#average person says ''well now'' factoid actually just statistical error

[missmako-chan]

Honestly I think we need a counter for all of the times Jeramie says "Well now"

[sorcerous-caress]

Hihi! I just wanted to leave a message letting you know how much I enjoy the stuff you've written. Your human kink tag is probably one of my favorites on this website to be honest, I've read through it so many times (its hard to pick a favorite, but i think mine my be the one with Halsin and the human tav/companions), and i adore the way you write for karlach and shadowheart as well (shadowhearts not even really one of my favorites, but you write her in such a way i think she ended up getting bumped up my list of favorites). Just wanted to say thanks for all that ig!! 🍒

Halsin is one of my fav when it comes human kink because you can tell the man is humanity's number one cheerleader.

"The average elf sleeps with 10 humans a year," factoid actually just statistical error. The average elf sleeps with 0 humans per year. XxHumanzlover69xX Archdruid Halsin, who lives in a cave & sleeps with 10,000 humans each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted

The average elf also consumes 0 human porn per year. Meluidil, the goonerbrained high elf, is personally responsible of 90% of the high forest traffic to human porn sites.

Halsin screams human kink. While wood elves have the least degrading view on the homosapiens amongst all other elf kins who view us as less than bugs, they still remain pretentious in their own way of patting us on the head for not burning down our forests...this year.

Take Kagha, for example. She'd be damned if she let a mere human direct her ways. In comparison to her venom filled fangs, we are mere deer fawns, clumisly still learning how to walk without tripping over our own feet.

But Halsin? Our "pathetic nature" brings out the protective instincts in him whilst making him crave us insatiably. He wants a cute human or a dozen to take under his wings and show them the ways of the natural order. Properly teach them about harmony and the various pleasures the oak father blessed his creatures with.

Humans categorize themselves as animals after all, don't they? Halsin would find that notion too silly and adorable of us. Yet he can see it in our graceless ways, primal hormones, and short-sighted nature. Its makes him pity how we can't truly connect with nature like he does, since if we're a part of the gaint picture that is nature, we simply can't step away to view it whole like elves can. We merely live in our veiled and narrow corner of the painting.

Or this is all just elf propaganda. Tales Corellon spinned to make his children believe they're inherently superior so they don't go making half elves left and right and therefore make him lose his domain. Who knows?

It's just that Halsin took the "humans are lesser than you" message a little too personally, and now he sees it as his duty to care and protect humanity.

It doesn't hurt that we are very easy on the eyes and easy to coax to bed. Elves have all these courting rituals that take years at a time just for a kiss, it's so refreshing to just walk to a human and make his intentions known in a poetic line or two that has them sliding onto his lap and touching his pointy ears all curious and wide eyed.

It's not every day that you meet a big, strong elf that shatters your painted glass view of delicate elves. That makes your human hunger for knowledge and cat-like curiosity go haywire as you tiptoe around the subject to get information from him.

He thanks his orc ancestor every night for the many cute humans asking to touch his muscles after a drink or two.

Humans are new, refreshing and constantly inconsistent. From the most primal cutthroat ones that wrestle the control from Halsin to the softest adorable ones that sit on his lap and let him do all the work. We are as cunning as we are dumb.

It's the most intoxicating drug he has had. The more he sleeps with humans, the more he wants more. No two are the same.

Nothing gets him going than watching two humans drown in the pleasure with each other, bodies glistening with sweat as they chase after one another's mouth. Hungry and impatient, Clearly frustrated with their lungs' burning for air as they are forced to break the kiss. Watch a human make another bend over under them, a struggle of power filled with possessive bites, moans and curses. Like their own emptions and desires are too intese for their human brain to process so they need more, melting in greed as they push their bodies past their limit just to scratch the itch.

He wants to watch two humans exhaust each other into oblivion before he takes over. Be gentle and guide them through one more orgasm just for him, experiencing first hand just how unbreakable the human spirit truly is as they stubbornly refuse to stop and keep demanding more.

Followed by providing aftercare for the two of them as they cuddle against him. Looking so Innocent with their soft features as they sleep, trusting him to watch over and protect them.

