#because i was thinking about Moreau a few days ago... I missed him. and now you gotta look at this

[sketchy-tour]

Anyway self ship jumpscare!!!!

[quilna]

A very long time ago I suggested a MBaV au then later took it down because I didn’t think that many people watched the show so not many people probably knew what I was talking about. I’ve decided to bring it back.

I had art to go with this (Which I might have posted earlier so my apologies if this is the second time you’ve seen this au) but people didn’t seem particuarly fond of it and I was worried that the art would be offputting from the actual concept.

Anyway, MBaV stands for My Babysitter’s a Vampire and it was this cheesy supernatural show I watched when I was a kid. This au has a few differences from the show, either because the time frame doesn’t fit (MBaV is set in the modern day, TGS is Victorian London so some things don’t match up), because I don’t properly remember the episode (It’s been a long time, not everything will match up. There are some episodes that I didn’t see at all.), or just because the change seemed better fitting for the au.

Dr Jekyll is a powerful spellcaster who, after a mishap with a spell years ago, accidentally split himself into two. While Jekyll is known for being one of the older and more skilled spellcasters in London, Edward has a bad habit of messing up spells, either by not reading through the consequences before using them or reading them backwards. He’s technically still powerful but it’s difficult for people to tell when so many of his spells go sideways.

The pair can hide memories from each other and both use it to screw with the other.

Jekyll runs a society for the supernatural, trying to keep the supernatural side of London from messing around with the normal side too much. However, the society has a cover of being a society for the sciences so it attracts a mixture of regular humans and the supernatural meaning that:

A. The supernatural side of the society has to be hidden from some of the society’s members

B. They’re not actually sure how many are human and how many are supernatural, leading to some more malicious monsters slipping in.

--

Lanyon, meanwhile, is a seer. By touching people or certain objects he can receive visions of the future or the past but they’re not always clear.

Throughout his life, these abilities have allowed him to learn a lot of things he didn’t want to know about - he always knew when other people were just trying to use him, he always knew when something bad was going to happen to someone, and it left him rather cynical and detatched. He does his best to avoid contact with people to avoid getting these visions.

However, he starts to get particularly bad visions from Dr Jekyll, hinting that Edward Hyde will eventually start being a danger to Jekyll. As a result, he’s doing his best to figure out what the deal with Edward is before it’s too late or, at least, get rid of Edward before things can come to pass.

Rachel and Henry don’t seem to take him seriously about Edward (Rachel doesn’t want to believe that Edward could hurt Jekyll and, therefore, reasons that Lanyon’s visions aren’t telling him everything and Jekyll, obviously, already knows everything and wants Lanyon to stay out of it before he learns the truth.)

--

Rachel is a fledgling vampire, bitten and turned by Moreau, the leader of a vampiric cult. She hasn’t drunk human blood yet which means she’s weaker than most vampires, hoping that, if she remains a fledgling (continues to not drink from people) she might one day be cured.

Jekyll helps make a blood substitute for her so she never has to drink from a human.

The Elephants are an all female all vampire group so Lucy and Elsie are very supportive of Rachel’s vampirism and often give her advice on the matter. (Although they don’t really get her aversion from drinking human blood.) Lucy is a very old and powerful vampire.

Eli was killed by Moreau when he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

--

Frankenstein is a necromancer who came to London looking for the  powerful spellcaster she had heard so much about, wanting his help to cure vampirism entirely. However, the moment she arrived she ended  up in an altercation with Moreau, leaving her injured. To her annoyance,  she had to pick up the cover of being a scientist looking for a cure  for her son’s terrible condition (The son being Creature.) and was taken in by the society while  she searches for the spellcaster in her spare time. To her extra  annoyance, every time she slips away and starts trying to track the  spellcaster, it always somehow seems to lead her directly into the path  of “the naive human” Dr Jekyll leading to her being put back to bed every time.

In all fairness, Jekyll has perfected the ignorant human act.

Things become trickier however when her spell finally leads her to Edward Hyde instead, leading her to believe that he’s the spellcaster. Edward doesn’t correct her or even let Jekyll know about this, wanting to prove himself as powerful as Jekyll.

Eventually, he starts searching for a powerful magical artifact which could help them. A magical artifact with absolutely no corrupting properties at all. Ever. It’s perfectly safe and will not at all ever send Hyde, already the personification of evil, towards trying to eliminate his good half and take over London. Of course not.

Jekyll knows that something bad is afoot but, with Hyde blocking his memories from him, he doesn’t know exactly what. Neither does Frankenstein realize her mistake until it’s too late.

---

The lodgers:

Helsby is a mermaid. When he’s touched by water, he turns into his mermaid form and his singing voice can send everyone around him into a rage. After he causes a lot of chaos around the society, Lanyon, Rachel, and Hyde set out to try to defeat him in a music contest. If he loses, he has to stop. This plan goes sideways when Hyde marches in with a trumpet cursed to make the most horrible noise possible and basically forces Helsby into submission instead. And destroys Lanyon and Rachel’s eardrums in the process.

Jasper is a werewolf as always. He came directly to the society, looking for help with his condition, fearing the danger of his werewolf half. Werewolves and vampires have a natural rivalry but Rachel just decided that the taboo of it was just more romantic and fell for him. When the full moon came, though, everyone found out that Jasper just turns into a harmless dog. Rachel was a little disappointed but still loved him anyway.

Cantilupe is an ancient god who slipped in with the intent of collecting followers in the society to bring about the apocalypse, pretending to be a zoologist. However, she then met Lavender, a newer human zoologist who viewed her as her senior and constantly looked for Cantilupe’s help with her work. Cantilupe decided she was fond of this tiny human and stopped trying to end the world. Lavender still isn’t aware that her senior is a literal god.

Maijabi is a spirit that can inhabit mirrors. His cursed mirror was accidentally taken in by the society where he began to manipulate people who looked into his mirror into harming people around them to get revenge for his death after dying in a prank gone wrong. As it turned out, though, Lanyon could see him for what he was thanks to his powers. After stopping him, Jekyll used his magic to make him visible to other people so he can sort of live again. He still can’t touch people without passing through them.

Sinnett is human but, at one point, a sentient tree ends up getting into the society and taking control of all of the automatons, technology, and clockwork in there, including Sinnett’s arm. He helps arm the trio with flamethrowers to fight the tree but they couldn’t get the last bit of tree of out Sinnett’s prosthetic arm. Now he has to deal with an evil tree in his arm which occasionally tries to convince him to destroy the world. He tunes it out.

Tweedy is also human but he’s a “paranormal investigator” who came to the society looking for ghosts. Most of his equipment suspiciously goes off around Rachel (She is undead and all) and everyone has to keep trying to hide the numerous ghosts and zombies in the society.

Bryson is the ghost of a once famous aeronaut looking to regain his lost fame. He tries to force Lanyon as the only person who can see him into helping him with this but Lanyon knows absolutely nothing about aeronautics.

---

Other things:

Once, as a lesson to try to teach Robert, Rachel, and Edward to work together, Henry secretly used a spell to send each one of them into their own pocket dimension based off of each of their fears. Initially it was supposed to have safeguards in place to keep the exercise safe and keep the fears mild.

Hyde was given the fear of being alone (A world completely devoid of people)

Rachel was given a fear of losing herself to her vampirism (A more powerful and evil version of herself)

Robert was given the villain from a play he watched recently which frightened him. (An automaton dentist gone rogue.)

However, either by Hyde messing around with magic to try to free them all or by some malicious outside intervention (Because it would be mean for Jekyll to do this himself but I can’t miss out the angst of a proper worst fear episode.) the safeguards got removed and the worlds started to twist themselves to everyone’s deepest darkest fears.

Hyde ended up chased by his own friends, turning on him after they discovered his secret.

Rachel was chased by the ghost of Eli, blaming her for his death.

Robert got a monstrous version of Hyde from his visions, the version of Hyde he knew was someday destined to kill Jekyll. (Hyde was very flattered when he found out.)

All of them try to hide their fears from the others and the worlds continue feeding off their fear and becoming more monsterous and twisted as time goes on.

They all only just escape.

--

Jekyll and Hyde have been seen in the same place before which doesn’t help anyone figure out that they’re the same person. Thanks to messing around with an old cursed camera from Jekyll’s collection, Hyde accidentally makes an evil clone of himself. Everyone kind of notices that Hyde’s acting a little worse than usual but Jekyll’s the only one who knows that something wrong’s going on here (Because that’s himself just standing there mocking him.) and Jekyll has to try to stop the evil Hyde alone, unable to tell anyone why he knows that isn’t the real Hyde.

--

Jekyll once accidentally hired a carriage haunted by the ghost of a dead vampire and everyone had to work together to stake it because it wouldn’t stop running people over.

They don’t talk about it.

The horses came out fine.

--

Hyde once tried to resurrect an old pet of Lucy’s to attempt to impress her (Pets don’t live awfully long when you’re immortal after all.) but ended up bringing to life every dead animal in the area. Every last one of them turned out violent. After getting rid of most of the animals, they found one little zombie dog that somehow didn’t become violent. Jekyll took it in and named it Zosi.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

The Killing Cure (Part 20)

The trip to Moreau’s Reservoir is somehow worse than the trip to House Beneviento’s was.  To go with the snow and ice are many pools of bubbling goo. It isn’t so bad to begin with, but the closer that they get to the reservoir, the thicker this substance becomes. And it smells absolutely foul, completely and unbearably unholy. Ethan thinks of fish and moldy cheese. Alcina’s nose is crinkled in disgust and his stomach feels queasy. To think, just a two days prior, he had been listening to the woman sing. Only two days ago, he was comfortable and content… He can’t believe that he is actually finding himself thinking that Castle Dimitrescu is a place of comfort. A place that he wouldn’t mind returning to. A place that, at the moment, he very much longs to return to. He can only imagine how Alcina feels.

Alcina who can no longer simply step over the slime coated gate. “I don’t want to touch it.” She says after a few moments--her face is now somehow even more scrunched. “You touch it.”

Ethan thinks that his face might be a mossy shade of green. He sticks his tongue out. “No way, you do it.”

“I will meet you back at my castle, Winters.” She takes only a step away. And then a second. He knows what she is doing but he, with a groan, grumbles, “alright fine. I’ll do it.” Alcina stops walking, not that she had actually planned on going very far. She observes with her arms cross and noticeable secondhand discomfort as he kicks the gate. Only when it doesn’t budge does he notice that there is a ladder next to it. “Sorry,  Lady D, you’re going to have to…”

“Do not call me that.”

“Sorry, Lady Dimitrescu.” He rolls his eyes. “You’re going to have to touch it after all.” He gestures to the ladder which has its own, significantly thinner, layer of slime.

Alcina inhales very deeply only to cringe and bunch slightly in on herself. If he weren’t so utterly appalled himself, he might have laughed at her reaction. Instead he finds himself scrambling up the ladder, trying to fight his gag reflex. The texture is quite horrid--sticky and only semi-solid. He can feel his hands slipping from the rungs. To his dismay he is forced to cling on more tightly.

Alcina waits for him to ascend before climbing up herself. If he weren’t so busy trying to cleans his own hands he would be snickering at the assortment of faces that the woman is making. Each one is more comical than the next.

“This…” she half-huff and half-growls. “This is why I don’t visit Moreau unless I have to.” Something tells him that she never has to.   “Out of the way, Winters.” She shoves the man to the side and steals the water pump. He thanks the lord that her shoves don’t pack the same force, but he is surprised to find that she--with enough disgust and determination--can still knock him on his little manthing ass.

He sighs, he supposes his hands are clean enough. Not that it matters, he has a very strong feeling that they have not seen the last of that goop. Once Alcina has decided that her hands are clean enough, they continue their walk. A walk that entails a steady string of complaints and the odd curse. She must truly resent this place if she’s willing to put aside her eloquent speech even for a moment.

He supposes that he understands; every now and then he steps into such a thick puddle of goo that his foot gets caught in it. The sucking slorp that it makes as he pulls it out is stomach churning in the most unpleasant way. And Alcina has just narrowly missed one such pool. The woman is lucky that he has so generously decided to take the lead.

“No, no! You simpleton! You turn to the left, not the right!”

“You could have told me that before I started to turn right.”

“You could pay attention.”

“I don’t know where we’re going!” He throws his hands up. He truly hopes that it is the slime and the cold that is making her unbearably cranky.

She clears her throat, “well, keep heading this way.” She gestures towards the path to what looks like a decaying old mineshaft.

“Of course we have to go into a mineshaft.” He grumbles to himself. He doesn’t know why expected anything but an abysmal looking, waterlogged hole in the ground. And she is going to make him go in first. To make a wretched situation worse, there is more slime than snow leading to it.

Alcina sucks in a deep breath. “Would it kill that little beast to keep his liar even a little less repulsive?” She sets one foot into the goo and cringes back. With a loud slurp and a squelch, the mess settles back into place. A banner of it clings to the sole of her shoe. She clears her throat. “Moreau’s room, unless he’s moved it, is just down that mine shaft and to the left. There’s a small alcove. You are a small man, you should be able to fit through. I will meet you back at my castle.”

“You’re really going to make me go down there alone? He wants to kill me?”

“Would you rather go alone or carry me across…”

He scoops her into his arms without a hesitation.

“Winters! What are you…?”

“I’m not going down there alone.” He declares. He isn’t sure exactly how he is going to carry her down the mineshaft ladder. She may not be nine feet tall but she isn’t particularly light either. No less, he holds her tight and close to his chest. “But you’re going to have to climb down the ladder on your own.”

“I--I am perfectly capable of that.” Alcina grumbles. He can’t tell if she is pleased that he had so readily obliged her request or if she is intent on making this as awkward and uncomfortable as she can. Perhaps she hadn’t anticipated him actually lifting her up. Just when he is finally getting used to her weight in his arms and her head against his chest, he has to set her down.  “Can you go first this time?”

Alcina sighs, “fine.”

With a relieved sigh of her own, he carefully touches her feet to the ground, taking care to place her in the least grimy area.  

.oOo.

She hates to admit it, but Ethan’s arms were significantly more pleasant than enduring the wet, spongy feeling of Moreau’s rancid dwellings. Perhaps they should have skipped Moreau’s and got straight to...she shudders--no, she would like to put that off for as long as she can.

She supposes that it doesn’t matter, they are almost there regardless. Not that Moreau’s living space is actually any more livable than the rest of this repugnant reservoir. Frankly, she would like a bath just thinking about the dirty waters she may well have to tread soon. She only hopes that Moreau will be in front of that box again--she wracks her brain for the name of it--in front of that television set.

“This place smells...God…” Ethan pinches his nose.

This time she doesn’t scold the man for his chatter. She feels much the same. At last they come to the alcove and to her fortune, Moreau is indeed sitting before the flashing box chuckling to himself. “Salvatore.” She hisses, pushing Ethan behind her. Taking the hint, he ducks down. If only she had the height to conceal him more securely.

“Why do I have to…”

“He scares easily.” Alcina whispers. “Just let me...ease him into the idea of conversing with you.” Because that went over so well with Donna… Granted, Donna is significantly more reserved. Salvatore, at the very least, is rather sociable after the awkwardness subsides.

“Salvatore!” She repeats, louder this time.

The man turns his head. “Oh, hello, Lady Dimitrescu.” He greets. From the look of it, he only wants to slink away from her retreat further into his rancid little dwelling. “What brings you around? No one ever visits me.”

She should very well tell him that he might get more visitors if the path wasn’t so infested with unidentifiable and putridly smelling mucus. “There is something I’d like to discuss with you, Moreau.” She knows that it is now a matter of choosing words very delicately. “Can, we come inside?”

“We?”

“There is someone that I would formally like you to meet, Moreau. Someone who would think you very helpful.”

“Me, helpful?”

Alcina nods, “we will come inside and we can talk it over.” She musters a tone that doesn’t leave room for disagreement.

He coughs nervously, a horrid sound that is as wet as anything else in this hellish place. “Sure thing, Lady Dimitrescu.”

“Come then, Winters. Let’s get this over with.”

[inkslingersworld]

Zusammen: Part VIII

Link to all parts here.

Neither Adrien nor Kagami had ever visited La Sante Prison, or, for that matter, any of the city’s prisons. They never had any reason to, which is why Inspector Beaumont’s proposition of meeting them there made Adrien and Kagami quite befuddled. 

And this was before they got there.

