#at most ill maybe rewrite the second chapter as well | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

taeyohonic · 4 years ago

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stolen dances | chap. V

summary: sometimes supporting the person you love is the hardest challenge you’ll ever face.

pairing: jeon jungkook x fem!reader

rating: m

warning: one/two swear words

additional tags: f2l, ceo!jungkook, bestfriend!jungkook, shrink!yoongi, my best friend’s wedding meets 27 dresses (if the boss/secretary couple had happened), angst-y

words: 1500

links: prev. | next

note: lower case letters intended

chapter summary: a muffin never tasted so bittersweet

can you believe it’s been three years? i miss you army

you can’t help the bittersweet memories flooding your mind at jungkook’s tweet. it’s been such a long time since bangtan stood in front of their fans – performing their music to the people who adored them with all their hearts.

you, yourself, were part of this crowd, more times than your bank account wishes to remember. their stage presence was so enticing, so alluring, you could not not fall in love with them.

jungkook shared some pictures in his tweet, old photos of jin and him demolishing a plate of deep-dish pizza in chicago, of jimin and taehyung posing in front of their pop up store in seoul, and one with all four of them bowing to the crowd in tokyo dome.

there is a smile on your face – not because you think about their shared journey, but because your best friend chose photos of events that you attended. sure, you hadn’t known them back then. but it can’t be a coincident that you have similar pictures – granted from another perspective – on your own camera roll. it makes you miss him.

“what’s going on?”, yoongi asks as he slides your coffee across the table. your starbucks is full of people, but namjoon, yoongi’s dear friend, works here. so, there is always a spot cleared for you. you don’t mind the special treatment as you sip your white mocca.

“just thinking”, you mumble, warmed by the caffeine.

“that can’t be good”, he says and sips his iced americano. he looks as tired as you feel. yoongi is recording his second mixtape right now. so, after he finishes his work talking to people about their problems, he starts rewriting, taping, recording, mixing and editing. no wonder he looks like death.

“i have you know that i’m actually thinking 67 percent of the day.”

“that can’t be good as well, ______. please use your brain more often – it might evolve with training.”

you gap at his audacity. “you do know i’m not paying you to talk me down, right?”

yoongi’s eyes smile while his lips are still half asleep. “you’re not paying me right now, _____. we are just friends meeting up for coffee before we have to… be a part of the working class.”

“i still can’t believe i get to see beautiful, brilliant, boisterous butterflies”, you say. your friend answers with an unattractive snort as his hands move into his thick, bleached hair.

“and i can’t believe you’re getting paid to watch bonkers, brackish, boring butterflies.”

you look away as you see his biceps flex. when did get this muscular? it takes a second for you to register his insult. maybe you need another coffee before leaving.

“i do have to care about my class as well, yoongi. it’s not all sunshine and butterflies. it’s also children’s snot and education.” still, you’re not making eye contact. if this was a therapy session, he’d ask for you to look at him, to ask why you’re feeling uncomfortable. but here, you are… just his friend.

“your work is important, _____, i know”, yoongi answers honestly. he knows how much you love these animals and children. and it is a big deal that seoul’s butterfly exhibition opens up just for your excursion. it makes him happy to see you this excited.

“and because i know that, i’ll remind you that you had to leave three minutes ago.” what? your eyes rush to your watch, only to widen in surprise.

“damn it, namjoon”, you mutter. your barista friend did take a long time with your order.

“don’t blame joon, _____. we were the ones who missed the train”, your friend reminds you as you put on your jacket in a rush.

“less correcting me, more helping me, yoongi”, you shush at him and make a motion to your heavy bag right next to his chair. “come on.”

yoongi doesn’t know why he agreed to help you carry all the lunch packs to school, he really doesn’t. nevertheless, he gets up and slings the heavy bag onto his shoulder and grabs his half-finished drink.

“let’s go – teacher of the year.”

the exhibition is amazing. you feel true bliss walking around the nature themed rooms, all home to one of the most rare, beautiful creatures. the kids hang on their tour guide’s lips as she tells them interesting facts about butterflies.

your phone is a constant companion – the camera roll now filled with funny pictures for the moms and dads to enjoy at the next parent-teacher conference. there are even a few photos of just you with a pink butterfly resting on your shoulder. jisoo, your coworker, is an amateur instagrammer, so the results of her taking your pictures are… really flattering.

now, the kids enjoy their break before you guys leave to drive back to school.

“really, you amaze me, ___”, your coworker says as she sits next to you on the bench – eyes trained on your students chasing around the butterflies.

“why?”, you ask, your attention monopolized by the two boys in a heated exchange over their shared butterfly net.

“getting the exhibition to open up just for our class? after hours? without additional fees?”

you flinch at her words as your heartbeat quickens. “wha- what? jisoo? i-“, you start to stutter, “i thought… you organized that.”

there is a fruit basket waiting on her desk with a thank you note for all her planning. now jisoo, too, looks uncomfortable.

“i didn’t”, she says.

it takes you a long time before you reach out. the whole train ride was spent with a pro and contra list on your ipad. then, while you were making yourself a two-person bowl of ramen, you crafted more than one email, only to delete every attempt. you haven’t talked to jungkook for more than five days. that’s the longest period the two of you ever went without seeing each other.

there is still a tightness in your chest when you think about his insult that night on the terrace. at first, you weren’t sure if jungkook realized that he hurt you – admittedly you aren’t the best with communicating your feelings. but your cold responses to his texts the next day must have been enough of a red flag for him to act.

then came the gifts: a triple chocolate muffin, still warm, delivered to your home before you had to leave on monday.

on tuesday, there was a singed copy of the unreleased album from one of your favorite kpop groups.

the next day, there was a poem collection where he scribbled in some commentary. you nearly teared up at that because this used to be your ritual when you first got to know each other: lending books with marked and commented pages for the other to enjoy.

on thursday he was strangely silent – only a single daisy decorated your briefcase.

but now, on friday, he went out of his way to get your class into this exhibition. you don’t even want to think about what that must have cost him.

there is an uneasiness in your fingertips as you dial his number. for one fleeting moment you want to call your therapist instead. but you can’t… because you may have left your whole “cold-shoulder-to-jungkook”-move out of the last session. and you really can’t take yoongi’s probing right now.

he answers after seven rings, breathlessly happy.

“______”

you smile and it’s not uncomfortable.

“jungkook… you didn’t have to”, you greet him and can’t help the endearment in your voice. he picks up on that and chuckles.

��of course, i didn’t… i wanted to.”

“thank you”, you answer, “it was really the highlight of my week.”

you can hear his cockiness at your words. “better than stray kids’ new album?”

“better than your thoughts on contemporary poems”, you counter teasingly. then, there is a beat of silence.

“______”, jungkook begins, “i… i really didn’t want you to think i’m not … or that i wouldn’t… do anything for you. you mean so much to me… it’s a shame i have to prove it to you… it should be… obvious.”

you suck in air as if your life depends on it. his words warm your heart and his awkwardness makes you smile.

“i get that i wasn’t the best of friends… but i’ll improve – trust me!”, jungkook vows with fire in his voice. “the winter collection has been kicking my ass… my family has been nagging about christmas… and the wedding…”

there is a beat of silence you do not dare to interrupt. this is his moment, not your responsibility.

jungkook collects himself fast and continues. “i know how much you’ve done for this wedding, for me… for us… and i want to be more involved… i’ll be by your side for all of next week’s appointments. ms yang already cleared my schedule.”

jungkook wants… to be by your side when you talk to the dj? the cake decorator? when you finalize the seating chart? dear lord.

“let’s spend some quality time together, ____. just you and me… and the wedding.”

you cannot find the right responds as you gap silently into your phone. after a moment, another voice is heard through the speaker.

“ask her if she liked the muffin i baked her.” his fiancée’s words punch you in the gut without ill-intent.

___

hi guys! I hope you are doing well! i had to take my first covid test this week – it was negative but that’s an experience for itself, right? i hope you are healthy and you enjoyed this chapter. i’d really love to hear your thoughts! next up: junkook and the reader tackling some of the wedding preparation… love, dana

taglist: @livewittykid @thequeen-kat @kagami-s-void @goldenclosethobi @youwannabelostandnotbefound @jinsalpaca @bishuthot @laabellaavitaa21 @baekstans @jalexad

#btswriterscollective #jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #jeon jungkook angst #ceo!jungkook #idol!jungkook #rich!jungkook #jungkook fanfic #jungkook scenarios #bts scenarios #bts fluff #bts angst

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perriewinklenerdie · 4 years ago

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Say you’ll be mine (Ethan Ramsey x MC)

Open Heart, Ethan Ramsey x MC

A/N: Hi guys! How we feeling? We did it, fam, we finally got it. The myth, the legend, the 30 diamond scene. As always, I did a rewrite, putting my own spin on it because I am a hoe like that and I just couldn’t resist.

As you can probably guess, this piece is NSFW, proceed at your own risk.

Summary: Chapter 12 diamond scene rewrite. As the rain pours outside, their emotions and feelings bleed out of them too.

edit: don’t mind me, being a colossal dumbass that makes an edit and then forgets to put it into the post :)

Tag list: @paleweasels, @kittykatchoices, @valiantlychaoticbarbarian, @radlovedreamer , @usuallyamazinglyaverage, @awhmilkywey @palestazure, @cordoniaqueensworld, @universallypizzataco, @princess-geek, @faithhasnowords, @mightyfangirlofthefandoms, @drakewalkerfantasy, @timmagicktoad, @laceandlula, @greywitchyshots, @llamasgrl, @gingerjane15, @marywrites-things , @ethanplaysfavorites , @mfackenthal , @betelgeusebee , @simsvetements, @buzz-bee-buzz, @owleyes374, @cora-nova, @aworldoffandoms, @l822, @cream-ray, @ughhhxjazzy, @silverlitskies, @justendlesssummerfeels, @togetherwearerapture, @desmaranj, @edgiestwinter, @friedherringclodthing, @waytooattuned, @choicesgremlin , @lapisreviewsstuff, @the-soot-sprite, @writerapprentice, @chasingrobbie, @choicesobsessedd, @x-kyne-x, @thisperfectmemory, @drakewalker04, @rookie-ramsey, @jlynn12273, @thepinknymph @dr-brianna-casey-valentine, @a-i-n-a-a-s-h @justanotherrookie @mvalentine @starrystarrytrouble @akshara16 @maurine07 @natzz-b @aylamreads

Enjoy! <3

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Ethan steered the car towards the curb, right outside her apartment, rain falling aggressively from every direction. The warmth that surrounded them didn’t do anything for him, his entire body still feeling as though it was still in a freezing grip of panic that hasn’t left his side for days.

“Are you okay?” Claire’s voice broke through the thick mist that fell over his mind, pulling him into the reality that was like a breath of fresh air. Her forehead was creased with worry, her usually bright eyes now dull and pensive. “I don’t think I’ve asked you that yet.”

His breath was shaking when he replied. “No, you haven’t. And no.” he shook his head, trying to shake away the cold shiver that ran through his bones at the mere thought of what had happened only days ago. “I don’t think I am okay.”

“Danny and Bobby dying hit us all hard. I’m not sure how we can ever be okay with that.” She wondered, her voice small and empty. Ethan found himself shaking his head in disagreement, his own thoughts miles away from what she was talking about.

“It’s not them I’m worried about. It’s you.”

Unable to look her in the eye and let her see all the ghosts that haunted him, all the nightmares that he suffered from, he turned his head away from her. He felt the muscles of his face tense up as his head tried, once again, to deal with the anguish, the horrific images of the moments he realized that he’s come so close to losing her. He’s felt that way before, when he decided to spend the night with her, not knowing if she would wake up in the morning.

“When Naveen was sick, I could still focus on work.” Despite his best efforts to not dwell on the past, he couldn’t help the memory of his mentor and friend, dying as all he could do at the time was watch, the mysterious illness practically eating him alive. Even though it shook him to his very core, he still managed to wake up every morning and work as though nothing was happening. The very opposite thing was happening to him now. “But now… it’s entirely different. You’re sitting here, with me. You’re completely fine and healthy, nothing endangers you, and yet all I can think of is how terrified I was that I was going to watch you die.” He felt his throat close up with incoming tears, his voice dropping an octave as he fought to speak clearly. “That I’d never get to see you again. That you’ll never hear me say…”

She interrupted him, searching with her hand for his, the touch so small and careful that it might as well have not been there at all if it wasn’t for how tuned into her presence he was. He continued after a while, all of his thoughts and terrors spilling out of him as the dam broke once again.

“I keep worrying that if I lose track of you… if I leave you alone… that it could happen again. That I won’t have the power to stop it in time… to save you.”

“Ethan, I promise, I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.” She squeezed his hand, looking at him with such certainty, hoping it would hold both of them up so they wouldn’t fall. Ethan looked at their joined hands, breathing in and out deeply, gathering courage to finally confess what’s been wandering his mind for weeks now, too afraid to come to light until now.

“All of it makes me realize that I just… don’t want to hide anymore. I don’t know how much time we have together. All I know is that I don’t want to waste a second of it on worrying what other people might think.”

Claire’s face lit up in surprise, her expression still guarded, making him realize just how much pain his pretended indifference must have caused. “What are you saying?”

“I’m done pretending. I’m done acting like I don’t think of you every moment of my day. Like you’re not in my head all the time. I need you, Claire. Like I’ve never needed anyone else before.”

Their eyes meet in the low light of the car, illuminated only by the streetlight. He doesn’t need a mirror to know just how his eyes look. His feelings are crystal clear to him, at last, he’s able to name them all, and he knows is that it’s all her. She nodded her head gently.

“I need you too, Ethan.”

With Herculean effort, he looked away from her for just enough time to pull the car into more safe space along the sidewalk, parking it in a safe distance, no one in their immediate neighborhood that could interrupt them. The vehicle was now stable, but not a single muscle of his moved to open the door. His eyes burned with unshed tears, his vision blurring.

Claire noticed. Of course, she did.

“Don’t worry, I’m not sad… just overwhelmed.” He rushed to assure her, blinking rapidly a couple of times to will the tears away. “What you said that night in the hospital got me thinking.” Just when he thought he had a grip on himself, he slipped again, falling into the pit of despair once more. “The idea that I’d never touch you again… it was almost more than I could bear.”

His fingers shook when he reached for her hand, brushing them against her skin like she was made of glass. As though any harder contact would turn her into thin air and his worst thoughts would become reality.

“Claire, you know what I was like when I first met you. A cynic, sometimes a bully. I was burned out on seeing all those interns coming in each year, making the same mistakes over and over again.”

“Excuse me, I like to think that my mistakes were brand new, thank you very much.” she interrupted him, by some miracle maintaining a serious expression. He wasn’t that successful in it, a grin cracking his façade.

“Your mistakes were more creative than most, I’ll give you that.” They shared a quick laugh before the tone of their conversation flew back into a more serious one. “When I thought that you wouldn’t be on my team, that I wouldn’t be responsible for your development as a doctor, I thought maybe there was a chance… if the only thing at stake were my reputation, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Not even a moment.” He allowed his eyes to search for hers, watching all the emotions playing out in them as he spoke. “Once you joined my team, I worried it wouldn’t be fair to you. That I wouldn’t be able to teach you, to push you the way you needed to be pushed. And the mere thought of someone suggesting that you slept your way onto the team made me furious.”

“I mean, clearly.” She smirked, pointing out how tense he’s gotten at the simple mention of it. He laughed, nodding his head in agreement.

“You earned your place.” He continued, staring right into her eyes, his gaze conveying all the belief he had in her. “I thought I was strong enough to hold my feelings back so I could support your career. That I could… I’m sorry if I...” he trailed off, unable to gather his thoughts. She smiled widely at how flustered he was.

“Don’t be.”

“Now, I realize how foolish I was. I’ve spent days worrying about your life.” his voice cracked, tears appearing in his eyes once more. “I just can’t bring myself to care about any of those things anymore. That is, of course, if you’re feeling the same way.” he finished, uncertainty and self-consciousness finding their way into his words. His hand squeezed hers again, trying to convey all that he didn’t or couldn’t manage to say to her through the simple touch, their gazes still tightly locked, their faces subtly leaning into each other.

Before he can think even once about leaning away to give her space, she captures his lips in the softest kiss he’s ever experienced. All existing thoughts fly out of his head, wiping it blank. Hospital, isolation room, the funeral, all the people, gone in an instant. Nothing else exists, nothing else is real. Only their lips, the slow dance of their tongues, the warmth they share and the heat in their veins, ignited by even the smallest of touches.

She muttered his name against his lips before he pulled her right back in, kissing her gently once, twice, three times before he, albeit reluctantly, leaned away. His expression revealed how torn he was, between what he wanted and what he knew she needed in that moment. Or, at least, what he thought she needed.

“I’m sorry. This isn’t the right time, I know. I should be trying to take care of you, not…”

“No. It’s good.” She protested firmly, steadying her gaze on him.

“I just don’t want to push you into something you don’t want. I understand, really Claire, I do.”

She shook her head, pressing her lips to the corner of his, remaining there for a moment. “I want this. I want you.”

A wide grin spread across his face, making him look younger. “You can’t imagine how much I was hoping you’d say that.”

Ethan lifted his hand towards her face, tracing the line of her cheekbone with his index finger. Every place they touched sent sparks through him, a heat wave following soon after. He noticed how flushed she was, undoubtedly feeling the same sensation as he was in that exact moment. If that wasn’t proof enough, the fogged up windows of his car would have to do. Rain still rang heavily against the outside of the car, managing to almost drown out the sound of blood, rushing in his ears.

“Is that all you were hoping for?” she panted, her breaths shallow as she waited in anticipation for what was to come. The smile couldn’t leave his face.

“Honestly? No.” he stole one kiss after the other, futile attempt to satiate his need for her. “But I want you to tell me what you need right now. Tell me what you want me to do, Claire.”

With a cheeky grin, she winked at him and then proceeded to climb over the console to the back of the car.

“Where are you going?” he asked with wide eyes, confused. Once seated comfortably, she crooked her finger, inviting him to join her.

“So much more space…” she trailed off, smirking suggestively at him. Placing her hand at the seat next to her, she patted the leather slightly, silently asking again. Wordlessly, he got out of the car, rushing to get back inside through the back door. Rain was dripping from the ends of his hair and trickling down the material of his jacket.

“That’s cheating.” She called him out, wiping a droplet of water from his cheek.

“No, that’s dignity.” He corrected her teasingly, taking a breath to steady himself, waiting for her next move.

Claire rolled her eyes and immediately after, her hands gripped his shoulders, pulling him down on top of her. He fell into her embrace before he could catch himself, keeping himself slightly above her with his arms. His lips found hers immediately, a soft sigh slipping out of her at the sensation.

Hesitantly, he allowed his hand to trail over the curves of her body, paying attention to them all. Sneaking beneath her back, he blindly found the zipper, breaking the kiss for long enough to lean away, his eyes carrying the question, laced with doubt. She nodded, kissing him again, a bit surer, a bit harder. Tugging on the zipper, he followed the line of her spine, letting his fingers dip beneath the material from time to time, her skin feeling feverish in comparison to his own, cold from the rain.

He skimmed over the hem of her dress, drawing out the moment. As he raised the material along with his hand, he willed his mind to remember this. To commit to his memory the scent of her perfume. The little sounds she was making in the back of her throat when their skin touched. The way her lips fit against his so perfectly.

