throwing it into his duffel bag along with the other cans of paint he’s left out. What you’re supposed to do next is grab the bag and run, but Changbin is trying his best to finish a really specific detail and the more time he has that can in his hand, the less time you guys have to get the fuck out. After what seems like an eternity of whisper-yelling and (gently) stomping your foot at him, he caps the can and throws it into the bag. Finally, the two of you are off. As he’s picking up the bag, however, you notice what he was taking so long to finish. In tiny lettering, in the bottom corner of the piece, 4 words. “fuck cops” on one line, and “for y/n” on another.

As the two of you clamber over wooden planks and piping, pulling your hoods over your heads and your masks over your faces to hide your identities, Changbin grabs your hand and squeezes. He lets go almost as quickly as he grabbed it but the sentiment is still there; i’m here, i’m gonna keep us safe. It’s a welcome sentiment when shouts of “police,” and “show yourselves” echo through the abandoned hall.

Fifteen minutes of running and one chain link fence climb later, you’re back at the car, cops nowhere in sight. You’re panting heavily as you throw off the parka and throw it into the backseat, and Changbin doesn’t look any better as he’s gulping water and fanning his face. Right as you’re about to climb in, he grabs your arm and spins you so you’re pressed between him and the car, holding your cheeks in his hands and grinning at you.

“God. Fuck. Wow. You’re unreal. I love you so much.”

You’re unable to do anything but nod. The two of you are still breathless and in that moment you realize that’s what your love was like. In the four years of you dating, your love never went stale, you never settled into a routine. You were always doing new things, like going on spur of the moment road trips or fucking around at playgrounds in the early hours of the morning. You never thought about the future, just did your best to enjoy your time in the present and bask in the glow of each other’s affection. You expected that after such a long time together you’d at least feel a little duller, but everything still feels as fresh and new as when you were teenagers and sneaking out to make out on park benches when no one was looking.

As you’re lost in thought, Changbin pulls you impossibly closer and presses his lips to yours, hard. Music is still playing from his phone as the kiss becomes more heated, and you make sure to add 1985 by Bowling for Soup to your “running from the cops” playlist later. Almost every memory you have with Changbin is attached to a song, and this one is no exception.

Changbin pulls away to wrench open the back seat door, guiding you to sit and kneeling on the dirty floor. He heaves the duffel bag on the seat next to you and you dig through it, searching for the joint you threw into it earlier. Once you’ve gotten to My Own Worst Enemy, you’ve lit it and Changbin has gotten your jeans halfway down your legs and your thighs over his shoulders.

Your boyfriend wastes no time in burying his face in your heat, licking hot stripes up and down and moaning loudly into your core. He pulls away to rest his head on your thigh and take a few puffs of the joint, and in that moment you remember your Polaroid exists and manage to snap a picture of him blowing out smoke, with your hand in his hair and his face squished between your legs.

Changbin pays it no mind and gets straight back to work, sucking on your clit and easing his tongue into your hole. Your grip on his hair tightens and you arch into his mouth, fucking yourself back on his tongue. Picking up on this, he hooks his arms under your thighs and pulls your towards him, close enough that you’re afraid he’s going to suffocate himself trying to pleasure you.

It’s hot and sticky and perfect, and the atmosphere combined with the weed and the fact that Seo fucking Changbin is eating you out is too much for you and you cum all over his tongue, which eagerly laps up your release, taking long, languid strokes to make sure he gets every drop. As you come down, Changbin is stroking your thighs and sucking hickeys into the soft flesh, and you register that Misery Business needs to be added to your “dirty car sex” playlist.

After basking in the yellow glow of the car’s overhead light and the thrilling afterglow of just having done something you shouldn’t have for a while, lazily finishing off the rest of your joint, the two of you get your things in order and begin the journey to Changbin’s apartment, speeding down the highway with the windows cracked the whole way. He carries you into the building like he always does, setting you down gently on the couch before heading off to the kitchen so you can make some blueberry muffins together. You do, and they’re terrible, so you heat up leftovers instead and watch reruns of old James Bond movies, cuddling on the couch. The night ends with Chasing Cars and you laying on Changbin’s chest, naked and sweaty and anticipating lots of aches in the morning, whispering tiny i love yous into each others’ skin and it’s perfect. But everything is always perfect with him. What else could you possibly expect?

please let me know if you guys enjoyed this!! feel free to send an ask, i always love receiving them🤌🏻🤌🏻

[olliedollie1204]

TSUS Day 7- Analoceit

Logan calls his roommates to a meeting.

Word Count: 2,454 words

Written for the Sanders Sides Unpopular Ships Challenge by @emy-loves-you

(AO3 Link)

Virgil shifted from one leg to another as he checked his phone for the third time in as many minutes. Janus was supposed to meet him here, but even in the five— six? Yeah, almost six— six years that they’d been roommates, he’d never gotten better at being places on time. Most of the time it was an intentional power move to assert dominance, but Virgil had told him once that he didn’t like it. Janus had never been intentionally late to meet him again.

On cue, the door swung open and Janus strode through, almost colliding with Virgil in the process. He stumbled clumsily, and on instinct Virgil caught him in his steadying grasp.

The two locked eyes, and after a moment Janus smirked.

“Hello, stranger.”

Virgil clicked his tongue in faux annoyance, but he couldn’t hide the earnestness behind his smile as the two of them righted themselves.

“Hey,” he replied. “Any idea what this is all about?”

“I assume he wants to practice his presentation again,” Janus commented idly, the two of them heading towards the private study room Logan had texted them to meet at.

“At the library, though? We never come here anymore.” That was true— while this library had been a hotspot for the three friends when they were undergrads, none of them had been in quite some time. Even Logan, who’d worked there from the time he was a teenager, hadn’t visited in years— it was much more convenient to do his research, studying, and grad work in the shared home office in the house they lived in together.

“Maybe he wants to use some of the projection equipment to rehearse or something,” Janus answered Virgil’s question. Virgil shook his head.

“I don’t even know why he gets so worried.”

Janus scoffed. “Glass houses.”

“I mean about presentations, Jan,” Virgil retorted. “Or like, school in general. He’s always incredible at...”

His voice trailed off; he’d been planning on ending that sentence with ‘school work’ or ‘graduate school’ or even ‘public speaking about niche ecological topics’, but he found he couldn’t find one in time. The words hung in the air.

A beat, and then Janus sighed with a smile in his voice. “Don’t I know it.”

The two looked at each other. The tips of their tongues were weighed down with words unsaid, and all too soon they reached the small study room Logan requested.

Janus was the first to break eye contact, rapping twice on the door before pushing it open.

“Knock knock!” he announced as he and Virgil entered. Just as expected, there was Logan at the back of the room, fiddling with the wall projector and a set of note cards. He looked up as the two entered, his face a bizarre combination of flushed and pale.

“Hello,” he said quickly before Virgil could ask if he was okay. “Please, take a seat.”

He gestured to the only two rolling chairs in the room. Virgil and Janus paused, side eyeing each other bemusedly, before taking a seat on the other side of the table.

“I do hope this was worth the bus fare,” Janus said lightly. His comment seemed to hit Logan, who flinched minutely before smoothing his face into a neutral expression.

“I wanted to speak with the two of you about something,” Logan continued, voice uncharacteristically tight, “and I thought it best to bring it up in a neutral, public environment should either of you want to leave.”

That… was not what either man expected. Janus kept his eyes trained on Logan’s face; next to him, Virgil subconsciously began bouncing his leg.

“Um,” he said. “Okay?”

Logan nodded. “Right.” He nodded again. “Well.”

Then he blinked, and leaning forward slightly, he murmured, “I need one of you to ask me why I invited you here.”

The tension broke a little, and Virgil huffed a quiet laugh that made Logan’s stance soften.

“Why did you invite us here, Logan?” Janus asked obligingly. Logan shook his head a bit and took a deep breath before looking down at his notecards.

“I invited you both here because this library has a lot of significance to me,” he read, eyes glued to the paper. “This is where I spent the majority of my undergraduate years, studying and working and passing the time with no real connections to the world around me. And… and this is where I first met the two of you.”

He looked up briefly, steeling himself, before turning his body toward Janus as he continued to read. “Janus, you were in the computer lab, swearing at a printer for taking too long to print your midterm.”

The man in question smirked at the memory. “I had a class in 15 minutes. Those things smell fear, you know.”

Logan turned his body toward Virgil, although his eyes remained trained on his note card. “And Virgil, you knocked over a book display I’d put up and pretended to only know French when I came up to help you.”

“I panicked!” Virgil squeaked in defense.

“And both of you came back the next week to work on a class project together,” Logan said with a significant air in his voice. His eyes flicked up again; unbeknownst to each other, both Virgil and Janus gave him matching encouraging smiles.

Logan felt the tension drain slightly from his body, and he couldn’t help but smile back as he continued, “For no reason at all, you two wandered back into this library— and back into my life— time and time again. We were strangers, then acquaintances, classmates, roommates. Friends.”

He paused, then, quieter: “Best friends.”

The silence only lasted a moment, but it was thick, heavy with meaning and intention. Neither Janus nor Virgil could even find it in themselves to make a snarky remark. By now Virgil’s leg had stopped bouncing, and he was watching Logan with an unconscious intensity. Conversely, it was now Janus’ turn to fidget in his seat, the growing sincerity in Logan’s voice making him clench the hem of his jacket between his fingers.

“I…” Logan started, looking between the two of them. He blinked and dropped his eyes back on his notecards.

“I… I am so grateful,” he said, “and so lucky to call you two my friends. You are the best friends, and the best people, I have ever known. And with this in mind, I was—”

He flipped to a new card, but his hands were shaking: he fumbled, and despite his best efforts the entire stack of notecards all went cascading from his hands to the floor.

“Oh, shit!” Virgil said reflexively, leaning forward in his chair in a feeble attempt to catch them. Janus was already on his feet.

“Allow me,” he said loudly, dropping to his knees to crawl under the table.

Logan’s eyes bulged. “No! No, Janus, wait—”

He, too, dropped to the floor, scrambling to pick up the cards closest to him. Janus knelt across from him, attempting to collect the cards on his side in a much calmer manner.

Above the table, Virgil swore again as he shimmied awkwardly from his seat to join them on the carpeted floor. “Jesus Christ, Lo, how many cards did you— ow! Fuck!”

“Are you okay?” Janus asked, twisting around in the small space to look at him.

“Yeah, fine, fuck, I just hit my head on the table—”

Logan’s face was an amusing mix of highly concerned and completely mortified. “Oh my God, Virgil, I’m sorry, let me help you—”

He shifted forward, but Virgil reared back on instinct, hitting the back of his head against the rolling chair. “Shit!

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“Wait, wait, who’s on my jacket?” Janus said, yanking fruitlessly at the billowy fabric that was much better suited for walking in the brisk winter weather than crowding under a tiny table.

“I— I don’t know, I don’t know,” Logan babbled.

“Well, someone’s on my jacket, so get off!”

“Um. Lo?”

Logan looked over Janus’ head, and his stomach flipped as he realized that Virgil had successfully picked up one of the stray cards from the floor, and was reading it.

“Virgil, please,” he pleaded. “Please, just let me explain—”

“Seriously, whoever it is, move your hand off of my jacket, because I can’t move—”

Virgil lifted his hand, and Janus suddenly flopped forward at the lack of resistance, face planting directly into Logan’s chest.

“Janus!” Logan yelped. “Are you okay?”

The man in question spluttered, shoving himself away from Logan’s chest (and trying his hardest not to flush when he realized he’d placed his hands directly on Logan’s pecs to do so).

“That’s it!” he announced sharply. “Time out!”

Everyone stopped moving. Virgil on one side. Logan on the other. Janus stuck between them.

He exhaled, hard. “Okay. Take a deep breath.”

The other two followed his instructions on instinct. None of them counted aloud, but all three of them seemed to follow the same loose pattern of 4 seconds in, 7 seconds holding, and 8 seconds release.

“Okay,” Janus said when they were finished. “Let’s— let’s lie on the floor.”

If the energy weren’t so fucking weird at this moment, Janus would’ve laughed the baffled looks on the others’ faces. Instead he allowed himself to flop to the ground and clumsily roll onto his back. He folded his hands across his stomach and looked up at the others.

“Are you coming?”

Virgil and Logan shared a look. After a few seconds, they joined him. Virgil kicked one of the rolling chairs away to make room for his legs, while Logan tried to push as many of the cards to the side as possible.

Finally they were in place: just three grown men, chilling on the floor of a library study room, staring up at the dirty bottom of the table above them.

“...Reminds me of junior finals week,” Virgil commented idly. Janus snorted, and even Logan managed to give a shaky laugh.

“You spilled coffee on my lab results,” he remembered. “I cried.”

Virgil looked sheepish. “So did I.”

“I didn’t,” Janus reminded them. Logan laughed again, a little louder.

“No. You just emailed my professor on my behalf, told them I had mono, and asked for a week long extension.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

Virgil giggled loudly, not even bothering to hide the sound. “I forgot about that.”

“I didn’t,” Logan said softly. His words brought the other two into relative silence as well.

Then Virgil passed the note card to Logan. He took it, squinting to read its now slightly smudged writing, before his face went pale again.

“You read it,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but Virgil nodded.

After a few moments, Janus added, “Well, I didn’t, so…” His voice was jokingly impatient, but both Virgil and Logan could recognize the genuine curiosity in his eyes.

Eventually Logan sighed and passed the card to him. Janus held it close to his face to read it in the table’s dim shadow.

“Resources for telling friends and family about… about…”

He squinted for a moment more. “I’m so sorry, does that say ‘parallelogram replenishment’?”

Logan scoffed and reached over to whap his chest. “It says ‘polyamorous relationship’, you bastard, and I know you could read that.”

“Oh, could I now?” Janus replied lightly. He crumpled the note card and tossed it somewhere toward their feet. “Darn these old eyes of mine.”