Halsin's other top fantasy is having a human druid be his disciple. Clearly new in the ways of Oak father and yet so passionate and determined. Halsin would show blatant favouritism as he takes them personally on quests with him, have them tend to the plants in his chambers just before he gently lays them over his bed and claim them.

On another note, poly Halsin with human Tav who's with Gale, Wyll or Minsc is literally his wettest dream. He wants to take you and your human lover on dates before fucking you both to sleep.

He enjoys hanging around in a full party of humans and laughing at their adorable antics while tending to their every whim. Poor human forgot their food? Halsin has some berries in his pocket, open wide, and he'll feed them to you

Your legs are tired? Come here and he'll carry you, don't worry about his wandering hand squeezing your thighs and waist, marveling at how squishy the human body is in comparison to elves.

Bored? Sad? Anxious? He will turn into a cat and be your best friend for the rest of the day. Watch you squeel at how fluffy his fur is as you pet and coddle him, a complete 180 to how you were before, especially if you happened to be closed off to him.

He does find it hilarious how humans who are shy around him or suspicious immediately change their attitude when he wildshapes into an animal they deem cute. He knows they know it's still him inside but their instincts to cuddle everything fluffy wins over their pride and they throw themselves at him.

-

Thank you so much. I haven't written or posted on this blog in a long while, so most people who read my stuff just come and go silently while leaving likes. It's discouraging to know the author is absent when leaving a comment because they think we might never see it, but I promise we do. Yours made me very happy, and I'm grateful for it <3

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 2

Perrin and Galad deal with leadership and its consequences, and I continue to not deal with the narrative conspiring to make me like Galadedrid Damodred.

Chapter 2: Questions of Leadership

With a title like that, this can only be a Perrin chapter.

Because average leader questions himself 10 times per book factoid actually just statistical error. Wolfbrother Perrin, who lives in a tent and questions himself 1000 times per book is an outlier and should not have been counted.

And that might be a new low for this liveblog, which is saying something.

A few days ago, the pervasive cloud cover had turned black, darkening like the advent of a horrible storm.

Luckily for you and the rest of existence, that particular meteorological phenomenon masquerading as a man decided against total annihilation of everything. *shakes head* Weather forecasts. Can’t trust ‘em.

(The science nerd in me now wants to write, like, a short story or something in the form of a journal article called Impact of localised heroic systems on global atmospheric chemistry and I think perhaps this is a tangent).

Anyway, we are indeed with Perrin, who’s been having a great time lately dealing with mud and plague. Yes, well, aren’t we all.

Both Asha’man had nearly died

Yeah well they’re used to that by now, surely. All in the job description.

Perrin you’ve had a month to work on that blacksmith’s puzzle in your pocket and you haven’t solved it? Just – give it to me. There. Solved.

(I used to love these puzzles. Haven’t come across one in ages though.)

Perrin’s taking in refugees because either he’s lying through his teeth or he’s ta’veren enough to slightly counteract Rand’s spoil-everything-edible influence, maybe.

He had bigger worries to bother him, not the least of which were his strange dreams. Haunting visions of working the forges and being unable to create anything of worth.

Is this the blacksmith equivalent of dreaming you’re suddenly sitting an exam you’ve not studied for, and also you’re naked?

Moving so many refugees was slow, even discounting the bubble of evil and the mud.

Hey at least you’re not also dealing with border walls and immigration control.

Everything took longer than he expected, including getting out of Malden.

Oh, TELL ME ABOUT IT. Me? Still bitter about the Malden plotline? Whatever made you think that?

All in all it seems like a pretty standard Tuesday for Perrin: slogging through mud, questioning his ability to be a great leader (not to be confused with the Great Leader), and trying to keep four nations’ worth of soldiers and refugees away from each other’s throats. Only one we’ve not ticked off the list yet is denying his wolfpowers, but there’s still time.

“Find out where they’re from, learn whether they did serve a lord, see if they can add anything to the maps.”

In which Perrin Aybara invents the census.

Oh hey! The road’s getting less muddy! Which is definitely not symbolic or anything.

“Where are the others?”

“They went on ahead, my Lord,” Fennel said, bowing from horseback. “I volunteered to stay behind, for when you caught up. We needed to explain, you see.”