She raised her arms above her head, helping him undress her, shaking her head shortly to move hair away from her face. He brushed the remaining locks away, looking at her as though she was the eighth wonder of the world.

“You’re beautiful.” His words were nothing more than a mutter against her lips before they came together in a fleeting kiss. Ethan sat up, taking in the way her pale skin contrasted the black lingerie in the dim light. His fingers ran down her legs with featherlight touches, stopping at the straps of her heels. Taking his time, he undid the clasps on both shoes, looking up at her from time to time, the atmosphere getting more and more electrified with each passing glance they shared. He pressed a soft kiss to her ankle before letting her feet rest on either side of him.

Claire sat up, wrapping her hand around his tie, and using it to pull him closer. The damp material of his jacket contrasted with her naked skin, causing a shiver to run through her. She undid the tie with controlled moves, using it to keep him near her, their lips almost touching, but not quite. He took the jacket off, letting it fall to the space beneath the seat, next to her dress and shoes. When she reached for the buttons of his shirt, he caught her hand, smoothing the skin over her knuckles with the pad of his thumb.

“Let me.” he mused, hastily getting rid of his shirt, shoes and socks following closely behind. She ran the tip of her index finger along the hem of his pants, watching how the muscles there contracted. He shook his head, a shuddered breath leaving his mouth when he finally got rid of the pants too.

They touched each other tentatively, reacquainting themselves with each other’s bodies. Ethan’s lips left hers, dragging a slow, hot line down the slope of her neck, paying close attention to every inch of her skin he could reach. He bit her right above her collarbone, a low moan of hers filling his ears not even a second later.

Listening to her, he allowed his tongue to dip beneath the fabric of her bra, with just enough force to tease but not enough to satisfy. Claire’s fingers flew to his head, tangling gently in his hair as he explored her body. His stubble tickled her stomach when his lips followed the line of her muscles, at last reaching the line of her panties. He kissed and bit his way from one hipbone to the other, spurred on by her breathless pants that kept on coming in waves. She moaned when his lips touched her directly through the lacy fabric.

“I’m just getting started…”

With a smirk she’s seen before, he slid her panties down her legs, slowly, without a single care in the world. Any protest she had, had died down when he reached the apex of her thighs, swiping his tongue against her folds slowly. Her head dipped back at the sensation, the grip she had on his hair tightening before she let it lose, instead threading her fingers through the strands.

His mouth closed over her clit, focusing all of his attention on that spot, guided by her moans. She looked down at him, finding his eyes almost closed, but still focused on hers. She was getting so close to the release that she could taste it, her legs beginning to shake with each move he made and it was at that moment when he leaned away, climbing back up and kissing her fiercely, with wild abandonment. She made a sound of protest, pressing her finger to halt him for a second.

“Don’t stop now.”

“We’ve got all night.” He grinned, kissing her finger and then her lips, again and again, short and sweet kisses passing through to her how happy he was in that moment. “No need to rush…”

She hummed, sitting up and placing her hands on his shoulders, pretending to lean in for a kiss. When he took the bait, she pushed him backwards, straddling his hips and pinning his wrists on either side of his head. Her hair fell around them like a curtain, blocking out their surroundings, leaving only her face in his field of view. She pressed her hips down, their bodies rubbing against one another, his helpless moan getting lost on his lips when she took his mouth in a searing kiss.

“No need to rush, huh? After you’ve made me wait for so long?” Claire asked, both of them breathing the same air. “I want to savor it. I’ll tire you out.” She whispered right into his ear, leaning back to capture surprise on his face that morphed into want when she grinned mischievously, grinding against him. She let out a soft sigh, feeling him growing harder from her ministrations. “I’m going to make you beg for it.”

“Don’t be so certain.”

“Sounds to me like a challenge. And we both know I’m not one to back down from a challenge.”

Adjusting her grip on his hands, she peppered light kisses against his mouth, pulling back when he began to kiss her back, and going back in. She treated his neck like a map, discovering spots that made him breathe heavier. Her teeth sank into his earlobe, pulling on it playfully. His hum of approval made his throat vibrate, tickling her gently.

Claire sat up again, keeping him in place with her legs, letting go of his hands so she could scrape her nails down his chest as she aimed for his underwear. Without a preamble, she hooked her fingers beneath the material and pulled it down, freeing him effectively.

She kept her eyes trained on his face firmly as she lowered her mouth. Her hot breath fanned against him, her hair brushing the sensitive skin of the inside of his thighs. She kissed him gently, running her tongue against his length, then took the tip into her mouth and sucked. Ethan moaned lowly, wanting to close his eyes but finding himself unable to look away from the sight of her working him.

She moved slowly, controlling her pace, alternating between her teeth and her tongue, his hips moving up and down, matching her rhythm. His hand gripped the edge of the seat, leather creasing under the force of his hold, while his other hand made its way to the back of her head, stroking her hair. She’d almost let him go, sucking gently, then take him back in, cries falling from his lips over and over again, following no particular pattern. Just like he’s done to her, she brought him to the brink, one more move of hers and he’d be falling recklessly, which is when she released him with a quiet sound. She let him have a moment to breathe, then went back in with barely-there touches, pulling him in and then pushing him away.

“You win! You win! I’m begging.” He laughed quietly, surrendering to her, gripping her hips when she straightened herself. Looking up at her, he couldn’t believe how long he managed to resist it. To resist her.

“Now?” Claire asked, smiling cheekily at him, squeezing his thighs together with her own as she waited for his answer.

“Now.” he nodded, helping her settle herself over him. Their eyes found one another, stares locked tightly as she guided him inside and lowered herself slowly, taking him inch by inch. A shuddered breath slipped past her lips, eyes falling shut. His arms closed around her, keeping them together while he adjusted, resting against the door, ignoring the way the arm rest was digging into the skin of his back. The new position allowed them to be even closer, enabling them more freedom of movement in such a small space.

Her back arched against him, their hips meeting at a frenzied pace, guided by his hands pulling her closer and her thighs raising and dropping her onto him over and over again. The way their position worked allowed him free access to her neck and chest, alternating between soft kisses and teasing nips across her skin.

“Come here…” Claire moaned, pulling his face up to meet hers, lips crashing in a hurried and intense kiss, taking their breaths and stealing their minds.

What started out as playful and light act of affection, quickly changed its tone. His hands strayed from her hips, running all over her body; with each new patch of skin he pulled her closer, more and more desperate to touch her, to feel her being alive. Alive and with him.

His hips shot up, meeting her halfway, changing the angle. The sounds they were making were getting louder and bolder, but Ethan couldn’t remember just why he would want to keep quiet. Claire didn’t do anything about it either, too far gone and lost in him to care about anything else than what they had in that moment.

Her name rang in the crammed space of a car when he groaned against her, his movements becoming less precise and more frantic. Both of them chased release, pushing each other further, higher, harder, neither aware of how much time has passed. The thing that pushed her over the edge was the way he looked at her. Complete certainty, utter happiness and endless bliss that made her feel as though she was about to fall apart and be put back together just by the movement of his body against hers. Crying out his name, she came around him, her spasming muscles tightening around him. With one thrust, he followed her, drowning out his desperate groan with a kiss on her lips.

Exhausted, although satisfied, they lied down to their best ability, cherishing the closeness that they could now allow themselves to experience. Ethan’s arms kept her as close to him as he could, his chest moving up and down rapidly, heart racing. Claire’s lips barely left his skin, kissing his cheek lazily and slowly, relishing the feeling of freedom that being so openly affectionate with him gave her. They basked in the afterglow of their closeness a while longer, neither saying anything, which left plenty of time for her mind to wander.

“You’re quiet. What are you thinking?” he ran his fingers through her hair, twisting the ends aimlessly. He could feel her smiling.

“I was wondering…” she craned her neck, looking up at him with a lively twinkle in her eyes. “Can we maybe do this inside next time? We wouldn’t want your old bones to get sore or worse, injured by closing ourselves in such small spaces.” Teasingly, she stroked his hip, tracing random patterns. His laughter rang in the car, sounding so carefree and rich, filling her to the brim with warmth.

“We can do whatever you want.” he promised, leaning down to make their lips brush together, eyes intense when he looked straight into hers. “Wherever you’d like.”

“That’s a potentially dangerous invitation.”

“I hoped you’d see it that way.” smirking, he made their lips meet properly, unhurriedly brushing his tongue against hers.

They decided against getting dressed just yet, opting for only their underwear. A sudden shiver shook her body, goosebumps spreading over her arms. Ethan noticed, picking up his jacket and helping her put it on, refusing to take no for an answer.

That’s how they spent the next hour or so, sitting in the back of his car, their legs tangled and hands clasped together tightly, talking quietly. He observed how her eyes glowed happily, his mind throwing a four-letter word at him. There was nothing left for him to hesitate about. He knew.

Her wild gesticulation got interrupted by him when he caught her hand, starting a line of hot kisses up her arm, biting her shoulder lightly before he claimed her lips. He leaned onto her, following her body as she lied down, her hands gripping the sides of his face, refusing to let him get too far away.

“Didn’t you say we’d be inside for the next time?” Claire’s laughter shook her entire body, making them rub against each other, pulling shaky gasps from them both. He touched his forehead to hers.

“Time after this one, then? Or the one after that too, just to be sure.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” She grinned, wrapping her leg around him and hauling him onto her with a light laugh.

#fanfiction #ethan ramsey #ethan x mc #mc x ethan #dr. ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #mc x ethan ramsey #choices fanfiction #choices #open heart #open heart fanfiction #fic

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fulokis · 4 years ago

Text

Fulokis WandaVision Rewrite- Chapter 2

Wanda furrowed her brow at her brother, "This is Vision, my husband. I swear you two have met before."

Peter processed what to say, "It's all a blur, honestly probably a side effect of being dead. Hey is that a Nintendo Entertainment system?"

"You and your games." Wanda said letting the subject of her brothers death go for the moment.

"You and your sitcoms." Peter shot back from inside the fridge. Grabbing a Capri Sun he speed over to the pantry and grabbed a chocodile, before heading back to the entry way to examine Vision.

"You never told me your brother had powers too." Vision said uncomfortably stepping to the side after Peter poked his face. "Or that he had died."

"Yes well..." Wanda said trying to figure out what to say.

"It runs in the family." Peter offered up still examining Vision.

"What no it doesn't." Wanda said furrowing her brow "Since when has it run in the family?"

"I believe what your brother is trying to say Wanda, is that it has something to do with genetics, rather than chance."

"Bingo!" Peter said.

"Shhhh." Wanda scolded, "If you wake up the kids I swear I will kill you."

"Kids?" Peter asked "First I'm an Uncle?! And second you had kids with the toaster over here?"

Vision frowned and Wanda shook her head, "Just try to be quiet okay?"

Peter chuckled, "You say that as if I'm not capable of being quiet."

"Vis can I talk to you for a minute?" Wanda asked half dragging the sinth into the kitchen.

"Are you okay Wanda?"

"Yeah yeah I'm fine why wouldn't I be?"

"Wanda you said I had met your brother, and that your brother had died. Neither of which I was aware of until now."

"Ohh I see. Yeah you two have met, it was quick. Literally he just ran past you. And about the whole death thing don't listen to him he's being dramatic."

"Wanda I find generally that people aren't dramatic about death." Vision said with visible confusion.

"He..." Wanda started, "We were six, and at school and well he choked on a potato because he was eating too fast. He was quiet at school I'm not sure why, but um the teacher wouldn't listen to me until he passed out. And the teacher went over to check on him... and his heart had stoped. The teacher started to try and revive him, and I don't know why but I went over to him and held his hand through it. He's fine but it left both of us shaken up."

"Oh I see." Vision said "Wanda do humans often claim premature death when they have no pulse?"

"Sometimes yes." Wanda said. "Look Pietro is probably going to need to sleep on the couch, he lives pretty far from here."

"Don't worry darling your family is my family." Vision said embracing Wanda and giving her a kiss on the forehead.

"You know this house reminds me of home!" Peter shouted from the living room.

Wanda sighed looking up at Vision. "I suppose I should go talk to him."

Vision smiled "Ill leave you two to catch up." He said before moving out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

Wanda walked over to the living room and sat down in the chair next to the couch. "So..."

Peter smiled "Do you still have that little thing mom gave you? The one with the other half that she game to me?"

Wanda smiled and laughed slightly, "Yeah I do. I'm assuming you lost yours?"

"Nah, it's in a safe place." Peter said. "At least I think, honestly don't remember exactly where I put it."

"Of course you don't. Although I'm sure you remember where you put moms special rock."

"In the cookie jar." Peter said smiling at the idea "No robber was ever going to look in that ugly old thing."

"Ugly? Dad would kill you if he ever heard you say that." Peter froze for a second, he knew he had something important to tell someone or say or something. Something about his father. "Pietro?"

"Sorry I guess I just haven't thought about them in a while." Peter said watching as Wanda got up.

"I'll make some hot chocolate." She said humming to herself a familiar tune.

"Thanks." Peter said standing up and walking into the kitchen to throw away his trash. "It's nice here. This town, your home, your family."

"Yeah I lucked out." Wanda said staring into the microwave.

"Yeah you did. I'm actually a little surprised."

"How so?"

"Well you settled down, you have a family. You don't have to worry about the world. You always wanted it, but I knew that you were terrified you wouldn't get it."

"Is it a bad thing?"

"No." Peter shook his head "No not at all. I think mom and dad would both be proud of you. They would've loved to meet your kids."

"Pietro you haven't even met my kids."

"Aw come on sis, you worried I won't like them?"

"No I'm worried they won't like you. There's a difference."

"Eh they'll like their old uncle P." Peter said and Wanda laughed. "But I'm being serious mom and dad would've loved them."

"Here." Wanda said handing Peter the hot chocolate mug to him.

Peter took a sip "You added a bit of cinnamon."

"Yeah just the way mom liked it." Wanda said, "Of course I'm not good with a stove in the way she was."

"It still tastes good." Peter said taking another sip, "So Uh how did you and toaster meet?"

"You really don't remember?" Wanda asked.

"Like I said it's a blur, although it's probably for the best."

"Yeah... for the best." Wanda said.

"I know that look." Peter said. "You're going to go watch a sitcom aren't you?"

"Maybe." Wanda replied setting the mug of hot chocolate she had made for herself on a coaster in the living room.

Peter followed her out to the living room walking over to the bookshelf in the corner. On the bookshelf sat a lonely chess piece. Peter picked up the black queen, running a finger along the piece. He stopped, he could remember something about the piece in his hand.

"She's lucky you know." Wanda said.

"What?" Peter asked sure for a second he heard a mans voice saying the words.

"She's lucky." Wanda said walking over, "Dad tried to teach you but you never had the patience."

"How is she lucky?" Peter asked.

"She's like us, unusual. We have powers like she does, and yet she's still not the most powerful piece on the board. She's always treated like she's second best, so she's lucky for anyone who is like her." Wanda explained.

Peter took a sharp breath, a memory came back to him almost as if he was reliving it. Through the fog in his mind he could remember. Him lounging on a couch Ororo sitting curled up in the sun on the other side of the couch reading a book. On an adjacent couch Jean was leaning on Scott having a hushed conversation with him. Jubilee and Kurt were sitting on the floor looking at a game of Life spread at their feet.

Peter had headphones in, but he didn't have any music playing. He knew that everyone else just figured he did and they let him be to take his 'nap'.

"Check." Charles said.

"Check mate." Erik replied placing a piece down.

"No it's not." Charles replied.

"Yes it is."

Charles sat and examined the board for a second "Fine you win this one my friend."

"You seem distracted today Charles."

"Distracted me? Never."

"Gah!" Kurt yelled in surprise accidentally teleporting into the table the two older mutants were using for their chess game. Peter startled at the loud noise and looked down to see a chess piece roll towards the couch. "Sorry Professor."

"Not to worry Kurt, we were done anyway." Charles said, "What startled you?"

Kurt started to explain to the professor what had happened. Peter tuned out the conversation sitting up and stretching. He bent down and picked up the piece that had rolled near the couch.

"She's lucky you know." Erik said watching the young mutant as he got up from the couch.

Peter nearly froze, he couldn't believe that Erik was talking to him. "What do you mean?"

"She's like us, powerful but always treated beneath those who have not evolved to a higher purpose. Always serving in the shadows of the less evolved."

Peter looked at the man slightly confused, "Has she brought you any luck?"

"A couple times yes." Erik replied, "She brought me family when I needed it."

"Oh." Peter replied, "Uh here." He said reaching out to give it to the man.

"Keep it." Erik said, nodding to Peters leg "You look like you could use a little luck."

"Heh luck, I don't need it." Peter said, "After all I did break you out of the pentagon without it. The legs just a little fluke that's all."

"Peter that's not something you need to boast about." Charles said handing Erik a a couple of renegade chess pieces.

Erik took the pieces from Charles and put them back with his set. Peter attempted to give the queen back to Erik. "Keep it, Ill get it back from you the next time I visit."

"Next Tuesday then?" Charles asked.

"Next Tuesday." Erik confirmed walking out of the room.

Peter waited until the man was out of earshot, "Why wouldn't he take it?" Peter asked Charles.

"Erik is a mystery that few can solve Peter."

"Haven't you professor?" Peter asked.

"Oh believe me I've tried." Charles said. "Best not to worry about it."

Peter looked down at the chess piece in his hand, he knew he was going to keep it close for the weekend. He had to keep it safe, if not for him but his father.

"Pietro?" Peter heard through his thoughts.

"What?" He asked still holding the chess piece.

"Are you okay?" Wanda asked touching his shoulder.

"Yeah, I just miss them ya know." Peter said mulling over the memory that he just seemingly formed.

Wanda nodded and gave him a hug. Peter went to place the queen back on the shelf but Wanda stopped him closing his hand around it. "Keep it, you could use some luck."

Peter wanted to protest but Wanda had already wandered off heading up the stairs. Peter walked over and sat down on the couch turning the piece over in his hands. Something wasn't right, or at least something didn't feel right. Peter sighed knowing he would have to mull over his thoughts later. Setting both his mug and the queen on the table he lie down on the couch and closed his eyes attempting to get some sleep.

The dreams he had were unsettling. He'd dreamt many times of death and dying, and yet these felt too real. Peter felt the pain, pain that shouldn't have been there. He'd been shot, he knew that in fact he was sure of that. And yet in his dream he nearly had his skull crushed while something pulled him towards the ground. What was even more unsettling was the man from his memory seemed to be the one trying to kill him.

Peter startled awake the last image of a man with a helmet, staring directly at him. He looked around the room to get his bearings. Wanda's husband sat in the chair next to the couch, reading the mornings newspaper. Peter turned his head slightly to read the headline on the paper.

"Restless night?" Vision asked.

"What?" Peter asked, "Oh yeah. Nightmares. Come to think of it do you get them?"

"Nightmares?" Vision pondered, "No I don't think so. Although I do get some unsavory images occasionally during my rest period."

Peter sat up, "Must be simple to be a machine. No reason to have fake memories."

"My memory has fallacies, although much less so than a human." Vision said paying much more attention to his newspaper than Peter.

"Mutant." Peter mumbled under his breath out of habit.

"What was that?" Vision asked.

"What? Nothing. I didn't say anything. It's you. You must be hearing things."

"I process audio input." Vision corrected looking up from his paper at the ten year old coming down the stairs. "Billy! Come say hello to your uncle Pietro."