Virgil snickered softly, then again. Logan sighed and bit his lip. Janus coughed.

And then the three of them burst into laughter— deep, loud, laughter, the kind that they couldn’t stop even if they’d wanted to. Logan rolled on his side as much as he could to face away from the others, Janus covered his face with both of his hands, and Virgil yanked the collar of his shirt over his mouth as if that could silence it.

It was honestly a blessing no one looked into the room; between the notecards all over the floor, the legs sticking out from underneath the table, and the near-screams of laughter seemingly coming from nowhere, it would probably be a surprising scene. Not that they’d care in the slightest.

After some indeterminate amount of time, the laughter tapered off. They weren’t sure exactly when or how it happened, but by the time they were silent again, Logan and Virgil were both lying on their sides facing inward. Janus had both arms out, and the two of them were using his upper arms as pillows.

“Logan,” Janus said softly. Logan looked up at his somber expression.

“Yes?”

Slowly, Janus let his eyes roam from Logan’s eyes to mouth and eyes again. Then he smirked.

“How many note cards were in your stack?”

Logan blinked. His face flushed immediately, especially when he saw Virgil lift his head to smirk at him as well.

“I— I don’t know the exact number.”

“Oh, well, that already means it’s in the high double digits,” Janus confirmed.

“And the projector, Lo?” Virgil asked with far too much glee in his voice. “Please tell me you had a powerpoint prepared.”

“With APA citations, I should hope.”

“Oh, yeah, of course, you gotta cite your sources, L.”

“And please, please tell me that you prepared a study guide for the readings you assigned us about healthy modern polyamory. Wouldn’t want to fail the quiz you’re inevitably giving us when we get home—”

“Enough,” Logan insisted, or maybe begged; it was hard to tell since he’d moved closer to hide his face in Janus’ shoulder. “Please do not mock me now. My heart can’t take anymore stress.”

Janus quirked his head. “What about this was stressful?”

Virgil giggled again, shoving his face into his hand to keep his laughter from building. When he pulled his hand away, there was a moment of hesitation in his eyes before he reached across Janus’ chest to take Logan’s hand.

Logan looked at Virgil’s fingers intertwined with his like he didn’t quite know what to do with them. Then, looking between Virgil’s eyes to Janus’, he slowly lowered their combined grip until their hands were laying in the middle of Janus’ chest.

Virgil and Janus both flushed, eyes darting towards each other and away again. Logan squeezed Virgil’s fingers, Virgil nuzzled into Janus’ neck, and Janus released a slow, shaky breath that seemed to remove some weight off of his shoulders.

“How long until they kick us out?” he joked weakly.

“I don’t care,” Logan and Virgil said in unison. They blinked, and the three devolved into quiet snickers once more, holding each other close.

For the rest of the afternoon, and the evening, and their lives, they did not let go.

[the-fandom-fool]

Danny’s Terrible, Haunting Visage, Mouth Unmoving

Hi, Danny Phantom phandom. I Made This For You. I stayed up until five a.m. writing it so I hope you’re happy. 

Happy Dannypocalypse :) @horrendoushag

Word count: 2190

-------

There was a Face glowing in the darkness. It was glowing because it was on a computer screen, but that didn’t make it any less terrible and haunting.

Sam Manson grinned maniacally as she stared into the Face’s blank eyes, then looked away because they were a bit too blank. That didn’t mean she was backing out on her plan, though. She was no coward.

The printer loudly chugged out sheet upon sheet of paper, but the size of Sam’s house meant her parents would never hear. They would never know how much work she put into this, how many bribes she had to make, the blood she had to spill—and that was fine, because she didn’t want them to.

In the dark of night and the light of the wicked Face on the computer monitor, Sam snapped her scissors and set to work.

~

Morning dawned bright and early. Too bright and too early, in the opinions of some.

This “some” included one Danny Fenton, who had spent more than half the night dead and fighting other dead people who didn’t appreciate his puns. He got to bed at four a.m. and was running on two hours of sleep at most, so you could pardon him if he didn’t at first notice something amiss when he got to school.

Another reason he didn’t notice anything amiss was that his head was stuck in his locker to avoid the too-bright fluorescent lights some maniac had installed in the ceiling, and he had his eyes closed.

“Hey,” a voice said on the other side of his locker door.

Danny grunted. The voice was familiar, but he was too tired to figure out who it was right now.

“You okay, Danny?” the voice asked. It was too loud in the same way the lights were too bright, and the same could be said for the rest of the hallway. That’s another reason Danny had his head in his locker; things were quieter there.

Danny grunted again.

“Yeah, I know, you were up all night fighting ghosts. But you need to get up, man, first period is starting soon.”

Danny almost considered climbing into his locker and going to sleep then and there, but then he remembered that Mr. Lancer was the teacher in first period, so instead he groaned and pulled his head out.

He turned and was greeted by a hallucination.

At least, that’s what he assumed it was. A combination of the lack of sleep, the brightness of the light, and a hard knock on the head he got from Skulker last night.

Because everyone in the hallway was wearing his face.

Beyond his locker door, where the voice he now recognized as Tucker’s had been coming from, his own blank eyes stared back at him—or rather, at his soul. Danny blinked a few times in the hopes that the face would resolve itself into Tucker’s, but no—it stayed the same. Tucker’s body, Tucker’s beret, wearing Danny’s own terrible, haunting visage.

“Finally!” Danny’s terrible, haunting visage said, mouth unmoving, using Tucker’s voice. “Come on, we need to get to Mr. Lancer’s class!” One of the figure’s hands, Tucker’s hand, reached out and grabbed Danny’s arm. Tucker’s body started dragging Danny in the direction of the classroom.

“Wait—wait,” Danny said, clumsily forcing them to a stop. “What’s going on? What—why is everyone wearing my face?”

Tucker—it was Tucker, right?—turned to Danny and cocked his head. “Your face? What do you mean?”

Danny stared at him, face a blank reflection of the other’s, as his half-dead and half-asleep brain tried to come up with an adequate way of articulating what was going on. He looked to the side, saw several of the same face conversing with one another, and looked back. “Just… this?”

“This?” Tucker repeated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Danny, but we need to get to class. Come on, we’re meeting Sam there.”

This time, Danny allowed himself to be dragged to Mr. Lancer’s classroom. All around him, everyone had the same Face. His Face. They were acting perfectly normal otherwise—he even saw Dash yeeting a football at Kwan, though it took him a few moments to recognize them. The only one who seemed to realize there was anything strange about this was Danny.

They reached the classroom and took their seats inside. Danny looked hopefully to where Sam was sitting, but she, too, was wearing The Face.

“Hey Danny,” she said, and was it just the hallucination or did she sound incredibly pleased with herself? “Sleep well?”

“No,” Danny said. “Do you have any idea what’s going on around here?”

“What?” Okay, no, yeah, she sounded really smug. “What are you talking about?

“The Face.” Danny made sure the capital letters were audible. “Why is everyone wearing my face?”

“Um, that’s what everyone looks like, Danny.” The expressionless eyes where Sam’s should have been gave an impression of being rolled, despite not moving at all. “Remember? After that whole thing with the Reality Gauntlet, everyone got stuck like this. And since you kind of destroyed the Reality Gauntlet, well…” She shrugged. “No going back.”

And no, yeah, Danny was pretty sure he would remember if that happened. This was just… a prank. A really wild prank, because he couldn’t imagine why the A-listers would also be in on it, or in fact everyone he’d seen at school today. But it had to be a prank, nonetheless. He wouldn’t believe otherwise unless he saw Lancer with The Face.

And speak of the maybe literal devil, Mr. Lancer chose that exact moment to walk into the room.

“All right, everyone,” said Danny’s terrible, haunting visage, mouth unmoving, using Lancer’s voice. Which sounded exceptionally annoyed today. “Get out your books. And congratulations, Mr. Fenton”—it was said with such venom that Danny would be cringing if he weren’t in shock—“for being on time for once.”

Danny thought he heard a giggle somewhere, but he was too busy staring at Lancer’s—his Face on Lancer’s body.

Vlad, then. He wouldn’t believe this wasn’t a prank unless he saw Vlad wearing The Face.

~

Principal Ishiyama had called an assembly.

Danny dragged his feet among a crowd of other Danny-Faced people, careful to avoid looking anyone in his eye. They all chattered away curiously, mouths unmoving, wondering why their classes in third period had been cancelled. Many were rejoicing the new absence of math or English or whatever from their schedule today, but Danny couldn’t bring himself to care. In fact, he had a bad feeling about this assembly.

As soon as everyone had taken their seats, Principal Ishiyama, whose normal face had also somehow been replaced by The Face, spoke into her microphone.

“Hello, students!” said Danny’s terrible, haunting visage, mouth unmoving, using Principal Ishiyama’s voice. “Today we have a special guest, who’s volunteered to talk to you all about—”

There was a physically painful moment of interference in the speakers; everyone plugged their ears. Principal Ishiyama didn’t seem to notice, for some reason.

“—so let me introduce our city’s mayor, Vlad Masters!”

Everyone clapped politely, except Danny, but including Sam and Tucker, bizarrely enough. Danny could only stare in abject horror as Vlad Masters, wearing Danny’s terrible, haunting visage, walked calmly onto the stage.

“Yes, yes,” said Danny’s terrible, haunting visage, mouth unmoving, using Vlad’s annoying voice. “Thank you, Principal Ishiyama. And hello, Casper High students! It is such an honor to be here today, teaching you all about—”

The speakers had another physically painful moment of interference that caused everyone to plug their ears, but neither Vlad nor once again Principal Ishiyama seemed to notice.

“—such promising young men and women as yourselves. In light of recent political challenges, I have truly realized the importance of educating our country’s youth in order to build a better future—”

Danny had seen and heard enough. Mostly seen. With a look to his friends on either side of him, he quietly slipped to the ground, waved goodbye, and phased through the floorboards.

He emerged on the other side as the dead version of himself. No one was around to see, since this was the basement, but better safe than sorry.

He floated around for a few minutes, glanced at a few warped versions of his reflection he managed to find in various metal things, then pulled out his phone in an attempt to distract himself.

Then he remembered that Skulker broke his phone last night. He remembered because the screen was now a bunch of shattered glass, and if you looked closely the entire phone had been snapped in half.

So instead he stared listlessly at the ceiling; imagined the new phone he would get; imagined punching Skulker in the face (did it look like his now, underneath the suit?) for breaking his phone; imagined all the new comebacks he could make while punching Skulker in the face for breaking his phone; thought about the hundreds of students and teachers above him who were walking around with his Face.

It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t.

Right?

~

After what he deemed to be a safe amount of time, Danny reemerged from the basement as a real live boy. He joined the stream of students heading for the cafeteria, since it was lunchtime now, and once there looked around for his friends.

Which is when he noticed people peeling their Faces off.

He jumped a few feet in the air—literally; he hoped no one saw—blinked, shook his head, looked again.

One by one, people’s faces were emerging. Like a skin of paper, the Face came away from their heads and was discarded in the nearest trash bin, or crumpled up and stuffed in pockets, or left to languish on the floor by a foolish few. The faces underneath The Face had expressions—real expressions, he hadn’t realized how much he missed seeing them. A lot of them looked relieved, or they were laughing, or annoyed. Real faces.

Thinking about this made him want to see Sam and Tucker’s faces, so he looked around for them again and saw them, sitting at a table together, grinning. He himself was too confused to grin, so instead he made his way over to the table without doing that.

“Hey,” he said, and they pointed their grins at him. What wonderful grins they were. “What’s going on? It… was a prank, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Tucker, grin becoming pointier. “It’s the Dannypocalypse.”

“The what.” Danny’s voice was as flat as the expression on The Face, mainly because he just didn’t have the energy for this right now. He took a seat next to Tucker and reached over to steal one of Sam’s fries.

“The Dannypocalypse,” Sam repeated, grin also becoming pointier. “In honor of Danny Phantom, we all wore paper masks of his face. Something weird happened with the printer, so his eyes came out blue instead of green.”

“Oh.” Danny looked into Sam’s maniacal face and felt his alive half become slightly more dead. “You… this was you, wasn’t it.”

Sam’s grin reached full pointiness.

Danny stayed silent for a few seconds, before an almost hysterical giggle wormed its way out of his mouth. “You know April Fools was two days ago, right?”

“I underestimated how much time it would take to make the masks. That’s fine, though, no one expects pranks in the days after April Fools. That just made it better.”

Danny had so many questions. Too many questions. But the most pressing, of course—“How did you get everyone in on this? I know lots of people would be willing to wear Danny Phantom’s face, but Lancer?”

Sam shrugged. “Money.”

“And what about Vlad? He doesn’t need bribes.” Danny tried to steal another of Sam’s fries, but she slapped his hand away.

“Get your own. And I won’t go into details on this one, but let’s just say blood was spilled. And it wasn’t mine.”

“…Right.” Danny considered going in for another fry, but maybe it wasn’t worth it. “And you didn’t worry that, uh…” He checked around to make sure no one was listening and lowered his voice. “You didn’t worry that someone might notice I have the same face as Phantom?”

Sam shrugged again. “Oh, come on, Danny. Everyone knows Wes Weston is Danny Phantom.”

Danny stared at her, completely blank for a few seconds, before he gave in and burst out laughing. “This… okay. This is hilarious.”

“You bet it is.” Sam slapped a hand on the table, and with it, a paper mask displaying Danny’s terrible, haunting visage. “I’m going to hang this on my wall. What do you think? Should it have a fancy golden frame?”

“Absolutely.”

As more faces peeled off around them, Danny and his friends laughed. Somewhere, Vlad was planning his revenge; somewhere, Wes Weston was tearing his hair out and probably also planning revenge; but for now, all was well in the world.

(“By the way, how could anyone see? I didn’t see eyeholes on the masks?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Danny.”)