I’m sorry, hold the phone, forward-thinking and communication – a plan specifically about communicating, even – all in one statement? Well. You know the apocalypse is coming when.

So everyone Perrin sent ahead has taken a detour because there’s mud up ahead, which may be the Pattern’s way of saying ‘we’re running out of time can you please just go where I need you for once’ or may just be bog-standard (see what I did there) geology and meteorology, but will, if the glimpses of Perrin through Rand’s special colour vision last book is anything to go by, result in a collision course for Perrin and Galad, which I’m… weirdly looking forward to.

“But from the look of things here, you decided to bring the entire town with you!”

Think bigger, Fennel. ‘Nation’ bigger, at the least. More likely plural.

Perrin does briefly consider splitting the party army nation(s) at his back, but the Shaido are conveniently in the way so instead I suppose they’ll all just make their way, amoeba-like, to wherever they can engulf Galad’s own group. Or be engulfed by. Alliance, phagocytosis; to-may-to, to-mah-to…

No I’m not sure where I was going with that either. Moving on…

He himself could Travel back to Rand, pretend to make up – most people would still think that he and Rand had parted ways angrily

This strikes me as being strangely sad, and I’m trying to figure out why. Maybe it’s because there’s a secondary reading of this which is that their ‘making up’ would be as much a pretence as their ‘fight’ because both of those have friendship as a prerequisite, and are they even friends anymore after all this time and all that has happened and all that lies between them?

Especially because, in terms of timelines, right now-for-Perrin, Rand is… not really in a place to be anyone’s friend.

I wonder, though, because I’m a terrible person who finds opportunities for Suffering even in things that should be entirely free of it, whether Rand-after-Dragonmount is in a better place to be anyone’s friend. I think yes, because that was very much the point, but I feel like there’s a bittersweet potential to it where ascendance is just as bad as damnation for maintaining a normal social life.

Or, less flippantly, there’s a strange loneliness to the messiah’s role, to being a force of nature and a champion of fate as much as or more than a man. He is known to all and all look to him and he stands, surrounded, at the centre, and he has learned to see the hope and promise in that rather than just the despair but there is still the sense of being alone on a mountain, alone on a pedestal, existing alone on a level that is not quite human but not quite divinity, touching all but no longer, quite, as a peer. Forces of nature don’t have best friends, even if they turn towards benevolence.

I mean, I’m spitballing here, because I’ve seen exactly one chapter of Rand-after-Dragonmount, and in fairness he seemed at peace with himself and his role now, but I still can’t help but wonder. And by wonder I mean wish. Because see above re: Suffering.

I guess mostly what I’m looking for is something along the series-standard line of you can’t go back, you can only go forward. And even when forward is better, even when forward is healing, even when forward is hope, it’s not the same as what you had or who you were before, and sometimes there is a sadness to that.

Sorry, this is a Perrin chapter and here I am going on about Rand, but I just… like thinking about all the friendships and relationships between all these characters, and how they change over time, and how those ties can be so altered and sometimes strained and yet even then they can also be what saves them all.

(“My best friend turned into the world.” “That’s rough buddy.”)

Faile was back now, and it appeared that his truce with Berelain was over.

NO.

*throws book at wall*

WHY. Damn it I was so glad when that finally died and Perrin and Berelain got to just work together and appreciate each other’s competence! Why must we return to this? Don’t you know that you can’t go back; you can only go forwards? WHY THIS. WHY ME.

The Prophet was dead, killed by bandits. Well, perhaps that was a fitting end for him, but Perrin still felt he’d failed.

Probably just because he doesn’t know that Masema was Faile-d.

I’m sorry. I’ll see myself out.

(That’s a lie; you’re just going to have to put up with me and my bad puns for at least another book).

His duty was done, the Prophet seen to, Alliandre’s allegiance secure. Only, Perrin felt as if something were still very wrong. He fingered the blacksmith’s puzzle in his pocket. To understand something… you have to figure out its parts…

Because you’ve only done the middlegame part of your duty, Perrin! You still have to get ready for the ending! And that means… *dramatic hammerstroke* forging. But, you know, metaphorically.