Peter looked at the kid, "Uncle P is fine."

Billy walked down the stairs slowly and came to sit on the opposite side of the couch closer to his father, clutching closer to the blanket he'd wrapped around himself. "He takes after Wanda."

Peter smiled and nodded at Vision, "Hey."

"Mom said you were very far away." Billy said.

"Peter smiled mischievously, "She wasn't wrong about me being far away, I mean I do live pretty far away..."

"Woah your hair is cool!" A kid shouted running down the stairs.

"Hey, Tommy what have we told you about running in the house?" Vision reprimanded.

The boy ignored his father and jumped on the couch right next to Peter "Can I touch it?"

Peter made a weird face, "I guess." He replied.

"Aww I thought it would feel cool too." Tommy said, "Who are you? Why are you here? Are you a secret agent?"

"That's Uncle P Tommy." Billy said.

"Woah!" Tommy yelled.

"Tommy what have we told you about yelling!" Wanda said coming down the stairs.

"But mom..."

"Listen to your mother kid." Peter said.

"See your Uncle knows what he's talking about."

"Do you listen to her Uncle P?" Billy asked.

Peter smiled and got up and sped towards Wanda, letting her stop him with her magic much to her resignation. "Nope." Peter said with a grin watching as the kids faces lit up with surprise. Wanda gave him a playful slap on the shoulder at his response, "But you should listen to her, she gives some good advice."

"That's better." Wanda said as the phone rang. Wanda sighed and picked it up, "Hello?... oh no...hold on... vis can you handle it?" Wanda asked nodding at the fact that Tommy had stolen his brothers blanket and started using it as a cape. "... what were you saying?... is there anything I can do?... are you sure?... okay feel better."

"What is it?" Peter asked.

"Vis Hon, Agnes can't babysit for us, she's come down with the flu."

"Rats, if only there were someone we could get to watch the kids." Vision said winking towards Peter.

"No, I am not letting..." Wanda started.

"Awwww." Billy said, "But mom I want to hang out with Uncle P."

"Please!?" Tommy asked.

Wanda frowned, "Oh I don't know. Vision what do you think?"

"I think that's an excellent idea. The kids get to hang out with their Uncle, you and I get to spend some time to ourselves. And Agnes doesn't have to worry too much about the kids. It's a Win-Win-Win situation dear."

"I'm still not sure." Wanda said.

"Don't sweat it Sis, nothing I can't handle." Peter said showing off his muddles for the twins.

"Please mom please??" Both boys pleaded.

Wanda sighed "Alright fine, but only because I'm outvoted."

"Yay!" Both twins shouted.

"But and this is a big but, you have to behave yourselves." Wanda said, "No T.V. After 9 and no desert after dinner you hear me?"

"Yes of course we hear you mom." Billy said, "Can we watch T.V. Until you go?"

"Yes you may." Wanda said, "Pietro can I talk to you?"

"Yeah." Peter said following his sister into the kitchen. "What's up?"

"Are you sure you're up for this?" Wanda asked watching as Vision helped the boys with the T.V.

Peter snorted, "Oh come on sis, how bad can they really be? Cause I've died and come back, not much can be worse."

"Pietro that's what I'm worried about. You sure you don't want to rest, or take it easy?"

Peter placed a hand on Wanda's shoulder "My dear sister I've never once in my life taken it easy, and there's no way in my afterlife life I'm going to take it easy either."

Wanda smiled and shook her head, "You're still awful at jokes."

"Aw come on you know I'm better at practical jokes." Peter said pulling his sister into a hug. "But my point is I'll be fine and your kids will be fine, I won't let anything happen to them I promise."

"Thank you." Wanda said, "I'll do the same for you if you ever have kids."

"I know Wanda, I know." Peter said, his mind slipping back to the memory of the chess piece and the dream he had experienced the previous night. Something was wrong here he could feel it, something about the town, about Wanda's husband, about Agnes. They felt fake in a way, almost as if they weren't meant to be there. He felt uneasy most of the time, especially as he tried to parse out what was actually real and what was fake. One thing he knew for sure, Wanda and her kids were real. And he'd be damned if he let anything happen to them.

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#quicksilver #dadneto #erik lehnsherr #charles xavier #wanda maximoff #peter maximoff #pietro maximoff #billy maximoff #tommy maximoff #the vision #agnes #xmen #x-men #ralph bohner #agatha harkness #vision #fanfic

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hecallsmehischild · 3 years ago

Text

Recent Media Consumed

Books

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. About ten or fifteen years ago, I tried to read this and was totally overwhelmed by it. I kept it around, hoping maybe someday I might be able to read it. I finally have, and here are my impressions: WHY SO MANY NAMES. WHY YOU HAVE TO NAME EVERYBODY, AND EVERY TRIBE OF PEOPLES, AND EVERY INANIMATE OBJECT, AND EVERY LANDSCAPE FEATURE. WHY. *ahem* So. I have a general comprehension of the events of The Silmarillion, but I dealt with it by doing what you do for an impressionist painting. I (mentally) stepped way back and let all the names flow by me, and if there were names that were repeated a lot, then I mentally attached appropriate plot points and character details to those names so I could track with who they were and what they were doing. And, actually, I found myself able to hang on and enjoy the book for the most part. This is going to lead into a re-reading of the Lord of the Rings books, since I haven’t read those in about as long…

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I haven’t read some of these books since pre-teen years, with one required re-read of The Two Towers in high school (i.e. it’s been many an age since I’ve read these and my memory of the stories has been far more heavily influenced by the movies). In re-reading the first book, I was struck by the extreme tone shift for the Elves and Dwarves. Elves seem much closer to happy, mischievous fairies than these ethereal, solemn pillars of elegance and grace the movies show them to be. And Dwarves are far more bumbling and craftsmanlike than the movies show. Aside from that, The Hobbit was a pretty solid adaptation from the book, and the book also reminded me that this story was the first time I experienced “NO, MAIN CHARACTERS DON’T DIE, HOW DARE YOU,” and probably was the first book to make me cry. I must have been 8 or 10 years old. I FORGOT HOW MUCH THIS STORY INFLUENCED ME.

A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell. I have a longer-than-usual list of things to say about this book. First is that it was just that level of difficult that I was struggling to understand while reading it (on Audible), but I think I got it. Sowell has several base concepts that I see repeated throughout his books, though he does like to dedicate whole books to specific aspects of the same topic. He is pretty damn thorough that way. So, for example, I would put this book in the middle of a three-book spectrum of similar concepts: Intellectuals and Society (most concrete and easiest to read), A Conflict of Visions (next-level abstraction, a little difficult to read), Knowledge and Decisions (root abstract concept, very difficult, I have not been able to get past chapter 2). The second thing I have to say is about a couple interesting concepts it proposes. Its whole point is to help readers understand the roots of two ways of seeing the world that come into severe conflict politically, and he calls them by their root titles: the constrained and the unconstrained visions. He traces the path of each back through the intellectuals that most spoke of them (tending to contrast Adam Smith with William Godwin and Condorcet). Though he leans heavily toward the constrained vision (based on reading his other works) he does his best to make this book an academic study of both, with both of the visions' strengths and flaws and reasoning and internal consistencies fairly laid out. In doing so, he helped me understand a few things that make this situation really difficult for people on opposing sides to communicate. One of them is that root words and concepts literally mean different things to different people. I had some vague notion of this before, but he laid out three examples in detail: Equality, Power, and Justice. It was kind of astounding to see just how differently these three words can be defined. It makes me think that arguing about any specific issues rooted in these concepts is fruitless until first an understanding has been reached on terms, because otherwise two parties are endlessly talking past each other. Another really interesting idea he brought up is the existence of “hybrid visions” and he named both Marxism and Fascism as hybrid visions. This was especially fascinating to me because I have seen the accusation of “Nazi” flung around ad nauseam and I wondered how it was that both sides were able to fling it at each other so readily. Well, it’s because Fascism is actually a hybrid vision, so both sides have a grain of truth but miss the whole on that particular point. In any case, this was a little difficult to read but had some fascinating information. For people who are wondering what on earth this gap is between political visions, how on earth to bridge the gap, or why the gap even exists in the first place, this is a really informative piece.

Movies

The Hobbit & Fellowship trilogies (movies). I mean, it’s definitely not my first watch, not even my second. But I went through it with Sergey this time and that means the run-time is double because we pause to talk and discuss details. This watch came about partly due to Sergey’s contention that Gandalf’s reputation far outstrips his actual powers, so we ended up noting down every instance of Gandalf’s power to see if that was true. Conclusion: Gandalf is actually a decently powerful wizard, but tends to use the truly kickass powers in less-than-dire circumstances. That aside, this movie series was always a favorite for me. I rated The Hobbit trilogy lower the first time I saw it but, frankly, all together the six movies are fantastic and a great way to sink deep into lore-heavy fantasy for a while. And I’m catching way more easter-egg type details after having read the Silmarillion so it’s even more enjoyable. (finally, after about a week of binge-watching) I forgot how much this story impacted me. I forgot how wrenchingly bittersweet the ending is. I forgot how much of a mark that reading and watching this story left on my writing.

Upside-Down Magic. Effects were good. Actors were clearly having fun and enjoying everything. Story didn’t make enough sense for my taste, but it was a decent way to kill flight time.

Wish Dragon. So, yes, it’s basically an Aladdin rewrite, but it’s genuinely a cheesy good fluff fest that made me grin a whole lot.

Plays

Esther (Sight and Sound Theatres). < background info > This is my third time to this theatre. There are only two of these in existence and they only run productions of stories out of the Bible. The first time I went I saw a production of Noah, the second time I saw a production of Jesus. My middle sister has moved all the way out to Lancaster, PA in hopes of working at this theatre. My husband and I came out to visit her. < /background info > So. Esther. They really pulled out all the stops on the costumes and set. I mean, REALLY pulled out all the stops. And the three-quarters wrap-around stage is used to great effect. I tend to have a general problem of not understanding all the words in the songs, but I understood enough. I highly recommend sitting close to the front for immersive experiences. This theatre puts on incredible productions and if you ever, ever, EVER have the opportunity to go, take it. Even if you think it's nothing but a bunch of fairy tales, STILL GO. I doubt you'll ever see a fairy tale produced on another stage with equal dedication to immersion.

Shows

The Mandalorian (first two seasons). Well. This was pretty thoroughly enjoyable. It felt very Star-Wars, and I’d kind of given up after recent movies. Felt like it slipped into some preaching toward the end? Not sure, I could be overly sensitive about it, but I enjoyed this a lot (though I did need to turn to my housemate and ask where the flip in the timeline we were because I did NOT realize that the little green kid IS NOT ACTUALLY Yoda).

Games

Portal & Portal 2. Portal is probably the first video game I ever tried to play, back when I had no idea what I was doing. Back then, I attempted to play it on my not-for-gaming Mac laptop. Using my trackpad. Once the jumping-for-extra-velocity mechanic came into play, I just about lost my mind trying to do this with a trackpad and gave up. Later I returned to the game and played it with my then-boyfriend on a proper gaming computer. Now, after having played several games and gotten better at "reading the language" of video games, I decided I wanted to see if I could beat the Portal games by myself. Guess what. I BEAT 'EM. Yes, I remembered most of the puzzles in Portal so that's a little bit of a cheat, but I'd say a good 2/3 of Portal 2 was new puzzles to me. It is crazy how proud I feel of myself that I could beat Portal 2, especially. Learning how to play video games at this age has really knocked down the lie, "You can't learn anything." Though I still suck at platformers and games that require precision. Since I find those types frustrating, I probably won't be playing many. Games are about enjoyment, so I'll push myself a little, but not to the point where I can't stand what I'm playing.

The Observer. I like the concept and the art but I don't think I could keep trying to play this game. It's really depressing. My in-game family members all died of illness or accident or committed suicide. I also kept getting executed by the state. In order to keep us all alive I'd have to do pretty terrible things that I have a hard enough time contemplating even in a fictional setting.

Baba Is You. Fun and interesting concept, but I got stuck pretty early on. Don't think I want to push as hard on this one.

#recent media consumed #n00b gamer child #child loves books #child loves movies #child loves shows

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alwaysmychoices · 4 years ago

Text

Is This Goodbye?

Synopsis: Charlie and Ethan are running out of time, and if they don’t hurry, this toxin will take everything from them. But with so little time left, is it more important to keep barriers or to finally say how they feel?

this is the final part of the chapter 11 rewrite but is not the end of the series.

Chapter 17 of the “with and without” series

Previous Series: “a weekend with dr. ramsey”

Pairing: Dr. Ethan Ramsey x MC (Charlotte “Charlie” Greene)

Words: 7.2k

Rating: T (language)

The second Charlie saw Ethan approach her hospital room, she knew he had bad news.

She had seen him give bad news hundreds of times. Every time, he had the same expression, though the degree varied. He walked with determination, yet there was a silent reluctance in each step, like he would be happy to walk just a touch slower. The skin between his eyebrows crinkled together, and his lips formed a hard line. And his eyes…

They were particularly sad today.

In the short time before Ethan reached the glass, Charlie panicked.

She imagined a million scenarios, each worse than the last. She grieved each of them for her friends, her family, and herself. Even Ethan, too.

But once he reached her, she was relieved to see him. Happy, even. Especially because this could be the last time that she would face him like this, before this toxin had taken everything from her.

She paid a great deal of attention to him. He didn’t look like the same man who had kissed her goodbye this morning, and it was so hard to reconcile the two conflicting versions of Ethan. The one from last night had this radiance about him – like, for the first time in a very long time, the world was beautiful and full of possibilities. That man was happy. He made an extra cup of coffee in the morning and sacrificed his morning rituals just to stay in bed with her a little longer.

This man…

He wasn’t happy.

He was devastated.

His life had shattered. His world was chaos. And faced with the most important case of his career, he was failing.

And he was failing the woman he loved…

Looking at him, it was hard to imagine that the Ethan from this morning could ever come back. He was this now – and maybe even forever.

Ethan didn’t know how to begin. He imagined that there were eloquent, efficient words that could professionally and carefully inform her of the team’s new breakthrough. If he had an eternity, he wouldn’t have found them, though. The truth was that he didn’t want to begin. He didn’t want to tell her. He didn’t want it to be true.

Charlie took a moment to weakly approach the glass, and when he remained silent, she offered a kind of sympathetic smile.

“Would it help if I guessed the bad news?” Charlie offered.

“Who said it was bad news?” Ethan asked reflexively.

He didn’t like the knowing smile she offered or how effortlessly she had read him.

He didn’t like that he wouldn’t be able to keep secrets from her in the coming hours. She deserved the luxury of compassionate lies and well-meaning falsehoods. She deserved to be spared, if just from the psychological toll.

“We’ve discovered the type of toxin,” Ethan finally elaborated, watching her intently. He told himself he was looking for new symptoms, but he wasn’t. He was studying her reaction and hoping that she could take it.

Ethan didn’t know Charlie’s limits like he knew his own, not really. She toed the line last year with the combined trauma of Mrs. Martinez, the ethics hearing, Naveen’s illness, and Landry’s betrayal. She got herself off that ledge somehow, though a few cracks remained. But this? Could she take this?

But truthfully, as her doctor, it didn’t matter if she could take it. She would have to.

“You have?” Charlie asked apprehensively. She was looking for the trick, for the subtle clue that would put everything together. Because, at first blush, this was good news, wasn’t it? They were one step closer to treatment if they identified the toxin. They might even have time to save Raf.

What was she missing?

How could this discovery earn Ethan’s somber expression?

Ethan took a deep breath and gave her one last moment of innocent hopefulness before he told her.

“It’s a maitotoxin,” Ethan explained, “One I’ve never seen before. And it’s still present and active on Danny’s body postmortem, including the surface of his skin, which means it’s still dangerous.”

It took Charlie about fifteen seconds to understand why Ethan had hesitated for so long.

There was no cure.

Charlie felt like the wind was knocked out of her, and she stumbled back, almost as if she were fighting this new information. She knew it was true. She had no doubts, yet… she couldn’t accept it.

So, she had to say it.

She had to announce it to herself and to the world. She had to make it real.

“I’m going to die,” she said it softly, so softly that Ethan almost didn’t hear through the glass.

But he did. She kind of wished he hadn’t.

Charlie belatedly realized that Ethan was talking.

No, he was talking to her.

He was saying something about how this wasn’t the time to give up because they were actively working on an antidote, but his words were so distant—nearly white noise.

All she could think was that she was going to die.

She would never keep her promise to Raf. She would never make it out of this room. She would never tell Kyra all the scandalous and sordid details of her private life. She would never sit on Ethan’s kitchen barstool and watch him make coffee in the morning. She wouldn’t even find out if they messed this up again or if, magically, it all fell into place.

All of her dreams and plans meant nothing now.

They would just be the private thoughts of a dead girl.

She could have wallowed in that for the rest of her life – it’s not like she had a lot of time left, anyway.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

And once she escaped those horrible thoughts, something worse occurred to her.

Charlie knew that Ethan Ramsey would never forgive himself for this. When she died, she would live on through his self-torment. He would twist and turn her memory until it became his personal hell. He would convince himself that he deserved it, and armed with his stubbornness and a conviction of his inherent badness, nothing could stop him.

She couldn’t fathom the thought.

Yet it felt so real, so decided, that she couldn’t stop thinking it.

It was there. It was true. It was practically inevitable.

And she felt some sense of responsibility in all of it. Like maybe it was her fault. Like she had sealed his fate with her own impulsive need to save others. Like she had betrayed him without even knowing it.

She couldn’t look at him when he was like this, eyes so wide and sad as he pled for her to maintain hope and ignore her own mortality. And she certainly couldn’t listen to him.

His voice didn’t even sound the same. It was too desperate for her agreement. Too grave. Too anxious. He needed her to live the same lie. It grated on her ears.

“Stop talking,” Charlie demanded breathlessly. She sounded like she had run a marathon just to command him. In her mind, she had raced miles and miles just to hold on to the world. But for Ethan, who watched her sway slightly with dizziness, her breathlessness was just another reminder of the horrible truth he couldn’t yet acknowledge.

He didn’t dare speak. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

There was a pause.

Charlie realized she didn’t actually want to talk.

She didn’t want to do any of this.

She wanted to crawl back into bed. She wanted to fall asleep. She wanted to wake up tomorrow morning.

“Ethan,” Charlie began, her voice shaking. She silently started to count, promising that she would say it again once she reached three. She didn’t actually do it until she got to five, “I’m going to die.”

“Charlotte, don’t say that,” Ethan’s response was quick and desperate, so much so that the words blended together a little bit.

Charlie’s vision was hazy from the tears building in her eyes. Even then, she could see how intensely he needed her to pretend none of this was happening. She hated herself for not letting him have that.

She hated herself for being sick, for dying, for walking in this goddamn room and ruining everything. She hated herself for needing more, for loving him so much that she had to hurt him. She hated this illness. She hated Travis. She hated Senator Farrugia. She hated Raf for taking the brunt of the toxin and for leaving her here alone.

She hated everyone but Ethan.

But she really hated what she said next.

“I have to say it,” Charlie asserted, “Because it’s true.”

“Charlie, you can’t give up,” Ethan’s voice cracked, and he moved as close as he could through the glass. He was looking at her intently, searching for something familiar to latch on to in her green eyes. All he found was resolute determination.

It crushed him.