Once they reached the complex, it was pandemonium - a throng of police cars and ambulances swarmed outside of the building, with law enforcement officers, prison guards, and medical workers running from place to place. Adrien thought he saw Lieutenant Raincomprix amongst the hubbub, but decided that even if it was Sabrina’s dad, now was no time for a conversation.

“Adrien Agreste?”

Adrien turned; it was the same police officer who’d been so excited to see him at the station yesterday afternoon.

“What the hell happened?” Adrien asked bewilderedly. 

The officer sighed. “Huge riot. The inmates went plain cuckoo when they got wind of the murder.”

Adrien and Kagami’s jaws dropped. “Murder?”

“Inspector Beaumont will explain everything inside,” said the officer, sounding a little harassed. “Follow me, it’s not safe to use the main entrance right now, they’re still trying to stop anyone from escaping.”

They followed the officer through the crowd of bodies and in through a side door. Adrien could hardly focus on where he was going; someone had been killed?

Before long, the three of them had reached the uppermost floor of the prison. Adrien recognized Inspector Beaumont at once, though the detective looked a little more worse for wear since the last time they’d met. He extended his hand to shake Adrien’s and Kagami’s.

“Mister Agreste,” he said tiredly. “Miss Tsurugi. Wonderful. Laurent, you may go.”

The officer nodded curtly and trotted off back the way they’d come.

“Inspector, Officer Laurent just told us someone had been murdered,” Kagami said urgently. “Why’d you bring us here?”

Beaumont took a deep breath. “Down this way.”

They headed down the hall to the corner of the building’s floor. Upon reaching it, Adrien gasped at the sight before him - a man only a little older than his father lay dead on the ground, the front of his body riddled with bullet holes.

“Who was he?” asked Kagami, sounding sick.

“Amos Moreau,” responded Beaumont gravely. “He was imprisoned here five years ago for trying to assassinate your father, Adrien.”

“W-What?” said Adrien weakly. “You mean... this is the guy?”

Beaumont nodded. “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve seen in my whole career, and that’s saying something. There are literally zero clues as to who might’ve done the deed.”

“What about the security footage?” questioned Kagami, staring revoltedly at the corpse on the floor.

“Useless,” said Beaumont, sounding unable to believe it himself. “It simply shows Moreau alive and well one second, and then dead the next! And if that weren’t enough, I just got the coroner’s report; Moreau was shot forty-seven times.”

“Okay, slow down,” groaned Adrien, leaning against the wall. “You call us over to La Sante Prison, there’s an inmate rebellion because someone’s dead, that someone is my father’s would-be murderer and is indirectly responsible for my mother’s disappearance, and now you’re telling us that he was shot forty-seven times?”

“Yep,” Beaumont answered plainly. “I’m telling you, it’s the damnedest thing.”

“Why would somebody shoot anyone that many times?” Adrien asked, his voice cracking slightly as it rose.

“Well, either it was a rapid-fire weapon, or whoever killed Moreau wanted to be absolutely sure that there was no chance of him surviving,” stated Beaumont. 

“But why would someone want Moreau dead in the first place?” asked Kagami.

“That part’s a bit easier,” said Beaumont. “Moreau was scheduled to give a full confession today about his attempt to kill Gabriel Agreste. Although he had refused to give any information when he was first arrested, for some reason he had a drastic change of heart the day before yesterday. Moreau told the warden that he’d withheld important details about the assassination attempt and that Emilie’s disappearance played a larger role than first thought. If the information had proven useful, he would’ve been eligible for immediate release under probation. ‘Course, that’s not happening anymore.”

“This might’ve been about Mother?” asked Adrien, not sure if he’d heard right.

“Maybe,” Beaumont confirmed. “Our number-one candidate for a motive is that someone else could’ve been in on the assassination attempt. This mystery accomplice could’ve heard about the upcoming confession and killed Moreau so as to keep him from spilling their secrets. Of course, this still doesn’t explain how Moreau was killed, but I’ll take care of that part.”

Beaumont let out a long sigh. “The real reason I brought you here is because I don’t think you should continue with the investigation.”

“Excuse me?” Kagami said loudly.

“This would be for your own safety!” argued Beaumont. “If you keep digging, it could put you in mortal peril! You think I want you two to go the same way as Moreau?”

“But now it’s more important than ever to find Adrien’s mother!” retorted Kagami. “If find her, we might find whoever did this and put a stop to them!”

“Or they could put a stop to you!” Beaumont shot back. “We have no idea what this person is capable of! For all we know, they could be a new Hawk Moth!”

“Inspector,” said Adrien quietly, “I understand there are risks involved, but Kagami’s right. We can’t just walk away now. A man has been killed, and we have the chance to find out why. We have the chance to uncover all of this. Are you saying you don’t want that to happen?”

“Of course not!” said Beaumont, sounding frustrated. “I don’t want you two kids to get hurt!”

“Have you seen Kagami’s combat skills?” Adrien challenged. “We’ve got nothing to worry about.”

For a few seconds, Beaumont only opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, looking very much like a dying fish. Finally, he sighed softly.

“Fine,” he said stonily. “Here are my rules: you will not undertake this alone. Get an adult, or several adults, to protect you. Don’t go around investigating at night. Deal?”

Adrien and Kagami looked at each other. “Deal.”

“Okay then,” Beaumont said in a defeated voice. “You two go on out of here. I need to stick around and try to organize this jumble.”

===========

It wasn’t until they were a few blocks from the prison that Kagami said, “I think we should split up.”

Adrien stared at her. “What?”

“It’s not that I don’t like being with you!” said Kagami hurriedly. “It’s just that now the situation’s more dangerous, we should try and get this finished faster, and we can cover more ground separately!”

“No,” said Adrien flatly. “Absolutely not. Kagami, the situation becoming more dangerous is exactly why we should stick together! Safety in numbers, right?”

“But that’ll take way more time! If we split up -”

“No, Kagami,” Adrien objected. “We’ll pick and choose which events we think have more meaning off my mother’s personal planner. We can save time that way.”

“Adrien, come on! We could end this so much quicker!” protested Kagami.

“I’m telling you again, no. Beaumont’s right about us not knowing what this person is capable of! What if whoever murdered Moreau is a new Hawk Moth?”

“That’s exactly why we should split up and cover more ground!”

“You’re not listening, Kagami!” said Adrien, trying to keep his voice level. “If I let you go, and this person killed you too, I’d never forgive myself!”

There was silence. After a while, Kagami spoke.

“Oh my god, you’re right.”

Adrien let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“If I left you by yourself, you’d be completely hopeless,” Kagami continued.

“That’s exactly what I was... huh?”

“What was I thinking?” said Kagami, reprimanding herself by facepalming. “I already know you’re no good at combat, you’d be defenseless out there!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” interjected Adrien, feeling offended. “What are you talking about? I’m good at combat!”

“Adrien, you’re thinking of fencing,” Kagami said impatiently. “You’re good at that. What you’re not good at is combat.”

“Um, have you forgotten who I am?” cried Adrien.

“Of course not,” responded Kagami innocently. “You’re my slightly socially awkward, completely adorable boyfriend, who couldn’t morally hurt anyone because he’s a marshmallow, and couldn’t physically hurt anyone because he’s not as good at using his fists as he is at using his lips.”

Adrien knew that Kagami was mainly flattering him so that he wouldn’t keep countering her partially unintentional jabs at his ego, but he could tell that she truly believed what she was saying to him, and he smiled broadly while rolling his eyes.

“Thanks, Kagami. Now let’s go; my mother’s steps aren’t gonna retrace themselves.”

[mhdiaries]

Jane Boolittle Diary

07.10

Dad wants to send me to a school called Monster High. It would require that I leave the jungle. I am not happy about it. Dad believes that I need to learn to socialize with other monsters my own age. He says that hanging out at a research station with a bunch of stodgy old mad scientists and monsters is not teaching me how to unlive in the real world and that I should have the opportunity to socialize with monsters my own age. Pffffttttt... socializing is for the birds. I know, I’ve asked them about it.

07.15

Despite my arguing against it, I am not out of the woods yet on having to go to Monster High. I know I shouldn’t be this opposed to going, it’s just that I’ve been living at that station since Dad and Dr. Moreau found me running wild through the jungle ten years ago and adopted me. It’s my home and I know I’d really miss it and my dad. He was the first phantom, actually the first non-four-legged monster of any kind I could remember seeing, and he understood the language of animals as well as I did. Well, almost, his accent is off a little when he speaks Jaguar but they’re too polite to point it out to him. Regardless, I argued that if I left the station they would lose a creature translator, which the mad scientists need for their research expeditions. Dad is just one phantom and he can’t be everywhere at once. I thought this was a pretty good argument until Dad and Dr. Moreau both reminded me that expeditions are always scheduled for the dry season, which corresponds with summer break. They also said that it would be more beneficial for the research station in the long run for me to learn how to better interact with other monsters especially since they wanted to start eco-tours to help support the station’s research and they wanted me to be the lead guide. Dr. M. said, “It won’t help us if you run and hide every time you meet a new monster.” I told them I would think about it.

07.25

This morning I came back from a run/climb through the jungle to find we had a visitor at the tree house, or rather two visitors. The first was a nightmare grazing in our yard. I had never actually seen one, at least not while awake, and she raised her head and snorted, “Who’s there?” before I even came out of the jungle. She must have smelled me because I am almost dead quiet when I walk. I answered back, “My name is Jane and I’m a friend.” The nightmare took a step back for a moment and turned her ears in my direction. She softly neighed, “You almost act like you understand what I said... how strange.” I assured her that I did understand what she was saying and she walked toward me, lowered her head and shook her mane. “Well then, I have an itch behind my left ear that I would dearly love scratched and as my rider is engaged elsewhere would you be so kind as to scratch it for me?” I happily did so much to her relief and enjoyment. “Tell me young one,” she asked, “how is it that you understand my speech?” I told her that I didn’t know but that I could always remember being able to understand and speak with creatures and animals. “Ahh,” she replied, “then you are the one my rider has come here to see. I believe she is waiting for you in your stable, err... house.” My first thought on hearing this was to head back into the jungle again. I would rather climb the tallest tree, in the strongest wind, on the darkest night, during the biggest rainstorm than meet a new monster. I’ve run into dragons that didn’t scare me as much but I summoned up my courage and slowly walked up the stairs. I could hear my dad, telling our visitor how an ocelot told him and Dr. M about a young ghoul living in the jungle on her own. My dad was curious so they set out to find me. It took a long time because I did not want to be found. Eventually they did find me and my voodoo sloth Needles living in a cave far from civilization. It took much patience and kindness but eventually they convinced us to go back with them. When I got to the top of the stairs I could see Dad and Dr. M. were having tea with a very properly dressed monster who was carrying on a conversation despite the fact that her head was sitting alone in the seat right next to her. When she saw me her hands reached over, picked up her head, placed it back on her shoulders and she stood up. Dad stood up too and said, “Jane, I’d like to introduce you to Headless Headmistress Bloodgood. She’ll be staying with us for a few days and has a proposition for you.” She smiled at me and said, “Hello Jane, I hear you’re interested in becoming a student at Monster High?” I knew I should have run when I had the chance.

07.26

Headless Headmistress Bloodgood is a very interesting monster. She is kind, polite and as I found out today, tougher than she looks. She asked me to take her on a tour of the surrounding jungle and seemed most interested in the place where Dr. M and Dad found me. I had my doubts whether or not she could keep up, for it was a long walk over difficult terrain to get there and the trails were too narrow and overgrown for her nightmare to travel. She would have to walk. She seemed to sense my doubts and assured me that she would not slow us down. I left Needles behind and told him not to follow us, to which he opened one eye, stuck his tongue out at me and then went back to sleep. Headmistress Bloodgood was true to her word and kept up with me, even when the trail got muddy and steep. She never complained or asked, “How much further?” She did ask about my ability to speak with animals and I told her that yes, I could speak and understand their languages but that didn’t mean I could control them. Animals have minds and agendas of their own and won’t always do what you ask them just because you speak their language. “Not unlike administrating a high school full of teenaged monsters,” replied the Headmistress laughing. We finally made it to my “old home” and even though the jungle had almost reclaimed it, the old hut was still there. We walked around and talked some more about my past, which I can’t remember, and my future, which I have to face. I like her a lot so maybe I will give Monster High a chance.

08.02

I do not know how long I lived in the jungle by myself before Dad and Dr. M. found me. Jungle creatures do not track time the same way that monsters who live in civilization do. We... I mean they, mark time by the dry and rainy seasons, or by events that are out of the ordinary like earthquakes and volcanoes or years where there is a lot of one kind of food and not a lot of another. So I’m not sure how old I actually am. I’m not even exactly sure what kind of monster I am. As a mad scientist, Dad has books on all manner of creatures and monsters but I do not seem to be in any of them. Not me specifically of course, that would be odd, but any monster like me. Dad says that the jungle is so vast that it’s possible there are kinds of monsters that haven’t even been discovered yet. The only clues I have are Needles and my walking stick - I never go on a hike without it, I feel it connects me to my mysterious past. I’ve asked Needles but he says about as much as the stick. I think he knows something but he’s not telling. Oh well, maybe I will find out and maybe I will not. I have a great unlife now so I am not about to complain.

08.15

I have made up my mind to attend Monster High even though it will be, I think, a scary stressful transition. Not that I plan on being a social butterfly - the whole thought of being in a room with more than three other monsters at once makes me want to find a tree to climb or a hole to hide in; but I know I cannot do that forever so I will make the best of it and hopefully I’ll be able to, if not exactly tame my shy side, at least make it play nice with other monsters.

[xlady-saya]

if magic exists, you’re the closest thing [fic]

Relationships: andrew/neil, jerejean, side aaron/katelyn, side alvarez/laila

Summary: The concept of love is not one Andrew understands.

For a long time, it escaped him. It's always fuzzy, always distorted. He'd given up on it long ago, so why is he still chasing answers?

Whatever the reason, he's content to blame Jean Moreau for a lot of things, Katelyn too.

It's their fault he's here, at the happiest place on earth.

Tags: disneyland fic, andrew thinks a lot about love, fluff, comfort, references to canon abuse/past

Read on AO3!

Andrew never liked the concept of time travel; there’s no one distinct moment he’d go back to personally, no tragic world event he’d try to stop like in the movies.  

However, due to today’s events, he might just forgo that opinion to say he’d gladly go back to make sure Disneyland never existed.

Then, maybe he wouldn’t have to listen to Kevin’s nagging.

"You two cannot blow off Jeremy Knox!" Kevin rages, hands planted on the kitchen counter as Neil deftly works around him. Andrew's not quite sure what he's doing; he asked Neil for some ice cream a few minutes ago, and the sounds of clattering dishes and spoons are way more interesting than whatever Kevin is saying.

Andrew leans back into his beanbag chair, content to demolish Aaron in Mario Kart in the meanwhile.

"Yes we can," Neil says, like it's the simplest thing in the world. Andrew almost smirks.

It is; there's no way in hell Kevin's making them go to Disneyland on top of scouting recruits in California. Andrew doesn't understand why Queen Day can't just make another pit stop in Los Angeles after visiting the other recruit he has lined up in Washington.

Andrew exhales slowly, trying his best to keep his attention on the screen while he thinks about Neil. He's not sure when that became so difficult.

Alas, Andrew knows why he's being forced back to California. Neil cares far too much about Exy and his duties as vice-captain to miss out on something so essential. He picked out some of these recruits this time around, and he wants to see them in action. However, in this case it's not even one of his picks, and all they need to do is drop off paperwork. Neil has been trying, futilely, to convince Andrew he doesn't need to come.

The consideration is appalling. Andrew's grip on his controller is enough to make the plastic creak. Neil knows all too well California is a sore spot for him, but not the area they're going. Andrew couldn't care less.

Besides...Andrew's not letting Neil travel that far all alone.

Nothing, not even his past, is going to keep Andrew from going with him to make sure he doesn't die or worse. It wouldn't be a problem if Kevin were accompanying him, but he's got his own recruits to scout.

Neil is capable, Andrew thinks. He doesn't need protection, but it won't stop Andrew from offering it.

He chooses not to think about how one day, he'll have no choice but to stay behind. One day, he'll live apart from Neil and have to trust that he'll be okay.

He swallows down the dread he doesn't want to acknowledge, and claims first place.

"Motherfucker," Aaron spits, but immediately clicks the next level for them. If he can sense Andrew's mood, he doesn't comment, but...this helps.