[so-small]

Connor Murphy x Reader: Dear Other Hansen: Part 1

words: 1,643

warnings: fight, slight harassment by a pervy football player

It was the first day of your senior year and your mom was giving the same speech to you and Evan that she gave every year. Growing up twins you shared everything: your anxiety, your interest in nature, your love-hate relationship with Jared, and your clear disdain for this speech. 'This year would be different, it's a new start- a clean slate. She's so proud of you already.'

"Oh and Evan, (Y/N)? I made you an appointment with for today, I'll come buy and pick you guys up after school. Make sure you guys have letters to yourself, the doctor expects you to have some." 

"We have an appointment for next week though, mom?" Evan questioned, worried that he overestimated the amount of time he could put off writing his letter.

"I thought you could use something a little sooner. I love you guys! Have a good first day, and remember if you guys need anything at all, call me. Bye," with that she was out the door.

Evan looked to you, and then down at his hands. "(Y/N), I still haven't written anything..."

"I know," you sighed, running your hands through your hair, "I haven't either. We were supposed to have another week." Procrastination. That was another trait you shared. You were well aware that it would only make the task at hand more daunting, but sometimes it was just more convenient to watch TV than do work.

"And we still have to take the bus. It's our senior year, and we're the only seniors who still have to ride the bus. Everyone is going to think we're losers."

"...What if we just walk?" You suggested, to which Evan responded to by nodding vigorously. You grabbed your stuff and the two of you began walking.

It was warm outside, but cloudy. Evan and you were talking about the normal stuff. He was talking about working at the park, and you were talking about hanging out with Zoe- another thing you had in common- who you had befriended one day at the mall at the beginning of the summer. You had been at American Eagle, trying to find the perfect outfit to boost your confidence. Zoe had seen you, said hi, and proceeded to help choose the cutest outfit you had ever seen. Ever since then, Zoe and you were good friends. Evan always loved hearing you talk about her, because he felt like he knew her better when you did. 

Finally, you arrived at school. Evan walked over to talk with Alana and then Jared, trying aimlessly to get them to sign his cast. Zoe had came over to you as soon as she saw you arrive to school, upset about the morning she had "-and then he finished the milk! Dry cereal was not how I wanted to start my first day back."

"Maybe he's just on his man period?" You didn't want to admit it, but Connor always intrigued you. He never looked like he was the same guy who Zoe complained about, or the rumors that spread across the school. He just looked out-of-place, which is how you felt most of the time. He didn’t look like he could be that much of a dick. Back in grade school, you had been in bed with the flu when Connor presumably threw a printer. After hearing little Evan cry for three hours after school about it- not because he was scared or even angry- because the teacher was printing out a coloring page for him, and he never got it. 

"Then he would have been menstruating since he was twelve-" Zoe was interrupted by hearing Connor yelling. She turned the corner to see him screaming at Evan and Jared scurrying off. "Oh no."

"Why are you laughing? Stop fucking laughing! I'm not the freak! You're the fucking freak!" Connor pushed Evan down and ran off sulking.

Zoe and you rushed over to Evan to make sure he was okay. You'd talked to her enough about Evan for her to know that he wasn't going to take this well. You were freaking out, both worried about Evan and horrified that he had already been pushed on the first day. The bell rung and Zoe went her separate way, while Evan rambled on, "-and then she introduced herself to me! Did you see that? It was so magical. Well, it would have been if I hadn't screwed it up."

"You'll be okay Evan. She's a sweet girl, she's not going to judge you. Especially since Connor was involved. What class do you have?"

"Stats, what about you?"

"English, see you at lunch or something?" You hugged Evan as tight as you could headed to class.

---

When you arrived to class, you took a seat in the back corner, relieved that you were in your favorite teacher’s class this year. Mr. Sinclair was half way done with the syllabus when Connor Murphy walked in. He walked to the back of the class room, but there were only two seats left. One by the captain of the football team, Derek, and the other next to you. He choose to sit next to you.

Not long after Mr. Sinclair was done with the syllabus, he announced that there would be a group project. “Your partners will be your table buddies. You will choose a book, and make a project on it. I emailed the requirements, but keep in mind that the books need to be appropriate. Derek you can join whatever group you.”  Mr. Sinclair then let everyone start working on the project. You were sitting with your hands cupped on the desk, staring down at them. You didn't know what to do. Sure, you'd seen Connor around at the Murphy's house, but he never really said anything more than the greetings his mom forced him to say. Other than that, all you knew about him were the rumors, what Zoe said about him, and that he'd hurt Evan earlier that day.

"(Y/N), right?" A voice snapped you out of your thoughts. You nodded, recognizing it as Connor's voice. "You're related to the kid with the cast and the polo?"

"-Evan, he's my twin." You didn't know why he was asking this. You’d been in the same grade level and classes as Connor since kindergarten, and even if you never personally spoke to Connor, you were sure he already knew these things.

"So you're going to go ask if we can just separate projects," You couldn't tell if this was a question or a command. "I mean, you're brother thinks I'm a freak, so why would you want to do a project with me."

"Evan does not think that, I promise."

Connor's voice got louder, "Yeah? Then why was he fucking laughing at me with Kleinman earlier?"

Your heart began race, and you began stuttering. Your face must have shown traces of anxiety because Connor's angry gaze softened slightly. He reached his hand toward your hand, but he was blocked by a figure.

“What do you think you’re doing, Murphy?” 

“Go away Derek.” The same amount Connor’s eye softened at the sight of your anxiety, they hardened when he saw Derek. 

“Were you going to hurt her?”

“Go. Away. Derek.”

“No can do. I’ve decided to be (Y/N)’s partner.” Derek slung his arm around your shoulders as you stiffened.

Connor was visibly getting more annoyed by the minute, “That would mean that your my partner too, go find a different set of partners.”

“Babycakes wants me here.” A smirk spread across his face. You were growing more uncomfortable, and were silenced by shock and disgust.  “No, she doesn’t. Neither do I, so don’t make me-”

“Make you do what? I’ve already decided. (Y/N), call me when you want to meet up for the project, sweetie.” Your face grew ten shades of red as you involuntarily grabbed onto Connor’s arm and scooted closer to him. Connor took one look at your shaky, nervous frame and lunged into action.

Connor drove his fist into Derek’s face, and Derek did the same. It was a blur as you gaped at the two men fighting, feeling a panic attack coming on, and before you knew it they were being pulled apart by Mr. Sinclair and two other teachers who had been called in. The teachers escorted Connor and Derek to the office. Mr. Sinclair pulled you outside the classroom and sat with you until your panic died down, “Are you okay, Ms. Hansen?” You nodded. “Did Mr. Murphy hurt you?” 

It took a moment to process what he said. “Connor didn’t do anything, Mr. Sinclair. Derek was making some,” you sighed, “comments about me that made me feel creeped out. I think Connor saw I was uncomfortable and tried to defend me.” 

Mr. Sinclair pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ms. Hansen, if what your saying is true, we need to get you down to the office so they don’t blame this on Connor.” Mr. Sinclair took you to the office just as the principal was getting ready to suspend Connor and release Derek. Mr. Sinclair reiterated what you had told him, and you confirmed it. Derek protested, trying to say that you were making it up.

“Very well,” the principal raised his hand to stop Derek, “Ms. Hansen has never given me any reason to not believe her. That, and last year three students came forward about you, Derek. I’m afraid I have no choice but to suspend you for a week and put you on probation from football until further notice. Connor, I’m going to let you off with a warning, and send you home for the rest of the day. Tomorrow, I will trust that you will not do this again, or you will be suspended.” Connor shook his head, and left without another word. 

---

A/N- I’m not sure how long this series is going to be, but we’ll see. 

[justoneday-namjoonii]

Don’t Breathe | 5.0

»Genre: hitman!au || stalker!au ||

»Warnings: kidnapping, stalking, obsession, themes of borderline Stockholm syndrome and Lima syndrome, brief mono-phobia, mature elements, manhandling, breakdowns, guns, yandere (? i think ), he thinks it’s cute when she cries, eventually they fall in love, Disclaimer: I do not condone nor suggest stalking/kidnapping or anything of that nature, this is pure fiction ok, kidnappers and stalkers DO NOT love you.

»Summary: He doesn’t get shaky hands, he never forgets his gloves and he never leaves a trail. He was paid to get rid of everyone who witnessed the exchange between a gang lord and a politician, they were picked off, one by one. He found out a month later, he missed one. A young writer who attended the event where the exchange took place. He has to kill her. Can he do it?

✤ pt.1 - pt.2 - pt.2.5 - pt.3 - pt. 3.5 - pt. 4.0 - pt. 4.5 - pt. 5.0 - pt.5.5 - pt.6.0

a/n: this is a heavy and wordy chapter so bare with me, we’re almost at the finale!  thank you for reading and i hope u enjoy!💖

taglist: @tangledsparkles @just-another-fangurl21 @impartoftoomanyfandoms​ @komorebi-unnie​ @tangledsparkles​ @yes-sol-not-soul (sorry :( tumblr won’t let me tag you) @sarzkh31​

When you woke up this morning, you felt nauseous, sick to your stomach. Last night, while you were sleeping, he packed up some basic necessities and put them in his car. He said Yeosang would be by soon to officialese everything and that you could relax until then. But you can’t, you’re head hurts so bad, you want to throw up. 

 “I was in the other room but I didn’t hear you get up, I would’ve made you breakfast,” Taehyung leans against the bathroom door frame and watches you, you’re dressed and he’s wondering how he missed you waking up and showering. You’re busy brushing your teeth, still wanting to pass out from how bad your headache is, but you decide against it. 

“Did you sleep well?” You nod, spitting in the sink with the running water. He tilts his head, already picking up on your change in demeanor. Taking a step towards you, he lifts your chin to get you to look him in the eye, “Hey, I know that face, look at me,” Concern coats his expression and you will yourself to finally look at him, “what’s wrong?” 

“I’m just- I don’t know, I’m nervous about all of this,” You walk past him into the bedroom, the beautiful bedroom you’ll probably never get to share with him again, “what if things don’t work out? What if your friend can’t help us, then what?” You sit on the edge of the bed, hugging yourself at the thought, the terror you would endure if this all went south. “I’m scared, I have this bad feeling, it’s making me really uneasy...” 

“I know,” Taehyung can’t say he’s never had those thoughts, it plagues his mind too. The thought of no longer having the comfort of each other, the joy in your smiles and laughter being taken, it’s scary. Kneeling in front of you, he takes your hands into his with a light squeeze.

“I know it’s scary, and we’re taking a huge risk,” He tilts his head, puppy-dog eyes peering into your weary ones, “but I promise, I’m doing what’s best to keep us safe and together, alright baby?” He caresses the side of your face with the back of his hand, but the affection makes you pout rather than feel better. 

“Hey, and guess what? Once this is all over, we’ll be shopping at local markets to buy fresh produce for us to cook with,” He smiles, trying to lighten up your mood with the dreamy idea, “we can paint whatever we can get our hands on, with whatever paint you want, you can write stories and poems during picnics, we could do whatever your heart desires, we’ll have a new life together,” He thumbs at the backs of your hands, tugging at your heartstrings to get you to smile. “I’ll even get you a puppy if you want one, doesn’t that sound perfect?” 

You can’t help but form a little grin at the thought. “It does...” 

“That’s what’s waiting for us bunny, we just have to wait for a little while,” He sits up to cup the back of your neck and places a firm kiss on your lips, so soft and warm but short-lived when he pulls away, “so give me a little smile, please?” You oblige, smiling down at him and he pinches your chin with a giggle.

"There you go, that’s my sweet girl,” He stands up and takes you with him, arms wrapped just at your thighs to keep you above ground, “why don’t you go get a few paintings to take with you, while I pack up a few things, and you can wear my favorite bracelet for good luck,” 

”Pack?” You sigh, feet hitting the ground when he let’s you go. He slips off the black threaded bracelet and tightens it around your wrist with a smile. “Do you want me to help-” 

“You go, I got it,” He holds your head in his hands and kisses between your brows with an audible smooch which made you laugh, “go on.”

With a pat on your butt, you’re making your way out of the bedroom and down to the basement. When you get down there, you realize the number of paintings you have. There are about ten to fifteen finished paintings and the others are unfinished. The little story that’s being written is illustrated in this painting, wonder and lover is illustrated in these paintings. In your attempt to pick a few, you notice the little cushion he got for you months ago. Sometimes, it doesn’t even register to you that once you were stuck down here, fighting and dying to leave this place. Now you’re almost in tears at the thought of having to leave. 

But you’re new life is ahead of you, you should be happy.

Leu is facing a political nightmare, there’s a chance he won’t recover from this. Scandals happen all the time, affairs, bribery, on rare occasions, perjury. But seldom is a man of his prowess busted for abetting in multiple murders. There’s no coming back from this. He’s been tracking the phone for a few weeks, and only recently did he realize it was active recently. He completely missed it. When he arrived at the police station, he gave one of the detectives the phone number to hopefully track. He’s been waiting in a room filled with computers and busy interns, just waiting for results. When he considers leaving the room for another bland coffee, he gets a phone call. Looking down at the screen, he sees who it is and decides to answer it.

Yoongi dismisses himself and steps into the hall, “Hello?”

“Jin told me you all found the person who hired the group that killed all those people and took Y/n, is that true?” She sounds hopeful.

“We found him. I can’t reveal too much but we’re hammering down on the search, trying to track the location of the cellphone.”

“I hope she’s okay,” Her voice falters a bit, “there are some sick people out there, I just pray she’s not with one of them.”

He has to cut the call short when one of the tech people waves aggressively to get his attention.

“We just got a location,” The woman beckons him back into the room, “it’s about an hour and a half away from here, in what looks like one of the upper-class neighborhoods on the east-side.”

Yoongi walks over to the computer, eyes skimming over the estimated location of the cellphone. “The phone was traced to that location?”