“I’m not giving up, Ethan,” Charlie told him. What little control she had over her body seemed to disappear. She was shaking. Breathing was harder. Tears prickled at her eyes. Everything hurt. “But we have to face this. You have to face this.”

“Am I not facing this?” Ethan retorted incredulously, looking like he had been insulted, “Am I not here, Charlie?”

Charlie shook her head vigorously, “No, you’re not facing this. You still think I will walk out of here unscathed, Ethan, and I won’t. Not even I can work my way out of this. I know that. I need you to know it, too.”

“Why?” Ethan snapped, “Why do you need that?”

Ethan seethed.

How could she ask this of him?

How could she give up when he needed her? When he was doing everything he could, how could she not just hold on? Why did she need him to face the one thing that would break him?

“Because I care about you, Ethan, and I need to know you’ll be okay.”

Ethan scoffed.

“I promised Naveen I would be there for you if he died,” Charlie explained forcefully. The way she spoke demanded his attention, and he begrudgingly gave it. “I need that same assurance, Ethan. I need to know that, when I’m gone, you will be okay. That you’re not going to waste years blaming and hating yourself for something that was never even your fault. I got myself in this mess. Blame me,” Charlie’s voice had changed subtly as she spoke, but it was clear now.

She was just as desperate as he was.

He felt it in her stare. He heard it in her voice. It surrounded her.

And it killed him.

When Ethan didn’t speak, she begged, “Please. I won’t let you use my memory to torture yourself.”

Ethan still didn’t say anything.

He didn’t need to. The look on his face told her that he could never agree.

It hit Charlie like a blow, and she stumbled back just a bit. She looked betrayed, even disappointed in him. Ethan felt the urge to avert his eyes in guilt.

“Do you promise?” Charlie was very close to a new emotion – one that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She heard it in her tone, though. It wasn’t quite angry, not fully disappointed. But it was certainly commanding.

Ethan had to answer her. He knew he did.

But he didn’t.

He was so mad that she forced him to sit in this, that she broke down his carefully constructed barriers. He couldn’t save her if he felt the full weight of what was happening. His grief, his adoration, his fury – it would bury him.

He told himself that he was doing what was best for her.

But there was a small voice in the back of his head that said he was just running away.

“I can’t do this, Greene. I can’t have this conversation,” Ethan announced, evading eye contact. He was too ashamed to look at her, “I’ve been here too long. I need to get back to the team.”

Then he left – so abruptly and dramatically that Charlie couldn’t even get a word before he was too far away to hear her.

Charlie watched him in disbelief.

He… left?

She was dying, and he fucking left?

Charlie didn’t know what she was feeling, but it was something close to anger, fear, and sadness.

She couldn’t believe he would allow his stubbornness to deprive them of what little time they had together. It was one thing for her to not let him hide from the truth, but was it the same for him to run away? Could he do that?

Was there a right way to do any of this?

If there was, Charlie was convinced he certainly hadn’t done it.

She fumed. How could he leave when they were already running out of time?

Quietly, she remembered the spring when she sneaked out of his apartment in the early hours just to avoid saying goodbye. Was he doing the same thing?

Charlie thought of the note she wrote the night she left. She had written, “I love you,” and then crumbled the note up and taken it with her instead of letting him read it.

Once again, when this could be goodbye, she hadn’t told him.

She might never.

Charlie paced as she tried to clear her mind. She stumbled every other step, feeling increasingly dizzy, but she kept trying. If she kept moving, she wouldn’t have to face the silence again.

She had to keep going because, if she didn’t, she would hear Danny’s final, ragged breaths. She would see Raf’s exhausted, pale face as he mumbled his last words. She would hear her own screams…

And now, she would also see Ethan storming away from her in her final hours.

It was too much.

Charlie felt lucky when she heard someone approach the glass. It meant she would have a distraction.

But when she realized that the noisy steps came from her all her best friends coming to check on her, her feeling of good luck wavered.

They all looked so…

Sad. Aware of the threat. And politely trying not to talk about it.

Sienna’s face was red with tears, and something stabbed at Charlie’s heart as she realized that her friend had lost the man she adored and would likely lose even more friends by the end of the night.

Sometimes, it was easy to forget that Charlie wasn’t suffering in isolation. Everyone she loved was also suffering, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“I saw Dr. Ramsey storming down the hall. Is everything okay?” Bryce asked as soon as he was in Charlie’s earshot, obviously apprehensive and drained from the traumatic afternoon. Charlie had never seen him not smile when he approached. It broke her heart that he only frowned.

No, Charlie thought, Ethan can’t handle his girlfriend’s mortality, so he’s acting like a dick.

But she didn’t say it. She didn’t want her last memories with her friends to be tainted with calling Ethan a dick or complaining about how ridiculous he was.

Instead, Charlie shrugged, “I don’t know, but they’re making progress. They’ve figured out the toxin, so that’s good news.”

“Really? That’s amazing! What is it?” Sienna’s face perked up with hope for the first time since the whole ordeal began.

Charlie hesitated and reluctantly admitted, “Maitotoxin.”

“Oh,” Sienna exclaimed with surprise, and it only took a moment for her face to fall with recognition, “Oh…”

An awkward silence fell between the friends, and Charlie’s eyes fell to the floor. She didn’t like the way they looked at her now, like they were memorizing her so they could remember once she was gone. Elijah’s face was soft with sympathy, a stark contrast to Jackie’s distraught and angry frown. Bryce was trying so hard to be positive that it seemed to break him.

And Sienna…

Charlie knew that, if she looked at Sienna right now, she wouldn’t be able to stop from crying, so she selfishly looked away.

But she couldn’t maintain it. She had to look. She had to connect.

She had to let them know how much she loved and appreciated them, even if they weren’t ready to acknowledge these as their final hours.

“I love you guys,” Charlie sniffed, wiping at her eyes before anyone could see her cry, “I’m so happy I met all of you.”

“We love you, too,” Elijah’s voice hitched, and Bryce put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

“It’s really good that they’ve identified the toxin, Charlie,” Jackie spoke up, nodding firmly, “We’re one step closer.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed weakly, “One step closer.”

“You’re going to be okay,” Bryce added, trying to keep everyone optimistic, but not even his bravado couldn’t save the day.

Charlie nodded, “You’re right.”

Everyone tried to stay positive, including Charlie, and she hid her growing tears with awkward sniffles and wiping her eyes. They pretended not to notice and ignored the increasing pain in their hearts.

“How’s Kyra?” Charlie asked.

“She’s good… She made it out of surgery, and she’s recovering,” Bryce clumsily added, “We haven’t… we haven’t told her about this yet. We didn’t want to stress her, but…”

He trailed off before he could say that they would bring her to say goodbye if it became obvious that Charlie wouldn’t survive the hour.

It stung. It was just another reminder that she was actually going to die.

Charlie nodded her approval and expressed relief that Kyra was okay, and she didn’t make Bryce explain. She didn’t need him to tell her. His obvious discomfort and nervousness expressed everything she needed to know. As long as she could say goodbye to Kyra before the end, she was happy to let her stay blissfully ignorant.

She wished she could give all her friends that gift.

As they continued to talk, Charlie found the effort to stay strong for them exhausting. A dark, quiet thought whispered that at least her impending doom meant she could rest after taking blow after blow.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the diagnostics team coming down the hall, and she released a tiny sigh of acceptance.

She knew they didn’t have good news. There was no good news to be had. Whatever it was would be traumatic at worst and depressing at best.

Charlie was so tired.

She longed for her bed so much that she was fine with the fact that she would likely never get out of it. She was ready to let go. She was ready to give in, if everyone would just stand back and let her.

But they wouldn’t.

Charlie’s friends moved to allow June, Baz, and Ethan to face Charlie through the glass. Ethan was staring at her with eyes that begged her to look at him. She didn’t. She was too close to crying already. Instead, she looked at June.

“How are you doing, Charlie?” June asked, and once again, Charlie was comforted by her no-nonsense approach. It was nice to not be causing someone pain for once today.

“Okay,” Charlie shrugged, “No significant changes.”

June nodded considerately, “You know it’s Maitotoxin?”

“Yes.”

“And you know what that means?”

“Yes.”

June looked away just for a second – a second to brace herself. When she looked back, she was stern again.

“I brought some files if you would like to look through it.”

“I don’t want to,” Charlie rejected the offer, “But thank you.”

June nodded understandingly and handed the folder to Baz, who wiped a tear from underneath his glasses, “We’re working on it, Charlie.”

“I know, and thank you,” Charlie acknowledged.

She couldn’t help herself.

She had to look at Ethan.

Her muscles burned with the effort of looking away. She couldn’t fight it. She had to see him.

And she did.

And it…

It broke her and healed her at the same time.

Her Ethan.

She could see him now – the Ethan she loved, not just Dr. Ramsey. He was so sad… So devastated. And so eager for her to glance in his direction.

She loved him. She loved him so much.

In that moment, he felt like the only thing worth looking at. Her heart swelled so much that it felt like it might just burst. She couldn’t imagine staring at anything else.

“This isn’t the time to give up, Charlotte,” Ethan asserted, but it was a plea, really.

He hoped his voice still mattered to her. He hoped he still mattered to her after how he treated her.

“But,” Charlie spoke softly to the group, though she only looked at Ethan, “There isn’t an antidote.”

“Yet,” Ethan emphasized, “We’re going to work around the clock to synthesize one.”

“And you won’t be alone.”

Everyone’s head jerked in the direction of the familiar voice.

For a moment, Charlie wondered if she should add delusions to her growing list of symptoms. She looked at her friends’ expressions for confirmation that they saw it, too, and to her surprise, they did.

But… how?

Aurora approached quickly, flanked with a team of doctors on either side. Just a step ahead of her was Tobias, and it was only then that Charlie recognized that he was the one who spoke.

And just like that, everything was different. Hope rushed down the empty corridor to the sound of a dozen footsteps.

Everyone gaped as the doctors approached. Everyone from Edenbrook was too shocked to say a word, so it was Aurora who spoke next.

“The best doctors and resources Mass Kenmore can offer at your disposal,” Aurora affirmed, and the doctors behind her nodded their agreement.

Charlie was stunned to silence.

“Tobias?” Ethan’s lips were parted in a silent gasp. He couldn’t believe it, and right then, he decided he didn’t care about anything in their past anymore.

Tobias was here now, and if he could save Charlie, Ethan would forgive and forget anything.

The only thing that mattered was Charlie.

“This is bigger than any rivalry. Greene’s not dying on our watch,” Tobias looked at Ethan like he understood.

Normally, this would have terrified Ethan. He would have wondered how Tobias knew about their relationship and if he would dare use it against the two of them in the name of their ongoing competition. He would have feared for Charlie’s career. And he would have hated Tobias for pointing it out.

But Ethan felt none of that.

Instead, he said, “Thank you, Tobias.”

This startled Tobias, but after a beat, he accepted the thanks.

“Yes… Thank you. Both of you,” Charlie echoed, looking between Aurora and Tobias with shocked gratitude, “Aurora… I don’t even know how to express… I …” Charlie stumbled through her words, struggling to express her love for her friend and her gratitude and her relief to even know her.

“Then don’t,” Aurora cut her off, “Thank me by hanging in there, okay?”

Charlie nodded weakly, “I’ll try.”

“We've set up basecamp in the laboratory. We can take you there now,” June offered.

“Anyone else who wants to join us is welcome,” Baz added.

“Count us in. Chemistry was always my strongest subject in college,” Elijah said, earning a nod of approval from Baz.

Sienna pushed her way to the glass, her teary eyes fierce and piercing as they found Charlie, “Don’t you dare die. No comas, either. Just… hold the line, you hear me?” Sienna demanded.

“I hear you,” Charlie confirmed as strongly as she could.

Aurora pulled Sienna from the window and gently lead her away. The others said their goodbyes and hurried after June and Baz to the lab.

Only Ethan stayed behind.

Charlie stared at him in surprise.

“What are you doing?”

“I realized you might need me here more than you need me with them,” Ethan confessed, taking another step towards the glass – towards Charlie.

He didn’t quite know where to start. He was ashamed of his behavior – of his rude cowardice. He was haunted by that last look she’d given before he left, like she knew he would let her down.

And he didn’t want to be that man.

He wasn’t that man.

He might not be able to save her, but that wasn’t what she needed from him. He knew that now.

“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” Ethan said it all at once, like a deep sigh he needed to release. And he did. He had to apologize. He needed her to not hate him.

“For what?” Charlie asked apprehensively. She realized that she was holding her breath as she waited. She wanted to forgive him so very, very badly that she was terrified he wouldn’t say the right words, that this would somehow be ruined.

But really, even if he had made every wrong move, she wasn’t prepared to let him ruin it. She would have forgiven him no matter what he said.

“For everything,” Ethan swallowed heavily, casting his eyes low with humiliation, “For storming off. For not listening to you. for hiding when I should have stood with you.”

He twisted his face, trying to hold back the floodgates of emotion as he added, “You’re asking for something that’s very hard to give, Charlotte.”

Charlie was crying.

She didn’t bother wiping away the tears as she sadly smiled, “I know.”

“But you deserve to ask,” Ethan made himself look at her, even though he wasn’t sure if he even deserved to, “Because you’re right, Charlie. You’re always right.”

Charlie laughed softly. That was the kind of thing she always wanted to hear. If he had told her any other time, she would have stored those words and brought them up time and time again. She wouldn’t get to now, though.

“I forgive you, Ethan,” Charlie quickly corrected, “Actually, no. I don’t. Because I don’t need to. I don’t care. You were a dick, but I… I don’t blame you. I’m just happy you’re here now.”

Ethan shook his head, knowing he didn’t deserve anything she said, “You’re too easy on me.”

“No,” Charlie tentatively held her hand to the glass, “I’m not.”

She offered a small, playful smile – the kind that always filled him with happiness, even now. She whispered, “I knew you were an asshole when I picked you, Ethan.”

He didn’t deserve Charlie.

But he placed his hand on the glass and smiled anyway.

He was supposed to leave now. They both knew it.

But he stood still.

He was devastated to look at her like this, alone and scared. He could see the exhaustion etched in her face, and he knew she hadn’t slept. He doubted she had sat for more than hour all together today. She was so stubborn… And so isolated…

“Can I stay?” Ethan asked impulsively.

Charlie jerked in surprise, instinctively taking a small step back. He missed her proximity immediately.

“Won’t the team miss you?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t care. I want to be here with you.”

Charlie hadn’t thought that there were right words to say. She thought that this situation was too shocking, too dramatic to have anything “right” about it. But she felt differently now. Because those were the right words to say.

She didn’t speak immediately. She didn’t know how to. She was too overcome with emotions she didn’t even recognize. It was harder to breathe. She felt like something was breaking inside of her – some resolve, some barrier. It flooded her until her limbs felt heavy and her mind exhausted.

She was falling apart. She felt it. Ethan saw it.

“Please,” Charlie begged him to come inside.

Ethan nodded emphatically, and he assured her it would be just one minute. As he rushed into his hazmat suit, he was tempted to be reckless with the remaining procedures. Time with Charlie was precious, and one minute felt like too long to wait.

It took about 65 seconds for Ethan to safely enter the hospital room.

Ethan only took one of the following seconds to complain about how slow he moved and how much faster he needed to go to get to her, but he was quickly distracted from those criticisms.

Because Charlie was there.

After hours of staying apart to maintain boundaries and leaving her to struggle on her own, Ethan could finally hold her.

Ethan wordlessly enveloped Charlie in his arms, and she fell deeply into his embrace until he was the only thing keeping her up. She shed the pretense of strength and stability. When Raf crashed and abandoned her in this room, she almost wallowed in the full effect of the night – the pain, the sorrow, the fear. But there was still a part of her that pushed Ethan away for his own good, sacrificing what she wanted for the greater effort. Now, even that was gone.

Charlie succumbed to the darkness.

And really, it was kind of a relief.

She sobbed into his chest, and Ethan held her as tight as he possibly could without breaking her. He wished he could give her all of his remaining strength. She needed it more than he did.

“It’s okay,” Ethan whispered, tracing a soothing pattern on her back, “I’m here.”

“I missed you so much,” Charlie managed breathlessly.

He squeezed her, but he wasn’t sure if he did it to reassure her or to prove to himself that she was really there.

Once her sobs grew softer, Ethan pulled away enough to wipe the tears off her red-stained cheeks. He hated the hazmat suit for keeping them apart. He wanted to feel her skin, her warmth.

“I wish you could touch me,” Charlie told him, a spare tear rolling down her cheek. He caught it with his thumb.

“So, do I,” Ethan affirmed with a sad smile.

She swayed softly in his arms. Her dizziness, coupled with her exhaustion, made it hard to stand. Her eyelids were heavy, and her eyes were bloodshot from hours of tears and not a minute of sleep. She demanded a lot from her body, and it was determined to get its revenge on her.

Though he knew she hadn’t, he asked, “Have you slept at all?”

Charlie shook her head, “I tried, but um…” Charlie had to stop and hold her breath for a minute, too choked up to continue. For anyone else, she would have left it at that, but for Ethan, she bore the pain and explained, “I tried after Raf crashed… And I… I was too afraid I wouldn’t wake up again, and I wasn’t ready.”

Oh.

Ethan swallowed heavily and nodded thoughtfully. He didn’t dare speak. He knew he would break if he did.

His beautiful, wonderful Charlie didn’t deserve this…

“How is Raf?” Charlie asked apprehensively. She doubted she would like his answer.

“He’s holding on,” Ethan told her, “He’s in a coma.”

Charlie knew that was the best she could ask for, so she accepted it quietly.

“Are you tired, Charlie?”

Charlie let out a deep breath as she admitted, “So, so tired.”

Not just physically, either. She was drained completely – emotionally and mentally. The only thing that kept her going was her determination, and even that wore thin.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed,” Ethan suggested softly. When she hesitated, he added, “I’ll be here to make sure you wake up.”

Charlie knew he couldn’t really make a promise like that, but she believed it anyway. She needed it.

Charlie accepted his hand and allowed him to lead her to the bed. As she sank into the mattress, he carefully followed. His arms encircled her, and her head fell comfortably and familiarly to his shoulder.

If they pretended, it almost looked like a normal night in his apartment.

“I think your bed might be just a bit more comfortable,” Charlie whispered playfully, earning his chuckle.

She liked to watch him laugh, even through the bulky hazmat helmet. In fact, she liked almost everything about him.

“Can I tell you something I regret?” Charlie asked, much to Ethan’s surprise.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yes, you can,” Ethan affirmed, hiding his own anxiety.

Everything about this night felt final, like the last chapter of his favorite book. Every time they had a “last” anything, Ethan felt closer to the edge.

“If I could go back, I would pick you all the times I almost did.”

“I wouldn’t deserve it.”

“I don’t care,” Charlie shrugged. She was smiling, but it didn’t reach her sad eyes, “You don’t have to deserve me, Ethan. I wasted so much time thinking that, if I couldn’t have you, I had to stay away until I moved on. And I never moved on, not even for a minute.”

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Ethan felt like a fool for all his stubborn, ‘ethical’ arguments. He’d just been hiding, and because of it, they were deprived of so much. “I wish I could take it back, Charlie. I would take a million more months with you.”

This time, when Charlie smiled, he knew it was real.

And she knew she had to tell him. Anxiety built in her chest, and for a terrifying moment, she wondered if she as alone in loving him, if she had always been the foolish, love-struck girl. If he still didn’t need her like she needed him.