Perrin feels awkward around Faile now because when you’ve focused your entire life and self and nation, waking and sleeping, on achieving a single goal, and rewritten your entire world around that goal, and then you do achieve it, it’s sometimes hard to know what to do with the reality of having achieved it, of having that person back at your side but an emptiness ahead of you where the idea of them once occupied everything. Or at least that’s my suspicion but Perrin when this is all over you may want to, I don’t know, talk to someone about it.

Seriously, a qualified therapist could make a killing setting up shop in this world.

“I should start turning them away.”

“I suspect they’d find their way back to our force anyway.”

“Why should they? I could leave orders.”

“You can’t give orders to the Pattern itself, my husband.”

Perrin: “WATCH ME.”

Maybe you could ask Rand to, as a favour? He seems to be on good terms with the Pattern these days. Er. These days in his timeline, I mean.

Yes, Perrin, this is you being ta’veren. Or have you been living under a rock for the last several books? Denial’s not going to last you much longer.

“And so coopers learn the sword,” Faile said, “and find they have a talent for it. Masons who never thought of fighting back against the Shaido now train with the quarterstaff.”

It’s such a ploughshares-to-swords image, and I still just love the way this is how Perrin’s ta’veren-ness manifests specifically: the one who was so careful lest he hurt someone, the one who tries so hard to deny his capacity for anger and ferocity, the one drawn to the Way of the Leaf and a dream of peace, is the one to cause that rippling of peace into war, farmers into soldiers, a quiet nation into a waiting army.

Because on one level there’s the sadness of it, of the only one who returns home bringing that home back out into the world with him and leaving it forever changed, of the one who wants gentleness rousing a people to follow and fight… but even that then ties into the deeper issue of acceptance. Of realising that the potential has always been there – for a ploughshare to be a sword or a blacksmith to be a warrior, or a man to be a wolf or a town to be an army – and that drawing that potential out and allowing it to exist and be used doesn’t negate what was there before. That man and wolf can coexist, that anger does not preclude gentleness, that fighting a war for survival does not negate the hope, one day, of peace.

And so Perrin’s ta’veren power becomes almost another level in playing out what he will eventually need to accept about himself. Just as Rand’s darkness and then light spread out to touch the world around him, it’s as if Perrin’s lack of acceptance of aspects of himself keep these people from truly coming together (the dreams of forging things that don’t come out right), whereas if he can accept what he is, and accept all parts of himself, forge them into unity, then the part of the world he affects – the people who follow him – will be forged together as well.

At least he acknowledges to himself that Faile’s right about this one. That’s a good step.

“Once we have gateways again, I’ll send these people to their proper places. I’m not gathering an army.”

Sigh. Or not. Two steps forward, one step back.

Understand the metal and the tools and the puzzle in your hands, Perrin. Look at what you have. Not at what you wish you had, or think you should have. Look at what the pieces can and need to be made into, rather than forcing them into what you want them to be made into.

“A man’s got to see a thing for what it is. No sense in calling a buckle a hinge or calling a nail a horseshoe.”

The hilarious thing here is that he’s making my point, whilst thinking he’s disproving it. Because Perrin, seeing a thing for what it is means looking at all these people around you and realising you’re their leader and they’re following you and you’re headed for Tarmon Gai’don. No sense calling a buckle a hinge, or an army a random group of refugees. (Well, they are that, too. But if you try to return them home now, soon they will have no home at all).

I do appreciate that he sees and acknowledges some of his flaws from when Faile was gone. He’s a little too hard on himself in places, and misses out others, but it’s a kind of humility and self-awareness and ability to recognise where he could be better that I like.

“It’s not [Berelain’s] fault,” Perrin said. If I’d been able to think of it, I’d have stopped the rumours dead. But I didn’t. Now I’ve got to sleep in the bed I made for myself.”

Perhaps not quite the idiom I’d have chosen in this particular instance, Perrin, but…

When she’d been a captive, nothing had mattered to him but recovering her. Nothing. It didn’t matter who had needed his help, or what orders he’d been given. […]

He realised now how dangerous his actions had been. Trouble was, he’d take those same actions again. He didn’t regret what he’d done, not for a moment.

Well… partial credit for self-awareness, I suppose?