And then he hits Andrew with a blue shell, and Andrew has to wonder why he shared a womb.

Andrew channels the uncertainty elsewhere, like kicking Aaron's ass and listening to Neil wave Kevin off. The rest of the time, he blames his nerves on the five hour flight he'll have to make in the very near future.

"We're not going," Neil says again, firmer this time. It's a tone that always sends Andrew's protective instincts into overdrive, Neil's temper flaring. But, it's just Kevin, which means there's more amusement than danger at play here.

Neil simply doesn't want to deal with it, so Andrew finds his voice. "Fuck off."

Kevin sputters, no doubt whipping around to where Andrew is sitting. He's not sure why Jeremy Knox is so set on taking them to Disneyland, but Andrew doesn't care enough to think about it. He's trying to do the bare minimum on their trip, and the USC Trojans are trying to make life difficult.

As Kevin groans on, Andrew hears the slightest indication of Neil stepping towards him. Neil's walk is distinct, in that it's nonexistent. Andrew often tests his hearing on how well he can sense Neil's approach.

And then, Neil is in front of him, and the world narrows until it's just Neil, crouched down with a bowl in his hands. Andrew hates what he's begun to call the Neil Effect, since it really has no concrete explanation, at least not an acceptable one. He gets second place in the game, and ignores Aaron's gloating for once. He'll get him back later.

There's something proud in Neil's eyes, self-directed, and that's when Andrew looks down to the bowl of ice cream.

Ah, now he remembers.

They hadn't been able to go grocery shopping, so the only thing in the freezer was boring vanilla. Disappointing, but Andrew's sweet tooth didn't care at the time. He needed dessert, no matter how lackluster.

However, this isn't just vanilla ice cream. There's large chunks of Snickers and peanut butter cups mixed in, haphazardly so, but well enough that someone obviously put in the effort.

Someone being...

Andrew looks between the bowl and Neil's steadily brightening expression, unwilling to linger on the fact Neil took the time to become a Cold Stone apprentice for the sole purpose of pleasing Andrew. It's all a waste though, because when he takes the bowl from Neil's hands, the reluctant words come out anyways.

"You're it for me."

It's not really a confession, since Andrew has known this for a while, but it still stings his pride a bit.

Neil blinks at him, tilting his head in that way that has Andrew glaring extra hard. "Hm?"

"Nothing."

He shoves the biggest spoonful he can manage into his mouth, and deserves the icy burn he gets for it.

Thankfully, before Neil can pry, Kevin is back at it again. Andrew's not sure if it's for better or worse.

The Queen himself rounds on them, blocking the television. "One of the best strikers from one of the top teams invited you to hang out for the day," he says, solely at Neil. He knows well enough that Andrew doesn't care about ranks. "How does that not excite you?"

An appropriate question, though. Why wouldn't it excite Neil?

"I don't know anything about Disneyland."

Neil plops down next to Andrew, indifference well conveyed. However, Andrew knows better. The restlessness in Neil's muscles is slight, but not surprising. There's a lot of things Neil doesn't know about, and while he normally wouldn't care, the idea of a place known for crowds of people probably isn't something Neil wants to explore.

It's not like the striker grew up with any exposure to the hundreds of movies or songs.

"It's an amusement park you loser," Aaron chimes in, and Neil scowls at him. Andrew pauses mid bite, surprised. A little. His brother's brand of comfort is the exact opposite of the what the word entails; it's a contrary, scathing thing, nearly as bad as Andrew's. But Andrew can detect it still, and that was definitely it.

Not that Neil would know though. The striker crosses his arms and sticks out his tongue, but Aaron's attention is already on getting Kevin the fuck out of his way.

"I don't care, I don't want to go," Neil responds petulantly, the words eaten up by the harsh impact of a pillow hitting Kevin's stomach.

At least he moves enough for Aaron's game to resume.

In the middle of Neil's protests, the door opens, admitting another one of Andrew's problems.

And she's unpredictable on top of it.

"Hi sweetie," Katelyn calls, punctuated by the slam of the front door. Andrew tries not to cringe at the name, nor his brother's dreamy sigh as Katelyn waves at them all. She walks over to kiss Aaron on the cheek before her attention is back on Neil's constipated face, which she blows past without a second thought. Oh, to be a cheerleader. "Go where?"

Kevin tears his gaze away from Aaron at the reminder. "Neil, you have to go to Disneyland, just fucking deal with it. You might be able to get some helpful pointers from Jeremy. Plus, don't you want to check on Jean?"

A cheap trick, and one that absolutely sours Andrew's mood despite the sweetness in his mouth. The protective itch is back from hearing Moreau's name, and he tugs Neil a little closer out of necessity.

Another reason for them not to go: Andrew's not sure he can stop himself from murdering the ex-Raven. Victim of Riko or not, he'd put his hands on Neil.

"If he wasn't doing okay I'm sure he would've reached out on his own," Neil counters, seeing through Kevin's appeal to sympathy. Neil, while he gets along with Jean better now, doesn't worry about him nearly as much as Kevin does.

Kevin can visit him then, if he's so curious.

As if Andrew said the words aloud, Kevin's stare intensifies. "Are you kidding--"

"Wait," Katelyn interrupts without care, and Andrew actually looks at her. He's been giving her that privilege a lot more now. Not everyone is dumb or brave enough to cut Kevin off, and even the striker looks impressed. Andrew's immediately thrown by the quality of her stare, the determination. Neil makes a strained noise in the back of his throat, and well, he does know Katelyn better. "You guys are talking about Disneyland? Like...Disneyland Disneyland?"

The existence of a knock-off Disneyland is certainly a topic Andrew will explore with Neil later.

"Oh no," Aaron whispers, and that's all the warning they get.

Neil leans further into Andrew's personal space, almost guarding. Like he senses the catastrophe too. "Uhh, yeah?"

Katelyn screams.

Andrew's hand on the back of Neil’s neck keeps him from jumping out of their seat, but Katelyn's got a one track mind as she rushes for him, plopping down on the ground as Aaron checks his ears for ringing.

The only satisfying part is that Katelyn pushes Kevin out of the way in the process. He goes reeling back with a yelp, very unbecoming of royalty.

"Oh my god! Neil you have to go, it's so fun!" Katelyn cheers, clapping her hands together softly. She chooses then to show Neil her backpack, adorned with about 100,000 Disney pins. Just an estimate.

As if Neil knows what any of them are. Neil barely blinks at Elsa's face before Katelyn's back to talking his ear off. "I've been trying to get Aaron to go with me for months but we don't ever have the time. I have a super long list of stuff I want! If I give you the money will you get them for me?"

Katelyn bites her lip rather hard then, like she almost let a 'please' slip, and Andrew doesn't try to think about the consideration. Katelyn clasps her hands together instead, like a plea.

Andrew figures the only reason her forehead isn't on the floor is because she knows better than to have any faith in a boys' dorm room.

"Whoa, whoa," Neil says, raising his hands in the face of Katelyn's puppy eyes. "I'm not going--"

The puppy eyes turn into those of a Rottweiler. Andrew doesn't know why all his previous judgements are being so twisted on this mediocre Thursday night, but whatever.

"Neil," Katelyn breathes, patience tested. "It's the happiest place on Earth."

Andrew's eyes flit to Neil's, communicating the same thing: bullshit.

Neil's confused expression falls into downright boredom, watching Andrew swirl the remains of his dessert. "Katelyn, I don't know how to tell you this, but I actually don't care."

Aaron wheezes at the same time Katelyn deflates.

"Josten--"

"B-but..." Katelyn turns her shining eyes on Aaron, cutting off his warning like a shiv. Andrew almost doesn't want to watch his brother be this pathetic. "Aren't I right, babe? Neil just has to experience it, he has to!"

Andrew hears Kevin open a bag of chips.

"I--um," Aaron tries, glancing between Neil and Katelyn's pout. It takes him about...two attempts to make words. "Yeah Josten, you have to."

"Wow," Kevin mutters, off to the side.

Neil glares at Aaron's weakness, but he had to know Aaron would be useless from the start. Aaron can't say no to his girlfriend.

What a loser.

"Katelyn, I'm not going," Neil tries again, dutifully not looking at the Disney-vomit backpack Katelyn keeps inching closer to him. "Andrew and I are just stopping by to drop off paperwork for one of Kevin's new recruits and that's it."

Kevin takes a deep breath, like he remembers he started this argument in the first place, but is cut off by Katelyn's backpack hitting the floor.

Neil is the only one who seems to take it as a threat, and he holds up a hand for Kevin to shut up. Now, Andrew knows most mafia movies are unrealistic and stupid, but he thinks he's had enough actual exposure to make a good guess.

This feels like some kind of standoff between two troublesome redheads, and he meets Aaron's confused stare with his blank one.

He wishes everyone would get out of his dorm.

"Okay, I get it," Katelyn says slowly, words spaced out by deep breaths for effect. Andrew would think she's a theater major, not biology. Neil watches Katelyn's hands fold in front of her, eyes hard. "I didn't want to have to do this."

Neil quirks a brow, somewhat amused.

"Neil."

"Katelyn."

"You owe me," she says, and the room freezes. Owe. Haha. That's a very dangerous word to toss around in the presence of Andrew Minyard, especially concerning his boyfriend who he's sworn to protect. Andrew turns on her with a frown, but she's undeterred by his ominous stance, fixed solely on Neil. "From the time. With the thing."

Katelyn flips her wrist back and forth then, an almost meaningless gesture, and no one knows what she's talking about

Except for Neil.

The striker's face goes red, and Andrew chooses then to squeeze the back of his neck tighter. Neil's not panicking, Andrew knows, but it's an instinct. Katelyn's smug smile is starting to piss him off, and he shakes Neil sharply.

"Neil," he says, voice even despite the tension in his limbs. "What--"

"We're going to fucking Disneyland," Neil says with a groan, slumping into the edge of the beanbag chair. He looks far from distressed, more...like he's been bested.

Katelyn cheers, jumping up to hug Aaron, who still has no idea what's going on.

Same.

"I'll get my list ready!" Katelyn rips out her science notebook, nearly tearing some neatly written equations. Not that she cares, in the moment. "Oh Neil, you're the best!"

Andrew drags Neil by the chin until their gazes meet, and Andrew hates when Neil looks sheepish. It means he's up to no good. "Neil, she can't force you to--"

"She's not forcing me," Neil sighs, tugging Andrew's sleeve until he lets their fingers link together. Neil's smile is rueful as he slots his eyes over to where Katelyn is scribbling on her homework, and he makes sure no one is watching when he slides Andrew's hand against his cheek. "Trust me when I say...I made the bed I'm about to lie in. I honor my deals too. Okay?"

Neil is such a problem, because he knows Andrew too well. He grinds his teeth, but he comes up with no argument. It's Katelyn, so it's not like the deal Neil made is anything life threatening or degrading, but Andrew's curiosity is annoying regardless.

Maybe when his pride dies down a little, he'll ask.

"Whatever you say," he scoffs, but keeps Neil's hand tucked against his side. "I still didn't agree to--"

Andrew looks down to where Neil fiddles with his shackle bracelet, still shining around his wrist because of how well the striker takes care of it. Neil tilts his head, and oh, oh no.

Andrew glares at the offending gift, given by his own hands and delicately tied around Neil's wrist. If he knew it would be this much of a weakness, he would've thrown it in the ocean.

"Andrew?" Neil asks, squeezing his hand, and Andrew doesn't know what to do other than curse Katelyn, himself, and then Walt Disney.

"I hate you," he mutters, and Neil's all too happy to hear it.

--

It takes Andrew about five minutes or so to determine that Jean Moreau is in love with Jeremy Knox.

It takes even less time for Andrew to decide he doesn't give a fuck. In fact, Andrew's not sure why he notices in the first place. He doesn't care about those things, but maybe it's just that they're so obvious, Andrew's can't help but pick up on it.

The long glances, the way Jeremy keeps reaching up to fix the stupid headband on Jean's head...

Gross.

The landscape in Andrew's mind has a tremble in it today, so there's no way for him to tell for sure why the two of them are so apparent to him. The air around him gives him a lot of things to linger on; disjointed laughter, cheery music, and less upsetting, the smell of fried desserts. It ties a rope around his brain and leads him in different directions, leaving only Neil as his weight. No wonder the Jean Moreau shitshow managed to slip in there somewhere.

Andrew doesn't even have the energy to be annoyed at that, at his inability to reign himself in and decide what to cast aside or focus on. His gaze scans the massive crowd in front of him, behind him, painfully aware that he's surrounded.

That Neil is surrounded.

He sighs, and the sound makes his boyfriend flinch in relief. Like he forgot Andrew was there, and is now all too happy that he is.

Calm down, junkie.

Andrew's fingers itch for a cigarette, but that ship had sailed as soon as he stepped through the Disneyland entrance. He thinks this, but he's actually not particularly anxious. He's not Neil, who needs to know all the quickest ways out of a place and who takes a large crowd as an invitation to slip in and disappear.

That's mostly where the itch comes from, Andrew realizes with only some irritation; he's hyper-aware of Neil, and all his reactions. The striker keeps glancing around at the streams of people, the bright colors and signs inviting them to a landscape with no laws or reason.

It should be everything Neil hates, and Andrew watches his blue eyes trace the cobblestone and directories.

"Beautiful isn't it!" Jeremy gestures to the road leading up to main street, and some of the tension in Jean's shoulders notably dissipates. "Did you know Disneyland brings in an average of--"

"50,000 people a day," Jean deadpans, as if the thought still makes him queasy. He gets a genuine laugh out of Jeremy for it, so Andrew guesses that was the point all along.

Andrew remembers everything, and he did not need that useless fact. But alas, now it's stuck.

Neil's body is surprisingly still beside him. Calm.

Andrew pauses, waiting for Neil to show some sign that he can't handle this. It's not a reflection of any kind of weakness Andrew thinks he has, he simply knows that sometimes Neil pushes himself where he shouldn't. Andrew considers this a loophole in their non-finalized deal. He lets Neil fight his own battles, but Andrew is not afraid to step in and put a stop to the ones Neil doesn't know he's in.

But, to Andrew's unintentional relief, Neil doesn't look two seconds from a panic attack. The striker’s face settles into a deadpan expression, a habit stolen from Andrew himself. There's no tremble, or fidgeting, or sign to tell Andrew to drag Neil back to their hotel and hole him up there.

Neil simply looks fucking done, and Andrew couldn't agree more.

Their unfortunate companions are there to remind them it's only the beginning.

"Oh my god, what should we do first?" Jeremy Knox babbles, stupid Mickey ears on his head, and Andrew watches with only some amusement as Neil leans back an inch in fear. The striker never did know what to do with genuinely happy people. Katelyn, he's come to understand based on the things they have in common. Their protective instincts and tempers ghost over her sheltered lifestyle and talkativeness, though Andrew still doesn't get how Neil stands her. Renee he simply hadn't trusted; Neil had seen the darkness beneath the smiles, but in time, he'd come to trust and value her as well.

Jeremy Knox is a different story, and currently even Andrew doesn't know how to feel about him. Such optimism and ignorance to the real world are things Andrew would normally write off in a person, but there's something swimming beneath the surface in Jeremy Knox's eyes that has him rethinking.

In short, Andrew gets the vibe that if pushed far enough, Jeremy Knox might actually have the capacity to snap over Disneyland. Disneyland.

That kind of madness is something Andrew can't help but recognize in people, and he keeps an eye on Neil as a result. He should've known; who gets custom Disney ears the color of their fucking school?

"Uh..." Neil tries, but he's apparently speechless. Andrew reaches down to tug on Neil's belt loop, and he won't ever say it's out of comfort. Neil takes it like one though, scooting closer, and the urge for nicotine is less powerful for a moment.

There's no avoiding it, and he despises feeling trapped. They're going to have to spend their whole day here. It really isn't their kind of place, but Andrew has not right to wonder how they got roped into this.

Andrew glares at Neil’s bag. He didn’t bring it for them.

That's why they're here, because Neil has a two-page souvenir list in his backpack courtesy of Aaron's girlfriend.

Andrew's scowl returns at the memory, and he turns it on Jean.

Just because.

"Jean, what's your favorite ride?" Jeremy asks, eyes shining. Neither Andrew nor Neil asked for the recommendation.

"Indiana Jones," Jean answers, seemingly without thinking too hard on it, and his eyes shine when Jeremy beams.

"Mine too!"

Gag.