“Can I tell you another regret?”

Ethan nodded his consent.

“I should have… I should have told you I loved you the second I felt it.”

The world stopped. Time wasn’t counting down.

Now, it was Ethan’s turn to stop breathing.

“When was that?”

“The spring, the night I left you before you could leave me. I wrote it on a note that I was going to leave for you, but I took it with me instead. I thought it help me move on if I never told you,” Charlie admitted.

She was very aware that Ethan hadn’t said it back yet, and she watched his lips intently, waiting for three words to fall out of them.

But Ethan was distracted.

Because, if he had known, everything would have been different. If she had left that note, he wouldn’t have been able to stay away. He ran away and hid from her for his own safety, to keep him away from her. If he had known that she was suffering, too, he would have stayed.

He could have been happy with her all this time.

All it would have taken was for one of them to say that they loved each other.

“I knew then, too…” Ethan still seemed lost in his own head as he spoke, “I spent every night in the Amazon wondering if I would ever stop.”

“Did you?” Charlie was so afraid of his answer she almost hoped he wouldn’t say anything. That way, she ran no risk of being crushed.

“Never.”

He loves me.

Charlie shouldn’t have been shocked, but she was.

And she was so… so…

So in love with him. So overwhelmed.

Charlie began to cry, hiding her face in Ethan’s shoulder as she mourned. She cried because of how much she loved him. She cried because they had all this time and never told each other. She cried because she wouldn’t get to love him for decades. She cried because this was still the end.

Ethan held her tight and fought off his own ragged, dangerous breath. He didn’t know how to breathe anymore. He was so sad but so happy. So distraught and so relieved.

He should have told her before. In his apartment, on the balcony with a bottle of wine. When she was smiling at him. When her eyes reflected the glimmering cityscape and stars. When she was happy and safe.

“You know,” Ethan murmured, “My dad says I would be an idiot to ruin this because you’re the best thing to ever happen to me,” Ethan wasn’t quite sure why he told her this story, but he just knew he wanted to make her smile, “I told him that I already had once, and he said I was an idiot.”

Charlie laughed softly through her tears. She could imagine it, and she didn’t disagree with Alan.

“My mom found a picture of you on the internet after I moved here. She warned me not to get too close to you because you were too handsome and smart for your own good,” Charlotte murmured. He could hear the exhaustion in her voice, but he was relieved to have the distraction.

“You know, it was pretty strange you claimed to be such a ‘fan’ but had no idea what I looked like,” Ethan teased.

“I was a fan of your research. Was I supposed to keep a poster of your face on my wall?”

“I’m just saying that my picture was in the back of the book.”

“I was too busy reading it to check you out, Ethan.”

Charlie rolled her eyes, and Ethan smiled.

They didn’t say a lot after that, just a few murmured words and the occasional joke. Despite her best efforts to stay awake and enjoy her time with Ethan, Charlie fell asleep. She finally felt safe enough to sleep.

Even after he realized Charlie was asleep, Ethan held her. He wasn’t ready to let go.

He wanted to hold her through the night and keep her safe. He wanted to keep his promise and make sure she woke up in the morning.

But he needed to get back to the team and fight for her while they still had time left.

Ethan reluctantly untangled himself from Charlie, and before he left, he whispered gently that he loved her.

Ethan followed the decontamination procedures methodically. It gave him something else to think about, somewhere for his mind to hide. Once he was done, he slid back into his white coat and started walking down the hall to the lab.

But he didn’t make it there.

Every step, his feet felt like lead. His heart raced. His eyes watered. His breath was irregular.

He had to stop. He had to… crash.

He fell to the linoleum floor with a thud that echoed down the empty hall. He leaned his head back to the wall and begged his body to stop, to just let him focus. He searched for those barriers that kept him safe, but they were gone now.

He loved Charlie.

And she was going to die.

Ethan succumbed to the weight of it all as he sobbed into his hands. It took everything from him, so when the tears stopped flowing, he felt hollow and empty. He was alone. And he missed her.

As soon as he could fathom it, Ethan stood. He walked into the bathroom and splashed his tear-stained face with water. His reflection was so unfamiliar – so distraught and devoid of life – that he avoided looking at it at first. He forced himself to level his gaze with his reflection, and he commanded that he get his shit together and be a good doctor. It didn’t matter if he was sad. All that mattered was that Charlotte survived. He would give anything for her.

Using that as fuel, Ethan marched into the lab.

Everyone was surprised to see him, and they hardly kept it to himself. Even June gaped in alarm. No one expected him to leave Charlie’s side, and they worried what it meant that he had.

“How is Charlie?” Baz asked immediately.

“She’s resting. Heart rate still normal. No obvious deterioration,” Ethan ignored their astonished stares and walked to the half-empty pot of coffee in the corner of the make-shift lab. He poured himself a cup and winced at the taste, “Who made this?”

“I did,” Tobias confirmed.

“Makes sense,” Ethan muttered. If Tobias caught it, he let it slide.

He forced the rest of the cup down, reasoning that he needed the caffeine more than his taste buds needed satisfaction.

As soon as he finished his coffee, Ethan asked for an update and where he could help. Tobias told him about their progress and invited Ethan to work with him. Ethan obliged and fell into the project quickly.

The team benefited from his presence, even if they couldn’t believe he was there.

As they worked, Tobias finally said, “So, the resident, huh?”

Ethan shot him a warning look, “Shut up.”

“I’m not judging.”

“You are, and I don’t care. After we finish this antidote, you have all the time in the world to judge me. Save it for then.”

Tobias raised his hands in surrender and got back to work.

---

Charlie woke the next morning to a sharp, stabbing pain ripping through her stomach. She yelped in pain and instinctively doubled over, silently begging her body to just release whatever the fuck this was. She reached for Ethan beside her but found the bed empty.

As another wave of pain hit her, Charlie longed for Ethan’s reassuring presence but was quietly relieved that he didn’t have to see her bitter end. And anyway, he kept his promise. She woke up this morning.

“Charlotte!”

She recognized Ethan’s voice, but her vision was too blurry to recognize him on the other side of the glass. He was just an outline, but he was the tallest outline out of the group. So, Charlie reasoned it had to be him rushing through the decontamination tent to get to her. A handful of people followed.

Charlie dug her nails into her arm to distract from the pain, but she only ended up drawing blood.

Once it was finally over, she fell back into the bed feebly.

Ethan anxiously approached and demanded, “Are you okay?”

Charlie faintly nodded her head in response, and Ethan released a sigh of relief.

“What’s going on?” Charlie murmured, struggling to keep her eyes open. She needed sleep. She needed relief.

“We did it, Charlie!” Charlie recognized the voice before she recognized Aurora’s form in the glass.

“What?” Charlie’s mouth felt dry, and the word came out cracked.

“We have an antidote, Charlie,” Ethan explained. While she tried to identify Aurora out of the crowd, he had made it to her bedside and was sitting in the chair beside her, holding out his hand for hers.

Charlie didn’t understand.

She had to be imagining this.

But people were talking. They explained the miracle of the formulation and how the antidote worked. She only picked up every other word, but she got the gist of it.

It was real.

They did it.

“Did you give it to Raf?” Charlie breathed as soon as it all clicked together, cutting off someone else. She looked to Ethan like he was the only one she trusted.

“We did,” Sienna confirmed, “We haven’t seen any change. It may have been too late…”

“But we haven’t seen a decline, and that has to mean something,” Elijah chimed in.

Charlie fell back into the bed just a little bit farther. She was relieved he was still alive, even if he might not be by the end of the day.

“Charlotte,” Ethan’s voice was tender, nearly begging as he asked, “Give me your arm.”

Charlie obliged, but her body was so weak that it shook when she held it out. Baz came to her side and steadied her as Ethan prepared the shot.

As Ethan smoothly slid the needle into her skin, he told her, “It’s going to be okay.”

And for the first time, Charlie believed him.

TAG LIST:

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#ethan ramsey #choices #choices stories you play #play choices #open heart #ethan ramsey x mc #open heart 2 #angst #dr. ramsey #dr. ethan ramsey

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alistair-blackwood · 4 years ago

Text

AO3 Year In Review - 2020

Top Fandom: The Magnus Archives (26 works)

Date of First Fic Posted: 02 May 2020 (road trip, 448 words)

Top Multi-Chapter Fic: fell in your opinion when i fell in love with you (19,002 words) The one that started it all! It was the first thing I’d ever written for TMA, having created the rough outline on 16 April 2020, a few weeks before I’d post the first of my one-shots. The rough draft was super rough, of course (initially it was only going to be one chapter, with nothing from chapter 2!), but I remember being amazed with how easily writing Martin’s character came to me. I’ve only gotten better from there!

Top One-Shot: the Teacher from the Magnus Archives (5,992 words) This one was my first fic/art exchange and I’m astounded with how well-liked it was! I never would have guessed it’d be my second most popular fic. I’m really glad people enjoyed Maggie’s character!

Fic You’re Most Proud Of: the loneliness never left me (but i can put it down in the pleasure of your company) (5,004 words). I know I only just posted this, but this is my first project using an entirely new system of rewrites and revisions that I think’s improved my writing by leaps and bounds. It’s definitely already made my entire writing process that much more efficient. Also the title is the best line from the best song and that’s an achievement all on its own. Honorary mention for the Monster of Magnus Manor, main reason I didn’t pick this one is because it’s still a WIP. Maybe next year!

Fic You Wish Got More Attention: the midnight hour is close at hand (8,189 words). God, this one was hard. It’s one of my only fics where the conflict of the story doesn’t really revolve around Martin and Jon’s burgeoning relationship, but around Jon and the problems that arise from his implied neurodivergency. I’ve never really tackled this subject matter before and I was absolutely terrified of making some kind of ill thought out implication or being too easy and/or too hard on Jon for his behavior. I think it came out okay in the end, though (I hope so, anyway). I think it would have gotten more attention if I had posted it as a complete one shot, but god writing this one was like pulling teeth, I would never have gotten it done if I didn’t divvy it out.

Fic That Challenged You The Most: every demon wants his pound of flesh (20,007 words) This fic was a real crossroads for me- I remember reaching the fourth chapter and being absolutely stuck. I wanted to write a big emotional scene with Jon and Martin in the hospital, but all I had done up to that point were fluff pieces with bare bones emotional reactions; I just had no idea how to get creative with the environment or what details to focus on in order to make a strong emotional impact. I still struggle with this a lot (shout out to theshoutingslytherin for all their good advice!), but this fic is where I really had to start digging deep in order to create the effect I wanted.

Favorite Quote/Passage: What did it mean, to be lonely?

Was it the dull ache of wondering how long it would take for someone to notice you were gone, if you were to pick a direction and start walking?

Being in the middle of a crowded room, nudged out of the way until you found yourself alone in a corner, fading into the background as everyone’s conversations carried on without you?

Wishing you just mattered to somebody, and not even managing that?

Lonely.

Was that loneliness? Because if it was, Martin wasn’t sure there’d been a time in his life where he hadn’t been lonely. (the Monster of Magnus Manor, Chapter 1: The Fog)

Total Words Posted: 130,739!

I’d like to thank all my followers for their support! I feel like writers have it especially hard getting attention on tumblr and that can be really discouraging, but you guys helped carry me through this, the devil’s year of 2020! I’d like to take a moment to especially thank everyone who have really gone the extra mile: @definitelynotshouting @fabulousspeed @skyberia @chalroe @hello-archivist @thesmallestzita @tired-dummy @thementalists @ciarakraken @spookyscarytaxevasion @lady-alys @ghostbustermelanieking @satturn I see your likes and reblogs and kudos and comments and it means so, so much to me every time! You made this year more bearable than it had any right to be!

Happy 2020, y’all! It’s almost over, haha.

(If anyone would like to use this format for themselves, please feel free!)

#the magnus archives #fic writing meme #2020 #i was supposed to be doing the last of this rewrite for momm chapter 3 and i got distracted with this lol #but i guess im going to the library later anyway #need to make breakfast rrghrgh

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ziracona · 4 years ago

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Who of the DBD original killers do you think would be cool to see in horror movies? What characters do you think have the most potential for a film and what do you think it should/could be like?

Interesting question! Let’s see: Lisa, Sally, Philip, Max, Evan, Herman, Anna, Kenneth, Rin, Frank/Julie/Susie/Joey, Adiris, Danny (kind of), Kazan, Caleb, Talbot, and the Deshayes.

Hmmmm. Danny would work the least well as an original product, because he’s also a Scream expy thing. And then I also don’t think Talbot would work well outside a very DbD like in-universe heavy story, because he just has so much realm context backstory.

Out of the others, they all have potential. Basically none of the sympathetic ones would work as standalone horror characters, because they just didn’t like, /do/ murders before in-realm or live horror lives. The exceptions being Charlotte, Legion, Anna, Max, and Lisa. A lot of the others are definitely interesting enough to be really cool to watch their backstory lives, just, it wouldn’t be traditional horror. Charlotte and Lisa wouldn’t be the antagonists, but they /did/ both live complex horror lives before the realm, and there’s a lot of tragic potential there. Anna, Max, and Legion are all fairly sympathetic killers, but they /did/ live horror experiences before their time in-realm, so they have potential too. Out of them, I think Anna would be the strangest to adapt as traditional horror, since so much of her genre is tragedy and drama, and a narrative from her pov doesn’t play her as living a horror story, while Max and Legion’s do. It /could/ be crazy sad and work though, especially if you say, started the film from the pov of a kid who is kidnapped by her and the family who loses the child, and then only slowly as Anna goes from this horrific thing that kills people and steals children and eats human, to a weird kidnapper mother-wannabe, does she become less a monster and more complex. Maybe then you get flashbacks. It’d be dark, though, because even if you learned her past and understood what she’s been through and why she did what she did, and she and the child form any kind of bond, and she’s temporarily happy with a daughter and full of affection, you know none of her kids ever lived, so it would have to end with the child she’s had a few slow heartwarming moments with falling ill and her working hard to make her better, keep her warm, only to return from a hunt or panicked mission to collect herbs, relieved to have found what she needs, only to find a cold lifeless body waiting. Which she cradles for hours weeping, and then goes to bury finally behind the house, and only then does the audience realize this is one more joining fourteen graves that have come before it. And god, that’s just...so dismal. Chilling.

Uhhh, Max could be really good, but I would be so afraid people would adapt him badly because mentally ill and disabled antagonists in horror like, almost without fail are disgustingly treated. So, this one gives me fear. It could be a really nice character study, slow understanding movie though, where you go from identifying with him and him being the character in a horror situation, to the monster at the end of the film killing anything who comes near him in a frenzied need to be left alone. Also a very tragic and dark film.

The Legion would be a top pick, because it’s less dark and more like, unique? As far as horror goes. You get these kids, kind of a Gingersnaps, The Craft feel horror, with character-driven and a slow build into the actual horror of it all. Things only spiral slowly, and you like and sympathize with at least to some degree the stupid shit teens by the time things fall apart and their is blood on their hands. And there’s just--so much in the air. One murder. Unplanned. Punk troublemakers that just went off the edge into something darker on accident, and never really have time to choose what this means for them as people or if they’ll come back, because they are still in the immediate turmoil of processing that first kill when the Entity grabs them all. Could be really sick. Also there’s so much sweet-tragedy to work with here, I die for it. Ahhh, and baby Jeff Johansen! --Side note: while I think a lot of these would be cool horror films, honestly, I wouldn’t make horror flicks out of any of them. The reason isn’t that they would be bad films, but that I think the ideal way to adapt dbd killers cinematically would be in like, a DbD tie-in miniseries that’s a collection of stories that gives you backstories like archives does, but does it /way/ better. Like how Overwatch does character short films periodically for lore, except longer and probably live action. Or like the Coming To America segments in American Gods before episodes/chapters that introduce characters or backstory. I fkn love that concept in media when it’s done well. I think it would be super sick, and it would be a great way to tie things into dbd while letting different killers have unique flavors and storytelling styles to their shortfilms. (Honestly, DbD as a concept could make for some /fantastic/ tv show material. I’d /love/ to adapt it. And if there /was/ a show, it would be really cool to periodically have episodes that are just character backstories before you go back to the like, over-arching realtime plot).

Uhhhh, Lisa’s would be tragic, and it would /have/ to go full story. Poor kid just living her life, to kidnapped and struggling to survive. Trying to escape. Canibalized and tortured horribly. Eventually dying and vowing revenge. All the way to twisted and abused by the Entity, doing things she never ever would have chosen for herself, for just the...the fucking wholesale tragedy of her. Honestly, if DbD had a show, she’d be a /fantastic/ choice for first or second killer to get a backstory segment or episode, because like, people new to the media would understandably be like ‘yo these monsters are all 100% evil’ but then you get Lisa and you��re like ‘Oh fuck. That was one of the creepiest, and really she’s some poor young woman who needs rescuing as much as the survivors,’ and then there’s just so much left up in the air to question--who else is like her? And who is like Danny, or Freddy? Who is somewhere in between? Great for storytelling.

Uhhh, it’d take a long time to break down how I’d adapt all of these even with me doing shortform like this so I’ll try to be brief. Let me see. Charlotte would be great horror, back to the original question, not my miniseries fantasy, because her whole life is a horror film she’s the victim in, but her situation is complex and fascinating, and she’s a kid, and it’s so tragic, but not in a pointless way. Her life was full of love and pain, but it mattered, to her, to her mom who loved her and died for her, and to the baby brother whose corpse she couldn’t stop cradling and literally carrying not just with but in her. I think you’d have to finish that heartbroken for the girl, and hoping somehow she is able to find healing in whatever time she has left.

Sally and Philip both went through awful stuff, but Philip’s is not really a subject for just a horror film--although his time in Autohaven could be. Sally also had horrific experiences at her job, but again, like Max, less excited about this one because I don’t trust many people to do a good job with an asylum story. If done well, could be really tragic. Watching her fall apart trying to care about the people who just deserve help, and falling apart being abused by the criminals kept right in the next room over. The horrific ‘treatments’, the slow influence of the Entity whispering in her head, her finally fracturing and believing so completely she is saving people by purifying them and setting them free while she smothers a young boy who trusted her to death. Devastating. And Philip’s life overall and his time in autohaven lend themselves very well to horror, and he’d be a magnificent protagonist, I just don’t think if it was mostly the stuff in America, that that’s a full-length movie. Could be a really great like 45 minute short film. God, poor Philip. He deserved /none/ of this. Uhhh, Rin’s is horrific, with her as the victim, but like Philip, there’s not a /ton/ of buildup, so short film, not feature? Also God, poor Rin. She was just a kid. Doing her best. Please, Entity, fucking stop this.

This leaves Evan, Herman, Kenneth, Adiris, Kazan, and Caleb. Out of these, Caleb would make for a really good movie, but I don’t think it would be a horror film? It’d be a drama, or action-adventure. I mean don’t get me wrong--dark drama--his life was fucked--but like, it isn’t very horror-genre. Kenneth would be super gross but he fits classic horror well so if you want a killer clown, let’s goooo, but like? It’d just be two hours of him drugging, torturing and assaulting and then killing kids, teens, young adults, adults, and old people? And like, almost getting caught but not, and then being recruited by the Entity? And there’s just...not a story in there I see very worth telling? So I’d hard pass. Gross.