He’s surprised that your phone would be in such a nice area, but then again he knows what the Hwan Group has been rumored to do. They’ve sold they’re victims to high-paying old men and women who’re looking to fulfill their sick desires in innocent people. It’s repulsive. He can’t help the churn he feels in his stomach when the thought of a person being used like that crosses his mind. In his career in the FBI and even as a PI now, he’s seen some shit. And no matter how many times he’s walked in on dead bodies, shackled victims, bloodied crime scenes, seeing people mistreated makes him sick. But what keeps him doing this is the chance, the small but promising chance that the victim might be alive.

“How long was it on?”

“Not sure, but it was turned on about 2 hours ago and then shut off, must’ve died,” She types a string of letters and another tab pops up, “this is the address.” Promptly, the printer in the corner of the room spits out the paper with the address and she rolls her chair over to it.

“If she’s anywhere, here is your best bet.”

*

*

The room is filled with men in black gear, heavy leather boots, and guns on their hips. When Minho gives the word, they all pile into the van and Minho gets in the backseat of his car—he tells the driver to wait before pulling out. 

“Shit,” He lets out a deep sigh, dress-shirt feeling too tight on his neck. “he brought this on his self, he brought this on his damn self and he didn’t give me any other choice, right?”

Jimin sits beside him, nodding his head in agreement. “Absolutely, he can’t blame you for this, he knows the price of the job,” 

“Doesn’t make it any easier, out of everyone, he was the last person I thought would pull something like this, I still don’t fully believe it-”

“Well,” Jimin interjects, making a thoughtful expression, “maybe he did kill the target and he’s just being hush-hush about it, the girl could’ve put up a fight or- I don’t know, anything could have happened.”

“Maybe,” He takes out his phone, pressing a contact, “but I’m going to give him one more chance,” Waiting for a few seconds, deep down inside he hopes Taehyung will answer. Sadly, the call goes to voicemail and he sets the phone down and sighs, there’s nothing else he can do.

“He didn’t answer, he’s buying time,” Jimin confirms the inevitable, “he knows what he’s doing, it’s best we confront him now.”

Minho pats the back of the driver's chair. “Go ahead.”

He was plundering through the drawers when he found your cellphone stacked on a small pile of books. Assuming he’d be able to wipe it, he tucked is into the little bag along with a few of the books he knew you liked to read. Packing up this stuff reminds him of the night he took you from your house, the night that changed his life. It had been after so much time watching you, learning our lifestyle. He knows now that if he had a chance to learn all of that about you in a different circumstance, like as friend that would slowly morph into something more, he’d take that chance.

The buzzing of his phone pulls him from his thoughts, thinking it was Minho again, he was about to ignore it, but he peeks at the screen to see that it’s Yeosang. Quickly, he answers the call and presses the phone to his ear. 

“Hey, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Good news, the condo is in your name and ready to go. The bad news is, the flights have been delayed due to bad weather, it’s about a 2-hour delay, could be more.”

“Shit, that would happen,” Taehyung presses his temples, “how close are you?’

“About 45 minutes? Something like that. Do you want me to get her to the airport and you drive separately or do you want me to-”

“If you pick her up that’ll be fine but I was hoping for both of us to get out of here sooner than that,” He zips up the backpack and leaves the room with the flick of the light, “Minho tried to call me and I didn’t answer, he knows something,”

“I want to help you guys,” Yeosang stresses, “maybe you could drive all the way and take a flight from a city further down.”

“That might work if I leave right now,” Taehyung mentally flips through his options and the possibilities are starting to grow slimmer in his mind, “you know what, listen out for me, I need to get her ready. I’ll call you back when we’re in route.” 

Taking the little bag with him, he goes downstairs and searches for his computer, but he realizes it’s packed away. He was going to see if there were any loose strings that he might now have noticed. 

That’s when he hears a heavy knock on the door. He stands frozen, waiting for a second knock. There is a second knock and a booming voice from the other side.

“Kim! I know you’re in there.”

it’s too late, he’s here. Without a second to lose, he runs down to the basement where you’re peacefully admiring your first painting. 

All of a sudden, he hugs you and the painting falls from your grasp, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, he’s here,” He goes to turn off the light and you pick up the painting down to put it back, barely registering what he’s saying, “you need to hide while I buy us some time.”

“Wha- What? No, I want to stay with you,” Your hands are shaking and you feel like you’re getting that sick feeling again—this can’t be happening. “Tae, don’t leave me, what if something happens to you?-”

“Shh, it’ll be okay, I need you to hide under here,” He guides you over to the tiny space under the staircase, gesturing for you to kneel down. You do as he says and he kneels in front of you, every fiber in his body telling him to stay by your side, but he knows he can’t. He holds you in a warm embrace as if it was the last time, he always does it like it’s the last time. “It’s okay, just stay here.”

With that, you’re left in the pitch-black basement, curled up under the stairs, and wishing this was all just a bad dream. But the sound of the front door opening gives you the confirmation that this is your worst nightmare coming to life.

He opened the door a few minutes ago, Minho and Jimin had pushed past him to get inside, about ten suited-up guys follow and the door slammed on there way in. With little struggle, they had Taehyung sit on the couch while Minho paced in front of him as his team tears the place apart.

“I didn’t want to do this to you.” That’s the first thing Minho says.

“I can see that,” Tae responds plainly.

“You brought this upon yourself you know,” Minho stands in front of him, hands in his pockets with a cold glare on his face, “whatever the hell you were trying to do, it’s over now.”

Taehyung stays quiet, pissing Minho off even more.

“Do you know what you’ve done to this organization? We’re on the radar because you took that woman. Now the cops are involved, they’re onto us and they won’t stop until they find her. Why choose to go rogue now? Your contract ends in a year and you decide to spend it ruining your reputation? Out of everyone in the company, you were the last person I thought I’d have to worry about, you were my absolute best, and now that’s all gone to hell,” He bites his bottom-lip, getting impatient with Taehyung’s unchanging demeanor, “do you even care?”

He just stares at him blankly.

“Nothing upstairs,” About three guys come from downstairs.

“Downstairs is clear,” The others emerge from the other parts of the house, also empty-handed, "no signs of a body or that anyone else was living here sir-”

“Check again!” Minho snaps, kicking the coffee table across the room with a loud curse, “Look outside, tear the damn place apart if you have to, she has to be somewhere.”

He goes on and on, going red in the face he’s so livid, Taehyung was his favorite. The fussing becomes a bit repetitive to Jimin, so he decides to go off and do his own search, that’s when Tae gets truly nervous for the first time, Jimin has a knack for finding the unsuspecting.

*

Footsteps can be heard throughout the entire house. You only flinch when you hear a loud thump, like a table being thrown or broken against the wall. You brace yourself, placing your hands on your ears until the footsteps cease. You breathe in and out shallowly, trying to listen for Taehyung. You haven’t heard him once, not one sound.

Your heart drops when you hear the high pitched squeak of the basement door opening. Light slips into the darkroom. Heavy footsteps on the stair-well reverberate against your ears.

He’s a painter? He would be, wouldn’t he? A man mumbles to himself. Peeking from behind the wooden beam that’s shielding you, you see a man with shiny black hair looking at your paintings. You close your eyes and cover your mouth, tears pricking at your eyes from the sheer suspense of it all. Your body is shaking, sweating and the need to gasp for more air becomes critical to your sanity. But you hold it in, you block out the rapid heartbeat pounding against your rib-cage.

“Where are you...” He speaks clearer now as if he knows you’re here as if he knows you’re trying to block him out. Eyes squeezed shut, your curl in on yourself, trying so hard not to make a sound. His footsteps become louder, his shadow appears on the wall opposite of you like a lurking monster, seeking to cause you nothing but terror. In contrast, he hums a little song softly.

If you close your eyes, he’ll go away, just close your eyes and he’ll go away. 

“There you are,” You look straight at him and your fight or flight kicks in. You try to make a run for it but he easily grabs you, “hey! Stop- Stop fighting, I’m not gonna hurt you! Calm down-”

You scream but he clamps a hand over your mouth. Squirming violently, you try to bite his hand but he removes it before you can. He fights to drag you upstairs as you cry out for help. “Let go of me!”

When Taehyung hears your cries, all that goes through his mind is that he has to be with you. He darts past Minho to get to you but one of the guys tackle him to the ground. He calls out to you anyway, “I’m here! Y/n, it’s okay,”

Minho’s thrown off by what he thinks is a loving tone, “Keep him down.” He orders the men as he waits for the squealing female to be brought to him.

“Here she is, found her hiding under the staircase,” Jimin emerges with a smile and a red scratch on his brow courtesy of you, “she is very much alive.” He drops you on the ground in front of Minho. On your hands and knees and you look up with weary eyes.

“Oh Taehyung, you’ve been hiding her this entire time, you lied to me,” He kneels in front of your trembling form, head tilted and a hand reaching out to cup your jaw, “she is a pretty little thing, I get it. But if you wanted to keep her, why didn't you just say so? That could have been arranged,” You jerk away, “I just never thought you were the type to want toys like this.”

“That’s not what this is, she’s not a sexual object,” The men pull Tae to his feet and he finally sees you, on the ground, paralyzed with uncertainty, “I’ve been protecting her from you.”

“When have you ever protected a target from me? You take the job, I never force you to take a fucking job, Kim. This is your fault because you missed her and then had to go back to the job, then you watched her for too long and got attached, the very thing I warned you about that when you first joined.” 

You look back at Taehyung, searching for some type of comfort in his eyes, but you’re stalled by the painful sting in your scalp, “Ow!-”

“This woman?” He fists your hair, pulling you to your feet. You grasp his wrist to try to loosen his grip but it only tightens, sending a burn down your back tears to your eyes. It’s deliberate torture for Taehyung to watch because he can’t do anything about it.

“This fucking woman should have been dead, and since you fucked everything up, I have to take care of her myself. But I don’t get it, you’ve killed dozens before, she shouldn’t have been a problem, but you got obsessed and she just had to be yours, didn’t she? That’s pathetic.” He shakes his head, disappointed.

“Do you not remember? You signed the contract for 7 years, you don’t get to experience real love in this job, and you know that better than anyone. How could anyone love you after what you’ve done? You’ve told me that countless times, what’s with the sudden change in heart?”

Taehyung looks away for the first time, it’s all true, when Tae signed the contract, he was sure he’d never have to worry about being attached to anyone. He didn’t love anyone, and no one loved him or ever could, so the job was perfect. No worried messages from a mother, disappointing looks from a father— if he has no one, there’s no one to disappoint, no one to secretly hate him. He ruled out the possibility that someone would ever want to love him, truly love him. Then came you and he loved, he was loved.

“She doesn’t deserve to this, she doesn’t deserve to die. She didn’t do anything wrong,” Taehyung looks into in your eyes, trying to communicate to you, trying to think of a way to get out of here, “I swear, if you touch her-”

“Don’t give me that shit, you’ve killed all kinds of people, good, bad and in between, what makes her any different?-”

His sentence is cut short when Taehyung suddenly jerks against the men holding him and he gets free. He gets a hold of the gun and points it at Minho. Your hair is released but the man now holds you with an arm anchored around your neck.

“Let her go,” Taehyung takes short strides towards you two as the barrel of the gun stays square to Minho’s forehead, “you know I’m a straight shot, I could kill you right now,” He cocks the gun, the action making you shutter, “get your hands off of her.”

“You won’t do it,” Minho is already holding it to your head, arm secured around your neck. “if you kill me, you kill her, that’s not what you want,” He shoves the barrel against your scalp and you bite your lip hard to stop from sobbing. “I will kill her if I have to, then this will all be over. But if you put that gun down, and do exactly what I say, she stays alive, I promise.”

“Tae- Taehyung,” You manage to choke out, clawing at Minho’s arms frantically, “please-” He tightens his grip on your poor neck and that’s when Taehyung raises his hands in surrender and he’s immediately brought to his knees.

“Alright! Just stop, stop! She can’t fucking breathe! Please,” As soon as they take the gun, Minho throws you on the hard floor and you gasp for air, coughing violently as you brace on your hands and knees, “do what you want with me, just don’t hurt her.”

“Huh,” He groans, clicking his teeth in contemplation, “since you are my favorite and you’ll probably never see her again, why don’t you give her some love before you go? I’ll give you that at least.”

Taehyung down looks at you then at Minho. “What?” 

“I’m giving you a chance to say goodbye,” Minho nudges you with his hand, making you flinch, “hurry up before I change my mind.”

The men are still holding him, his arms behind his back. He bites back tears as you sit frozen, mirroring his pained expression. “Y/n, it’s okay,” He calls for you, pulling against the retrains, “come here, baby,” You begin to crawl over to him, but you’re still hesitant to get near the people holding him, “let go! What the fuck do think I’m gonna do?!-”

“Let’m go, he won’t do anything stupid.”

Once he’s freed, he cocoons you in his arms, his body is warm and his energy is calm as he cradles you close. Minho stops to observe a version of Taehyung he has never witnessed before. He’s on his knees, holding you to his chest as you cling to him. Your knuckles must be white from how hard you’re gripping his shirt. Your eyes are squeezed shut, you’re shaking, petrified with the thought of never feeling this again. You can’t live like that, you could die without this. “T-Tae, don’t let them t- take me, don’t let them take me-...” You hiccup through your sobs, holding on to the little bit of affection that might be the last.

“Shh, I’ll fix this,” He whispers just low enough for you to hear, “I promise...”

You feel his hand go to your hair and he pulls your head back to bring your lips to his—you can’t live without this. He parts his lips, kissing you as if you two were the only ones in the room, as if you’re in bed, heart-to-heart, feeling loved. Shamelessly, you push against him for more and you can taste your tears, are those your tears and his tears?

“My God,” Minho tucks the gun back in its holster with a scoff, “from the looks of it, you’d think he actually loves her.” Minho makes a thoughtful expression, smirking down at Tae who’s resting his head on your shoulder as you hold him tight. He signals at Jimin who’s watching the scene with interest, “Okay, that’s enough.”