Frustrating as this is, though, it also feels quite realistic. And there’s a certain kind of maturity in the devastating honesty it takes to look at something you’ve done and say ‘I shouldn’t have done that, but in the same situation I’d make those same choices again’. Even if it’s a mistake, being able to acknowledge that about yourself is… impressive.

You couldn’t make a drawknife into a horseshoe by painting it, or by calling it something different.

Yeah, and you can’t make a ta’veren lord, leader, wolfbrother, and warrior back into a simple blacksmith’s apprentice boy by sheer force of denial, but don’t let that stop you.

“I’ve been thinking on this for the last few weeks, and – odd though it seems – I believe my captivity may have been precisely what we needed. Both of us.”

*throws book against wall and lets out an Elayne-like scream of pure rage*

ARGH.

WHY.

‘It’s fine, Perrin, you see I actually think it’s good that I was just used as a plot device to further your character development because I was tossed a bit of character development as a last-minute consolation prize, so really it’s all good!’

Sigh. Okay. I mean, in-story and in-character… I get it. It’s over now, it’s past, and they’re both trying to move on, and Faile has always been one to try to find a pragmatic angle – even an optimistic one – on a situation. And she’s strong enough to say this and make it sound (almost) believable. To look back on harsh lessons learned in harsher circumstances and appreciate the fires that forged her.

Which of course puts me in mind of Rand and his if a sword had memory, it might be grateful to the forge fire, but never fond of it ‘gratitude’ towards his imprisonment in Far Madding, but with Rand and that thought, we are given fairly obvious narrative cues that point to ‘yikes, Rand, that’s maybe not the healthiest of responses to trauma’, and we know full well that we’re not supposed to think ‘ah, yes, being locked in a cell with his worst nightmares was good for his character development so everything’s fine’. (Which is not to say we can’t enjoy it, because sometimes you just want to see your favourite character broken and bleeding and chained to a wall, but that’s uh. Neither here nor there).

But here, it’s as if we’re supposed to take Faile at face value. As if we’re supposed to nod and think ‘yeah, actually, that probably wasn’t fun but it was What She Needed’ (which… wow that is an entire pile of yikes, because yes, what a female character in this genre needs is to be held captive and sexually coerced and deprived of all agency… is maybe not a point you want to be making?). It feels like trying to hang a lampshade on that travesty of a plotline and say ‘but look! It brought them both character development! So it’s fine!’

Anyway I’m still just bitter about the way Faile has been used as a plot device for Perrin’s character development across the last few books, and this… while entirely understandable from a character and story perspective, from an external perspective feels like salt in the damn wound.

Moving on.

*

To Galad, apparently.

Galad who is bound and in pain after being tortured. I’m listening.

(Why am I like this)

All was dark around him, but pinprick lights shone in the sky. Stars? It had been overcast for so long.

Huh. There’s something almost sweet about how closely this echoes that chapter in TGS when Gawyn is wishing he could see the stars. I mean I’m certain it’s not actually intentional because it’s a spurious connection at best, but it’s just a kind of sweet-sad note of similarity between two brothers who haven’t seen each other since they both got lost trying to find their way, and are still trying and wishing, just for a moment, for the stars for guidance.

They’re not actually stars, just pinpricks in the tent, but that’s beside the point.

What’s not beside the point is the inventory of Galad’s wounds because honestly, it’s as if everything from then he did dance, all his grace turned in an instant to fluid death onwards has been a targeted attack on me as a person by going down a list of all the things I like to see in a character and going ‘do you like him now? What about now? What about now?’ and I’m mad about it.

Galad did not fear death or pain. He had made the right choices. It was unfortunate that he’d needed to leave the Questioners in charge; they were controlled by the Seanchan. However, there had been no other option, not after he’d walked into Asunawa’s hands.

I’m not sure why I find it so fitting that Galad’s experience at Asunawa’s hands is not unlike Morgase’s in the end, but something about it just works for me. There’s a whole set of connections here that this bookends, between the two of them and their fall from and rise to power, and choices, and Valda and Asunawa and the Seanchan, and for whatever reason it feels satisfying to have this coming to an end much like it began. Though Galad is spared Morgase’s…………… choice. But I suppose there’s almost an irony here in him avenging Morgase in one way but then sharing her fate in another.