Uhhhh, Herman is boring if he’s rewrite. Torture bastard but like with mad scientist vibes is more interesting, and I could dig a CIA is evil film. Only, since he canonically kills /everybody/ in the building, you’d either have to retcon, or have a very disappointing film. Because Herman can’t be the pov character if he’s mad scientist Herman--you kinda need to see that from the outside at least as like, a deuteragonist. Not that horror is always disappointing if the cast all dies--sometimes that works--but like. Given the plotline I know Herman’s life takes, I can’t see your protag being slowly mind control tortured and then eventually experimented on and ripped apart until they die Herman’s last day being a very worthwhile storyline. If you retcon the complete losses though, and have maybe a spy who is the pov character, experimented on a lot, tries to escape and is punished, maybe tries to help a friend, tries to kill Herman in retribution for what he does to a colleague, and last day, somehow finds a way to survive whatever is done to them/not end up vegetative for the rest of their life or dead? Maybe puts a plan into action and messes up a machine and gets hit with a much lower than it looks like dosage of electricity and fakes vegetative, and survives, and witnesses the Entity come and take Herman even, and the Entity notices them and is like “Okay...more free food” so you have a last minute terrified beat to shit spy trying to break free of arm restraints and escape the place before the Entity gets them. Maybe rescues someone else too? Then baybeee we got a story with a great antag! Throw in a new protag to spice it up and u got something I’d like to see. If it’s just torture man lover Herman -the mad scientist aspect, I am not super interested but it’s not a /hard/ pass. I keep this pitch, it just becomes a less interesting film.

Adiris baby, I’m so sorry I didn’t do you with the sympathetic killers you know I love you your name was just late in my list because of how I typed it. Uhhh, her life doesn’t lend well to horror, although she’s a fantastic drama or epic. I’d love to see a major focus on her in-relam in a show, but as far as this question goes, I just don’t think that’s her genre.

This leaves Kazan and Evan. Guess I lied before about not going into any detail TuT but I’ll try. Uhhh. Kazan I am just not that interested in the story of? Man goes around killing farmers brutally for no reason. It’s less horror, more historical drama, unless you take the pov of a victim who seeks revenge or something. So, like Herman, he’d need a pov character fix to make it work. But the end result I find much less compelling. I’d probably pass. It’s just not that interesting to me.

Evan. Well, he’d be a good film I think. Classic horror. Rich, privileged, conceited bastard. Even worse father. Dead mom, drama as a young man. Becomes a horrific monster and loves it, cooks workers to death in his foundry furnace for no reason except sadism, lots of kidnapping workers and forcing them into slavery for him and then horrific murder. Kinda a torture-porn leaning here if you’re not careful, but it could be a really solid flick. I don’t think any of his victims survive though, so without a retcon, it’d be a pretty damn dark one. You could have any number of pov characters that just end up burned to death, or beaten to death, or buried alive and suffocated or starved, crushed to death. You could follow Evan and just be overwhelmed with horror and disgust for the person he becomes. But it works better than some of the other dark horror options, so I’d say it has potential. Especially as a lead-in to DbD, because then it works better as a storyline, because it isn’t totally over.

Hope you enjoyed this! Again though, a lot of these could make nice movies, but I think like 45 minute episode TV show for DbD would be ideal, and they’d all make /phenomenal/ backstory short films. Even the ones that really don’t lend to standalone feature.

#ask #Anonymous #dead by daylight #dbd #long post

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nymphixdevelopmentarchive · 4 years ago

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What changes will you be making in your Au? I crave the knowledge

Woah hi anon!! Thank you for all the questions so far! I would be really excited to share with you all the lore I can offer (without giving out too much ;) )! I hope you didn’t mind the long wait as I wanted to get really deep into this so I hope you enjoy it!!

Nymphix: Dragon's End is a canon-divergent au (which for those who don’t know means after a certain point in canon I cut off from there to begin a new point of lore, writing, and story) which cuts off after season 6's midseason finale and completely erases s6.5 (Mythix) to s8 (Cosmix) in order to place Nymphix in an easier time frame.

This is basically how ill be sectioning off this entire answer, apologies for how long it is I get really encouraged to write when people as me this stuff: 1 will be basic pre-nymphix lore, explaining how the au will break off from canon, 2 will be changes to designs for each girl/guy/and parents (only really the main two ill be using: Oritel and Marion) and finally 3 the new additions to Winx lore and explanations of them.

Pre-Nymphix Lore

So how will this au break go about? Well in order to implement Nymphix smoothly, I had to do one rewrite which is for the s6 midseason finale. After the entire Vampire invasion of Gardenia, Selina promises the Trix that her best chapter is yet to come. Selina is planning to summon Archeon at last in order to finally get rid of the Winx and maybe even the Trix to absorb their energy into the Legendarium to free her master. So long story short, the Winx confront Selina and the Trix and they fight. The Trix cover for Selina as she reads from the Legendarium and Archeon slowly starts to climb out of it, sucking in magical energy from all except Selina. That is until Bloom talks to Selina and tries to convince her to stop which causes Selina to do a double-take and stop reading and decides to use the magic energy she gathered and sacrifice herself in order to save the others and to hopefully undo all the damage she's done. Yet she can't, as Eldora finally reveals herself and grabs the Legendarium from Selina and uses her Mythix and stored Fairy Godmother energy to seal herself and Archeon back in the Legendarium causing it to be safe.

Now with Eldora out of the picture (both literally and plot-wise), the Mythix arc cannot happen setting off a chain of events causing s6.5-s8 to not happen and instead causing Nymphix to be slowly rolling into action. After the Battle of Cloudtower v.3, the Winx decide to take some personal time off from saving the universe for almost 6 years straight to focus on themselves. So for a year, the girls have been pursuing either their royal duties or personal dreams. Bloom is learning more about how to be a Dominoian Royal, learning under her mother, Queen Marion. Stella is back in Solaria going under rigorous training to become Queen of Solaria which causes her to be in isolation from Radius as he hones in on her training. Flora is with Helia in Lynphea with her parents planning a wedding while Helia is learning under Flora’s Father to become a medical wizard. Meanwhile, Musa is with Roxy on Earth working at Frutti Music Bar and working on her music career. Aisha is currently ruling over Andros as Interim Queen due to something happening and Tecna is working on a big project for Zenith with Timmy. Sky and Brandon are on Erakylon as good ol’ King Erendor is attempting to retire, making Sky king and Brandon his right-hand man. 2. Design Changes (cause the Dragon knows we need them) First of all: I’m doing more look changes, giving the girl’s different body types and heights as I just feel like that makes each girl a lot more different. I’ve also changed how some hair looks, probably just on how I draw hair but Bloom and Tecna’s are the most different in a sense of length and style. Here’s a height chart for reference (this is an old one so please forgive the shitty anatomy and other things, I haven’t had a chance to make another yet!):

I’ll go into each girl’s differences stylistically briefly. Bloom has much longer and wilder hair than her canon s6 counterpart, I honestly didn’t like the whole thing she had going with her hair so I brought the old style back and made it a bit longer and crazier with a lot of waves. Stella is a lot shorter and has longer hair, keeping more or less everything the same. Flora is chaotically different, having a much much taller form and making her bangs not look like they can cut you on impact, similar to Bloom’s bangs. Tecna has a lot of changes as well, mostly with her hair, giving it a very unkept manner but longer than the pixie cut we’ve first seen her within S1-s5, making it as long as her Bloomix hair. Musa has the second shortest hair, keeping it tied with Aisha. Musa is also the shortest in the group, but can still kick your ass. Lastly, Aisha is at the same height as Bloom, but I decided to keep her original hairstyle from s2 and s3 as I feel like those are the best representations of her hair but added the salmon highlights into her hair cause I think those look amazing on her. One other thing I have changed for the girls is their Bloomix designs. I honestly didn’t have to redesign them but I couldn’t help myself as they have a lot of problems aesthetically and efficiently, especially for a webcomic. I went for a still-looking good, but less sharp design and got rid of that shitty side ponytail from Stella’s Bloomix. I’m also giving the girls a lot of unique outfits to wear based off of previous transformations so look forward to seeing that and the Bloomix designs! The guys have a lot more fixes than the girls, giving them a better glow-up than whatever the fuck s4/s5 did to them (rip Sky and Helia’s hair). Sky and Helia get their glorious locks back in full swing and made them longer, while the entire boy group gets new outfits and armor! The parents also have modified designs and personalities, especially Oritel and Marion. Marion, or The Dragon Queen of Domino, is a feared royal to most of her enemies and even some of her allies but a soft mother and kind leader to her subjects from those who know her best. She’s the current guardian of the Dragon Flame, having the “guardian form” of the Flame giving her a special transformation. Marion is also known to have a fiery temper during Alliance debates and talks with other kingdoms. Oritel rules by her side, gifted “The Key of the Flame” (the sword from SOTLK and MA and other times) by Marion when they were first married. Oritel is a lot calmer and much more level-headed during debates than his wife and usually takes care of these affairs as well as ones closer to home. Also no more bucket helmets and weird half-circle hair for them, they get new designs. 3. Added Lore

This is gonna be a bit shorter than 1 and 2 since some of the stuff in the added lore section are MAJOR spoilers. However, I can give you somethings that I think you will like anon! First off we have The High Council of Fae which is a council containing guardians of all canon transformations including Nymphix. This council is the main place where Fairy magic is tested, kept safe, fairy-involved history is recorded and stored, and trails of fairies happen. Daphne is apart of the High Council, being Lady Sirenix (Harmonix included). No one except the Council themselves and their close family knows the guardian’s true identities (except for the royals of Andros due to a loophole in sentencing) and are kept secret at all times. Each guardian looks over their respective transformation and guides those who want to gain it in the right direction or protect those who are involved in said transformation (Like Mythix with the Legendarium, Tynix with the Mini Worlds, Butterflix with the Fairy Animals, and Cosmix with the Cosmic star energy that is used by the Queen to bless fairies who are worthy). Another thing added to the lore is a small thing, Fae is used to reference Earth Fairies as its used in common folklore to call fairies of Earth Fae, especially since the Earth Fae have an almost entirely different magic system and way of life. Lastly, the Dragon Flame isn’t just Blooms, it's also been given to Daphne and Marion. Due to Domino’s past, a girl or son born in Dominoian royalty is usually blessed with the Dragon’s Flame as when they become Queen/King, they are seen and trained to be the protectors of the Flame. Queen Marion is one of them, as stated earlier, having a special fairy form of the Dragon Flame especially suited for Queens and Kings. Daphne, however, is very unique. Due to Daphne also being Lady Sirenix (basically having pure sirenix energy straight from the Heart of Sirenix), combining it with her Flame created the Water Flame which is a special type of Dragon Flame that is so enhanced by Sirenix magic that it becomes the Water Dragon’s Flame. Bloom has the purest form of the Dragon Flame, having the chance to basically become God. Each holder of the dragon flame also has a special Dragon that is gifted to them after being blessed with the Flame, coming in different forms that suit the user. Marion has a ram-horned Dragon, Daphne has an Eastern-Dragon-inspired dragon, and Bloom has the dragon we all know and love. Also as a fun little addition, in times of great fury, power or distress a Dragon Flame user can have horns in the shape of their dragon appear on their heads.

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rutilation · 6 years ago

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Well Cairn, going off established precedent, you have to start by slowly accruing some highly symbolic gemstone prosthetics. Just pretend that this is part seven of jojo and start competing with Phos to see who can obtain the most religiously significant body parts. Whoever has the most by the time the seventh meteor hits wins!

So about this chapter…

The part of this chapter that really merits discussion is one I kind of have trouble parsing—so much so I ended up rewriting this essay a couple times. Neither Cairngorm nor Aechmea are very forthright characters, which means you have to chase after subtext in order to guess at what’s really being communicated, and this chapter seems to really lean into that approach to dialogue. Which is to say, I’m kind of unsure of my interpretation of this chapter. But if I just throw in the towel now out of fear of misinterpreting my favorite problematic rock, then Ichikawa wins, and I can’t let her and her vaguely menacing self-portrait get the better of me.

At the start of the second half of the chapter, Cairn seems quite content, but the longer the (rather one-sided) conversation goes on, the more distressed they become. While it’s not made explicit what’s upsetting them, my take is that Aechmea’s attitude in this scene makes it harder for Cairngorm to manage their cognitive dissonance toward him. I’ve mentioned several times before that a number of things Cairngorm says and does indicate that they realize that Aechmea is shady and perhaps not operating in their best interest, but they don’t want to admit that to themselves. As long as Aechmea remains ambiguous, they can pretend that everything’s fine. I think that Cairn’s steadily increasing dismay over the course of the chapter is because pretty much everything Aechmea says here threatens to clarify those ambiguities, and said ambiguities resolve themselves in a way that Cairn isn’t terribly pleased with. Let’s take it from the top.

First, let’s address the initial stretch of the conversation. Aechmea implies that he doesn’t actually see any value in the gender roles he’s been encouraging Cairn to adopt, seeing them instead as simplistic tools to keep the other Lunarians occupied—mere bread and circuses. But while Cairn may not understand the implications of said gender roles, the fact that they made Cairn feel special and loved was enough to make them invested in the whole concept. So, for Aechmea to imply that it was all an act designed to provide fleeting, cheap entertainment for the other Lunarians probably feels like a slap in the face to Cairn.

In the same breath, he gently tells Cairn that he plans on isolating them in a compound on the most remote of the six moons, and that that’s his idea of granting Cairn freedom. This makes it completely clear that what Cairn said to him in chapter 71 went in one ear and out the other: Cairn wants to finally have agency and can’t abide doing nothing while everyone else is struggling, and Aechmea responds by making a drastic decision about their life without their input, one which will cut them off from the conflict they want to help resolve. As one might expect, Cairn doesn’t seem happy to hear this.

This next section of the conversation in which Aechmea tells them he’s loved them before they came to the moon also follows the pattern of being full of understated subtext that I apparently require two weeks to untangle and draw a conclusion from. It’s seems clear from their distraught expression, trembling, and the fact that they incredulously bring it up again a few minutes later that what Aechmea is saying upsets them. If I had to wager a guess, it’s because the implications are concerning regardless of whether or not Aechmea’s words are true. His claim is ludicrous and Cairn doesn’t want to believe that he’d try to feed them a bald-faced lie, but if he’s not lying then the implications are equally unsettling. I think Cairngorm is most comfortable believing that their meeting with Aechmea was a happy accident, because the alternative is that he was romancing them all while hiding ulterior motives. (Not that it really needs to be reiterated at this point, but these pages make my skin crawl, especially when you look back on Phos’s first day on the moon—with Aechmea trying to butter them up by them by telling them how special they are.)

Anyway, let’s assume for the sake of argument that Aechmea’s statement wasn’t complete bullshit, and that he had some sort of interest in Cairngorm before meeting them. The fact that he kept their old arm indicates that there’s something to what he said, as does the fact that he feels the need to distract Cairn with creepy makeouts when they try and press him for answers on this topic a few pages later. There are a couple of ways I could see it going, so I’m going to go on a tangent for a minute, and try to speculate on what might have piqued Aechmea’s interest in Cairn. I don’t feel that predicting future plot-events is really my forte, but sometimes I can’t resist trying to decipher a good puzzle.

Everyone connected to Phos is of interest to him, including Cairngorm. Several pivotal moments in Phos’s development have happened in front of the Lunarians, (I’m specifically thinking of the drama with Ventricosus and Phos’s gold arms.) It’s quite possible that Aechmea took an interest in the fact that one of the seemingly static gems was rapidly changing, and I think this line in chapter 54 alludes to this. As a result, he predicted that Phos’s path would cross his sooner or later, and didn’t dust their captured partners. I’ve said before that it is really suspicious that he happened to have a “fake” piece of Antarc on his person when Phos got to the moon. Even if it was artificial, there was no reason for him to have it made in the first place or for him to be carting it around unless he already had Phos on the brain. The fact that he apparently kept Cairngorm’s original arm makes me think that that piece of Antarc may not have been artificial at all, and that maybe he didn’t dust Antarc, Ghost, or Phos’s head in order to have some leverage over Phos later.

Another possibility is that he took interest in Ghost and Cairn’s unique condition on account of those mysterious gem experiments that he was running before Phos got to the moon. Since he was apparently trying (and failing) to create new gems by combing pieces of shattered gems with synthetic material, the fact that there was a gem who was a complete person despite being essentially a thin sheet of quartz may have been of interest to them. The main reason I think this might hold some weight is because the Lunarians were rather particular about nabbing Ghost instead of Caringorm in chapter 37. By the end of the fight, Cairn was completely wrecked, and the Lunarians could have easily taken them both before the other gems made it to the vessel. But instead, they pushed Cairn off as soon as they had collected Ghost. To compound this, they don’t usually try to sheer off the gems’ bodies in layers; they just try and shatter them. Which makes me think that they were specifically trying to get Ghost in this scene and leave Cairn behind, and that Aechmea later decided to keep their arm on a whim along with the pieces of Ghost. If this ends up being the case, then that begs the question of how the Lunarians could possibly know that Cairn and Ghost are two separate people; it’s not really something they could observe at a distance, especially since Cairn apparently rarely had control of their body. If this ends up being the route this subplot takes, you guys on team Obsidian-is-a-Lunarian-spy may be able to add this to your pile of evidence.

Following this is the triumphant return of the Highly Symbolic Arm, the importance of which I’ve been harping on for a while now. It’s also at this point in the conversation that Cairn is most visibly distressed. I’m of two minds regarding what this sequence is communicating. They are clearly quite opposed to reattaching their original arm at the expense of their replacement, but it’s not clear which replacement they’re holding onto. It’s possible that this is the same replacement arm they’ve had since their introduction, but it’s also possible that they got rid of that arm the night they came to the moon—it is after all a physical representation of their involvement in Phos/Ghost/Lapis three-ring circus. This page in chapter 69 would seem to imply the latter. That being said, Ichikawa has already established that Cairn’s replacement arm acts finicky whenever it has to be reattached—so it’s also possible that they still have the same arm they did before; the sequence of events is hazy enough that it could be read either way.

Needless to say, the sentiment behind Cairn being almost violently opposed to getting rid of their replacement arm changes significantly depending on whether or not that’s the arm Phos gave up their head to save, or an arm Aechmea gave them when they arrived on the moon. At the moment, I really can’t say one way or another. But I’m pretty sure this isn’t the last we’ve heard of Cairn’s left arm, so for now I’m content to wait and see.

All that being said, I think the emotion behind the action is clear: desperation. Whether that arm is one that Cairn associates with Phos or Aechmea, they are clearly desperate to cling to the connection it represents. Keeping in mind that just about everything Aechmea says in the chapter up to this point drives a wedge between himself and Cairn, I think that in this moment Cairn is forced to grapple with the idea of being truly alone, and out of all the characters, they’re the most ill-equipped to deal with that. I think I touched on this in my essay focused on them, but to reiterate: in spite of their desire for autonomy, Cairn cannot seem to envision themselves outside of another’s shadow. Whether they’re acting like Antarc for Phos or like an anime-waifu for Aechmea, they’re never really acting like themselves—whoever that might be. This is a bit of a tangent, but the way they’ve conceived of themselves in relation to Ghost is also kind of off-putting. They referred to Ghost as their “other self” in chapter 67, and if you’ve gotten the official translation of volume 6, you can see that they also refer to Ghost in similar terms in chapter 38. This has a rather concerning implication about their self-image or lack thereof.