The embrace is broken when you’re ripped away and Taehyung is tackled to the ground with loud cursing. You let out heartwrenching sobs, eyes glazing over with sheer horror, “No! Please! I’ll do anything, I won’t say anything about this I swear! Just don’t do this, please!”

Minho dismisses you entirely, more interested in Tae’s reaction. “That’s all it takes?” Minho walks over to him, laughing when Jimin and another guy struggling to hold him back, “Years of training and killing, and it only takes her to break you?”

“Go to hell.”

Minho shakes his head with a sigh, pitying him. “Put her in the car.”

Yoongi is in the car with two other officers ready to give the signal any time now. He knows something is going on but whatever happens, he’s determined to get you home safe. When he looks into the house from the car he sees a shadow pass the front window.

He holds the button on the com. “We’re moving in now.”

*

It was a blur when it all happened. You were crying and being dragged away from when the door burst open. Officers stormed the house. Guns go off and your ears ring painfully. They rush in and so many people are everywhere—your oasis, your little paradise is being made a battleground. You cry when the man holding you bumped into a vase and drops you near it. He flees out the back door, but you’re frozen, everything is in disarray but the one person you do see is Taehyung who’s being handcuffed along with so many others. He mouths something but you can’t make it out. He shakes his head, you don’t know what he’s saying, what is he trying to say? 

“I’ve got her, she’s here!” A man is yelling to the others, you didn’t register he was kneeling beside you. 

“Y/n, we’re here to help you, you’re safe now,” He moves to block your view from what’s happening behind him. You don’t verbally respond, but your eyes are teary, breathing rapid, lips trembling.

“She’s hurt! I’m taking her out.” 

You’re having derealization episode, or a panic attack, or both. You might be looking at him, but you’re acting like you don’t know where you are, you’re not even aware of the wound on your leg.

Who is this man?”

“Who are you?...” You speak for the first time, and you pear at him with wavering eye-contact, his eyes look kind.

“Yoongi. I’m going to pick you up, is that okay?” You nod after he wraps your leg tightly with his jacket, he lifts you into his arms and carries out of the house.

You can’t see Taehyung, you don’t know where they took him. Yoongi notices how you twist in his arms to look behind him, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone or something, he doesn’t know. All you see are a bunch of officers and Minho’s people being cuffed and shuffled into squad cars.

You’re taken past all of the squad cars and put you in the back seat of a black SUV and Yoongi disappears. A woman kneels down to tend to your leg, when did your leg start bleeding? You frown down at her when she cuts you pant-leg, tossing the denim to the ground, she notices instantly.

“My name is Chloe, sweetheart. I’m a paramedic, I just need to stop the bleeding until you can get stitches,” Her lips are moving, you know they are but you have no idea what she’s saying.

She mumbles to the man beside her, an EMT, give her the shock blanket. With a small nod, the man scurries off and returns with a silver tarp-like material and wraps it around you with gentle hands.

That man called Yoongi comes back and he’s talking on the phone with someone, he pushes back his middle-parted black hair and gets in the passenger's seat. Chloe finishes wrapping your leg and gently puts your legs in the vehicle, hooks you in your seat-belt, and promptly closing the door to seal you inside. This is too much, this wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t supposed to happen. You start heaving, hand on your chest and body rocking back and forth to soothe yourself. They think they’re saving you, they’re not saving you.

They’re tearing everything apart.

“Wait one second,” Yoongi moves the phone from his ear and looks back at you, the color has left your face completely. Your hands are shaking and it feels like there’s a heater right in front of your face. 

Yoongi reaches his hand back to get you to calm down but you don’t even look at him, your stomach aches all too much for you to acknowledge him. “Y/n, breathe, okay? You have to take deep breaths and calm down, you’re safe-”

You kick the door open and you’re expelling any food you had left in your stomach on the curb.

He sighs, quickly unbuckling his seat-belt to, “I’ll call you back,” 

“We brought her to the infirmary,” Yoongi paces outside of the room, “looks like the place was being ransacked when we got here, we don’t know who the culprit is but the most important thing is that she’s safe now. When the doctor thinks she can undergo questioning, I’ll head over.”

“Good. The other officers arrived not too long ago, a majority of them won’t talk but they’ll stay in holding until you get back,” Eunwoo pauses, “how’s she doing? Is she all there, are there any signs of abuse?”

Yoongi sighs, taking a seat on the bench. “Don’t know yet, she hasn’t talked much. I don’t know if we should do the questioning today but I’ll talk to her after the doctor talks to me,”

“Alright, let me know when you’re headed over.”

It smells so sterile, you want to throw up again but you settle for staring at the nurse who just finished bandaging the stitches. When she leaves, another woman comes in.

“Y/n, how are you feeling?” She adjusts her glasses, getting a little closer when you don’t respond. “Everything is happening so fast, yeah? I can’t say I know what you’ve been through, but I know you're probably overwhelmed.”

You nod. 

“I won’t bombard you with a bunch of questions, I’m just here to make sure you’re physically okay. Your vitals are good but is there anything going on with your body that you might be concerned about?”

You shake your head no, not maintaining eye-contact by any means—she notes that.

“Okay, do you mind if I check to make sure everything's okay? I’ll need your consent to do a full-body exam and I’ll have a chaperone with me, but if you’re not comfortable with that, I 100% understand.” Again, you nod with a small yes when she asks for verbal confirmation. She puts on some gloves before instructing you to sit on the edge of the bed and she goes to get a young woman in sky-blue scrubs.

He’s been waiting for about an hour and he stands to his feet when the woman comes out of the room with a clipboard. 

“How is she?”

She holds the clipboard to her chest with a sigh. “We finished the physical exam, and there are no signs of sexual abuse or physical abuse, she’s quite healthy considering. As far as her mental health goes, it’s hard to tell right now. She’s obviously really overwhelmed by everything, this is probably going to be a trauma that she lives with for a while, she’ll need a psychiatric evaluation. I know you’re apart of the investigation but if you want to question her, talk to her to see how she feels about it first.” She walks off to the nurse's station but turns to say one more thing. 

“You know, I heard about her in the newspaper, her news publisher has a whole story on her. Thank God she’s alive, not all stories end so fortunately.”

Yoongi walks past her and into the room quietly, you look up at him and then down at your hands.

“Do you feel a little better?” He walks to your bedside, eyes drifting down to your bandaged leg. 

“H-...How did you find me?...” 

“We’ve been looking for you nonstop. Today we were finally able to track your cellphone, we only hoped you’d be at that location. It’s been 8 months since the day you were reported missing, and for 8 months I’ve made finding you my main priority.”

You furrow your brows, looking at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “It’s been 8 months?...”

“I know a lot is going on but we need some answers from you. I understand if you’re feeling up to it, but would you be able to come with me and answer some questions for us at the police station? If you don’t feel up to it then-”

“I’ll do it..” You answer too quickly. 

Just like that, you’re at the police station sitting across from Yoongi and the officer over the investigation, officer Cha Eunwoo. They gave you a glass of water and you’ve chugged it down. You’re so jittery, your mind is everywhere.

“Y/n, do you know why you were kidnapped?” Eunwoo comes back with another cup of water and you watch him sit back down.

“I was told it was because of a politician who had it arranged that I be killed...

Yoongi writes something down and you swallow, wondering what he’s writing down.

“The house you were rescued from, is that where you’ve been living?”

“Yes...But-” You bite your lip, tears welling up in your eyes, “...I’m not hurt, the person I was with kept me safe, the man I was with, he's not the bad guy...”

The two of them look at each other puzzled, then at you. They question whether they heard that correctly. 

“Who? Y/n,” Yoongi begins softly, “are you saying you were being protected?” You nod, pout ever so present on your lips. “Who was protecting you?”

You bite your lip, stopping yourself from saying his name, you shouldn’t say his name. They don’t know who he is yet, and maybe there’s a chance he’ll get out of this. As your mind reels, the two of them watch you, teary eyes laser-focused on the black bracelet on your wrist.

“Can you tell me who was with you in that house?” Yoongi asks again but you won’t look at him now. “Was it multiple people, or just that one person?”

You press your lips, nodding subtly. “It was multiple people?” You shake your head. “So it was just him,” He glances up from his notepad and you don’t indicate an answer, so he takes that as a yes, “did you ever leave the house?”

Eunwoo stands to his feet, stirring curiosity from you and Yoongi. “Min, can we have a word in private?” 

Albeit confused, Yoongi nods, following the officer out into the other side of the two-way mirror where the other officers are.

“The hell? She was just giving us some good information.”

“Let me take this over, we have about a dozen people and we need to identify and interrogate all of them. But right now, we need the man who did this to her, that’s all.”

“She might not respond well to that, she’s obviously troubled, the pressure isn’t going to help.” Yoongi glances at you from the corner of his eye. “I think she trusts me a little more, so I should finish this.”

“I’ve interrogated hundreds of victims before, I think I can handle this. You can step in if she gets irate.” Yoongi can already sense how there’s an obvious shift in your demeanor when you notice that Yoongi’s isn’t accompanying him.

“Y/n, what happened to you was not your fault, but the person who did it needs to be dealt with. You were kidnapped, held hostage against your will, and no matter what that person might have told you, there are people who care about you that have been looking for you. You’re a victim and the person who did this to you will not get away with it. The man who had you and multiple others killed is already in our custody, he stands trial tomorrow. Now, we just need to get the others. Can you help us do that?”

You look at the one-way mirror. “Where’s the other guy, Yoongi, why didn’t he come back?...”

He evades the question. “Did he ever tell you his name?” Eunwoo glances at the one-way mirror before softening his tone. “Y/n, do you know his name?”

You frown, looking down at the bracelet on your wrist. “Does my family know I’m here?...” 

“Y/n, we are going to let your family know but you have to realize what’s going on here. Senator Leu, who is standing trial today, hired someone to have you killed, but they didn’t kill you and we need to know why. Is he threatening you?... Is that why you won’t tell us anything?”

You swallow, throat feeling incredibly dry, face heating up. You chug down the second glass of water, it only cooled you down for just a moment.

Yoongi watches with a trained eye. You having to talk to Eunwoo alone was not a good idea. Gathering that this interrogation is going to end pretty soon, he decides to go ahead and contact your family.

“I don’t feel well,” You blink slowly, handing going to your stomach, “can I get some more water?...”

“Sure,” He can’t deny you water, but he knows when someone is avoiding questions, “but before I get that, I need you to tell me who did this to you.”

You look at him and like a rehearsed scene, you queue the tears. The discomfort on Minho’s face indicates the foolish decision he made to interrogate you alone.

“Y/n,” He looks you over and wonders why you keep messing with the black bracelet on your wrist, “that’s a nice bracelet, is it yours?”

Wiping your tears, you scramble for an answer, “Yes, it’s-...It’s mine.”

“So, if we ran a DNA test on it, the only prints on it would be yours?... Or, was this bracelet given to you by someone, maybe by the man who had you all this time?”

You lower your head onto the table and cover your face with your arms, Yoongi presses his temples—you’re not budging, but Eunwoo insists. In the meantime, he decides to step in the hall and make a few calls to your job, family, and friends.

“Why does it matter!?” You snap, eyes burning red. “It’s mine and if you want it, you’ll have to pry it off of my dead body, I won’t let you take it off for anything, it has nothing to do with this...”

“You’re making this harder than it has to be, you know that, don’t you?” He reaches into his pocket and holds a fist in front if you. 

“Remember this? Suzy said you wouldn’t be caught dead without it, but it was on the floor in your house. Is that bracelet just as special as this?” He opens his hand and there sits your favorite necklace, the one your parents gifted you years ago. As much as you love that necklace, this bracelet is just as special, it’s a piece of Taehyung.

You ball your fist, tears welling at your eyes, you don’t care. “Just leave me alone, I don’t wanna talk anymore...” 

He sits on the uncomfortable steel bench, arms cuffed behind him. It’s dark, cold, and dreary, but the interior of this place is the least of his worries. He’s never been on this side of the bars, despite deserving it. The gate slides open suddenly, Taehyung can feel the guard's presence but he doesn’t bother looking up.

“Come with me.”

Without a word, he obliged, picking up his feet with heavy strides. The guard holds his arm tight, leading him through the halls to find interrogation room 12. 

“Is interrogation room 12 open?” The guard talks to the officer standing at one of the many rooms lining the hall. The two of them strike up a conversation but Taehyung is listening to the conversation down the hall.

“She’s alright, I called her job and her mother, and Jin,” Yoongi paces, peeking down the hall to see the third culprit brought in for questioning, “there will be a lot of happy people when they find out she’s okay.”

“That’s great, I’m glad, I know the last case you had didn’t go this well,” Jungkook flips through the phony contracts that his recent client was given to sign, “I’m about to leave the firm so I’ll have to call you tomorrow, but if you need me to help with the case just let me know.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Yoongi bids him farewell and slips the phone in his pocket. The lawyer had helped a lot in the last missing person case Yoongi was involved in, the victim was in rough shape. It was a young woman kidnapped by an ex, it wasn’t a pretty outcome. The shape they found her in will always be ingrained in his memory, it haunts him that he couldn’t get to her sooner.

Yoongi walks down the hall and Taehyung watches him. He tries to do it in a subtle way, but that’s the man that carried you out of his home while he was being cuffed and pushed into the back of a cop car. Anger bubbled in his chest, the inability to call out to you, to take you into his arms, it hurt him to his core.

Yoongi spares him a glance before going back into the one-way mirrors viewing room and the door closes, preventing him from seeing inside any further. You’re a wreck. It only takes a few seconds for Yoongi to see you balling your eyes out as Eunwoo paces around you to barge in there to put a stop to it.