Andrew's opinion of Jean Moreau has not improved over the past year. Andrew promised Neil he wouldn't confront the man while they were actually at the park, but it's a talk Andrew will eventually have if he has anything to say about it.

He's different though, that much Andrew can tell. The backliner still curls in on himself, making himself as small as can be despite his height. The tattooed '3' is dark against his pale skin, but the sun has taken out some of the starkness. Jean always keeps his hands in front of himself, as if ready to guard against an attack, but his shoulders are less stiff around his new team.

They're observations, nothing more. Andrew couldn't care less about Jean Moreau's life or happiness. It's all his own to deal with, but Andrew cannot ignore the changes, since they mirror Neil's own.

Speaking of Neil...

He's still trying to find a polite way of telling Jeremy he has zero clue about what Disneyland has to offer, and Andrew notes that Neil must've sensed it too: Jeremy's batshit opinion about this place. Otherwise Neil would never hold back the usual bluntness.

Andrew would pay to see it.

Jean tugs one of Jeremy's Mickey ears, gesturing to the entrance. "The girls are here."

Neil's demeanor breathes a little when he sees Laila and Alvarez approaching; he likes them, and even Andrew knows they're not nearly as annoying as their teammates. They're walking hand in hand, the same Trojan ears glistening on their heads.

What is it with these people?

Andrew lets the greetings fall into the background, but can't say he feels awful when Laila cracks some dumb Exy pun, making the edge of Neil's lips twitch in a smile.

Another thing the girls have to offer: they seem to know when Jeremy is about to launch into another tirade.

"Jeremy cool it," Alvarez says, holding Jeremy back by the hoodie before he can get anywhere further into Neil's bubble. "Neil's not going to remember everything about all the different sections, just let him explore."

For a split second, Jeremy's face scrunches up, like he ate something foul. "He needs to know not to go to....that place."

Laila rolls her eyes. "You mean Star Wars--"

"Stop."

Laila turns her aggravated stare on her girlfriend, but all Alvarez offers is a shrug. "He's right."

Neil turns to Andrew as if he'll understand, but he does not.

Jeremy's eyes flit around the park to all the decorations, the crowd a sea of Mickey ears, planning out where to drag them. And the rest of them allow it. Team dynamics don't interest Andrew much, but they're not following Jeremy out of fear. They're treating this journey, along with Jeremy's eccentricities, as inevitable and maybe even endearing.

Andrew wants to leave.

Then Jeremy gasps, staring down at his empty hands. "Neil, you and Andrew have never been here right? Maybe I should've gotten you a map, for the experience, you know?" Then Jeremy tilts his head up, in that haughty way Kevin might after lecturing them on an exy skill he acquired. "It's fine though, I know where everything is. You're in good hands!"

Andrew seriously doubts that.

"Oh, that reminds me!" Jeremy says, plopping his giant backpack on the floor. Andrew wonders if he packed for the possibility of them being stuck there for eternity. It's a gift for Jeremy Knox to be able to make Andrew's day that much worse. He pulls out two custom sets of ears from his backpack, styled in white and orange. Palmetto colors.

No.

"You guys can match," Jeremy says with a wink, and Neil looks torn. On one hand they're orange, on the other hand they're absurd.

But of course, Neil's obsession wins over, and he grabs for a pair of ears without hesitation.

Andrew can't.

"I'm not wearing those," Andrew states, uncaring of how the rest of them flinch. Neil's the only one not surprised, but he's giving Andrew that face, and Andrew has to hold himself back from telling Neil to stop.

We're in public, control yourself.

But Neil just sighs, fixing the ears to his head. They clash with Neil's reddish-brown hair, bright and sparkly.

Andrew hates being gay.

He ignores Jean's glare as Jeremy holds the other pair of ears to his chest. More evidence, Andrew realizes, and the pathetic kind too. Jean can't stand the thought of someone hurting his not-boyfriend's feelings.

"O-oh," Jeremy says, but his smile is back, undeterred. He spins to face Neil, who miraculously, doesn't flinch. "Well, I guess I'll wear them then! Neil, you and I can match! I don't want you to be alon--"

The stream of consciousness in Andrew's head comes to a jarring halt, tires screeching.

Unacceptable, absolutely not. He doesn't even have a moment to think about why, or stop himself from being so ridiculous.

He snatches the ears from Jeremy's hands and puts them on, refusing to meet Neil's smug stare.

"Shut up."

And thankfully, Neil does, but others do not.

"He's as bad as you babe," Laila whispers behind him, and he practically feels the heat radiating off Alvarez.

"Can it."

Andrew catches Jean's sigh of relief in his peripheral, and isn't quite sure why he agreed to not kill him in the happiest place on Earth.

"You guys look great!" Jeremy comments, but Andrew is already walking ahead, eager to be anywhere else.

That, and he's pretty sure the churros are this way.

Neil keeps up with him easily, given his strong legs, even knowing Andrew is deliberately trying to not look at him. Neil's gaze is a warm, affectionate thing, one Andrew will never be used to. Neil's so distracted, he almost trips, and Andrew hooks his arm around Neil's waist to right him. They're connected for merely a second, but Andrew's arm feels like it's on fire.

"Focus," he growls, but Neil doesn't take it as a threat. He never does.

"Mm, I can't," Neil says. "I like them. I like them on you."

"They're hideous."

"So our uniforms are hideous?"

"Yes."

They reach the churros, and Neil buys him three.

Jeremy starts to babble again as Andrew digs in, and Andrew can't help but notice he buys Jean one without being asked. The ex-Raven doesn't look super pleased with the sweetness, but he eats it anyways.

And throughout all the chatter, Jean won't stop staring right at Jeremy.

Why does Andrew keep noticing? He might just be able to blame Katelyn for that too.

Ever since he picked her up from Eden's, she's been responsible for a lot of unacceptable thoughts in his head. All because of one, stupid line of reasoning.

"I know, I know a lot of people use the word and they don't mean it, or they don't act like it but...that's on them. That's not real love, the actual thing, the definition. Just because people use the word incorrectly doesn't mean the feeling isn't real."

Real love. Already, there's so many things wrong with that phrase. Katelyn doesn't see it as subjective, Andrew doesn't see it as anything at all. Devotion, protective, consideration...they are all things people would perhaps put towards the definition, but they neglect the absences as well. Absence of hurt, of blame, of judgement.

That's the half so many people don't get right, and even if they do, Andrew cannot see how it could be wrapped up in a word.

He watches Jean sigh and lean into Jeremy's sphere, and thinks of how his brother looks at Katelyn. It's eerily similar.

Andrew would not use the word love normally, so he reaches in to pluck Katelyn's idiotic definition out from the past to see if it applies. The pretty parts are there; Jeremy is constantly aware of Jean's presence, careful to steer him to the edges of crowds, to check if he's alright. On the opposite end of things, Jean just looks like he'd burn the so called happiest place on Earth to the ground if it meant being able to listen to Jeremy's prattle.

He's not willing to analyze much more than that, not with Neil by his side. It puts pressure on the stone in him, dropped there by Katelyn that night at Eden's and steadily growing with every moment he spends around his boyfriend.

"I think we should definitely go on Indy though," Jeremy says, leaning in to take a bite of Jean's churro. It's so stupidly romantic Andrew wants to vomit. "I want to see Jean get scared again!"

The girls smirk, though a minute later Alvarez is teasing Laila just the same. Jean's face is colored red, not with shame, but innocent embarrassment. Not becoming of a Raven, but then again, Jean never wanted to be one.

"I was not scared, I had never been on the ride before!" Jean crosses his arms, and his teammates look at him in the way the Foxes look at Neil. Complete adoration.

"It scared him to death," Jeremy says to Andrew and Neil, trying very poorly to whisper.

And, without breaking eye contact with Jean, Andrew says: "If only."

Because really, if only.

Jean's the only one besides Neil who takes the statement as intended, as in completely seriously. The backliner's face goes white, staring at Andrew and waiting for it to be a joke. He has to know deep down it's not.

Jeremy holds his stomach from how hard he's laughing. "Ha! You're a riot Andrew," he wheezes, and Neil regards him as neutrally as he can. It's hard, when Jeremy sounds like a dying seagull.

Andrew pulls out his phone, avoiding Neil's gaze. Technically, he only promised not to physically confront Jean at Disneyland, nothing else. "That's me, comedy king."

Without looking up, Andrew opens his notes app and sidesteps Jeremy until he's closer to Jean. He has no qualms about calmly typing out the words 'I despise you' before showing it to him.

Honestly, no other Raven is this easy to read, but Andrew supposes it has more to do with Jean's complete revival than anything else.

Jean reads the message, blinks, looks at Neil as if to confirm his suspicions, and then nods slowly.

Well, now he knows. It'll be a good way to put a pin in things for now.

When Andrew walks back over to his churro holder (see: Neil), the redhead is shaking his head, grin way fonder than it should be.

--

It takes around fifteen minutes for them to ditch the group, and for Andrew to stuff his pair of ears into Neil's backpack to never see the light of day again.

It's absurdly easy, they barely have to duck into the crowd or put their heads down. Despite Jeremy's insistence that Andrew and Neil see all there is to see, he'd hardly taken his eyes off Jean. In fact, the two are so engrossed in each other they barely notice the girls, who seem to weirdly not mind.

Jeremy is the talker, and Jean is only too happy to go along with it, soaking in every nonsense opinion even when he seems to not understand the relevance or importance. Andrew wonders if this so called 'love' truly makes people that uncaring, but then again, he knows it does. He's watched his brother fawn over every dumb little detail of Katelyn's life. Once, she'd gone on a ten minute tangent about her colored pencil coordinated note taking system. Aaron had been fascinated, not because he cared about the content of the words, but because of Katelyn herself.

Andrew doesn't understand, but his mind conjures up the image of Neil peeking over the top of a bus seat, the hours floating by.

They find a good spot to sit down on Main Street near the castle, perfect for the people watching Neil likes to do. Andrew's on his third churro with a fourth lined up, and if Neil's wallet is crying about it, he doesn't seem to mind. The striker's legs dangle lazily from the bench they're on, swinging in time with the cheery music blaring through the speakers. Andrew brought him here to escape the crowd; Neil always preferred to watch, to catalogue the different types of people. Disneyland, at the very least, should have an interesting variety for Neil to judge and pick apart for the nonsensical survival guide in his head.

Page ninety-two: signs of regret-filled parents. That's how Andrew would guess it's organized.

But no, Neil's staring right at him. Andrew could feel it mid chew, the striker's gaze penetrating and brighter than any of the thousand balloons he's seen flying around.

Andrew managed to hold out for about half a churro, no longer, before giving in.

Neil's triumphant smile is an indication he was all too aware of the game.

"Are they good?" Neil asks, and it's enough to make Andrew pause. He watches the way Neil adjusts those stupid ears on his head, the way he licks his lips to mimic the place Andrew assuredly has sugar on his own.

Rather than answer, and before he does something stupid, he shoves the end of the churro into Neil's mouth. It's not an uncommon occurrence.

Neil barely yelps before dutifully taking a bite. Andrew waits for the usual scrunch of his nose, the disgust at the sweetness. Still, Neil will never refuse something Andrew offers him.

"Not bad," Neil says, chewing slow. There's sugar on his lips now too, and Andrew realizes he made an error. "Still too much sugar."

Unheard of. There's no such thing.

With a scoff, Andrew wipes the excess sugar off Neil's lips with his thumb. "You disgust me, Josten."

It doesn't sound as convincing as it used to, and Neil's triumphant smile only grows wider. Only then does he sigh and lean back, staring into the sea of people who love wasting money. Andrew will never get the fascination.

There's a good distance between them on the bench which Neil hasn't tried to close, and won't until Andrew says otherwise. Andrew's not in the mood to feel his weight, not today. It wasn't brought on by anything specific, but Neil abides like he always does.

Neil doesn't seem any less content.

"I can't believe they haven't noticed we're gone," the redhead says, far from disappointed. The relief is something Andrew can relate to. It's been about an hour, and they've done nothing, but Andrew knows he's having a better time this way.

The last thing he wants is to watch Jean and Jeremy obliviously flirt and fawn over one another with no outlet. Andrew's not sure if they'd be worse if they were actually dating, and part of him considers just dropping the bomb on them to ruin any kind of movie moment they might have at this godforsaken place.

"I can," Andrew mutters, but doesn't elaborate. He's sure Neil hasn't actually noticed the pining, not with Andrew nearby, and certainly not with everything else going on. He doesn't need to know, because then they might have to talk about it.

Andrew doesn't have all the words for that yet.

Neil hums, interpreting the words in his own way. "Jean does seem...better. I guess he would be more focused on his friends. At least now Kevin will stop complaining, I'll get to tell him Jean's doing just great."

The topic of Jean Moreau isn't much better.

He's not able to keep all of his glower locked down, and he ends up making a passing school teacher flinch. "I don't care how he is," he says through his teeth, and Neil stiffens.

Yeah, wrong thing to bring up. Not as bad as the times Neil will drop his mother into conversation, but not good regardless.

Neil sighs, fiddling with his bracelet again. It's what he does when he wants to touch Andrew but won't. "Andrew, Jean is--"

Andrew turns the intensity of his stare on Neil. They've had this talk before, and he's not trying to bring it up again. Contrary to what other people may believe, he's not adverse to having difficult conversations with Neil. Arguments, even.

They happen, but...

There's something about it; Andrew won't say it's comfortable, but he simply knows it won't change anything. He and Neil disagree sometimes, but it seldom turns into a screaming match or the silent treatment. More often than not, Andrew's willing to keep coming back to a topic if it means they reach a compromise. He doesn't yield that way for anyone else, but Neil doesn't make it feel like submission or defeat. It's why it doesn't make Andrew nearly as antsy as he originally believed it would, when they started their this. For them, it's problem-solving.

This however...this is one thing Andrew can't excuse. Not yet, maybe not ever. They keep having to step away.

"Don't," Andrew says. Neil's eyes hold no fear, and they shouldn't. Andrew's not saying it unkindly, it's the truth. "Whatever you say will not change my mind. Not with this."

Not when it comes to people hurting what's mine.

Andrew's hands curl into the edge of the bench, the splitting wood a comfort. He's strong, his hands have the power to kill, to fend off. Why that's so important in this moment...

When Neil still doesn't look like he understands, Andrew reaches forward to flick the shackle pendant around his wrist, almost on instinct.

And well, guess it's become a weakness for them both.

Neil sighs, and bites his tongue in a rare show of restraint. The striker keeps back every counterpoint and argument, which he surely has handfuls of, and puffs out his cheeks. Any other moment it would be...maybe not so annoying.

But not cute.

Some of the trembling in Andrew's frame leaves; he's not dumb enough to think this is over, Neil is too stubborn. But for now, the striker accepts it.

Though, not without being infuriating. Neil's gaze pierces him, sticking Andrew to the spot.

"I'm safe with you Andrew," Neil breathes, and Andrew's not willing to acknowledge how Neil quickly aims for the root of the problem. It's a spike through Andrew's chest. Again, Neil races ahead of Andrew's own thought process at the most random times.

So that's it. Andrew thinks. A promise.

It won't happen again. Neil has no way of knowing that, but he wants Andrew to believe it; nothing will hurt Neil so severely again because Andrew won't allow it. Andrew will thrash and bleed before it happens again, but Jean Moreau is a reminder that it can, even when most of the guilt falls on a dead man. There will always be others, lurking in the shadows. Weapons, threats.

But still, with all his paranoia, Andrew can't even tell Neil to be quiet, because to refute such a statement feels wrong in a number of ways. Neil's trust is something he earned.

Andrew hums instead, and refuses to repeat the obvious. Instead, he pushes Neil back by the shoulder, his back hitting the bench and forcing Neil to loosen up.

Better.

"I can't believe a place like this exists," Neil sighs, giving into the calm Andrew lends him. Andrew's not sure if he means it from the perspective of a runaway or not. Disneyland would be an enigma to most people with Neil's past.

"You don't feel happy?" Andrew says with a sneer, taking in the fighting families and crying children. He knows there's equal parts people smiling and having fun, and he's choosing to center himself on the negatives, but he's not in the mood to apply Bee's advice for once.

"Well if I did it would be because of you," Neil says, grin smug from the stare Andrew turns on him. No one needs his sappiness. "But I don't really like that word."

Haha.

Andrew pokes Neil in the leg, more like a jab, and Neil jumps. "Stop stealing my lines."