Or maybe it’s just back to the classic ‘I like fictional characters in pain’.

Soon the Questioners would come for him, and then the true price for saving his men would be exacted with their hooks and knives. He had been aware of that price when he’d made his decision. In a way, he had won, for he had manipulated the situation best.

STOP. TRYING. TO. MAKE. ME. LIKE. GALAD. DAMODRED.

I just. Damn it. This is such a good look! And yet it’s Galad!

Standing, beaten but unflinching, determined and himself, ready to face whatever they do to him. Well. That’s how Morgase began, too.

Oh hey it’s his friends! Which means probably no more torturing of Galad, which is kind of a shame (I’m sorry), but is also not entirely unexpected.

Oh wow Asunawa’s dead. Okay. Can’t say he’ll be missed, though it’s just a shame Morgase didn’t get to kill either him or Valda herself. Ah well, can’t have everything.

And it wasn’t Galad’s men who killed him, so now he has won the Questioners to him as well. Questions of Leadership indeed. I see what you did there.

It is an interesting contrast in this chapter, to watch Perrin constantly second-guessing or trying to deny his leadership, set against Galad just… accepting his.

I will give Galad this: he has won his leadership by being entirely and unrelentingly himself, and true to his convictions, and standing, despite everything thrown at him, despite the corruption around him, as a determined and unassailable symbol of what the Children of the Light should be. What they can be. He doesn’t try to steal power, doesn’t outright challenge their ways; he just leads quite literally by sheer force of example.

Galad nodded. “You accept me as Lord Captain Commander?”

But also, I just have to remind everyone that he’s buck-ass naked throughout this entire scene, and some juvenile part of me finds that absolutely hilarious.

“We were forced to kill a third of those who wore the red shepherd’s crook of the Hand of the Light.”

What a pity. No, really. I’m weeping. How sad. Terrible.

None of them asked whether he needed rest, though Trom did look worried.

Again! Characters beaten and exhausted and hiding their pain in order to just move forward is a whole Thing, and putting that on Galad and throwing it at me is just unfair.

Galad didn’t feel wise or strong enough to bear the title he did. But the Children had made their decision.

The Light would protect them for it.

(The fact that ‘Galad’ means ‘light’ in Sindarin is just an added bonus here, really).

But I like the way his thinking about this runs: he doesn’t feel wise or strong enough, but that’s not the part that matters. The part that matters is that they chose him. As Galad sees it, what makes a leader isn’t what the leader thinks of himself, but merely the fact that others choose to follow.

He is their leader now, and whether he wants to be or not, whether he feels up to it or not, is irrelevant. There’s an interesting question here around choices, and the lack thereof – that he has no choice, in a way, but to lead. Because whether or not he wants to, people have decided to follow him, and so by definition he is their leader now. And so the only thing to do, because it’s the right thing to do, is to lead them as well as he can.

Next (ToM ch 3) Previous (ToM ch 1)

[askguyslikeus]

((thank you to guest writer @listentotheshityousay !!!))

The dorm kitchenette is quiet at three in the morning. There's just the sound of running water as Jeremy washes out the measuring spoons, humming to himself to drown out the drone of the microwave. It's peaceful.

Consuming baked goods at this hour won't be beneficial to anybody's health, a snide voice rings out in his head.

So much for peaceful.

“This is gonna be beneficial to Michael’s mental and emotional health, so shut up,” Jeremy responds, rolling his eyes. “And like, it can’t be worse than that time we ate fried chicken off our floor after we dropped it.”

That was truly disgusting, the Squip agrees.

“We’re college students. We eat a lot of gross shit.” He turns the faucet and shuts the water off, wiping his hands with the dishrag. “Stop judging.”

If only your eating habits were the only troubling part of your lifestyle…

Jeremy scowls. “Okay, you know what?” He isn’t in the mood to listen to another lecture about vegetables and hygiene and cholesterol. “I’m not doing this.”

He heads out of the kitchenette and walks four doors down, pushing the door to his dorm room open. Michael’s laying on the bottom bunk bed, Jeremy’s phone held above his face as he taps away intently at the screen.