“I know you’re scared but you need to stop covering for that Man. You’re safe, he can’t hurt you now-”

“Hey,” Yoongi looks at him as if he’s grown a second head, he whispers, “stop, she’s completely shutting down. She needs to be physiologically evaluated before we finish this, look at her,” He gestures to you who’s trembling, breathing hitched with our inability to stop crying, “we can’t do this right now.”

He sighs, pulling Yoongi to a corner, “I’m sorry, I just, I hate to know that somebody did this to her and she won’t say anything, her Stockholm syndrome is on another level.” 

“The owner of that house had to be the one who did it, just go to the research lab and they should be able to tell you. I’m taking her to the Melody’s Heart temporary safe house until her family can pick her up tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’m going to step out for a minute.” With that, Eunwoo leaves the room. it takes Yoongi talking you down for about 2 minutes to finally get you to stand up and walk with him. You sniffle, rubbing your eyes as Yoongi walks you out of the room and into the hall.

Taehyung is right there. 

Your eyes widen and your gait slows, he’s right in front of you. Yet, the only thing connecting you is your gaze, this can’t be all there is left of your love. Yoongi leads you down the hall and you pull against him slightly. He notices your staring and that when the pieces come together. That’s him.

“Open room 12, officer Cha wants to have him interrogated separately.” 

Taehyung watches you disappear, he can’t say anything and he can’t do anything. He gets pushed into the room and into a hard steel chair.

*

*

It’s sunset, they drove you about 20 minutes away somewhere, you weren't sure. A woman opened the front door to a huge house, and Yoongi opened your car door, helping you out with a hand. He walked by your side and went inside with you to sign some papers. The woman was kind, she had curly brown hair she was speaking to you with the softest tone. She kept saying you were strong, why was she saying that? With Yoongi lingering behind you, the woman that you know now as Melody takes you to a bedroom on the first level of the house. She said they prepared the room for you, there was even a change of clothes with toiletries on the bed.

“Can I get you anything, sweetheart? You’re our only resident tonight, so I’m all yours.” She’s nice but you don’t feel like company, you don’t feel like looking at any more new faces. You shake your head and she nods in understanding, 

“Alright, then I’ll be here if you need anything, Mr. Min, I’m sorry but officers are actually not allowed in the bedrooms of the residents-”

“I’m not an officer, I helped with the case,” He turns to her so you can’t see his face and speaks lowly, “I just need to talk to her for a few minutes, I won’t be long.”

“Alright, just let me know when you’re headed out.” She leaves from standing in the doorway and cracks the door and she heads to the surveillance room that doubles as a bedroom for her. 

“Do you want to bathe? I’ll leave if so and we can talk after.” You’ve kicked your shoes off, crawled to the edge of the queen size mattress and curled on your side facing the window. “So, I talked to your parents and they’ll be heading here tomorrow but Jin will probably be here first,”

”Jin?” You sit up, wondering why your ex-boyfriend has anything to do with this. “Why?...”

“He hired me to look for you, he’s the reason I got involved in your case.” Yoongi keeps a safe distance, the little camera hidden behind the plant reminds him of the high-security this place has. “Out of everyone, he called the most, almost every day to get updates about you.” 

For a moment, you wonder if he has the correct Kim SeokJin. Because the last encounter you two had was so brief, it was a run-in at the grocery and you two talked about your jobs. It was really adult-like of you, you picked out potatoes as you picked up small-talk with an old flame. But there was no romantic love left, that boat had sailed a long time ago and your brief love for wine replaced it. He’s always cared about you, but you never thought he would be waiting for you.

“I have to go but I’ll be back in the morning, do you need anything before I go?” You shake your head, not wanting to be around him or anyone else any longer. It’s too much, it’s too much for you to handle all at one time and you just want to go to sleep. Maybe you’ll wake up, and this will all be a bad dream, and you’ll be in his arms. He said he would fix this, how is he going fix this?...

*

*

Yeosang waited for hours, he called Taehyung at least five times and he has yet to get a response. Something went wrong. In efforts to figure this out, he drove all the way from the meet-up spot to Tae’s house. He could tell the place had been intruded on, Tae never leaves his car outside of the garage at night. He pulls into the driveway, right beside the smokey black Audi R8. This isn’t like him to have gotten caught. The passports were ready, the new house was waiting, everything would have gone fine had the flight been earlier. He has to admit, he was looking forward to giving his good friends a chance at a happy life. He only met you once, but the way Tae talks about you, you two are clearly in love. If he knows Taehyung at all, he’ll receive a call in at least a few hours about what happened. He has to come out of this, that’s what Yeosang chants in his mind.

“So you own the house,” Eunwoo paces, coffee in flimsy Styrofoam cup as he takes a seat across from the culprit, “Kim Taehyung.”

Taehyung acknowledges him with a disinterested glance before staring down at the steel table separating them. He wonders if you’re still in the building, they were taking you away, but where were they taking you? After he was cuffed, he saw Minho’s men get cuffed but Minho and Jimin were gone. If he knows Minho at all, he’ll be back.

“Don’t you hear me talking to you?” Minho hits the table, causing Taehyung to finally looking at him. “Look, for some reason your record is clean. But if we find out that you were involved in any of these murders and this kidnapping, you’re looking at a hefty sentence. Just admit it, you saw a pretty, successful girl living all alone and you thought, why not take her? Are you threatening her, is that why she won’t reveal you?”

“There’s not a scratch on her, does it look like I threatened her?” Taehyung speaks for the first time, the very insinuation that the nature of this kidnapping was to harm you made him sick.

“So, you did it then?” He affirms.

Taehyung shrugs, expression too nonchalant for Eunwoo’s liking. “You know what, wipe that smug look off your face-”

“Cha,” Jaemin opens the door without warning.

“What?” He snaps. “Don’t you see I’m in the middle of something?”

“The chief wants to talk to you, he says it pertains to this case.” 

With a resent glare at Taehyung, Eunwoo leaves the room with urgency. Jaemin, however, stays in the doorway, eyes fixated on the acclaimed Hwan Group member that he’s heard so much about from Minho. Kim Taehyung, his record is so clean, he doesn’t have so much as a parking violation on him. If he didn’t know who he was, Taehyung would fly under the radar in his book, he’s that convincing.

“What do you want?” Tae scrutinizes the man, eyes scanning him up and down.

“So you’re Kim Taehyung,” Jaemin closes the door with a soft click, “you really fucked this one up, it’s a shame too, Minho said you were the best. You ruined your record all for that woman-”

“Where did they take her?”

“That doesn’t really matter, let’s just hope Minho can work something out for you, he’s pissed right now,” He shakes his head in and ‘tsk, tsk’ way, “had you just done your job, you and that poor woman wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“She was crying when I saw her, what did they do to her?” He shifts in his chair. “Fucking answer me.” 

“Look, stay quiet and you might get out of this alive, that’s all I can say,” And that’s all he says before quickly exiting the room, leaving Taehyung isolated in the cold room, head hung back against the chair. He’s tapping his foot, rhythmically, he’s jittery, anxious with thoughts about you. He promised he would fix this, how can he fix this when it’s so obvious that he’s got the least amount of control in this situation? Hold on Y/n, hold on.

*

*

Eunwoo rushes to the Chief's office and without a knock on the cracked door. he steps inside. He closes the door, “Chief, Jaemin said you wanted to see me?-...”

“Hello, Captain Cha.”

“Who are you? Where’s the Chief?“ 

“My name is Lee Minho, I’m sure you’ve heard my organization, the Hwan group. I know the chief and there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding here. The man you have in custody is a member and he’s only here because he made a mistake and my informant didn’t tell me who was on this case. You know of the Hwan group, the Chief has mentioned you and how you’ve dismissed some cases in compliance with the partnership we have.”

“This is really an HG case?” Minho nods. “The Chief never told me anything about dismissing this case. There were multiple murders and kidnapping, that’s not the typical HG favor.” 

“That’s because the man assigned to the job often does high-profile jobs but stays under the radar. Unfortunately, he didn’t follow the instructions of the job. It was a multiple person execution but he had to go back and get that woman because he missed her. He led me to believe that she was dead but I found out recently that he’s been hiding her from me. I went to his house to confront him and here we are.”

“But the pardons I’ve made have never been for HG jobs that involved things like this. He murdered innocent people-”

“My organization has helped get rid of a lot of bad people and my people have worked in situations where cops just aren’t trained in. They get the job done if they chose to take it, no questions asked. Anyone who’s willing to pay can seek my group for help. They’re pawns, and Taehyung was one of my best. He takes a job and he does it, no sentiments attached. But for this woman, I don’t know,” He shakes his head at the thought, “he just couldn’t do it and that messed up everything, his reputation is screwed. Now I’m here trying to clean up his mess, a little.  I’m sure you’ve spoken with our middleman, Na Jaemin, he was supposed to monitor this case to ensure things didn’t end up like this. But since it couldn’t be helped, I’m here to propose a deal.”

“Okay, what kind of deal? Because someone has to pay for this,” Eunwoo paces, “her disappearance has been televised and in the articles, she was a writer, people knew of her work from her publisher and they've been anticipating her return for months. We can’t just say she’s been found and then not give them any more than that. People will want to know where she’s been and who took her. Someone has to be held responsible other than Leu.”

“No, that’s not entirely true. We can arrange a cover story and Taehyung can be released to me.” He reasons. “And the girl stays free.”

“What about justice for her? She’s been-”

“Trust me, she’s not happy about this ‘rescue,’ it’s not what you think, she loves him.” Minho recalls the act of affection you two shared and how you pleaded to stay by his side, “I’m sure there are some psychological factors but at the end of the day, they are romantically involved, that’s probably why she’s so apprehensive to say anything, she doesn't want to say anything that might ruin her chances of seeing him again.”

“Woah...wait, I don’t think this is a consensual relationship if it were, why wouldn’t she say anything about is?”

He shrugs, “Doesn’t really matter at this point, here’s what needs to happen; I’ll take Taehyung back because he’s still under contract for a full year after this year ends, he has a job to do. In exchange, I’ll set up the cover story and the two of them can never make contact again, how does that sound?”

“Hm,” He takes a moment to consider the possibility of something going wrong, “them not making contact would put him in the clear and isolate her from any association with the group. That sounds foolproof but what if they don’t agree? If they’re together like you say, who’s to say she won’t rat on the group or he won’t try to find her anyway? I don’t see how we can get her to go back to her regular life.”

“She’ll never go back to her regular life, not really. I’ve known Kim for years, he’s not a monster but that doesn't change the fact that she was kidnapped, isolated from society for months and all she had was him. We’ll have to tell her what’s going on of course, but I doubt she’ll squeal if it means putting him in prison. They’ve said their goodbyes, it’s not a love story to be salvaged anyway. He doesn’t have a family he has very few friends and he has a ton of money, a huge house in a nice part of town, he’s got everything.” 

“What if he refuses?”

Taehyung broke under the hand of a thing like you, the idea that he is emotionally impenetrable is long gone. Minho straightens the collar of his dress shirt and leaves the room to go deliver the news. “He doesn’t need her, his job doesn’t allow for distractions like her, and he knew that when he signed up; he’ll get over it.” 

The door creaks and he expected it to be one of those officers, but Minho emerges with a guard who quickly walks over to take off the cuffs. Aside from the guard who just scurried out, Minho isn’t accompanied by anyone and he doesn’t look like he’s seen two seconds in a pair of handcuffs. He knew his boss had connections in high places but he never imagines it was to this extent.

“I am upset with you, Taehyung,” Minho circles around the chair, hands on the back of it, “you don’t know the strings I’ve had to pull to keep this quiet. What were you thinking? You knew the job, but you deliberately put your self in harm's way when you decided to hide her from me.”

“Had I told you she was alive, would you not have tried to kill her?” His tone bites.

“Probably, but it doesn’t matter what I would have done, you were supposed to do it.” He stresses. “I didn’t take the job Taehyung, you did.”

Tae diminishes a bit, the guilt of it all coming to the forefront of his mind. At the end of the day, no matter how many people actually wanted to harm you, he’s the one that signed up to do it. And it hurts, it hurts because he loves you, you love him and he doesn’t deserve if, but he wants it more than anything.

“Where is she?”

“I think they took her to some safe home, she got hurt but she got medical attention for her injuries. Now that she’s taken care of, I’m getting you out of here. I arranged a deal with the chief and it gets you out of this mess scotch free.”

“Okay...What’s the catch?” He knows there’s a catch, there always is.

“Your contract isn’t up, you have a little over a year left with the organization and despite how frustrated I am with you, you’re good at your job. You have to finish your contract.”

“And if I choose not to?” He asks daringly.

“If you choose not to, any immunity you have from the law because of the organization goes away, that will most likely land you in prison. But if you finish, your record stays clean.”

Tae doesn’t have to weigh his options to make a decision, but Minho hasn’t mentioned you. “What about Y/n? Will she be safe under this deal?”

“Of course, a cover-up story is arranged and she gets to go back to her everyday life,” He grins, “everyone's happy.” 

A glimmer of hope comes to his eyes. “Then I can be with her, and no one will know about the kidnapping?”

“Oh, no. She’s staying here and you’re being transferred to the Europe division of the organization, you’ll reside in Bordeaux, France and travel throughout Europe for jobs. The deal is that you never see her again, it guarantees there can be no association between you two.”

“What? No, no...I can’t do that, I love her, she means everything to me. I won’t leave her, not without an explanation. We were gonna leave before you showed up, make a new life with all of this shit behind us,” His nose burns and he bites back a tear, “I-...I wanted to marry her one day, I can’t just leave her here.” 

“You don’t have a choice, your flight leaves in the morning if you’re lucky they’ll let her out and you might be able to say goodbye one last time. Come on, we need to get out of here, you have to pack up. Do yourself a favor and try to forget about her, she’ll eventually do the same.”