Neil snorts. "I just meant in terms of this place. Doesn't it feel untrustworthy from the get-go if you advertise your park as the happiest place? It can't actually be."

It's amazing how hard Neil's brain works when it comes to unimportant topics. "Careful, if Jeremy hears you he'll have a meltdown."

"That would be interesting though."

"And potentially homicidal."

Andrew makes a note to bring Kevin if he ever has to return here. Kevin won't be able to keep his distaste hidden, and he'll get to really test the Jeremy Knox theory.

"Have you ever been to an amusement park?" Neil asks a moment later, voice low. Treading lightly.

It's not a particularly bad memory for Andrew though, and he only shrugs. He's no longer shocked about how much he talks to Neil. It's easy, not draining.

"Mostly for school, I wouldn't waste time with the rides," Andrew says, and feels the memory of old dollar bills in his hands. Sometimes he'd be lucky enough for his foster homes to provide him money for food, sometimes not. "Carnivals were easier. I could just go off and find some abandoned corner to smoke or wait it out."

No one ever cared to come looking for him.

Despite his sweet tooth, he seldom had the actual money to spoil himself with the fried foods either. He makes up for that now, obviously.

Speaking of, he wants a frozen lemonade at some point.

Neil's eyes are devoid of pity, but Andrew knows he could quickly turn that understanding gaze into a rage-fueled one if he chose to provide any of the details.

He doesn't. He never enjoyed things like amusement parks, and he doesn't mind either way if Neil does, but part of him is simply at ease, here on this stupid bench.

Neil's protection can't reach back into the past, no matter how badly the striker would like it to.

"Everyone always talked about Disneyland as the best place in the world," Andrew offers instead, waving his hand around. If anything, the sheer size of the park is the most impressive thing about it. The other kids in his classes couldn't let it go; family vacations, dream dates, etc.

The hype around the park never died down no matter how Andrew aged.

Compared to Neil sitting next to him, the park is without.

"And your verdict?" Neil asks anyways, because he tries not to assume when he can.

Andrew's not sure why his heart reacts the way it does to that.

Neil's stupid ears pair with his Palmetto hoodie perfectly, and he looks like the pumpkin Cinderella would've taken to the ball. The fierceness of him isn't softened in the slightest by it though, his vulnerability comes from his eyes, the way all his alarms become inactive in Andrew's presence.

Andrew craves it, this complete, unyielding trust.

He hates how Neil can make any situation interesting.

"It's annoying," Andrew eventually says, rolling up his churro wrapper into a tight ball. He misses the trash can when he tosses it, and ignores the disgruntled stare he gets for it from a park worker. "Not awful."

Neil straightens up, too proud of himself. "Are you saying that because of the churros or because I'm here?"

"Be quiet."

Neil, because his death wish inclination isn't as active today, doesn't point out the non-answer. The striker just hands him money for another churro, though he's considering beignets.

Neil watches the way Andrew stares at the money, seemingly content to allow Andrew this indulgence. "I remember kids talking about it when I was younger. I could never understand why such a crowded place could be so fun. Much less the lines or overpriced food. But..."

Andrew clutches the money tight, but it's a poor substitute for Neil's hand. "But?"

"But well, it's not like I ever got the chance to try it out." Neil gestures to the precise decorations, the ornate buildings, and his eyes flit down the trolley lines like they remind him of a destination far worse. Andrew never asked Neil if he train hopped before. Neil sighs, his nose scrunching from the sweet, candied scents in the air. "Maybe I would've loved it. Then I'd be a lunatic like Jeremy."

It's meant to be a joke, but Andrew understands. That's the strangeness of the unknown. Had things been different, had they been raised like anyone else, there's no telling what they could've been like.

But things weren't different. Andrew isn't foolish enough to reflect on the past with bitterness or entertain what he could've been like if only. The asinine exercise would do nothing for him, for his future.

The future he's coming to anticipate and accept, because Neil also refuses to look back. It's still a globby, hard to see mess right now, but the more days pass with Neil by his side, even it begins to take shape.

But he doesn't have room in his chest to say all that, so instead he tugs on Neil's headband again. Snug.

"You're already wearing the ears," he drawls. As if Neil forgot, his hands fly up to tug on one of the ears, and Andrew is helpless to save the image forever.

"I should probably take them o--"

"No."

Just...no.

It's hard to make Neil blush, but when it happens Andrew makes sure to catalogue it. He watches the color spread on the bridge of the striker's nose, and then Neil laughs, a light and fleeting sound. Andrew hears it over everything else.

Neil turns on the bench, hugging his knees to his chest, and Andrew is moving to face him without thinking about it. "I feel like...if the others were here they'd say we're wasting the opportunity," Neil muses, pursing his lips. "Like we should be going on rides and watching shows."

"That's everyone's problem then," Andrew waves the thought off, tracking Neil's lips. He's not ready for a kiss, but he's warming up to the idea.

But, Neil seldom brings up things pointlessly with him.

"It is," Neil agrees, and Andrew presses his thumb into the crease of his boyfriend's brows. Neil doesn't flinch. "But they might be right. I guess I can't expect to have the same opinions now as I did as a kid on the run. I should at least be able to say, yeah I went to Disneyland slightly more adjusted and I still don't see what the big deal is."

Ah, the point emerges. Andrew will admit...

"You don't seem anxious," Andrew observes, because he expected Neil to be very nervous.

Neil tilts his head, and Andrew has to make him stop doing that. "What?"

Andrew leans back, and Neil follows the touch instinctively before getting a hold of himself. "If you really felt you were wasting time, you'd be all fidgety and irritating."

"I didn't say I felt like I was wasting time, just that I maybe should," Neil sighs. Andrew isn't sure what he means, but he doesn't have time to think about it when Neil's impish grin comes back. "But no, any time I spend with you isn't a waste."

Andrew leans in, slow and insistent, and lets Neil tense in anticipation of a touch, a kiss. Then, Andrew pushes his face away. It's what he deserves, and Neil bites his tongue.

Huffy.

Neil slumps back, but the pouty thing he's doing dampens the scowl. He needs to not spend so much time with Katelyn.

"You've become a sap, rabbit."

And it's dangerous for both of them. Andrew doesn't mean for the words to come out so light, but what's the use in correcting himself?

"I get it from you," Neil shoots back, and oh, now he chooses to read Andrew's mind. At the twitch of Andrew's mouth, Neil smiles, the kind reserved for Andrew and Andrew alone.

Andrew's nerve endings are still a little fuzzy, but he tugs Neil's sleeve until he follows. He brings Neil close enough to feel Andrew's heat, to smell the cinnamon. This works, for now.

And Neil, despite being somewhere people dream of visiting, looks totally focused on him. When he gazes down the trolley lines again, the expression is much more promising.

"Who knows? It might be fun if we went now, with all the foxes," Neil wonders aloud. "Not sure, since I think the closest thing to a ride I've ever been on is a train, and not legally."

Well, there's the train hopping question answered.

But that's it, he supposes. He feels nothing about this place, or any amusement parks for that matter. Even in his tumultuous childhood, he experienced them, never understood the appeal.

Neil's never had the opportunity to try. He's never been able to form an opinion.

Andrew thinks that's at least one aspect of his freedom Neil should have, even if it is something so trivial.

Andrew sighs; what has he gotten himself into?

Neil Josten is a whirlwind of an individual, but he's Andrew's.

That's what Neil would say, without hesitation, every time.

'But I'm yours.'

Andrew really does need a cigarette, but that frozen lemonade will have to do. He stands up, making a show of brushing himself off. He can feel the tilts of Neil's head behind him, for fuck's sake.

"C'mon then," Andrew says, turning around to adjust how crooked Neil's headband is. Another problem he didn't need, but it's too late now. Damn merchandise. When Neil still makes no move to get up, Andrew tugs his bangs. "Let's go on a ride."

Neil's jaw opens and closes, but Andrew is already turning away from him. Neil's fast, he should be able to catch up. "W-wait, are you sure?"

Neil scrambles to his feet, and Andrew can't look directly at him. He's sure there's something bright and shiny swimming in those eyes right now, and that's far too much.

He tries to go through his mind for what he knows about Disneyland, and asks himself if he's in the mood to be up high.

No, not today. Neil has him feeling far too much already.

"I think the Matterhorn is enclosed," he says, in lieu of an explanation, and knows Neil will get the meaning.

Neil grips the straps of his backpack, reigning in the energy as best he can. Andrew wonders when he'll work up the nerve to tell Neil he doesn't have to when it's like this. Even without touch, Andrew promised to take everything Neil had to offer.

He's not sure if Neil can sense the feeling, but his face softens anyways. "Okay...yeah!"

Neil falls in step beside him, and Andrew revises his previous statement with only mild displeasure. He doubts he will ever have enough of this.

--

The Matterhorn was, what a shocker, a bad idea.

Andrew will never say he tries to make his driving a comfortable experience, but he knows his road raging still would've been a more pleasurable time than being thrown around on that poor excuse for a ride.

The bumpiness of the Matterhorn was also not helped by how tense he was; he felt like a cutting board in a blender, trying to force away the unrealistic thought of Neil flying off the edge and plummeting to his death during the whole two minute affair.

A forty-five minute wait for two minutes of back pain that'll last the rest of the day.

"Well that sucked," Neil says with a wince, stretching out his back slowly. Andrew pointedly looks elsewhere. "Why do people do this for fun? I feel like my spine got ripped out and then put back in the wrong way."

Andrew wants to tell him to stop being so dramatic, but for once Neil's words are accurate.

They tried. No one can say they didn't try.

"Nevermind you were right," Neil says as Andrew orders them a lemonade to share; Neil ignores the glare Andrew gives him for chugging the first half in one go. Neil sighs from the rush of citrus, placing the cold cup to his forehead. "Can we go home?"

"Doubtful, unless you want to walk," Andrew sighs. He retches the lemonade away from Neil, pushing away his grabby hands. An admirable tactic, but fruitless. "I knew carpooling was a stupid move."

"Hey, we take offense to that."

Neil tenses on instinct, like the hypocrite he is. He's so used to being the shadow, the nosy meddler who overhears everything. Andrew would think he's more than deserving of being on the receiving end if he wasn't so annoyed himself.

They turn to find the girls grinning ear to ear, and Andrew notes right away how there's no smiling bundle of 'I love Disney' with them.

Jean and Jeremy are nowhere to be found.

How 'bout that.

Alvarez unlinks her arm from her girlfriend's to ring out her damp shirt; Andrew notices they're soaked from head to toe, sneakers squeaking from their drenched socks. It makes Andrew grimace on the inside; it should feel atrocious, but the girls are beaming.

"So you two do act like a couple," Laila says, and Andrew's not sure he gets what she means. He does decide she's his least favorite of the two though. "I had some doubts."

Andrew couldn't care less about that, but Neil's a different story. Defiantly, Andrew silences his boyfriend before he can even go on his tirade by shoving the lemonade back into his hands.

An acceptable sacrifice; Neil's aware they don't seem like the stereotypical couple, but he hates having his feelings doubted.

He hates it even more when people doubt Andrew's, and Andrew pushes the thought of Katelyn's suspicious expression at Eden's out of his mind.

What other people assume about him is not his problem.

"Why didn't you just buy him his own lemonade?" Alvarez asks, her eyes flicking over Neil's expression. He's calming down, but the aggravation is there. Guess not all the Trojans are oblivious.

Andrew takes the bait for what it is, no energy to be contrary.

"Neil doesn't need that much energy, and he'll drink mine no matter what because he's annoying," Andrew says, and sure enough, he hears the slurp behind him, an alert that Neil basically sucked down the rest of his drink.

One down, several to go.

"It's true, I am," Neil chimes in at that, refreshed. It's then he actually seems to pay attention, scanning the girls from head to toe. "Why are you guys all wet?"

Laila claps a hand over Alvarez's wolfish grin before she can even respond to that, and Andrew is glad. He really didn't want to hear it.

At least Neil would get the joke this time.

"Splash Mountain," Laila replies hastily, like they have any clue what it is. "Horrible build-up, decent pay-off. Jean hates it though so it's the best way to make sure we don't run into them."

At her own words, she checks behind her, like Jeremy Knox can appear at the mere mention of his not-boyfriend.

They probably shouldn't stay in the same place too long.

"Outside Star Wars anyways," Alvarez adds, prying Laila's hand off her mouth for .2 seconds.

"Hush, he'll hear you!"

Then, Alvarez must lick her girlfriend's hand, because the goalie retches away with a disgusted yelp. "Hey! Gross!"

"Wow, you don't love me."

It's punctuated with giggles, and Andrew stuffs his hands in his pockets; why that word decides to plague him today, he's not sure. He wouldn't say the girls act as useless as Katelyn and Aaron do, but their dynamic is still distinct.

Affectionate.

Andrew turns his hard stare at the ground. No, no. It's still not right.

Neil, oblivious to Andrew's plight, squints at the empty space where Jean and Jeremy should be. "Wait...you guys ditched them too? Why?"

"They had the same idea as us," Andrew mutters, but Neil's lightbulb still hasn't gone off.

Laila's grin is as sardonic as it gets. "Ah, so you noticed?"

Andrew doesn't respond. He's steadily reaching his word quota.

Knowing the only chance of Andrew saying anything is by asking himself, Neil turns to him, too searching. "Noticed what?"

And oh, Andrew can't avoid talking about it after all, can he? He's not sure why he doesn't want to, there hasn't been much cause for concern with Neil lately. Not for months. Maybe not ever, but Andrew had been in denial there for a while.

Perhaps Andrew just hates being in this limbo, where he doesn't even know how he feels about a topic yet. It's happened before, but it's no less disconcerting than the other times. The jealousy, the concept of understanding, their first time...

His mind, a traitor, reminds him none of those situations ended horrifically.

"Moreau is in love with his captain," Andrew mutters, and watches the moment Neil blanches. No stopping the floodgates now. "Original."

Something in Neil's gaze twitches. Andrew's hasn't seen the look before, but it's surely not good for him or his pulse. Andrew turns his stare to the ice cream cart in the distance, but his sweet tooth is done for the day.

Another unfortunate reality.

"God, so they really are that bad," Laila groans. "For a second there, we thought it might just be us."

Alvarez scoffs, crossing her arms and putting all her weight on Laila. It must be a common occurrence; Laila huffs, but makes no move to push her away.

"We've been trying to get them together for ages," Alvarez continues, twirling her finger around like a never ending cycle. "We ditch them literally every single time in the hopes they finally have their moment."

Both their expressions fall then, truly defeated. Laila sounds at her wit's end, and Andrew feels little sympathy. "But, no such luck."

Andrew can't even begin to pick apart how uselessly optimistic that is when idiots are concerned, but Alvarez seems to be tracking his every movement for some type of reaction. He should've never said anything, but she'll learn soon enough; he's not an easy read, despite a hot-headed outlier.

Neil blinks at them, a complex math problem with cliche romantic plots instead of numbers. "They're...into each other?"

The look he gets from the girls is similar to the pitying ones he gets from Allison whenever he says something particularly misguided about fashion.

Laila puts her hand on Neil's shoulder, patting him slowly. "Oh Josten, your face right now tells me all I need to know about you."

Then, the double shot of pity is poured right down Andrew's throat.

"You got an oblivious one too huh?" Laila says wryly, and Alvarez chokes.

"Hey."

Andrew won't dignify that with a response, but he figures it's obvious anyways.

Laila snorts, tugging on Alvarez's ear lobe. "But yeah, Jean totally wants to husband Jeremy. It's so painful. Disneyland is supposed to be romantic, but--"

Alvarez finishes the thought with a fart noise. Andrew's not sure why he speaks up, the conversation is so beneath him, and he blames Bee. He never used to talk so much before he realized that it actually helped his mind move down the endless river.

"Movie moments like that will never happen," Andrew says, nothing condescending or dismissive about it. It's the truth; he learned long ago that the grand gestures people expected seldom come to fruition. They could sit Jean and Jeremy at the table for two with violins playing around them and it most likely wouldn't do any good.

People won't do anything until they're ready to acknowledge how they feel, and even then they might not. Andrew never thought that was such a bad thing; shutting down a feeling, weighing the pros and cons of a decision until ultimately trying to be rid of it.

It was better that way.

He knows though, had he never let that go, he wouldn't have Neil next to him.

He also knows Bee would call that a good thing, the release of a way of thinking that he's yet to acknowledge as completely outdated.

None of that realization shows on his face.