The point is, they find a sense of stability and self-worth in tailoring themselves to the desires of others, and they see reattaching their original arm and discarding the replacement and everything it represents as tantamount to abandoning the (terrible) coping mechanism that’s keeping them somewhat functional.

Which makes this a very ironic moment for them to decide that they want to disappear along with Aechmea. I don’t know a whole lot about Buddhism, but I do know that one is supposed to let go of all attachments in order to attain nirvana. But in this scene, Cairn is conceiving of nirvana as a means to an end in order remain forever attached to Aechmea (and in the short term: relevant enough to his interests to avoid being banished to the farthest moon.)

The way I see it, if and when Cairn becomes enlightened enough to have any hope of disappearing, they’ll probably have grown past the desire to follow Aechmea off a cliff like a lemming in the first place. So I don’t see them getting what they want any time soon. What I am concerned about is the pattern of self-destructive behavior that lies behind this. While reading this chapter, it struck me that whenever Cairn is presented with a stressful or upsetting situation with no obvious solution, their first instinct is to—as Aechmea so succinctly put it—relinquish themselves. When a poor decision on their part ended with Phos losing their head, they wanted to give up their own head. When Phos didn’t wake up, they wanted to throw themselves into the ice floes. When Phos ends up devastated in chapter 67, they want to renounce their own personhood and pretend to be Antarc. This chapter also follows the same pattern: when faced with the upsetting possibility that Aechmea wants to set them aside like a toy he’s grown tired of, Cairn panics and responds with the most self-destructive possible solution to their problem. I think that until this underlying malaise is actually dealt with, they’re just going to keep circling back to the same “solution” over and over. It doesn’t matter so much that Cairn is currently about as enlightened as a cornflake; when the chips are down, they probably won’t let that stop them from essentially trying to kill themselves once again.

Well that was harrowing to write, but with all the melodrama out of the way, let’s delve into the real meat of this chapter.

We know that gems don’t have teeth or tongues, but I’ve also wondered for the longest time…do gems have nostrils? This shot from the anime makes it seem as if Phos does not have nostrils, but it’s hard to tell when everything is so stylized.

Thankfully, best boy Barbata has given us the answer. Here we can see that light is pouring out of the orifices on their heads, but conspicuously, there is no light coming from their noses; ergo, gems don’t have nostrils. No nostrils allowed in fanart from now on you guys, it’s now officially as much of a faux pas as drawing them with pores or teeth.

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #sorry this is late #iirc ichikawa once said that she tries to have at least one lighthearted comedic moment per chapter #because a spoonful of sugar helps the horror go down #she sure utilized that technique to its fullest this chapter amiright

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melanoradrood · 6 years ago

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WIP Wednesday

So this is from my Nanowrimo fic, which is the soulmates AU, which is a rewrite of Rogue One, more or less, with Cassian and Jyn as soulmates ( spoiler alert? ). Anyways, I’m pretty sure I have a title locked down, but I’m not going to start posting this fic on AO3 until I get probably another chapter done, just because the chapters are so meaty, BUT, take this little bit from the middle of Chapter 1. Chapter 1 covers Lah’Mu, Kafrene, and Wobani, btw...

Enjoy.

She pretends that her parents are here with them, her father writing away with what little light they have, her mother fixing the hole in Jyn’s leggings. She imagines her doll with her, and imagines that the rocks around her are actually sky, showing the stars.

She closes her eyes, and she tells herself the constellations, as if she can see them. She whispers them to herself, and pretends like someone, maybe even her soulmate, can hear her.

She’s so cold, so wet in this place. A storm has been brewing overhead, and despite the fact that she is within a cave, underground, the water runs, and it drips, drips onto her skin, onto her cot, onto her clothes. The longer she remains wet, the colder she gets, and she shivers, trying to hide under every blanket. The weather only gets worse, and the darkness never seems to stop.

Three days, three long days, and then, the hatch opens above her head. She recognizes the face immediately - he’s a friendly one, but she gives no response, save to climb up the ladder, her bag on her back. He does not look surprised to see that she is alone, and when she climbs out of the hole, they close the cover, although no one will be seeking shelter there again.

There’s a ship, with three big men with him, waiting at the mouth of the cave. They all look her over, tiny thing that she is, but she lifts her chin, raising herself up with all of the strength of her mother. Her mother never let anyone look down at her, and they give her a nod before she turns and looks at the one that came for her, Saw.

“They shot her,” she says, and there’s sadness in the man’s eyes. Pity, perhaps… or maybe understanding.

“And your father?”

She shakes her head - she doesn’t know the answer to that, not for fact, but she knows what she suspects. They wanted him - wanted his research, wanted his work. They would take him alive, if they could, and her father was not one to fight. He was likely still alive.

“How did you get away?” he asks, and her eyes go wide with surprise - she had done as told, had run when told, so how- “Your face, were you struck?”

She touches at her eye, where he gestures, then lets out another shake of her head. There’s no pain there, but she can imagine what it is - her soulmate. They must have gotten into another fight.

“My... “ She shows him her hands, where the knuckles are scraped and bruised. Saw gives her a nod, then sets a hand on her shoulder, leading her to the ship.

“My Papa… he’ll have a scar, where they shot her, won’t he?”

Saw is quiet for a long moment as they walk up the ramp, and he settles her into a seat in the back, sliding her bag under the chair. He then kneels in front of her, taking her hands in his.

“Most likely, yes. A mark where she was shot, to show the pain within his soul.”

“Will the mark hurt?” she asks, and it feels like a stupid question, but her father had reared back from what looked like pain when her mama was struck.

“The soul is what aches,” Saw answers wisely, as though he has known that pain, has felt that loss. “The wound is only a sign of the part of him that is now broken.”

Jyn nods, then looks down at her knuckles, scraped and marked.

“I never want to meet my soulmate. They make you do stupid things…”

She doesn’t want to think that her mama was stupid, not when she was so brave. Perhaps, if her mama had struck down the man in white, the troopers might have left her papa alone… but how could her mama think that she might fight against all of those fighters and lived? Her mama had fought for nothing, and now she was dead.

“My child… you will meet them one day, and you will only feel complete with them. It is a gift from the Force, one which you cannot fight… you are young, still, and we can talk on it later. Close your eyes and rest.”

She nods, sniffling a little, and Jyn realizes then that she’s crying, tears running down her cheeks. She was supposed to be brave, and here she was crying. Her hand runs under her eyes, brushing them away, and then her hand goes to her neck, to her mama’s necklace.

Her necklace, now.

Her eyes go towards the viewport, and as they take off from the planet, she can see in the distance that her house is now a ruins. There’s nothing left on Lah’mu, it seems. Nothing but ash, and dirt, and tears.

Her eyes close after a long moment, and she tries to wash it all away, to forget everything, to forget the past. She cannot change what has happened to her…

Ash… dirt… tears… and memories…

Dirt… sweat… tears…

Running… dripping…

Her eyes fly open, and for half a second, Jyn thinks she might be back in that cave, deep underground. Her next thought is that someone has come for her, and that this time, it’s not a friend. When she sits up, though, and realizes that the wetness on her skin is from the dripping ceiling, and that she’s no longer on Lah’mu…

Her hand reaches out to grab the rag she had left drying in the small space that is hers. It’s damp, but it’s better than letting whatever liquid drips from the floor above remain on her skin. Her eyes flick over towards her cellmate, still sleeping.

A guard walks by, but Jyn knows that it’s the middle of the night, and that it’s only memories, memories that haunt her, memories of a lifetime ago, of a girl that no longer exists. Her mama is long dead, her papa is long gone, and Saw had abandoned her, left her behind.

Everyone left her behind, everyone save for…

She looks down at her hand, sees a familiar bite on it, the bite from a blaster, used in close range, as a pistol. Sometimes, whoever her soulmate is, they grip the blaster too tight, the firing catching back on tender skin. There hasn’t been a mark in some time…

They recently shot someone. She tries to not concentrate on that too hard.

Her gaze goes out of the cell, and she tries to clear her mind. Her parents, Saw, her soulmate… none of them matter. All that matters is that she has been caught, captured by the Empire. They do not know her true name, but she knows that the name Erso means something to the empire.

If they find out her real name, find out who she really is…

A prison camp on Wobani will be the least of her worries.

For the first time in her life, Jyn is caught, trapped. There’s no way out, there’s no backup plan, no rescue crew. She’s alone. Entirely alone. And no one is coming to save her.

...

There’s a hunger deep within him, but it is not his own. Cassian has to ignore it as he moves through the busy crowd, glancing down at his hands, checking that his gloves are in place. It wouldn’t do for someone, a stormtrooper, to see the dark ring around his wrists. Granted, those marks were also not his own, but then they would ask for scandocs, and well… better to get in and out, without being spotted.

The stink in the air is nearly unbearable, but he’ll be off this piece of junk soon, heading back towards Base, or wherever the intel takes him. He hopes that Tivik is good on his word, because he keeps hitting dead ends. Jedha, though… Jedha is overrun with the presence of the Empire, and for no valid reason. Something is happening on Jedha. He just needs to find out what.

The smell of food makes him feel ill, and he knows he has eaten enough to sustain him recently, but it doesn’t help when he still feels hunger. His thoughts wander for a moment, where are they, that they’re so hungry, that they’re kept in shackles - no. No, he doesn’t have time for thoughts such as that. Things like soulmates… they have no place in a war. Those are for dreamers and fools. Nothing more.

His gaze flicks down the main street as Cassian reaches the alley where they agreed to meet, and he sees no troopers facing towards him - not that a man going down an alley is much concern, but he wants to be aware, wants to know if any are following him. He had been careful, as always, but… well, it was his job to be careful, to aware. He was good at what he did, the best, in fact.

You had to be the best, otherwise, you ended up dead.

The man is where he said he would be, and Cassian tries to put on an easy smile. There’s stress written on Tivik’s face, a sign that the intel, it has to be good. No one gets nervous sharing details about nothing.

His gaze goes back towards where he came from, and no eyes search him out. Stepping forward, he hopes that they will be out of the way… away from interruptions.

“I was about to leave,” Tivik says, and Cassian can only shrug, the grin tightening.

“I came as fast as I could.” And he had. He had had to dodge patrols to get there, but he had half run, when able. The news had to be good, the intel worth it - it was worth running there for. He pulls off his gloves, trying to get relaxed, to slow the man down, and he shoves them into his jacket pocket, out of the way. His wrists burn, but he ignores them.

#wip wednesday #rebelcaptain #rebelcaptain fic #swfic #unfinished fic alert #nanowrimo #[ i need to give this fic a tag ugh ]

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ayearofpike · 6 years ago

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Strange Girl

Simon Pulse, 2015 413 pages, 19 chapters + epilogue ISBN 978-1-4814-5058-4 LOC: PZ7.P626St 2015 OCLC: 936552329 Released November 17, 2015 (per B&N)

There’s a new girl in school, and something about her is unbelievably interesting to Fred Allen. Maybe it’s the way she carries herself. Maybe it’s the way she refers to herself as merely a vessel for conveying the knowledge she seems to have about our greater nature. Maybe it’s the remarkable power she commands, the way that happiness and healing ride in her wake everywhere she goes. Or maybe it’s her sweet ass. Whatever it is, she seems to connect with Fred just as quickly, elevating him to a greater happiness than he’s ever known. Of course, as with any powerful girl that people don’t understand, this happiness is fated to flee just as quickly when she pushes herself beyond what her body can handle.

Or, shorter: It’s Sati. It’s Sati set in high school with teenagers. It’s Sateen.

Part of the reason I took on this project is that I felt like my own writing was stagnating. Time was I couldn’t sit down without pumping out a thousand words of my own universe, my own characters and plots and desires and ideas. But at a certain point, I started to try to focus on bettering and refining one of my main tales, one I’d revisited off and on since sixth grade ... and I just burned out. I realized that I simply could not rework this story again, that it wasn’t ever going to be what I wanted or do what I wanted, or at least not in this fifth attempt in ten years. I couldn’t keep talking about the same thing again.

This might be indicative of why I’ve had a hard time pushing through as A Year (And A Half Now, Almost) Of Pike has approached its end point. There’s no denying that the man is a killer storyteller, and that some of his ideas and worlds were stunning and even revolutionary within the genre. But thirty years is a long time to stay in the game, especially when you’re pumping out more than three books a year for the main part of your popularity. It’s admirable that he was able to keep that up for so long without resorting to the James Patterson model of hiring someone else to write the books that have his name in large type across the top. But then, when you’ve only got one brain working on all these extensive ideas and under these onerous deadlines, you’re invariably going to start to repeat yourself.

Almost everything Pike wrote after the start of Spooksville (I can’t even be charitable and say after his car accident) has repeated or revisited some major theme from an earlier work (mostly his own; I see you, Black Knight). And as I’ve pushed through and read every single one of his published works, I’ve started to feel that same fatigue that I had when trying to rewrite and repair something I’d spent so much time on of my own. See, this is why I can never actually be an academic despite being a composition teacher: so much of studying English is finding your niche and continuing to write about the same topic for your entire career, and I don’t think I could ever devote that much of my professional life to writing about the same thing. I just got tired of my ill-researched writing about the complete works of my favorite childhood author, for fuck’s sake.

Still, if any book was due a revamp, Sati fits that mold. It was his first adult novel, it kinda got buried to all except his most devoted fans, and maybe it would be timely to publish a book about kindness and introspection and acceptance just as the muckrakingest American election in recent history was getting underway. But most of all, it’s still a relevant look at how we act and what we think about when we consider faith and religion and God. Considering how audiences and the book market have so drastically changed in the last thirty years, it totally makes sense that Pike might want to revisit the concept for a new generation. And honestly, I’m a victim of my own age and literacy here — nobody else who might be interested in this YA book in 2015 is reading its spiritual predecessor from 1988.

I’m mostly going to blast through the summary, because it’s been more than three weeks since I finished the book and I don’t actually want to reread it to remember specifics. Fred is a high-school musician living in Elder, South Dakota, and just like any other teenager in a small town is dreaming of escape. His parents own a hardware store and just barely maintain a rocky marriage, though all we know about that is what Fred specifically tells us. His best friend Janet, the presumptive valedictorian, has her own messy home life, but they always have each other’s backs, which is why Janet pushes Fred toward the new girl.

This is Aja, a beautiful Brazilian who relocated to South Dakota for some reason three months ago but didn’t start school until today. The teacher in the class they share is unreasonably mean to her for apparently no reason, but it doesn’t put Fred off buying her lunch and trying to learn more about her. He’s unsuccessful, largely, but she does learn about him and his band and their work before she takes off. They’re doing a gig at a nearby Air Force bar on the weekend, and everyone knows Fred is the real talent and pressures him to perform a little more of his original and quieter work at the show. This here is Fred’s difficulty: he wants it, he has the talent and the drive, but he second-guesses how much people actually want to hear his voice.

Aja gets kicked out of the class they share when she’s accused of cheating on her entrance exam (what?), so Fred doesn’t see her again until after their gig. The crowd is getting raucous and angry, and the drummer doesn’t take well to that, so the evening is just starting to devolve into a brawl when Aja stands on a table and tells everyone to calm the fuck down. She also helps out one of the servicemen, who has taken a whiskey bottle to the head but now isn’t even bleeding. Weird, right?

A local reporter sure thinks so. She posts a video of the event, with a suggestion that maybe Aja is more than she appears to be. Can she heal people? The folks at their next gig have the same question, surrounding her and generally pestering until Fred manages to pull her away. They drop her off at home, the biggest house in town, and Fred finally asks her out, sort of, by responding to her question about his unhappiness by saying she should stop accepting dates with other dudes. Like, possessive much already? But on his way to work the next day, he sees the teacher in the cemetery, near her son’s grave, and decides to talk to her about Aja. This opens a floodgate: the teacher blames herself for her son running outside and getting hit by a car, and apparently Aja knew more than she should have, which was why the teacher was so salty with her before. So what else does this girl know?

Fred goes to pick Aja up for their first official date, and ends up talking to her guardian, where he finally learns more about her past. It seems that Aja was a feral child living near a village in the Amazon, and she had a reputation as a magical healer and talent. The guardian was compelled to the village for some reason, and appointed herself the caretaker of the girl, and only uprooted them to South Dakota because Aja said they needed to go there. The guardian only has a vague idea why, but she’s pretty sure it’s related to Fred.

They go back to his house, because his parents are out, and he plays her a song almost off the top of his head that she’s inspired. Before they can start gettin’ freaky, Fred’s phone rings, and apparently his hot-headed drummer has gotten into it with some drug dealers and cops in a nearby town and is in critical condition in the hospital. So Fred and Aja go there, but when he calls the guardian’s valet (or whatever this dude is; it’s kinda muddy) to tell her what’s up, he gets pissed and freaked out and orders Fred to make Aja leave the hospital. Only he can’t find her. And when he does, she’s all dizzy, and passes out on the ride home, and when he drops her off the valet screams at him and slams the door in his face.

But the drummer wakes up, and when Fred goes to see him, he hears a story of two beings visiting him, and his realization that this was the end, only he wasn’t ready to go because it would cause too much pain. This is the only real mention of the subplot that the band’s bass player is gay and in love with the drummer, and even though the drummer is straight (I mean, I guess he could be bi, Pike doesn’t really go into details, but the point is they don’t end up together) he cares too much about his friend to just kick the bucket. So the smaller of the beings picked up on that and touched him, and then he woke up.

There’s also a reporter there trying to talk to Fred and his best friend about the miracle that Aja performed, and they do their best to brush her off only she isn’t giving up. In fact, she’s using a YouTube channel to promote the idea that Aja is a goddess or something, with a video of the way she ended the bar brawl and testimony from a nurse in the hospital that she touched the drummer not long before he arose from life-threatening injuries. Fred agrees to meet with the reporter and actually gets more information than he gives up: namely, Aja has been curing and healing people since her days in Brazil and that she spoke with all of the villagers about her decision to leave for the US, saying there was an important reason to do so.

Before he can confront Aja and her handlers about it, her guardian dies. The valet says she’s written a letter to Fred, but he can’t seem to find it. So while we wait, let’s go on a date! Only someone in the restaurant recognizes Aja and insists she heal her daughter. And this is where we find Aja’s limitations: she can’t help this girl; her fate is to live for a short time.

In blasting through the summary I might be glossing over Aja’s description of her connection to the cosmos and how her powers and abilities work. A lot of it ties back to the same things Pike loves to revisit when thinking about metaphysics: the oneness of Buddhist nirvana, letting go of desires and selfishness to connect to the unity of humanity, and being able to tap into superhuman powers once you’re linked. Aja calls the overarching all the “Big Person,” and her abilities come from what the Big Person tells her is necessary. She can act out of her own human desires, respond to the Little Person, but when she does it takes a toll on her health, which is what happened with the drummer. But how does someone so young get tapped into a consciousness so vast and lose her childish selfishness? We’ll get there.

Anyway, Fred goes to a band rehearsal the next day and is stopped on the way by a family who has another sick kid in the hospital, desperate for him to put them in touch with Aja. He doesn’t want to do it, knowing what he knows, but his friends accuse him of being overprotective. The best friend compares a lot of what Aja has said she does with practices she’s learned through yoga and meditation, to draw an explicit line for those in the audience who haven’t just read 94 other Pike books and didn’t look more deeply into Eastern religion because of it. And then Fred’s phone rings, and it’s the family, and they already talked to Aja and their daughter is feeling better so he doesn’t have to put himself out. What? The kid was in the hospital in another state. Aja explains that she’s not actually the vessel: the Big Person does the work, and all she’s doing is making it aware and asking the question of “can we?”