This can’t be it, this can’t the end everything he’s built with you. He promised he would fix this, how can he fix this if he’s on the other side of the world? The thought of going to get you and running came to mind, but he can’t make you live like that, on the run like outlaws, he loves you too much. He has to fix this but you’ll have to wait. His heart aches, he knows you’re probably alone and confused. This is all my fault, this is my fault.

[kelyon]

Golden Rings 24: A Stranger

The Storybrooke sequel to Golden Cuffs

Rumpelstiltskin seeks out the mysterious man on a motorcycle

Read on AO3

August Wayne Booth. 

The man had been at the forefront of Rumpelstiltskin’s mind for weeks now, ever since Jefferson had mentioned him in passing. His friend had only known the stranger as a man on a motorcycle, someone who had come to town in January and stayed.

Outsiders weren’t supposed to be able to come into Storybrooke and they certainly weren’t supposed to stay. The only person here who hadn’t been born in the old world was Henry Mills. The people affected by the curse didn’t notice it’s constant effect because that had been their reality for twenty-eight years. But a normal person would notice the oddness around Storybrooke, the little things that didn’t quite add up. Henry had, and he was only a child. If an adult who had been born in the world without magic slipped into town, the curse was designed to fill them with an unfathomable dread, a soul-deep revulsion that would make them want to leave as soon as they could.  

But not Mr. August Wayne Booth. 

For a few weeks, Rumpelstiltskin kept tabs on the man. Gold had a loose network of informants, people who wanted to stay on his good side. It was easy to make subtle inquiries. Emma Swan had given him the name, as well as the fact that he was a writer. That had piqued his interest. A storyteller coming into a town made of stories. Wasn’t that awfully convenient?

 “Booth” was clearly a false name. If he was a writer, it was a pseudonym. If there was something more nefarious going on, it was an alias. Either way, the name was a lie. What was the truth? Who was he, this dark-haired young man who had been born in the old world but had come to the land without magic without being part of the curse? 

And why did he seem to be watching Gold as much as Rumpelstiltskin had been watching him?

****

It started with Henry. One day after school, the boy came into the shop. Thankfully, Mrs. Gold was out at the time. Rumpelstiltskin hated to imagine the sorts of things that woman might try to get away with in front of a child. 

Rumpelstiltskin liked Henry. He liked most children--they were so refreshingly direct. Henry reminded him particularly of Bae. It was something about the dark hair and wide brown eyes, the conflict of innocence and experience that made both boys wiser and more haunted than they should have been. Bae’s life hadn’t been an easy one, and Henry had been raised by Regina, a woman the boy had correctly identified as the Evil Queen. 

“Good afternoon, Henry.” He left the back counter to talk to him. “What brings you in today?”

Henry looked around the shop with a half-frown on his small face. “I wanted to buy a present for Mrs. Nolan,” he said. “You know, since she didn’t die.”

Kathryn Nolan’s disappearance, various sightings, and eventual re-appearance had been headline news for weeks. The poor woman had finally made it to the doorstep of the sheriff’s station, dehydrated and malnourished but clear in her mind. She reported that she had been abducted, had escaped several times, and had been recaptured and moved to different locations before finally making a break for it.

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t wonder who might be responsible for something so tragic happening to the woman Prince Charming was married to in this world--or who might benefit from it becoming public knowledge that David Nolan and Mary Margaret Blanchard were having an affair while Kathryn was in such peril. But he did wonder how things might have been different if Regina had asked someone more competent to do her dirty work. He would have refused, but she should have at least tried to come to him first. 

That was all in the past. Now, Kathryn Nolan was recuperating in the hospital and young Henry wanted to buy her a gift. 

“What were you thinking, my boy?”  

Henry shifted from one foot to the other. He seemed focused at some point over Rumpelstiltskin’s shoulder. “Um.... Maybe something musical? Something that makes a lot of noise.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Interesting choice. Perhaps a music box?” He went to the case where he kept a few antique music boxes. He wound each one up and set them on the counter for Henry’s inspection.

“They’re not very loud.” He held one shaped like a golden harp up to his ear. 

“I also have a mechanical nightingale.” Rumpelstiltskin pointed to a clockwork bird that was covered in jewels. In the old world, it had belonged to an emperor, who had valued its song over that of any real bird. “Though I fear it may be a touch out of your price range.”

There was a noise from the back of the shop. Rumpelstiltskin turned to look that way, but then Henry spoke up again.

“What about a bell?” he asked loudly. “Do you have any bells around here?”

“I’d be happier if I had one more,” Rumpelstiltskin joked to himself. “But yes, they’re in the case on the other side.”

He got them out--glass and porcelain, silver and pewter. Henry had to ring them all, of course. Several times. It was only when the boy was done that Rumpelstiltskin noticed more noise from the back. 

“Excuse me,” he said to Henry as he limped over to the curtained door. 

There was a man in his office. August Wayne Booth. Looking through the shelves of unpriced antiques. 

“May I help you?” he threatened. 

Booth put on a boyish grin. It was meant to look disarming, which only made Rumpelstiltskin arm himself more thoroughly. 

“Yeah, I was looking for some maps, if you had any.”

“They’re out there,” Rumpelstiltskin nodded behind him. “In the shop.”

“I thought this was the shop,” Booth chuckled. 

Slowly, Rumpelstiltskin came toward the man, who backed away without losing his shit-eating grin. 

“This is my office.” He kept his voice low, to make sure Booth was listening. “Private.”

“Ah!” To Booth’s credit, he kept up the ruse, no matter how thin it was getting. “Sorry. My mistake.” 

Why did the memory suddenly come to him of Baelfire insisting that he had washed his hands before dinner, even when Rumpelstiltskin could see the dirt on his palms?

Booth made a hasty retreat through the curtained door into the showroom. A moment later, the bell over the front door rang. Without looking, Rumpelstiltskin knew that Henry and Booth were both gone. 

****

      “Will you be able to watch the shop today?” Rumpelstiltskin asked Mrs. Gold the next morning. She had started coming down for breakfast again, though she still made her own coffee and toast. 

For some reason, she seemed to be warming up to him lately. In the evenings she lounged around the house instead of staying cooped up in her room. She offered to help him with dishes and other chores. She stood close to him again. Sometimes she even tried to take his hand. 

She set down her section of the newspaper. Instead of reading to him as she once had, now they divided the paper and read in silence. “You won’t be in?”

“No, I have some business that would bore you.” 

For a moment, he wondered if she would question him. When the curse was in full force Mrs. Gold would have obeyed her husband without thought. Her trust in him--damaging and perverse though it may have been--was absolute. But since Rumpelstiltskin had given up any pretense of acting like Gold to her, she didn’t know him anymore. It had hurt her at first, especially when she had seen him with Jefferson. But lately, for some reason, the breakdown of their marriage didn’t seem to bother her as much as it once had. 

She just nodded. “Feels like I haven’t been in the shop in forever.”

She hadn’t. When Mrs. Gold avoided him that meant avoiding the place where he spent the most time. Should he have done something different with that? Should he have arranged that they alternate days in the shop, just to give Mrs. Gold something to do? Would keeping her busy have made her happier? Would it have prevented some damage to her heart or her mind?

Was it too late for him to make things better for her?

****

 The question of regrets, of apologies and restitution, weighed heavily on Rumpelstiltskin’s mind. Everything he had done for the last several hundred years had been to get to the moment he was in now. He had created a curse that would destroy the old world and bring them to this one. He had manipulated events so that Regina would have enough power and enough rage to cast it, and that Snow White and Prince Charming would have enough True Love to create a Savior who could break it. All of that was just the first step, just the way to get to Baelfire. Now he had to find him, and he had to make things right by him. 

But what if Baelfire had found him first?

The thought was too precious to believe in. It didn’t help that he had no idea how old his son would be. Time worked differently in different worlds. In some places it stopped altogether. Jefferson once spoke of a world where thousands of years could pass between one of his visits and the next. In this world without magic, Bae could still be fourteen. Or he could be an old man. 

Or could be an adult who rode a motorcycle. 

Booth was staying at Granny’s Bed and Breakfast. As the owner of the building, Rumpelstiltskin could have insisted that Granny Lucas pull out her master key and escort him up to the room. But there was no need to make a public display. Not when a set of lock picks could achieve the same result. 

Tit for tat, after all. Booth had invaded his territory. It was only fair that Rumpelstiltskin repay him in kind. 

After four months of him living there, the hotel room had plenty of information to offer about Booth. Housekeeping had made the bed, but dirty clothes still littered the floor. A desk was strewn with books and papers, with a typewriter sitting in the middle. That gave some credence to the idea that Booth was an author. There was a page in the typewriter carriage, the end of a paragraph about a smirking blonde woman. 

There were two stacks of papers on the desk. The larger stack appeared to be a ream or two of blank printer paper, waiting to become the next Great American Novel. The smaller stack was the actual results of Booth’s work. Typed pages held down by a wooden carving of a donkey.

Rumpelstiltskin picked up the figurine. There was no brand on the bottom, it could be hand-made. Once, Baelfire had asked him to teach him to whittle, as he had seen other men around the village teach the other boys. Rumpelstiltskin had been forced to admit that he didn’t have that skill. His father had never taught him either.  

He leafed through the pages until his heart skipped a beat. Hidden with the rest of the papers was a drawing. Baelfire had loved to draw, as Milah had before him. And this drawing was certainly something that only Baelfire would have made. 

It was the dagger. His dagger. 

He had told his son about the power of the dagger, that it was the source of his magic, the only weapon that could hurt him. That anyone who used the dagger could control him and make the powerful Dark One a slave.

Bae had hated the dagger. He hated what his papa had become--and hated more that Rumpelstiltskin didn’t hate it. How could he? The power, the knowledge, had been like nothing he had ever known. Once he had lost his soul to dark magic, Rumpelstiltskin felt like a man for the first time in his life.

But Bae had only wanted his father. 

And when the time came, when Rumpelstiltskin had to choose between the dagger and his son--the son he would die for but could not protect without magic--he had made the worst choice he could have made. 

By the time he realized what he’d done, it was too late. Bae was gone. Rumpelstiltskin lived for centuries without him. Centuries trying to find him. And now…

And now his son might be in Storybrooke. 

****

Later that afternoon, he took Gold’s car and followed Booth on his motorcycle. The Sisters of St. Meissa Convent was an odd visiting place for a man as worldly and rough-edged as Booth appeared to be. But Baelfire had goodness in his soul, the kind that time could not erase. He would talk to nuns as easily as he would talk to fairies. How fitting that the Blue Fairy was now the Mother Superior over a superfluity of nuns. 

Booth was talking to her. Bae had once asked the Blue Fairy how to remove the darkness from his father, and the gnat had given him a magic bean. The bean had opened a portal to get to the land without magic--this world.

If she had offered the same courtesy to Rumpelstiltskin when he had demanded it, the curse would have never happened and none of them would be in the mess they were in now. 

The fairy and the man spoke for some time. They walked around the convent grounds while Rumpelstiltskin waited in the car. From the far side of the large parking lot, he kept an eye on the motorcycle. Once Booth came back to it and started the motor, Rumpelstiltskin got out and made his way to the convent. 

“Mr. Gold!” Mother Superior squeaked when she saw him waiting for her by the entrance. She quickly recovered and straightened up in a display of determined self-righteousness. “It isn’t Rent Day. Are you here to repent of your sins and beg for forgiveness?”

“My sins are far beyond your forgiveness, dearie.” He showed his teeth. She might be stupid enough to think it was a smile. “Who was that man you were talking to?”

The fairy lifted her chin in the air and began to walk on. “I don’t have to tell you that.”

“And I don’t have to not double your rent.”

She stopped in her tracks, her back to him. She was dressed in wool from her stockings to her habit--all of it dark blue. At least some things hadn’t changed. The Mother Superior stomped back to him. 

“What do you want?” she asked through a clenched jaw.

“That man,” Rumpelstiltskin repeated. “What did you talk about?”

Fidgeting with the sleeves of her cardigan, the Blue Fairy didn’t look him in the eye. “He’s a lost soul looking for his father. He asked me for advice on how to approach him.”

Rumpelstiltskin’s throat went dry. He stayed very still and gripped the handle of his cane. “What did you tell him?”

Her temper seemed to flare. “The same council I would give anyone in that situation: To be selfless, and brave, and honest.”She looked at him pointedly. “You have to care about the other person’s feelings more than your own pride, you know.”

“You would know a thing or two about pride, dearie.” Rumpelstiltskin turned away and began to walk, leaving the gnat sputtering in his wake.  

****

Taking time to chat with the Blue Fairy made Rumpelstiltskin lose track of Booth’s whereabouts. He drove back to town, knowing he would run into the man again. Especially if he was looking to reconcile with his father. 

Should he believe what the fairy had said? Mother Superior would know better than to make things worse between herself and Gold. Nothing she had said seemed to be a lie. But there were so many ways to deceive without lying. 

He parked the car by the shop, but didn’t go in. Without knowing that he was doing it, he began to walk down the main street. He needed to think.

What he really needed was to talk to someone. Belle would know what to do. He could talk to her about anything, and she would understand, or try to. At least she would listen. In the too-brief year of their marriage, he had poured out his soul to her a hundred times. She had always known how to help him, how to see what he needed to do and how he might go about doing it. He could be weak with Belle, in a way he could never be weak with anyone. He could admit his confusion, his inarticulate mass of fears and sorrows--and always, she would help him untangle the threads of his thoughts, without judgement, with nothing but wisdom and love.

No one else could do what Belle did.

He might reach out to Jefferson, but the poor man was so caught up in his own misery. Little Grace didn’t know who her father was, it would be cruel to talk to him about a possible reunion with his own child. It also occurred to Rumpelstiltskin that Jefferson didn’t know Bae existed. His son--his life before he became the Dark One--was one of Rumpelstiltskin’s closest secrets. Only Belle knew the whole story. It would be too much to burden Jefferson with all of it at once.     