"You sure sound fun," Alvarez mutters, but she's smiling in a way Andrew hates.

"Andrew's the funnest person I know," Neil adds, unhelpfully adding to the upbeat of Andrew's heart. If Neil could stop ruining the English language on purpose that would be great.

The girls wait for Neil to reveal it as a joke, but seconds of Neil's blank stare kill any chance of laughter.

No, Neil is completely serious. And maybe he's right, after all the good Trojan captain himself did call Andrew a riot.

Laila purses her lips after a moment. "Right..."

"Anyways, you better get a move on if you don't want to continue enjoying your date," Alvarez says, glancing behind her suspiciously while checking her watch. Laila's hand entangles in her girlfriend's, and Andrew notices the charm bracelet there. He wonders if it's a gift from Alvarez.

He's seen a similar, custom one on Katelyn's wrist for the longest time. He's about to ask himself why people are so obsessed with buying jewelry, before realizing he's in the same boat.

When did he come to permit this?

Ugh. He's not running around that particular race track again. "It's not--"

"We're going to go get drinks in the Star Wars cantina," Alvarez interrupts, hastily beginning to tug her girlfriend in that direction. Guess it's later than she thought. "Jeremy will come this way soon. He has a very specific itinerary."

Of course he does.

"Any...slow ride suggestions?" Neil asks before they go, and Alvarez squeaks when she runs right into Laila's strong back. Neil steadfastly ignores the glare Andrew sends him, though if they do have to go on more rides, Andrew would prefer something smooth.

The Matterhorn can burn.

"There's the storybook ride?" Laila says, pointing behind them down the path. "Or It's a Small World?"

Alvarez huffs. "There's a joke there somewhere..."

Andrew doesn't mean for it to happen, but his memory is a steel trap, with a layer of unpredictability wrapped around it. He can't stop it, can't turn it off. For the briefest of moments it brings him the image of a homely kitchen in California, his fingers tracing the carvings in the table while he watches Cass cook dinner. It smells good; he remembers. Of course he remembers, the dish, the ingredients, down to the stains on the tile and which cabinets were open.

The song Cass hummed from between her lips.

He'd never heard the real song, never cared to look it up online or search up the ride itself. But he knows the name, knows the tune.

"What's that?" Neil asks, and whether he means to or not, his voice pulls Andrew out of it. Not even just that...Neil has a way of firmly planting Andrew in this new reality he's forged and tailored.

For the better, Bee's voice reminds him.

Laila smiles, no doubt connecting the ride to memories of her own. Happier, softer memories. Andrew could have those too, if he wanted. It would just take some revision, overwriting. "It's just a boat ride, and it kills time for sure."

Just a boat ride. That's all.

Neil nods, turning to Andrew while the girls walk away. It's getting later; Andrew can tell by how blue Neil's eyes get, highlighted by the darkness. They're haunting in a way, like the unexplored bottom of the ocean. Horrific things lurk in the depths, but there's something pleasant about them too, calming in their mystery. Maybe because to Andrew, and only Andrew, it's familiar territory. Andrew has never felt that level of ease from something, but Neil's stupid expression is too soft when he speaks. "How about it?"

How about it? Hm.

Andrew looks off into the direction Laila pointed in, debating on if he should put himself through that. Is he ready to put himself through that?

He could take this step, he reasons. He could try to overpower the terrible memory with one of Neil, with the feeling of his weight beside him. Is it worth it? Will it work?

No, he can't think of it like that.

It won't erase anything; Andrew's not so naive to think he will ever be rid of the image in his head, the sound of Cass's voice. But...maybe he could make the crystal clear image blurrier, faded around the edges until his mind wavers, until he can no longer make out the scenes as well as before. Instead, his brain will default to Neil in the future. Whenever he hears the cheery tune, Andrew will think of his stupid headband and sugar-kissed lips.

Stronger, sturdier memories.

He's allowed Neil to implant them before, and it hasn't backfired. The process is not always easy, or without pain, but it's been worth it every time. Andrew sees no reason to mess with a working strategy.

Andrew grabs Neil's wrist, the firmest contact they've had all day, and something in him sighs at the same time Neil does.

He leads the way.

--

As soon as Andrew hears the tune as they enter the tunnel, he wonders if he made a mistake. Not because of the memory, though that's definitely there. No, it's the tune itself.

The music is loud, repetitive, with no lull. He's not sure how someone can work on this ride and not quit immediately. He should've expected it though, so the blame is on himself. It won't be over anytime soon either. The boat they're in is moving at an agonizing speed, but it's a relief for his back. The slow glide makes him painfully aware of the soreness in his legs, the heaviness of his eyelids.

The spotlights are pointing at the monuments and walls, leaving the riders in the shadows. If Andrew squints, the people in the boats ahead of him look like nothing more than silhouettes for the briefest of moments. Unreal, specters.

The song continues, and Andrew reevaluates. It's too late to get off the ride, and the song might be called fitting; there's a weird eeriness to it, along with the surreal feeling of the park noises being completely blocked out. It's silent, for being so loud, so irritating. But after a while he's sure he'd become numb to it, and then what would be left?

All he can hear other than the singing is the gentle slosh of the water and the occasional hushed voices of the people in front of them. Like the wind. He feels like a ghost on the ride, wispy and drifting in and out of centuries. The tune is ageless, has probably been around for decades, long before Cass started to hum it.

Somehow, it's a comfort. Cass had been insignificant, another way to separate her memory from the ride itself.

Some of the tension leaks out of his shoulders, and having Neil beside him lessens it further. There are two free seat rows in front of them; the line hadn't been too long at this time of day, and Andrew feels an inkling of gratefulness.

It's the closest thing to privacy they've had all day, he realizes, and some of the fuzziness from earlier dissipates. The static in his brain has had time to even and sizzle out; it's taken hours for him to get to this point, but when Neil lets a quiet 'yes or no' pass between them, the answer is easy. Certain.

Andrew pulls Neil against him, and Neil follows it up by entangling their fingers together. He hardly hesitates anymore, doesn't treat the gesture like something with an expiration date. Andrew privately thought it would be the case, but...he's yet to be tired of it.

It's not so rare anymore, holding Neil's hand.

They pass the first display of dancing puppets, just as the song repeats 'it's a small world after all' through the speakers. Andrew can feel Neil's wry smile before he sees it. "It really is a--"

"Finish that joke I'll kill you."

Neil throws his head back in the first sign of genuine joy from a ride, and Andrew thinks this is already better than anything else they'd previously done. It's less intensive, with just enough chaotic energy to appeal to Neil's sense of humor.

They're not the type of people usually caught dead on these kinds of rides, but the creepiness feels warmer than any of the other joyful displays Disneyland had to offer. Neil's laugh echoes off the high ceilings, and he smothers it quickly.

But Andrew's mind remembers, and he plays the cut off sound on a loop far more intense than the tune of the ride itself. He mixes them together, until they can't be pried apart.

When they pass the German section of the song, Neil looks at him expectantly, and the look Andrew gives him is unimpressed. Mischief dances in his boyfriend's eyes anyways, and again, it's not cute. It's not like Andrew is going to suddenly start singing along just because it's in German. Though, Neil's reaction might be worth it.

Neil critiques the lyric translation anyways, like it's not the simplest song to mass produce.

"This isn't so bad," Neil sighs as they pass under another archway to a different section of the very small world. His finger is starting to tap along on the back of Andrew's hand, and he's not sure if he should put an end to it before it gets stuck in Neil's head. Then he'd have to hear Neil humming it over and over, and while not as traumatic, there's only so much Andrew can take.

"Other people would probably call it torture," Andrew says, gesturing to the lifeless faces of the puppets. He wonders if there's any conspiracies about this ride online, he's sure Neil would get some morbid kick out of them.

"Wimps," Neil replies haughtily, and no, Andrew's pulse does not jump. “I’m a torture connoisseur.”

He bastardizes the word so bad Andrew almost feels bad for France. Almost. When did Neil start thinking he was funny?

"That's not even remotely how you say it." Andrew untangles their hands purely for the purpose of flicking Neil's earlobe. Neil grabs for it again as soon as the punishment is doled out.

Junkie. "You speak that language..."

But Andrew's accusations mean nothing to Neil, per usual.

"I'm dumb remember?" Neil reminds with a shrug, and Andrew grits his teeth. He's still unsure how he feels about this; Neil's mind is vast when it comes to a lot of things. Languages, math, world knowledge, how to kill a man, basic things.

But otherwise...the ignorance can be...

Attractive.

Andrew almost gets off the boat from admitting it to himself. Dumb jocks with runner's hearts is a type he guesses, and it happens to be his.

Or, scratch that. Neil can't possibly fall into a group. Had more than one Neil existed, the mafia would've surely met their demise as a whole through a combination of violence and general dumbassery.

"You milk it on purpose," Andrew decides to say, because Neil does. Because no, Neil's far from dumb, he just knows what gets under Andrew's skin.

Neil chooses not to respond to that, predictably.

"It's just not as bad as I expected," Neil continues, leaning his head against Andrew's shoulder. He gives a long sigh, and Andrew's sure it can't be comfortable. As at ease as he is in Neil's presence, there's always a hardness there, a tension coiled in his body. Yet, Neil leans into him like a pillow and seems to cherish the steadiness.

For a while, they just listen to the song.

Andrew's not quite sure if he agrees with the message, but he doesn't care in the moment. He's come to acknowledge lately that he shares quite a bit with other people, much to his chagrin. Though in the grand scheme of things, he's eons away from them all.

Primarily, he doesn't like to think he could replicate this...feeling, whatever it is.

Certainly not enough to assign an overused word to, one stamped onto every relationship like a barcode. 'I love you.'

He's never admired the words when other people used them. Is that fair, he wonders. Does it matter? He's stuck between a rock and a hard place; the need to be contrary itches at him. He shouldn't want to feel that way, shouldn't have to label this feeling as love...

And it doesn't feel right anyways.

He does not want to fit an insincere mold, but he doubts he and Neil ever could. They never have. This would not be so easily destroyed, toppled.

They simply share too much, and Andrew thinks back to his goal of replacing every bad memory with Neil. That's not an accident, or a desperate quick fix. That instinct is there for a reason...

Cass. Funny how his two separate problems seem to come together. Cass is an appropriate example. Andrew knows, better than anyone, that she hadn't loved him in Katelyn's definition, if that's what love even is. If love can be broken down like that, if it's real. Devotion, consideration, loyalty.

Andrew sighs; he can't go that deep into it. It's too much, bogged down by layers and layers of terrible experiences that have only just begun to be pushed aside like weeds. Never ripped out. The roots have taken hold, but they're withering.

Maybe it's because he's so tired of thinking about it that the words come out. He peers down at Neil against him, at the top of his head where the auburn curls are so within reach, and confesses to Neil's crown. He doesn't blame the need to admit things to Neil as influenced by love, it can't possibly be so contained. He just...something pushes him to work this out. "Cass would hum this, every now and again."

Andrew's not sure what he wants the reaction to be, but when Neil responds, Andrew's soul relaxes, so it must be what he needed. Neil goes rigid within an instant, robbed of the peace afforded them. Andrew didn't mean to throw it into their quiet bubble, but he doesn't regret it. These things aren't inconvenient. Andrew gives these pieces of information to Neil now, like he always has. Willingly, and they're received in kind.

Neil shoots up, eyes frantic when they meet Andrew's. He sees so many things in those blue eyes: rage at Cass, concern for Andrew, and things Andrew didn't ask for but will receive for as long as Neil is here. Neil looks frantic, and two seconds away from dragging them as far away from this place as possible.

Neil's voice is a whisper, sharp and desperate. "Why did you--"

Why indeed? Why come on this ride?

Andrew's puts all his boyfriend's worry and guilt into an early grave.

"I hate having her in my brain," he answers, and knows it's not an excuse. Being on this ride is far from traumatic, more therapeutic than anything, but he almost recoils. He's only ever admitted those things aloud, the pent up resentment and anger, in the privacy of Bee's office. Even then, it's pulling teeth. For so long he framed his time with Cass as the only blip of light in his life. But it had come with a price, and Andrew knows now it hadn't been remotely worth it. For so long he tried to protect that outlook, but now he wants it stained, blacked out. He just never knew it would be so hard to blot it out with his own hand.

And if that was not love...

Neil flinches, but Andrew keeps going, daring him to say something. He needs Neil to know he's serious, so he makes it personal, shared. "You're the obnoxious one, telling me to overwrite things all the time. That's what this is."

That's why I'm okay with this. It's you.

Andrew can see the moment Neil remembers; they'd been sitting on the roof, and Neil had asked him to only remember the good things, even if for just a moment. Andrew's not the best at employing this, and sometimes he vehemently denies the ability to do so, but not with this. Not today.

That feeling cannot be replicated; Andrew turns the idea in his head again and again, never getting closer.

But one thing is certain...

Neil's expression softens, and Andrew squeezes his hand before he flicks a look up at the bright orange monstrosity on Neil's head. "Now, this ride will just remind me of how terrible that headband is," he says, and Neil should at least be able to read between those lines. "Nothing else will come first."

I will latch onto you instead. Andrew never wanted that before, to cling to some idealized outlook again. But Neil is not that; Neil is painfully real. Sometimes he misinterprets, other times he keeps too much to himself. But at the end of the day, Andrew trusts him to do whatever it takes to remain by his side for as long as he chooses to be there.

Andrew is the same way; he can't go back to how it was before.

Andrew's not paying attention to the displays around them anymore, but he can feel his mind melding the images and the tune together with Neil's expression. Open, vulnerable, welcome.

Neil sighs a moment later, muscles relaxing. Not once does his hold on Andrew loosen, but he knows better than to pry about Andrew's past. Andrew has made it clear; this moment is not about an old memory.

Neil leans back, moving further into Andrew's space. "Mm, should I say something else annoying, make the moment stronger?"

And ah, back to normal already are we?

Andrew flicks the back of Neil's hand. "You just did."

He'll log that away too, as aggravating as it is.

"Yeah..." Neil breathes out with a laugh, his thumb rubbing small circles into Andrew's skin. Physical touch, muscle memory...Andrew needs all of it for this to work. He gladly focuses on that while Neil thinks; Andrew can tell solely from the crease in his brow the striker has more on his mind.

Neil's not necessarily like Andrew, he won't keep these things to himself for prideful reasons. He needs to let them out, or they will eat him up.

He's bad at hiding it too.

"Hey Andrew," Neil says eventually, and Andrew's ready for the words before they're even in the air between them. He'd been expecting this, dreading it, but not okay with putting it off any longer. He needs Neil's help, unfortunately, to piece it all together. "You said Jean was in love with Jeremy."

One day if life is especially cruel, and Andrew outlives Neil, he will make it his mission to pick the man's brain. Something in that stubborn subconscious always seems to anticipate the winding roads Andrew is currently stuck on, even when Neil actually has zero clue.

He's not so upset by this anymore.

Carefully, Andrew turns Neil's palm over to trace the heart lines. If he put them on a map, would they cross through all the places Neil's been? "I did say that."

And he's been re-thinking about if it's true. Who knows if Jean and Jeremy are actually in love. As much as he likes to compare them to his brother's and Katelyn's nauseating displays, affectionate looks and blushing cheeks can't be all there is to it.

Andrew had been stupid to chalk it up to just that. Not even Katelyn would've. And if that's the case, Andrew might never be convinced of Jeremy and Jean's feelings. Attraction sure, but he doesn't care enough to dig deeper.

There's not an equation to test levels of protectiveness, or comfort, in order to determine an abstract and troublesome thing like love. And why would he need to test his own feelings against such a thing anyways? He knows...he knows this is something he will keep for as long as he can.

"I thought you didn't use that word," Neil offers when Andrew is quiet for too long, debating on the best angle to attack this from. Neil tends to do that, when Andrew himself hasn't figured things out yet. If he poses questions that open up other doors, it clears the mess away. He notes how Neil says 'doesn't use' instead of 'doesn't like' or 'hates,' because it's true. Andrew isn't repulsed by the word, just annoyed with it and all its aspects. He does not get it.

It's like he told Katelyn...

"I don't, but only because it's untrustworthy," Andrew replies, rubbing the back of his neck. He's not making sense, not even to himself. He's simply trying to see if he's open to the idea of throwing out his old opinion, the one where the concept of love is something twisted beyond recognition. Fake. Overly reproduced.