“Jer? You done already?” Michael asks, tilting his head towards Jeremy’s direction. He drops the phone in his distraction and it smacks him in the face. “Ow!”

“I told you not to hold phones like that,” Jeremy says absent-mindedly. He knows Michael’s never going to learn his lesson on that anyway. He squats down to open the mini-fridge and dig out a new bottle of Mountain Dew Red. He cracks it open, ignoring the Squip’s aggrieved grumbling, and chugs half the bottle.

“Electronic Voldemort being an ass again?” Michael asks when Jeremy’s done. His tone is joking, but there’s that telltale hint of worry in his eyes, in the slight furrow of his brows, and Jeremy wants to chase it away. Michael’s already had a shitty day and he doesn’t need to be worried about the voice in Jeremy’s head right now.

So Jeremy shrugs and leans forward, folding his arms on the bed and resting his chin on them to give Michael an easy grin from up close. “More like trying to be my health coach. As if any college student ever cooks balanced meals or eats vegetables.”

“Hell no,” Michael scoffs, rolling closer to lay on his stomach, his face inches from Jeremy’s. “Not even Jake does that.” A beat. “Well, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t.” Another beat. “I mean, he eats plenty of junk food and vegetables—shit, does that make it a balanced meal?”

“Depends on the ratio, I guess?”

Michael scrunches his nose. “I saw him eat, like, three pieces of broccoli once.” An ominous pause. “Uncooked.”

“Gross.” Broccoli isn’t that bad, but uncooked? Jake must be a masochist.

“‘Average person eats three pieces of broccoli a year’ factoid actually just statistical error,” Michael deadpans. “Average person eats zero pieces of broccoli per year. Jacob Dillinger, who lives in a cave and eats over ten-thousand each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.”

Jeremy starts laughing just before Michael starts to crack up, too. “A cave?” Jeremy wheezes, gasping for air. “He lives in the dorm across campus.”

“Tell me that cave is an inaccurate description of a college student’s dorm room,” Michael says between chortles.

Jeremy looks around their dorm room. “So this is our cave now?”

“Fuck yeah it is. Which reminds me.” Michael rolls away, settling onto his stomach and stuffing a pillow under his chin as he grabs Jeremy’s phone again. “I have a camp to attend to.”

Jeremy pushes himself up to sit on the side of the bed Michael just vacated and leans over to see Michael’s screen. “Did you get Kyle to come over?”

Michael scowls. “Not yet. Almost done building that fucking table, though, so his smug wolf ass is gonna be mine, soon.”

“What, my ass isn’t enough for you?” Jeremy pokes Michael in the ribs. “Plus, technically this is my phone, so his smug wolf ass would be mine.”

Michael bats Jeremy’s finger away. “Tone it down, you furry. Let me bask in my sweet, sweet upcoming victory.”

“You could’ve just downloaded Pocket Camp onto your phone,” Jeremy says, but he’s not really complaining. He’d been playing on and off for a while, but he hadn’t developed an obsession with the game the way Michael has over the past few days after trying it out on Jeremy’s phone during a fit of boredom. He doesn’t mind Michael stealing his phone for a while every day, and it’s worth it, to see the tension that’d been in Michael’s shoulders earlier all bled out, the smile on his face much more relaxed.

He watches Michael finally coax Kyle into their camp and almost gets smacked in the face when Michael flails his arms victoriously with a whoop. “Gotcha now, sucker,” Michael crows. He’s already tapping away, moving onto the next step, humming as he mutters, “Gotta catch em all.”

“That just gave me some really intense Pokemon Go flashbacks.” Jeremy blinks away the vivid memories of chasing down the whereabouts of a Dratini behind a 7-Eleven at two in the morning. Michael had announced he was disinheriting Jeremy when he found out Jeremy was Team Mystic (“Remember when I told you that you could have my Gameboy and my Magic The Gathering card collection if anything happened to me? I take it back. I’m taking you off my will, Jeremiah.”), and then promptly cancelled the disownment in favor of recruiting Jeremy into kicking some Team Instinct ass.

“Man, I walked so much for that Flareon.” Michael squints at the phone screen. “Fuck, I need more Bells. I should get somebody to buy my shit.”