After circling the block, Rumpelstiltskin’s feet stopped in front of a building across the street from the shop. It was called the Hepworth Building, Gold had owned it for years. Among other businesses, it housed the office of Dr. Archibald Hopper, the town’s resident psychiatrist. 

In the old world, Hopper had once been a petty thief named Jiminy. After getting caught up in some magic he didn’t understand, Jiminy had been transformed into a talking cricket. To atone for his previous crimes, he had made it his duty to act as the conscience for confused humans, to encourage them to do the right thing.

Rumpelstiltskin sighed as he knocked on the office door. Whatever might happen with the cricket, it had to be better than stewing around in his own head. 

Dr. Hopper opened the door. A tall, bespectacled man in tweed, he radiated a kind of earnest goodness, a guileless sincerity that made Rumpelstiltskin itch. 

Belle would like this man, he told himself. Belle would want him to talk to someone. 

“Mr. Gold.” Hopper’s voice was always soft, even when he was surprised and confused. “Are you… here about the rent?”

Of course that was all Gold was to these people. Nothing but a monster set out to take as much from them as possible. 

“No.” He leaned on his cane and looked at the carpet. “No, I’m… I’m not sure I could tell you why I’m here.”

Hopper’s frame had been taking up the entirety of the doorway. Rumpelstiltskin stood in the hall, far enough away that no passerby would think he was waiting to go into the psychiatrist's office. With a single step Hopper went out into the hall. Now the door was wide open. 

“Would you like to come in?” he said. “I’ve got some time before my next appointment. If there’s something on your mind…?”

Rumpelstiltskin brushed past the doctor before he could change his mind. Once in the office, he had just enough time to find a chair before his knees gave out and he collapsed, like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. 

Hopper sat down in the chair across from him, so they were eye to eye. Some deep, primal emotion burned in Rumpelstiltskin’s throat. He wanted to talk. He shouldn’t talk. If he started talking--about Bae, about himself, about Belle--he would never be able to stop. 

“So,” Hopper began, “what brings you in today?”

A coffee table sat in between Rumpelstiltskin’s chair and Hopper’s. He looked at it, at the fake wood grain that covered up the cheap plywood. He breathed.

Gods, he wished Belle was here.

“I think I might be seeing my son again soon,” he said.

Hopper was silent for a moment. His head tilted to the side. “I--didn’t know you had a son. How old is he?”

“Let’s start with something simpler.” Rumpelstiltskin took a shaking breath. “I haven’t seen him since he was fourteen. I…” He trailed off, then began again. He was here. He was talking. He was determined to plunge in the knife as deep as it would go. 

“I haven’t seen my son since I abandoned him.” He looked up, stared directly into Hopper’s eyes. “I can’t imagine that he doesn’t hate me for what I’ve done. I know I deserve his hate. I deserve all the anger and rage he wants to pour out onto me. But I’m still afraid of it.”

“Well of course you are,” Hopper said simply. “No one wants to deal with negative emotions, or the consequences of actions they regret. The past can be a scary place, and it sounds like you’ve got some real causes for concern.”

Rumpelstiltskin blinked. He’d forgotten how good it could feel to have someone agree with him, to look at the facts of the situation and say that his reaction was justified. 

“I do want to see him,” he said. “But… but how can I make up for what I’ve done? If I make myself vulnerable to him, I might as well put my head on a chopping block.”

The dagger was the only weapon that could kill him. Did Bae want it for that reason? Had his son decided that enough was enough, that he would end the evil of the Dark One no matter what it cost?

“Vulnerability,” Hopper said, “is a very scary thing. Forgive me if I’m overstepping, but you don’t strike me as a person who is comfortable with being open.”

Rumpelstiltskin sighed. It had been the greatest gift Belle had ever given him--the chance to open himself up to her. Could he trust Bae in the same way? Could he offer his son all he had, all the weakness and cowardice? Could he trust his boy to understand everything he wasn’t, as well as everything he was?

“When he was growing up,” he said, “I always wanted to be strong for him. I didn’t want him to… know.”

“Know what?”

“What I lacked. As a father, as a--man.” Rumpelstiltskin’s hands balled into fists. “I didn’t want him to know that I wasn’t good enough for him.”

The confession escaped him like air from his lungs. It left him feeling hollow, deflated. He looked at the ground. 

The office was silent. Hopper seemed to be waiting to see if he would say more. When it was clear that he wouldn’t, the doctor put his hands together, entwining his fingers.

“It’s clear you have regrets,” he said gently. “If you want to talk about those things in the future, we can schedule an appointment. But you came here because you have concerns about reuniting with your son. On that end, I have a question for you.”

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t speak, but looked up from the ground to let Hopper know he was listening. 

“Do you think your son doesn’t know about what you think of as your faults?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“Everything you were trying to hide from your son when he was a boy, everything you didn’t want him to know--do you think, right now, that he is unaware of those things?”

Rumpelstiltskin opened his mouth. “No,” he said after a moment. “No, I don’t see how he could be ignorant anymore.”

When Bae was small, he had tried to be a regular father to him. He’d tried to keep him from understanding how wretched their poverty was, how unhappy Millah was, how far Rumpelstiltskin fell from being anything their world thought a man should be. But Bae had grown up and he had learned. And then he had seen that not only was his father less than a man--he was a monster. 

Bae had known that. And he had run from it. But now he was back. He had chosen to come back, to seek out Rumpelstiltskin.

“If that’s the case,” Hopper said, “though it might still be frightening, I don’t know if there’s any reason for you to feel like you need to hide from him anymore.”

He didn’t speak. He was too overwhelmed. He should see his son. He would see his son. He had to. 

“Do you know where mold grows, Mr. Gold?”

Wordless, Rumpelstiltskin shook his head.

“In the dark,” Hopper answered his own question. “Any rot, any corruption, it’s mostly going to happen in dark, hidden places. Basements, attics, the back of the fridge. It’s the same with emotions that people keep secret. If you don’t bring them out into the light, they’re just going to get… yucky.”

He allowed himself to grin. “You know, that sounds exactly like something my wife would say.”

****

   That night, when Rumpelstiltskin followed the motorcycle, it drove off into the woods. It took him a few minutes to realize that they were headed to Gold’s cabin. The same place where he had buried the dagger all those months ago. 

Good. That dagger had been the linchpin of the conflict between him and Bae. No matter how that conflict ended, the dagger would surely have some part to play. 

He parked the car beside the motorcycle. The cabin was dark, but moonlight reflected off the lake. The figure of a man stood by the shore. 

Rumpelstiltskin hesitated before going out to meet him. How was this going to play out? How angry would Baelfire be? How could he ever make up for leaving him, for embracing the darkness he had hated so much?

How could he ever be a father to him again?

Do the brave thing, Belle would have said. Bravery will follow after that. 

Leaning on his cane, Rumpelstiltskin stepped onto the grass and walked out to meet his fate. 

The man didn’t move as he heard him approach, but he did turn his head as they stood side by side in front of the water. 

“I didn’t know if you would come,” he said calmly.

Rumpelstiltskin planted his cane in front of him. Just barely, he resisted the impulse to weep. He wanted to throw his arms around his son, to get on his hands and knees and beg forgiveness from his beautiful boy.

“I didn’t know if I would be welcome,” he said honestly. “After… everything.”

Now Bae faced him fully. In the moonlight, his eyes sparkled blue--so like Millah, so like Belle. His eyes shone with unshed tears.

“Papa.” 

It was all he said. It was all he needed to say. Rumpelstiltskin’s resolve melted. His son was in his arms. They hugged and cried and apologized. Bae assured him that everything was alright, everything was forgiven. They were together again. They could be happy again. 

“Look at you!” Rumpelstiltskin held his son’s face in his hands. He had changed, but he had grown up to be a handsome, strong, capable man. Bae was everything he had ever hoped he would be. “Belle will be so happy to meet you at last.” 

Bae looked confused. “Who’s Belle?”

“My wife. Your--well, she’d like to be your step-mother, if you want to think of her that way.”

Belle had wanted to be a mother to his son, a mother to all the children they could have together, once the curse was broken and the world was safe.

“Of course, Papa,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll love Belle. She’s got to be a better wife to you than that girl who hangs around your shop.”

Rumpelstiltskin winced. He patted his son on the arm and began to walk toward the cabin. “Don’t judge Belle by Mrs. Gold, son. This curse… it is a terrible thing.”

“I know.” Bae began to walk ahead of him. Then he stopped and looked back. He waited for Rumpelstiltskin to catch up.

Limping, he chuckled at his son. “Just like old times, isn’t it?”

For a split-second, the man’s face was blank. Like he had no memories of running to the village on market day while his father hobbled on a staff, urging him to slow down, to stay close. The blankness remained in his blue eyes, even as he smiled and laughed. “Oh, right.” 

Had Bae always had Millah’s eyes?  

Rumpelstiltskin felt his jaw clench. A worm of worry had gnawed into this perfect moment. But he couldn’t worry. He couldn’t be afraid now. Not when he finally had Bae again. 

He had Bae. And Bae had forgiven him. It was so easy.

Too easy?

They kept walking, past the cabin and to the patch of woods where he had buried the dagger. There was a shovel in the cabin. The young man insisted that he do the digging. Rumpelstiltskin watched him work. He tried to keep a level head.

The deeper the man dug, the more worried Rumpelstiltskin found himself. Was that just his connection to the dagger? Dark magic knew when it was being threatened, it always worked to protect itself. Bae had tried to separate Rumpelstiltskin from the Dark One before. Did the dagger know that? Was it afraid that Bae would win this time?

Or was Rumpelstiltskin afraid that Booth wasn’t really Bae at all?

After unearthing the metal box, Booth handed it over to him. 

“Can you unlock this, Papa?”

The keys were in his trouser pocket. He didn’t reach for them. He held the box in both hands, in the dark and silent forest. 

“You know,” he said. “I gave the dagger to Belle, before I asked her to marry me. I knew it was the only way we could be together. If I kept my magic, she would have the power to control it.”

The young man looked up at him from his hole in the ground. “That’s… really sweet, Papa.”

Rumpelstiltskin let out a breath. “Funny thing, though,” he said. “In this world, I don’t have magic. Wasn’t that the whole point of coming here, Bae?”

Thinking clearly for the first time in days, Rumpelstiltskin looked August Wayne Booth in his lying blue eyes. 

“There is no magic in this world,” he said. “My son wanted to escape from magic. He would leave this dagger buried in the earth. You are not Baelfire, so who the hell are you?” 

Booth opened his mouth and held up his hands. “Papa, how can you--”

“Enough!” Rumpelstiltskin roared.       

By the time Booth had scrambled out of the hole, Rumpelstiltskin had unlocked the box and taken out the dagger. He pushed Booth up against a tree and held the point of the dagger to his lying throat. 

Booth’s breath went ragged. “You just said it doesn’t have magic.”

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t sharp, dearie. I think you should talk while you still have a voice box.”

He tried to swallow, then seemed to realize what a dangerous endeavor that would be. “I-I-I’m not your son.”

Rumpelstiltskin bared his teeth. “A little fairy told me she advised you to be honest. Now tell me something that I don’t already fucking know.”

“I know where he is!” Booth gasped out the words. “N-Baelfire. I’ve met him, I’ve talked to him. I can find him again.”

“See, if you started with that, you might have some credibility. But now I’m going to make you bleed, just because you insulted my son’s name by putting it in your mouth.”

He pushed the dagger into a spot under Booth’s ear, far away from any fatal areas. Rumpelstiltskin had seen blood in the moonlight before--it looked black and otherworldly and beautiful.

But Booth wasn’t bleeding. A trail of clear liquid rolled down the man’s neck, much more slowly than blood usually did. Rumpelstiltskin reached out a gloved hand to touch it.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you? Were you not born in my world?”

Though clearly feeling pain, Booth was able to grin. “That’s where you’re wrong, Dark One. I wasn’t born at all.”

Rumpelstiltskin eased up on the point of the dagger, but kept Booth pushed up against the tree. “And?”

“I was carved,” he explained. “From the wood of an enchanted tree. And enchanted trees don’t do well in a land without magic.”

Now Rumpelstiltskin stepped back. Far enough away that Booth couldn’t grab the dagger away from him, but close enough that he could still rush the man if he needed to. 

“You need magic,” he said to the wooden man. “Did you think you could control me with this? Use me to keep yourself alive?”

“There are three people in this town who might have access to magic.” Now Booth leaned against the tree. He rubbed at his neck, wiping away the sap that had leaked from his skin. “It’s Emma, you, and the Evil Queen.”

Understanding dawned. “You’ve been hanging around Emma for months.”

“Trying to get her to believe.” Booth shook his head. “Hasn’t worked.” 

“Well, you couldn’t claim to be her long-lost child, could you?”

He had the good grace to chuckle at that. “I don’t have anything to offer Regina either. Hell, she wants me to be a pile of kindling.”

“You haven’t exactly endeared yourself to me either, sunshine.”

Hanging his head, Booth looked at him. Blue eyes--Bae’s were brown, they had always been brown, dammit!--had no hope in them. “Do you want to kill me now?” he asked. “Or do you want to watch my limbs and lungs and brain slowly turn into wood?”

“It’s a day in the park either way.” Rumpelstiltskin didn’t hide his satisfaction at this news. This man had lied to him, betrayed him in one of the most personal ways possible. He deserved to die. “Any guess as to how long you’ve got left?”

“Maybe weeks.” Booth pressed his hand to his thigh, then rapped his knuckles against his leather jacket. “Maybe days.”

“Hmm,” he grinned. “Well, Mr. Booth, for as long as you’re flesh and not furniture, you have a job to do.” He stepped up to the man, grabbed him by the collar and spoke loudly into his ear. “Get Emma Swan to break the curse. She is the Savior. Her magic is what will save us all.” He released Booth, tucked the dagger into his inside coat pocket, and walked back to the car. “Even those of us who don’t deserve it.”