It's far more difficult a feat than simply overwriting a bad memory. This feels more invasive, but Andrew knows he wouldn't be thinking about it if there wasn't something important lodged beneath.

Neil squints, unaware of Andrew's turmoil. "So you were insulting them?"

The game show buzzer in Andrew's head rings; nope, that's not it.

"I was applying Mrs. Minyard's definition..." Andrew tries not to sound too bitter. The whole reason he even let this issue cling to him is because of Katelyn. She's the worst.

"Katelyn?" Neil asks, but doesn't question further after Andrew nods. Andrew assumes he's used to this, and it's entirely likely he's had a similar conversation with Katelyn. Andrew won't think about that either.

Neil nods. "Okay well, do you care if they figure it out?"

Again, Neil strikes out, but it helps Andrew to eliminate the background noise in his head.

"No, it makes no difference to me," he says. He couldn't care less what becomes of Moreau's romantic life. "Though it would be annoying if we have to do this again."

Another forced outing surrounded by dense morons...

Andrew's had to deal with enough obliviousness.

Neil smirks. "You know, Kevin might flip out if they get together."

Ah, another rare pro...

Neil leans away, regarding Andrew like he's taken on a new sleuth role. He rubs his chin too, to add to the drama of it. Maybe Andrew should get him a monocle, if he's going to be this much of a fuck. "So...if you don't care if they realize it, why think about it at all? I'll be honest, I didn't think you'd care about something like this."

Andrew's not quite sure why or if he does either. It doesn't have to be a thing that applies to them, if he doesn't want it to be.

Their this is unique. Andrew had been so resistant to using the word 'love' because it had been spit on and turned to bile, misused by people throughout his life. But in doing so, he ignored the times people used it genuinely. In the past, he would've contested that. He would've said it was never genuine, never earned. The commercialized concept wasn't something he'd let himself have in common with others.

But lately, Andrew finds that having some things in common with certain people isn't reprehensible. And in this case...

Aaron's voice comes barreling through his head, steering Andrew to destinations he couldn't find before. And well, now he knows why his brain can't let go of Aaron and Katelyn as his go to example.

"Our feelings for them are the same."

Yes. Andrew had slowly begun to accept that. Maybe that's why his brain wouldn't write off Katelyn's words so easily.

Begrudgingly, Andrew admits there's a lot more to his brother's relationship than pure affection, even when most of it is behind closed doors. Katelyn had been there through the worst parts of Aaron's college life, and she'd never once judged him or ignored the ugliest bits. Not even when he hated her, could Andrew look past those things. They meet her own definition, and Andrew's simply choosing to extend some trust to his brother. Aaron says he's in love, so Andrew believes him even when he doesn't believe in the feeling's history, in the way it's manipulated.

And well, if his feelings are the same...

Well, he guesses he can try to accept that too.

"I was testing it," Andrew answers, without much struggle. Katelyn's definition, any definition. Andrew looks at Neil straight on then, and the striker's grin fades. Something crosses over those eyes, like for once Andrew is ahead of him. "Love. I think I'm trying to decide if I...want to say it."

If I want to say 'I love you.' If it applies at all.

Not need, but want.

Is it something heavy, or is it something inconsequential?

It feels wrong, but Andrew knows he's reached the crux of his problem. This is where all his restlessness stemmed from, his observations about Jean and Jeremy, about the girls...

It had nothing to do with them, but everything to do with whether or not he'd ever want to have that in common with them.

He'd ignored the fact he most likely already does.

But the words...he never would've bothered before. They don't mean much, other than the weight society has put on them, and Andrew's never cared about that. He doesn't need them to know this is something sturdy in his life, and he doubts Neil needs them either.

It's more...this is another thing life took from them, took from Neil. They've never expected to regain everything; they never feel like life owes them.

It has nothing to do with that. It's just the same as with a lot of other instances; Andrew wants to give these things to Neil, because Neil is his.

Does there have to be some deeper explanation or justification for it? Even if there is, Andrew stops looking for it.

He waves off Neil's shocked expression, and doesn't ponder why it's there in the first place. He's been in the wrong before, assuming he's the only one who thinks about stuff like this. It's possible this has been on Neil's mind too, but that's not the point.

"I don't mean now, or anytime soon," Andrew corrects. No, no. He's not there yet, and it's not like it's some milestone they have to reach. Andrew doesn't like to think it could encompass how he feels, but maybe his biggest issue with this is that...he's not sure he hates the idea of it anymore. The word. One day, he might be able to say it and know it means a lot more than what other people think about it. And that would be enough. "But one day."

The shadows of the displays wash over Neil's expression, and Andrew can't pull anything out of it. Neil stares, hand still curled impossibly tight in Andrew's.

Andrew won't take back anything he said, but Neil's silence is beginning to unnerve him. He could have overstepped he realized, he should've asked for Neil's opinion at some point, weighed it against--

"You know, Aaron talked to me about this once," Neil offers finally. It's not what Andrew's expecting him to say. Then, Neil's face twitches, and Andrew can tell he's...holding back a smile. "That night you picked Katelyn up, we talked about...yeah."

Yeah.

Andrew knows the gist of what happened, Neil filled him in. Guess he didn't reveal all the details though.

Neil's laugh is a breathy, comforting thing this time. "He made me think about it. He asked if I loved you."

Neil smiles wryly, an expression he's begun to pair with Aaron lately. It's not a glare or scowl nearly as much anymore.

Andrew stills, but relaxes in the next second. They'd both been subject to the same thoughts after all, Andrew just didn't realize how similar the sources were. Aaron and Katelyn are menaces, and they don't even realize it.

Andrew doesn't feel nervous, or anxious. The way Neil feels about him is obnoxiously stone-like and unmovable at this point, as much as Andrew still sometimes tries to act like it's not. Neil won't say anything to make him doubt that.

"I said I did," Neil continues, like it's obvious. Andrew's pulse hiccups a little anyways. Stupid. "But I didn't know if I ever wanted to say it to you. It's more like...well obviously I do feel that way right? In the whatever—traditional sense."

Traditional. Ha.

He's not sure even Katelyn's definition is truly traditional in its selflessness.

Neil clears his throat, palm clammy in Andrew's own. Second by second, Andrew feels lighter. Neil's rambling is a strange salve, one more thing they have in common. Too much thinking, when the answer doesn't have to be so complex. Neil tries to glance away, but Andrew grabs his chin, keeping them face to face. He wants to have all this forever, every expression, every blink.

Neil swallows, but his smile stays, making a liar out of him before the words even leave his mouth. "But one word doesn't seem like enough, and if we did say it wouldn't it just be for other people's satisfaction? I don't need it to know you feel the same way..."

Andrew shakes his head in disbelief. Neil. Only Neil would expect that from Andrew. Andrew's mind exhales.

The convoluted mess of words echoes Andrew's own thoughts throughout the day, but it's never sounded clearer. No, it's true, one word will never be enough, but Andrew thinks if he could come to associate the word, the phrase, with this feeling, unique to them...

It wouldn't be so damaged anymore.

It would still be theirs, and no one else's. He'd have his own definition, to overwrite the rest.

"But even then..." Neil adds, quietly, his voice dancing with the song still playing around them. The lyrics are in English again, and Andrew knows the ride will end soon. Cass is barely a blip in his mind now, compared to Neil's words, the ones which mirror Andrew's. "I still thought it might be nice, one day, to say it. That doesn't make sense, does it?"

Logically no. All the contradictions, the back and forth...feelings are a strange thing and that's one reason Andrew's always hated them. There's no rhyme or reason, and there's two sides to each one. All justification is ruled out by one thing and one thing alone: 'I still want to.'

And in that sense, Neil's words make perfect sense.

But he can't confess all that; instead he cups Neil's face in his hands, smoothing over the scars like he always does. The roughness is a constant, familiar. "I hate you," he says, with no heat. It makes both of them blink, and Andrew realizes it's been a while since he said it. That too, has changed. But in this case, he thinks it's more than fair. He's feeling more than he possibly knows what to do with. "Yes or no?"

The fact he asks makes Neil snort; it's nostalgic, because...they don't ask as much these days. But Neil's 'yes' echoes loud and clear as they pass under the final archway, and for the first time all day, their lips meet. Neil sighs into him, his hands coming up to rest over Andrew's, breathing in the unspoken promise.

Nothing was decided, nothing fleshed out. But it didn't have to be.

One day, maybe.

They're both more than okay with that. Besides, Andrew did always say proof meant more than words.

And he has mountains of it to last in the meantime.

With only a little annoyance, Andrew admits he fell into the trap without meaning to; they shared a kiss at Disneyland.

Andrew pulls away as the sunlight begins to pour over them, and he squints, already missing the ride. Quiet it was not, but not as bad as the sounds and size of the crowd. If he ever does have to come back, he knows it will be a place to stop.

It makes him think of Neil, first and foremost, and he's long since stopped denying himself that.

Neil tries to help Andrew out of the boat, but Andrew swats him away for being a shit. He doesn't need help. As revenge, Neil smirks at him once they're walking down the exit path, adjusting his ears just to be even more irritating. Not cute. "Wait, so this means you admit Katelyn and Aaron are in love. Can I tell them?"

Andrew rolls his eyes, and Neil laughs. He'll never live that one down, and if Neil wants to survive he'll keep it to himself.

Mockery aside, Neil links their hands together, and Andrew pushes his face away before accepting the touch. Neil hasn't stopped smiling.

"Something to say Neil?" He says with a glare, and though he knows it's a joke at best, it makes that obnoxious warmth in him surge.

Neil smiles wider, dragging Andrew down the path with no idea where he's going. Andrew lets him.

"No," Neil throws behind him, humor lacing his tone. Gradually, the corner of Andrew's mouth twitches. "Not at all."

--

"Andrew! Neil!" Jeremy's voice booms from across the pavilion, and they both freeze in their analysis of where the best hiding spot would be in the entire park (Andrew is making a case for Toontown, but puts a pin in it).

Their time alone is officially over.

"Shit," Neil mutters, hand still linked in Andrew's. Normally at the sight of people they know, he'd pull away for Andrew's comfort, but Andrew keeps his grip firm.

He wants this today. Neil beams, sighing at the rest of the group's advance. It must be twice as sad now, since Neil knows.

Jeremy and Jean follow with the girls in tow, and as they get closer Andrew can see Laila's resigned smile. She and Alvarez have been caught too, despite their best efforts, and Andrew can tell nothing has changed.

The 'magical moment' they'd tried to pull out of Jean and Jeremy didn't happen, just like Andrew knew it wouldn't. Regardless, they're as hopeless as ever.

Jean trails close after Jeremy, eyes scanning his strong back while Jeremy keeps looking to make sure he's following. They're still dancing around one another, oblivious, but that's their own problem to sort out.

Still...there's a shift in Jean's features that wasn't there before, and Andrew is all too happy to wither it away with a glare.

He's accepting, not forgiving.

Whatever realizations Jean came to today have no other impact on Andrew other than an urge to get as far away as possible from it.

But there's hours to go.

Hours more to go, with Neil's hand in his. The striker throws a knowing grin back at him before pulling him forward, probably dead set on meddling as much as possible.

With the promise of 'one day' still fizzing strong in his chest, Andrew follows.

There's no more memories of this place to overwrite, so he has no choice but to crack open the door a little for some new ones.

That, at least, he can handle.

[crqstalite]

"I'm so proud of you, you know that?" For a ship of your choice

not the happiest with this prompt to be completely honest, but i couldn’t think of where else to use it. will probably revise it in the future with proper shoker [that being citlali shepard/joker]. this one is mostly detailing citlali’s kidnapping by the collectors in the beginning, which is honestly kind of horrifying just from kelly chambers’ description of it. so of course, took it and ran with it. unsure what kind of content warning should be on here, so the typical blood + gore + canon typical violence.

word count: 2,650. pre-relationship citlali velasquez/jeff moreau. [platonic, sort of]

Wide green eyes, a mumbled shout. She forces the door closed behind her with a thud, even though he tells her to move, to follow him.

She doesn't, regardless they'd make it in there after him whether she went with him or not.  And regardless, she wasn't putting his life on the line if she didn't have to.

Buzzing.

Eyes. So many eyes. All focused on her, darting around but always returning. Focusing. Sizing her up.

They grow closer. Multiplying. A mess of skin and boils appears behind them, towering over her biotic shield with a gun that spills it's ammo against the mass effect field while she struggles, fear flooding her body with every second the biotics tingle against her skin. Licking her skin like flames while blood bubbles up and dribbles out her nose when she shoves the field backwards.

They come back.

They always come back.

Screaming. Her own. Theirs. Her vocal cords thrumming with a shriek she hopes he can't hear. They knock her off her feet.

Her hat falls when she's slammed to ground, nose broken and head swimming.

Then nothing.

Then all over again, only in more detail.

Then nothing.

Biotics flickering. Electrical pulses up and down her spine as she tries and tries and tries to keep the shield active.

She doesn't have enough eyes to keep one on everyone. They fall around her, some screaming, some silent. No blood, just bodies on the ground with beasts above them.

Then there's nothing.

She's cold. So cold, freezing. Ice like lead in her veins as she drops into unconsciousness.

Black. Subdued senses. A fall onto something, someone.

Her eyes open to nothing. To everything. Light. Tubes. A cavern she can't make sense of.

Shepard. The crew.

Mordin. An order to get back to the ship. A promise.

The Protheans -- no Collectors.

They get a shot in when she has her back turned. Her body feels like it's on fire, her shoulder the source of the flames, but it gives her enough of a jump in adrenaline to throw out a pulse and get them off their tail.

She knows it won't stop bleeding for hours. She doesn't even want to think about all the towels that would be needed to mop it all up.

Chakwas tells her that she'll look at it when they're back on the ship.

Her lungs are burning, trying to keep up with the last few members of the crew as Mordin helps them on. There's a few soldiers following them, nothing serious.

She pulls from the well of her implant to throw back a few.

Things get sharper. Brighter. More of them and all eight of their beady, yellow eyes. Time doesn't make sense, they keep coming and coming and coming and she doesn't know what to do. Shepard's depending on her to get every single member of the crew back aboard. So she holds the position, longer and longer and longer before she's sure it's a lost cause.

They get lucky in the moment that she depletes her shields long enough to turn around. Mordin's on board, but she feels a wet dribble start in the middle of her chest when the wind is knocked out of her. Her head swims, body throbbing as her mind screams. Red paints the ground underneath her, staining her hands crimson and soaking her white fatigues through.

Hands. Talons. So many of them, roughly pulling at her shoulders as she leaves behind a pool of blood. Her sight darkens, they grab her tighter, their talons digging into her skin. Then, they're trying to shove her into a pod. That inhuman buzzing again, it fills her ears, stuffing them with cotton. She screams and screams and screams until she can't. Blood gushes out around her like an ocean, drowning her while her heart drums on, faster and faster and faster until she's sure it's about to burst.

No one hears her when the top closes over her, a filmy yellow substance that she pounds against. It closes in around her, the strangled noises coming out of her raw throat resembling that of a trapped animal.

-

She gasps, a cry catching in her throat as she grabs out for something, anything solid. The beat of her heart strikes her eardrums in tandem while the blood rushes in her ears. Her eyes dart around, hands gripping the arm rests before she catches a glance of the stars twinkling back at her in a dizzying array. A white blanket around her shoulders, Cerberus emblem in the corner, but not stained red. The lights are turned low, the only source of light being the soft orange from the screens around her.

She drops her head into her hands, curtain of hair falling around her as she tries to calm herself, groaning audibly.

No hat on her head, no brim to knock off. It's still gone, somewhere in the ship.

It was still real, all of it was if the bandages around her shoulder were anything to go by. It aches when she shifts it, grimacing as she leans back in the chair. Chakwas would have her head if she pulled the stitches again, so she's more careful pushing it out of where it'd been painfully mashed against the back of the chair.

It takes her more than a moment to find her voice and whisper for the AI, throat dry and cracking, "EDI-"

"You've been asleep for approximately four and a half hours, Citlali," Her voice is soft enough not to throw her sensitive senses for a loop, and answers quick enough that she's sure the AI knew what she was going to ask, "Though it is more than you've received in the few days, from your reaction and vital signs, this session was not particularly pleasant either."

"Can say that again," She deadpans, rubbing a bleary eye with a hand. Erring on the side of caution, she shifts her hair to the right, rolling her shoulder again. She bites her lip, in pain. So she wasn't exactly on the mend yet. Citlali had knocked out right around eleven that evening if the clock on her dash was anything to go by, meaning at the latest it was only four in the morning. The wound hadn't bled through her fatigues yet, so she considers it a win, "Miss anything?"