Jeremy pulls out Michael’s phone from where it’s been stashed in his hoodie pocket to check the time. The screen flashes 3:14. “Michael, nobody’s going to be awake at this time on a Tuesday night.”

“Nuh-uh. PJ will sure as hell be awake,” Michael says.

Jeremy thinks about that for a sec. “You know what, that wouldn’t surprise me.”

There’s a minute of silence as Michael switches from the game to open Jeremy’s message app, tapping furiously at the phone screen, and then he’s grinning up at Jeremy with a smug slant to his mouth, the way he smiles whenever he’s having an I told you so moment. “She’s awake.”

“Why is she even awake?” Jeremy asks with a laugh. “It’s past three in the morning!”

“I don’t know, maybe she’s staying up to play Pocket Camp just like me,” Michael says with a fond snort.

Jeremy’s about to say that Michael’s up playing Pocket Camp to destress from a bad day when his brain tugs at that train of thought, derailing him from saying anything. Aren’t you forgetting something? echoes in his head, sounding eerily like the Squip’s voice.

He’s blankly staring at the wall, mystified, when Michael’s voice drags him back to the present. “Hey, weren’t you making Nutella cake?”

Jeremy blinks, then looks down at Michael, who’s giving him a curious look.

“Yeah,” Jeremy says, as his derailed train of thought is replaced back on the metaphorical traintracks, starting off slow and steady. “I was.”

Michael stares at him.

Jeremy stares back.

The thought train cranks up the speed from one to eleven, his thoughts all crashing into him at the speed of light. From the look of rapidly dawning horror on Michael’s face, he’s on the same track (ha fucking ha) of thought.

“Did you just,” Michael says very slowly, “leave the stuff in the kitchen?” Even more slowly: “In the microwave?”

“Oh fuck,” Jeremy blurts, and that’s the exact moment the fire alarm starts blaring.

-

See, the thing is, the microwave on their floor is a piece of shit that’s probably older Jeremy and Michael’s ages combined. It has many buttons but no settings work aside from Fires of Mordor, and its timer settings operates solely on thirty-minute intervals, for some reason. So it’s the duty of the poor dorm residents who use it to stop the microwave accordingly using their own timers.

It hasn’t been replaced because, for all it’s shitty, fire-hazard qualities, it still works and it hasn’t actually caused a fire yet.

But just because it hasn’t caused any real fires doesn’t mean it hasn’t set off any fire alarms. There’s been enough fire alarms this month that a few days ago, Rich--who had been spending the night on their top bunk--had literally clamped the pillow over his head and went back to sleep.

It’s a building full of hungry, easily distracted college students and the world’s most tyrannical microwave. It’s the worst combination possible.

So it’s absolutely normal for Jeremy and Michael to be standing outside their building in the middle of the night, surrounded by dozens of their cranky, sleep-deprived neighbors, waiting for all-clear to head back in.

A lot less normal for Jeremy to have been the cause of the fire alarm, though. Usually people set off the fire alarm trying to make popcorn. Jeremy set it off trying to make Nutella mug cake. Which is probably a scorched hell cake now.

“Holy shit,” Jeremy mumbles, still kinda in shock about the whole thing. “I almost burned down a building with a cake.”

“Good thing Rich isn’t sleeping over at our place today,” Michael says. “He’d either be really proud of you or really disappointed.”

Jeremy stares at the dorm windows, feeling indignant. “I used the last of my Nutella for that cake.”

Michael makes a choking noise from beside him, and Jeremy remembers that fuck, he’d been making that cake to cheer Michael up after a shitty day. And then he went and had the whole building evacuated instead.

“Oh my god,” Jeremy moans, dragging both hands down his face as the shame properly kicks in. “I was supposed to make you feel better, not get us kicked out of our room.” He turns to Michael to apologize. “I’m so s—Michael?”

Michael, he realizes, is doubled over and wheezing, laughing so hard that he’s nearly crying. He straightens up and hooks an arm over Jeremy’s shoulder, pulling him in, still giggling breathlessly as he leans against Jeremy, grinning as bright as the rising sun.

“Actually,” Michael says, sounding happier than any Nintendo game or baked good could make him, “this is just what I needed.”