The will reading for Aja’s guardian comes up, and in addition to splitting her (holy crap immense) wealth between Aja and the valet, she has also left instructions with her lawyer that Fred should get an audition with a record label in LA. The laywer also has the letter, which basically says that Fred can’t protect Aja from the infirm and ill, and he shouldn’t try. I guess this lady would know, right, having taken care of the girl for something like ten years. But word is getting out, more and more people are asking Aja for help, national reporters are starting to show up, Fred has a weird encounter with a spooky fortune teller in a graveyard, and he can’t help but be concerned. So he helps the valet hire a private security firm to keep these people away from Aja, which (when they follow her to school on Monday) prompts an emergency community meeting about the disruption of education by these horrible rumors.

As it turns out, this is actually a racist move by the principal, who has a reputation as an evangelical Christian and has unfairly targeted minorities (especially our drummer, who is Mexican) for years. He’s trying to get a lynch mob together without exactly saying as much. Only too bad for him a lot of people in the community (the more open-minded ones, the ones who have actually spoken to her) already support Aja, because of their own first-hand experience with her help. But enough people are screaming about Jesus that they’re just about ready to light up torches and drive Aja out of town. Until she reveals the racist principal’s big secret: he had a child with a black woman, and could never reconcile his love for them with his love for pointy white hoods or whatever, and then the kid died and he has always regretted it. And Aja holds his hands, and talks to him, and suddenly here comes the creepy fortune teller who it turns out was the mother of Racist Principal’s child, and they embrace and apologize and forgive, and the meeting is suddenly over.

Somewhere in all the Aja hullaballoo, the best friend took off to New York to live with her mother. She won’t answer Fred’s calls, she won’t respond to texts, and Aja (the last one to see her before she left) insists that she can’t be the one to reveal her confidences. So Fred goes to see her dad and try to get more info. Now this isn’t the first time Best Friend has left with the mom: the first was right after they got divorced, only she moved back a year later without any explanation. And the divorce was just as sudden and explanation-free, only the dad just accepted it. And Fred realizes, while he’s standing there in the living room and picking up hints from the dad and looking at old pictures where both women look uncomfortable: he’s a sexual predator. He touched his daughter inappropriately, because his wife and her mother was somehow loveless (leading to the girl coming back the first time) and so he partook of some fucked-up urges. Only the girl has never been able to accept that it wasn’t her fault, and in talking to Aja and exploring herself is she just getting there. So of course she needs to not LIVE with the motherfucker while she’s coming to grips.

Fortunately for Fred so he doesn’t stab a bitch, the trip to LA is nigh. Aja goes with him, and he plays his demos live, finishing with the new song he’s still writing for her. Of course that’s the song they want, and they hustle him into a recording session with an engineer to lay down a single. On the way back, Best Friend calls and asks if she can stay with him and his parents long enough to graduate high school with her friends, and as their flights land within a couple hours of each other in Sioux Falls, they plan to drive home together. Fred and Aja get there first, and he has to intimidate the dad away from the airport before his friend gets there. Only that can’t work for the whole state: he’s waiting for them to drive out of the parking lot, and attempts to run them off the road to take back his little girl.

Did I mention that it’s winter in South Dakota? The interstate is a sheet of ice, and these assholes are playing chicken at 100 mph. Of course they wreck the cars, and the kids get off with minor bumps and bruises. The dad isn’t so lucky: his car has overturned and trapped him inside. Now the best friend is upset with him, but she’s not a sociopath and he’s still her dad, so they work to pry him out of the car before it explodes. But the way he’s bleeding and choking, he’s probably going to die anyway, so she wants Aja to heal him. And this is Fred’s great test of faith: do I argue against this and risk losing my best friend, or do I go along and risk losing my girlfriend? He finally agrees to let her listen to the Big Person.

Of course Aja collapses immediately upon laying hands on the molester. But by the time emergency response gets to the accident, he’s feeling better and Aja is fading fast. She can now finally tell Fred about her childhood, her past, which she has long avoided. It turns out that her dad was a drug dealer who stole from his bosses, and as punishment they sent three strongarms to kill the whole family. Only when they murdered Aja’s mother, her soul fled her body, leaving a gap for connection to the Big Person. The female enforcer sensed this and took the kid and ran ... and this female enforcer ended up being Racist Principal’s baby momma. No, I don’t know how it works, get your own globe.

But now she’s given her all to Molester Dad and is on her way out. Still, her reason for coming to South Dakota was a good one: love. She knew that Fred needed her, and she knew that he would benefit from the connection she might provide to the Big Person. And even though her time was fated to be short, she feels happy that she completed her mission of love, and trusts that Fred will continue to spread the message. One last kiss, and she’s gone.

They end up at a hospital, and of course they want to do an autopsy on Aja to see why she died so suddenly and unexpectedly. The valet is firmly against it, and manages to get custody of the body and take it home, where he and Fred say one last goodbye before he lights the shit on fire. It’s a good thing she already filled out a will, that gave all her money to Fred, and that the lawyer has a copy of it!

There’s a long-ass epilogue that talks about what happened to everyone. The best friend has kids of her own and almost never talks to her dad, the two other band members founded a holistic medicine company in San Francisco and got married but to other people, and Fred himself was never able to leverage his meeting and audition into his own performing career but now writes hit songs for other people. But I guess none of them are about Aja, because now he had to write a book about it? And it’s done! The end!

See what I mean? This shit has been done before, almost beat for beat, and by the SAME AUTHOR. Now I’m not averse to reading a book again (cf. this whole goddamn project), but at least I’m going into the book knowing it is what it is. I’m not expecting to see something that is labeled a new work that actually retells a previous story that I literally just read. Maybe James Patterson can get away with that, but I don’t read his books either.

At any rate, this post is finally done. I have this monkey off my back, and maybe now I can reflect and give some closure on the whole project. But I’ll save that for another post.

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purrincesscatitude · 6 years ago

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angst 14

Why did I write this in present tense?? Good question.

This probably turned too sweet for angst but whatever it happened I’m not overthinking it.

Prompt from this list. Yes, if you like this, you can still send me things!

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Adam comes to the Barns after school, because he doesn’t have work for once in his life but does have a ton of calculus homework and a whole act of Hamlet to read & summarize scene-by-scene and college app deadlines looming like a swollen thunderhead. The Barns isn’t normally his most productive workspace, but it is warm and has more space for him to stretch out all his papers and textbooks, which feels like a thing he needs to do with the way everything is tangled in his head right now.

He’s been in a mood all day, can feel it festering just beneath his skin. He’s evolved over the months, now able to identify and acknowledge his bad days before they surprise him and his victim by shooting barbs from his tongue and condemnations he can’t take back. But knowing that he’s in a shit mood isn’t the same as controlling it. Growth is, as always, a slow and arduous process.

This evening, he sits at the dining room table under the kitchen’s yellow fluorescents. It’s only 6, but it’s already dark outside. Autumn winds rush over the mountains and rip through the valley, a harsh reminder that winter is only a month away.

Adam has a headache. Not a bad one, but enough that it bugs him, makes it that much harder to focus on equations and soliloquies and why he’s worthy of an Ivy-League education. Spreading the papers out hasn’t helped organized his brain like he wanted it to. Instead it just makes him more stressed, seeing all the work he has to do, all the expectations, all the time and money and thinking he needed in order to get through it all.

And then Ronan comes in.

Ronan understands why Adam does work here, encourages it, even. But that doesn’t mean Ronan finds it fair that Adam comes into his home only to completely ignore him. Some days he’s fine with it. Other days he goes and sulks elsewhere until Adam comes to him.

Today, however, Ronan wants Adam to be here and present. Wants to talk to him. Wants to sit with him, be with him, wants Adam’s undivided attention.

Currently, Adam’s cheating on him with a calculus textbook. And really? Calculus? He’d rather Adam shove his tongue down Skov’s throat.

He sits down at the table with him. Adam ignores him. Not unusual; they do this all the time. Homework-Mode Adam is a one-track mind, set to finishing whatever worksheet or essay or chapter he was working through and loath to be pushed off-course.

Sometimes, though, Ronan likes to toe the line. Because Adam’s line, in his opinion, needs to be more fucking flexible.

Ronan starts small. Just to see where Adam’s line is today. He picks up a page of notes. Adam, scribbling through an equation, doesn’t react. Ronan scoff, drops it back on the table. Still nothing. He picks up more papers, reads them through with feigned interest and then lets them flutter back down to the table.

Adam is intentionally ignoring him now. Ronan can tell the difference.

He starts trying to build a card tower out of looseleaf papers. It’s going about as well as expected, and making plenty of noise. Opal, ever drawn to the sound of rustling, edible paper, clambers into the kitchen.

“Don’t, brat,” Ronan warns. Opal hisses at him. He rips a blank page from a notebook, crumples it into a ball, and throws it back out the door. Opal chases after it with a screech.

Adam winces. “Cut it out, Lynch.”

But he still hasn’t taken his eyes off his book, and Ronan still feels like a third wheel in his own home.

He starts drumming. Not any particular song, just a series of beats using a discarded pencil and his index finger. Adam tightens his grip on his pencil, glares at the problem sets.

“Lynch,” he grumbles. It’s a warning.

“Parrish,” Ronan replies. It’s a challenge.

Adam grinds his teeth, presses his pencil hard enough into the paper to leave imprints on the pages below it.

Ronan adds his foot to the rhythm.

“Stop,” Adam demands, finally rips his eyes away from the page to shoot him a signature Adam Parrish witheringly frigid glare.

Ronan raises his hands in mock surrender. Adam returns to his work.

Ronan drums harder.

“Ronan.”

“Sorry, sorry. Just feeling the beat, you know?”

“There are ten other rooms in this house where you could go right now.”

“It’s my fucking house, so I’m going to stay in whatever fucking room I want.”

Adam rolls his eyes. Ronan is pretty sure he’s walking the line like a tightrope right now, and it’s dangerously close to snapping.

He lets Adam go back to work. Manages his energy quietly. Tries to not get jealous of a goddamn textbook.

He resolve lasts maybe five minutes.

He starts drumming again. On his leg. And then his leg starts jittering, and then his foot starts tapping.

And then he hits a beat too hard, slams his knee into the table, which makes Adam’s hand jolt, and the pencil catches in the paper and rips a hole in his problem sets.

“Ronan what the fuck,” he shouts, throwing his pencil on the table.

“Whoops,” Ronan says.

Adam rips the page from his notebook.

“Dude, chill. Just tape it, they won’t give a fuck.”

“That’s not the point. You’re being an asshole.”

“I’m not the one eye-fucking a damn textbook in someone else’s house.”

“Are you shitting me right now?”

“Just keep doing your damn homework, whatever,” Ronan says.

“Are you going to stop being an asshole?” Adam spits back.

“Does keeping you company mean I’m asshole? Then yes, I’ll gladly fuck the fuck off and let you keep nerding alone.”

“Bullshit, you’re not keeping me company. You’re being selfish and immature and it’s fucking obnoxious.”

“Fine. I’ll fucking stop. Jesus,” Ronan growls.

“You say you’ll stop but then you keep doing it! Making noise and hitting the table and, just, being a fucking brat.”

“What do you want me to say, Parrish?” Ronan snarls, throwing himself out of his chair and storming towards the door.

“Nothing! You don’t need to say a goddamn thing!” Adam snaps. “Just stop.”

They stand apart: Ronan curling and uncurling his fists by the door, Adam digging his nails into the peeling cover of his calculus textbook. A war of wills.

Adam breaks the glare first. It isn’t a surrender. He shoves his schoolwork into his bag.

“I’m going home,” he announces.

Ronan scoffs. “Do whatever the fuck you want.”

Adam clenches his jaw. He leaves.

He bikes back to St. Agnes in the dark, pedaling hard as the frigid November air cuts his cheeks and turns his fingers white as bone. Running his trembling hands under hot water doesn’t do much, only heightens the pins & needles pricking under his skin. He flexes his fingers over and over as he settles at his desk. He starts rewriting his calc problems. It takes him an hour to finish, when it should have been thirty minutes. Valuable time sucked down the drain. He resists the urge to throw something.

The wind rattles the window, howls through the gaps in its ill-fitted frame. Someone is practicing the organ. They’re not very good. The low notes send vibrations through the floor. It’s almost as annoying as Ronan. Almost.

But it’s a different kind of annoying. It’s cold, and distant. Turns him inward, makes him glare and grumble and bite his nails. The sort that can’t be remedied, that can only gnaw and curdle until he accepts the inevitability of constant suffering.

Ronan’s sort of annoying is infuriating, makes his blood boil, fills him with a sort of fire that can only go outward, that demands he confront it head on, in an almost cathartic kind of way. It makes them bicker and argue and shout at each other.

But it’s familiar. And sort of warm, in a weird way. In that it’s almost comforting in how he can expect it, how Ronan always seems to know the exact right buttons to press to set him off even if he doesn’t mean to.

A Ronan Lynch who isn’t annoying as hell isn’t the Ronan Lynch Adam learned to tolerate, and then like, and then like like; isn’t the Ronan Lynch Adam will probably decide he loves; isn’t the Ronan Lynch who can piss Adam off one second and have him laughing with side stitches the next; isn’t the Ronan Lynch who’s impulsiveness and brashness and pigheadedness can be as frustrating as it is liberating and joyful and wild and adventurous.

It isn’t the Ronan Lynch that Adam wants.

The apartment vibrates with a horrifically discordant note. Adam digs his nails into his scalp. Scrubs his hair into a ferocious mess.

The old walls creak. The organ resumes, quieter and in a higher register.

It’s been a long time since he was at St. Agnes alone. Truly alone. He’d sequestered himself here before, told Ronan he needed time to study, needed to finish a paper, needed to focus without distraction. But there was always a hope that Ronan would stop by for half an hour– perfectly timed when Adam was at his most exhausted or frustrated, a study break calculated, Adam guessed, by the months he had spent with him in the latest and earliest hours watching him study–with food in hand and a smirk on his face that Adam would spent 20 minutes kissing off and replacing with a very different sort of grin.

There isn’t that hope tonight, which…fucking sucks, if he’s being honest. Just one more load to weigh on his shoulders.

Adam’s stressed about school, about all the essays he needs to write and the tests he has coming up, and the fact that grades are due soon and he’s sure he’s doing fine but there’s always a chance that someone’s parents are going to buy their slacker son a 4.0 and kick Adam down to Salutatorian. He’s stressed about the SAT Subject Tests he needs in order to apply for the schools he wants, not just the studying and the psychological prep work necessary to outsmart the test in the way it wants you to, but the money it’ll cost him and the weekends he’ll lose taking them means he has to stack hours at Boyd’s and the warehouse and the factory now, and even then he doesn’t know if he’ll have enough money for food after he pays for the tests. He’s stressed about having to take all these shifts to pay for the tests and the college applications, because even though he got a waiver for a few of them (it was Gansey’s idea, one that made Adam absolutely furious. The way he coincidentally mentioned it at lunch the day following Adam venting to Ronan about their discriminating pricing and Ronan ranting about how “it’s the fucking system, man. Rigged bullshit, is all it is.” And don’t even get him started on the humiliating conversation with the Aglionby college counselor that followed) he still has to pay for the supplements for a few of them because Ivies are nothing if not completely ignorant to the concerns of people making below a yearly income of 200k.

Oh, and he’s not sleeping well. None of them are, he guesses, from the bags under their eyes when they gather around the table at Nino’s. It’s only been 55 days since…all that. And when Adam can find a few spare hours untouched by work and admission essays and calculus problems and Hamlet reading notes, he shuts his eyes and finds himself choking the life out of Ronan again, or seeing Aurora’s mangled corpse in a field of rotting trees, or watching Gansey fall lifeless into Blue’s arms again and again and again…

Shit.

This is his fault, isn’t it?

He wasn’t pissed at Ronan. He was pissed about everything else and Ronan just happened to be the target in front of him when he burst. And then he’d upped and stormed off like the biggest asshole in the world.

Adam was the problem right now. Adam was the shitty one.

If that didn’t make him feel so damn guilty, he’d relish this personal growth and newfound introspection.

Instead, he was lonely and annoyed. And regretful. And cold. And these calc problems were damn near impossible. And that stupid amatuer organist was so bad did they really think this hobby was worth continuing? And…

Oh, fuck it.

Adam grabs his sweater and barely remembers to lock the door. He bikes, fast and hard, ignoring the bitter wind as it makes his eyes water and nose burn. He almost eats dirt on the side of the road when he rounds a corner too fast, but he keeps going.

The wind is still howling when he drops his bike in the gravel driveway of the Barns and bangs on the door. It take him a minute, but Ronan eventually answers.

“Parrish?” he says, pushing open the screen door.

“I’m stressed about my SAT scores,” Adam blurts out, shoulders hunched and hands squeezed in the armpits of his sweater against the whipping winds. “And about needing to take these stupid subject tests. And about picking up all these extra shifts just to pay for them, and I need to get all these college apps in soon, but I have no idea what to write about for any of these stupid essays without making myself sound pathetic or pitiful and melodramatic. And I can’t sleep anymore, after what happened with…everything. I feel like I’m running on empty all the time, which, by the way, my car is since I’m spending all of my money to take these dumb tests and buy transcripts, and did you know that teachers who write you recommendations expect a gift? Like what bullshit is that? So now I have to get these, too. And it’s just so much, Ronan. All the fucking time. And, shit, your mother fucking died in front of you. Like, my shit is so…stupid compared to what you’re dealing with and yet I’m the one being an asshole and taking my shit out on you and I’m just…” Adam breathes. And freezes.

Ronan had led him inside. Sat him on the couch. Draped a blanket around his shoulders. And Adam hadn’t realized.

Ronan sits on the coffee table, chewing his leather bands and avoiding Adam’s gaze. Their legs fit together like puzzle pieces.

“Ditto,” Ronan says around the leather. “‘Cept not the school shit. Obviously.”

He drops his wrist, leans his elbows on his knees and runs his fingers in circles along the faded denim stretched across Adam’s knee. “I just. Today was rough. I wanted…I needed someone else. Something to focus on, other than…”

He can’t finish. Adam doesn’t need him to.

Adam sighs with relief. “I’m sorry,” he says. It feels weird to say. Weird but good. Another step forward.

“Me too,” Ronan echoes.

They sit close, legs fitting together like puzzle pieces.

“Okay, seriously though,” Ronan says suddenly. “Don’t bike at night again. You never know what sort of assholes are going to take those corners too sharp and flatten your ass into a pancake.”

“If the asshole in question is waiting for me at his house, then it shouldn’t be an issue,” Adam replies with a smirk.

Ronan rolls his eyes. “Just fucking call next time, loser.”

“Good to know you’ll still chauffeur even if we’re fighting.”

Ronan snorts. “That was barely a fight. You want to fight, I’ll show you a fucking fight.”

“Oh yeah?”

Ronan tackles him into the couch. Adam cries out with laughter.

This wasn’t their last fight. There would be more disagreements, more spats, more storming off and misunderstandings and cursing and regretted words. But they’d be okay. They would always be okay.

#trc #te raven cycle #fic #fan fiction #fanfic #trc fanfic #pynch #ronan lynch #adam parrish #my writing

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