"No notifications for you from anyone aboard the ship. I did have to answer Commander Shepard's query on whether you were okay or not two hours ago. I simply responded you had fallen asleep in the cockpit, and she seemed relieved by the notion." Citlali glances over at the blue sphere, a slight smile on her face. Sounded like Shepard, she'd be happy if she just blinked every once and a while.

She blinks the sleep out of her eyes, sweat cooling on her forehead, "Thanks EDI."

"Logging you out."

She eyes the blanket again, narrowing her eyes before pulling it off. She hadn't fallen asleep with the blanket on, that much she knew and she hated them because they made her hot. That, and she'd moved her's back to the crew quarters a while ago. Either her sister brought it for her, or-

"Are you..doing alright?" Joker. His voice snaps her out of her thoughts, and she swivels her head to look at him. A friendly face, at the very least.

"Yeah. I'm fine, little out of it." She pinches the bridge of nose. Guess the work day started a few hours earlier than usual, but she could work with this, as much as her hands are still shaking and she can't snap that terrified look in his eyes out of her head, "Could ask for more sleep and less, well, nightmares, but I'm okay. Why didn't you wake me up? You know these chairs aren't exactly the pinnacle of comfort."

"EDI says you haven't been sleeping, not since the mission," He responds, uneasiness creeping into his voice, "Figured you might as well get the rest where you could."

"Not exactly a lie, I'm not a fan of sleeping in here if that's what you're trying to say," She assures him, "As for being okay, I...well I'm fine. Still here. Still alive."

He pauses, maybe considering her words. Still not a lie, she never said she was actually alright, "You don't have to be okay after that. Nothing the Cerberus manuals that I found would say you had to be."

"Don't think many have been to the center of the universe to give them the passage either, to be completely honest," She scoffs, pulling up the diagnostics from the day before. All was looking well enough that she settles back into her normal routine of scanning them for any irregularity, "Besides. We saved the day, kicked some collective Collector ass, and we're still here to tell the tale. Plus, I think you owe me something really strong and preferably expensive when we get back to the Citadel."

"Just asking, already trying to pin drinks on me," He shakes his head as the sarcasm slips into his tone, though the smile dies a moment later, "...You sounded terrified."

"Anyone would in the middle of a horror show," She rebuffs, face flushing. Had she been screaming in her sleep? Whimpering even, that much she knows she's done before. For someone reason, she doesn't want to think about the fact Joker might've heard her working through her demons in the middle of the night. Damn her lack of sleep these days.

Better question is why he's still here, but she's learned better than to question the pilot. Plus, their shift would've been due to start in a few hours anyway, "Did Shepard bring the blanket? If she did, I'll blame her for the fact I'm hot right now."

"No. That's the one she makes me keep in here. Doesn't like me falling asleep in here, but brought it in a while ago. It does actually get cold in here when you're not a biotic."

"It's not all sunshine and rainbows with that hunk of metal installed either, I'll have you know," Well that explained the different smell, wasn't even her blanket. Citlali isn't sure whether she minds it or not. She ignores the comment, "Hm. Y'know you really should ask if Shepard's okay, not me. She's been through hell and back, and then back again. She's seen some shit."

He gives her a quizzical look when she raises an eyebrow in retaliation, "Makes it sound like you haven't either. I'd be pretty stupid to think whatever was outside that door when you sent me for the core didn't warrant a few bad dreams."

"Bad dreams, sure. Still, every technical matter, I failed the exercise. Lavius would give me that 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' face if he knew what happened," Her neck cracks when she tips it to the left, "Lucky enough Shepard pulled my ass out of the fire before I paid for it."

"And yet I'm pretty sure you just saved all our lives, and lived through that. Take a little credit."

"Not sure I deserve any amount of credit."

"Look at it this way," His chair swivels around slowly to face her's, "If you hadn't been there, I think we'd all be Reaper food right now. And definitely not the good kind."

"Is this your round about way of saying thank you, Joker?" She asks, her voice smaller as she's already feeling like she's trying to fold in on herself. Why would he try to thank her? She'd said she'd hold off what she could, and yet the entire ship still got kidnapped. Citlali hadn't done anything, had saved no one. The thank yous felt like an empty gratitude, "You already said it. Once. Plus, I didn't do anything other than get my ass handed to me long enough for you to work your magic. You and EDI were the ones who unshackled her and repaired the ship from what Shepard told me. You didn't need me."

There's a palatable beat of silence before he starts again, and she's feels a little bad. Not that she's wrong, of course, but that she'd offended him in some manner, "You held down the fort, foundation builds a house, right? Plus I heard you and Mordin brought everyone back, watched out the cameras when you blasted back the group that was following you."

"Had Jack or Samara or Miranda or-"

"But you're not them, and they weren't here," He interrupts her, "I saw what you did to the ones we came across on the ship. Made me feel a whole lot better that we're friends."

"Thanks." Citlali deadpans, looking down at her hands as she flexes her fingers. Whether he denies it or not, all of the other biotics on the team would've handled it better than her. Probably would've been able to save a small group of the crew before they purged the ship.

She can't get the sound of buzzing out of her head.

"You've come a long way from that uh, disagreement, you had with Jack a while back. That's an improvement," Joker shrugs, "Shepard's proud of you. Specifically said she was surprised as hell you managed to disintegrate so many on the way out of base."

"Damn. I think I'd feel better if she didn't tell me that every time I turned around, Joker." She responds, "It wasn't me anyway. Mordin and Shepard coordinated it, I was along for the ride."

Why are her hands so cold? Had they always been that way, or is she imagining they are?

"Would it change your mind if I said I was proud of you?" His voice cracks over the word, and she looks up as he offers her a lopsided smile. The chair turns back to it's original facing, "It was impressive watching you work. Beyond impressive, really. You got every crew member back with only a few scratches to report."

She opens her mouth to argue, or at least wants to, before she instead decides that caffeine is worth more than stretching this out for another five minutes. While the dream's adrenaline is starting to fade, the entire ordeal still has thrown her off course. And, well, maybe she doesn't want to think about the fact he'd really just said that, even though he'd been there to watch it all play out, "I am, by the way. Just in case you thought I was pulling your leg."

"Thanks for the pep talk, really," She murmurs after another moment, pushing herself up to open the cockpit's doors and tousling her hair with her good arm. He couldn't change her opinion that easily, it'd haunted her for days and she's pretty damn sure it's about to haunt her for about a thousand more before she'd accept anyone's opinion of the matter, "And the blanket."

"Any time," He nods, "Don't forget -- none of those heaps of sugar you Shepards like. Sickly sweet milk cups."

She rolls her eyes, a smile tugging up the corners of her lips. For that alone, she'd probably put enough in to taste, just to bother him. Sweet wasn't a word she'd use to describe him, but more introspective than expected. If making fun of squad members while they were off the ship was introspective at all. It amused her, kept her busy when she wasn't working. Made her feel less like the outcast that she had been at Grissom. Still, he's the closest thing she's got to a real friend, squad and crew included.

When she returns, two steaming cups in hand and yawning, their hands touch just a little longer that's necessary to hand it over. There's an 'I told you so' in that smile of his when she slides back into her chair, though he immediately groans when she takes a sip of her's, smirking over the lip of the cup.

"I offer you perfectly good advice, and this is how you repay me?"

Her hands are still cold, but at least the buzzing has subsided with the inclusion of someone else here, "You made fun of my coffee choice two weeks ago. I think it's your due calling."

[shermandelux-blog]

HOW TO NEVER EVER OFFEND ANYONE ONLINE...EVER!!!

***spoiler alert....it's not possible!! so HERE's what to do when the internet  TURNS ON YOU!

So I'm walking out the front door of the brewery the other day and there at the bar was great friend and fellow brewery owner from down the block Damon Moreau of Common Crown Brewery. "How's it going buddy?" I blurt out, happy as always to see fellow brewers in our taproom. The somewhat fatigued look on his face said everything but yet he replied "Well our new beer just launched and social media is EXPLODING right now!!" Well, that's GREAT news I begin to attempt to congratulate him but he stops me in my tracks with a "yeah but NOT in a good way!" The reaction to the name "Cherry Karen Sour” hit fast and hit hard.  Some people were clearly offended by the use of the Karen meme on their cans and accusations of ignorance and racism began to fly. 

From my viewpoint, I thought it was a clever play on a sour beer being named after a sour personality. I've seen enough of the Karen meme vids and GIF's online to get the connection and was truly surprised to see such anger and attacking comments towards them. Of course, I'd witnessed the Karen meme developing over the years since seeing #FuckYouKaren on Reddit YEARS ago. I'd heard the many tales of  "the Karen in the dental chair" when my wife comes home from work. I'd just simply never EVER associated this meme with anything racist. My thoughts on the worst part of the Karen meme was the unfortunate effect on the poor ladies who, despite being incredibly nice, respectful, lovely ladies who DO NOT need to speak to the manager and simply happen to be named "KAREN"!

Growing up a redhead I've certainly dealt with my share of being the TARGET of the internet's "less than flattering" meme's that range from my obvious lack of any semblance of a soul, all the way to people celebrating "kick a ginger day" (thanks south park) essentially mobilizing the world towards an entire day of the year promoting actual ASSAULT on myself and my fellow soul-less Gingers. 

To be clear, I do not think my personal experiences as the target of the latest internet meme excuses ignorance towards other internet meme's. I do wonder, however, how much responsibility we are to shoulder for keeping up to speed with the latest EVOLUTION of a meme? From my ignorant line of sight "Karen" had not yet manifested herself into a racially charged concept causing fear and possible harm to people of colour. 

"Karen" had been making us laugh since 2017 on Reddit but a quick search of Karen on "Know Your Meme" cites that a pretty significant change happened in 2020! May 25th, 2020 to be precise! That day saw the global pandemic collide violently with the killing of George Floyd AS WELL AS the Amy Cooper Central Park incident. Dr. André Brock, associate professor of Black digital culture at Georgia Tech stated "..the viral widespread resonance of “Karen” footage now is the result of an interest convergence where the coronavirus pandemic intersected with collective outrage over police brutality. The weekend that the video of Amy Cooper in Central Park went viral was the same weekend that George Floyd was killed after now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck, suffocating him. The Central Park video only highlighted the extreme violence — and potentially fatal consequences — of a white woman selfishly calling the cops out of spite and professed fear."

That happened May 25th, 2020. 50 days ago at the time of writing this. My point about the timeline of the evolution of the meme is that, as a fellow brewery owner, I can say with certainty that ‘50 days ago’ our friends at Common Crown Brewery would have still thought Karen was funny! They also would have already ordered beer cans labeled with Karen based artwork and they would have been so head down, consumed with keeping their business alive during the pandemic that they would have most likely missed the significance of Karen’s shift over the past weeks. I know i missed it. There's simply no way anyone could convince me that any of the fine folks at Common Crown would ever intentionally offend anyone with their branding and I'm positive that every single person who has ever met them feels the same way. So WHY such a violent and angry outcry towards them? I think Ricky Gervais from his time eating vegan wings on "hot ones" has some relevant insight! 

 The video above is obviously an overgeneralization of this new world we live in but it's also hilariously accurate. When did we become a generation of people swiping endlessly through other people's lives, waiting eagerly for OUR turn to be offended and stoke the internets mob justice flames? In today's day and age, I wouldn't feel safe announcing ANY kind of beliefs online be it political, religious, medical, sexual, etc. The internet is now a terrifying place, ready to attacknat a moments' notice and bully you for announcing that you wanted the Olympics in Calgary, or that you voted for Nenshi, or that you drive a Tesla, or, or, or,....

So NOW what!!?? Imagine you're a small business owner and despite your best efforts to make your customers happy, to make a living doing what you love, and to create a great environment for your staff to call home, you find yourself on the receiving end of the angry internet? Recently my good friend and fellow business owner James Boettcher of Righteous Gelato (the artist formerly known as Fiasco Gelato) found himself in this similar situation. After releasing a Black Lives Matter Gelato the internet backlash was swift. I watched terrified from the sidelines as my good friend and true Canadian LEGEND of an entrepreneur battled his way through a minefield. What started as criticism quickly turned into a pretty savage attack with people assaulting him as a person and as a business owner. It was brutal. And knowing the incredibly high level of intentions that both Righteous Gelato AND Common Crown Brewery uphold in every decision they make, I'm sure more and more people are thinking "when is it going to be ME who makes a mistake? When will I be the target of the internet's wrath? And what will I do when it happens to me?" 

Having caused a few controversial nationally viral stories myself, I'm no stranger to picking a fight and I'm no stranger to spending 24 hours a day for up to a week at a time responding to every single engagement, every single opinion, every single review, and every single media request during these times and I have a few suggestions for you if your turn ever DOES come around!!

1. Take a Deep Breath - Right or Wrong, Good, Bad or Ugly when you find yourself staring down the loaded barrel of an angry internet, the first step is to recognize that these situations are INCREDIBLE opportunities to let the world see who you really are! What you do next will be a defining moment in the history of your business, so take a deep breath and think "how do I let the TRUE spirit of my company's DNA shine through." 

2. Decide COLLECTIVELY on your position - We often react quickly with anger or defensiveness towards a seemingly unjustified criticism aimed at ourselves or our business. And why WOULDN'T we? NO ONE knows how hard we've worked as business owners to get to where we are right?? But that type of thinking is like a biased parent who's kid can do NO WRONG!! Anyone with kids on a sports team knows those parents! They are the WORST and usually have the worst kids! haha. But by involving your entire team to address the situation cooler heads can often prevail and can help a business see the situation from another position. Compassion, sympathy, and understanding of how others see our actions differently than we do is a hard skill to master. It's also perhaps the most important first step in admitting that we may, have truly made a mistake and need to genuinely make things right. Collectively Involving your team members with a less emotional connection to business is a great way to show them your level of respect for their insight as well as arrive at a position that the entire business believes and OWNS!

3. OWN your position...GENUINELY! - The internet can spot a fake a MILE away. Bullshit meters these days are finely tuned to sniff out shallow apologies, or disingenuous attempts to make the situation "go away". As Ricky Gervais stated above, it's OK if people don't agree with your decisions, even if they're MAD at your decisions. But don't waffle. If you were wrong...OWN IT! Apologize and mean it! Here's a sniff test example of whether you own an apology or not: If you apologize online for your actions and then someone posts in support of you that they thought your actions were justified....and you don't CORRECT them? then guess what? YOU'RE NOT SORRY so don't say that you are.

4. Don't delete the thread! - I love reading other business' reviews online! But I never waste my time with the 5-star reviews. I always feel they're either fake or the business owners' parents! either way, there's no value to me reading them. It's the ONE-star reviews that show me how a business responds to the challenges of business and most of THOSE are BS as well. When a bar gets a one-star review because some jackass felt vindictive towards the bartender who "cut him off" for the night. I laugh at the drunk idiot who thinks that bad review of this nature makes ANY negative impact on the business. On the contrary, a witty, clever response to a one-star review of this nature can do wonders for letting the world see your business's personality. And when a REAL one-star review comes in. It's a TRUE opportunity to show how your business is managed and you "right the wrongs". But somehow as business owners, we FEAR the one-star review!! Don't! Trust that the public will read between the lines and make their decision based on all the information. Again, we all have highly tuned bullshit meters, and deleting threads of this nature not only stop the public from gaining the full context of the situation you may find yourself in. It also, more often than not, creates a perception of guilt. If I hear about a company experiencing something similar and I look them and can read the threads I can make my OWN decision on where I stand on the matter. But if the threads have been deleted, I instinctively assume "boy they must have really screwed up!"

5. Don't be intimidated by the volume of the angry - People who "oppose" are ALWAYS louder that those who "support". Just because you've never had this much attention on your social channels and it ALL appears to be negative. You have to know that in general people who support you are much less likely to dive into shark-infested waters with you. However other SHARKS smell blood and are MUCH more likely to join in on the feeding frenzy. I guess it's just not as fun to stick your neck out there when you can safely watch the attack from the shore. Have faith, however, that despite the feeling of helplessness and the isolation of feeling totally alone in these times, there are TONNES of people who will read the posts, perhaps see both sides and potentially send you some support on a private DM, email, or phone call in support of what you're going through REGARDLESS of whether you're right or wrong. OTHER business owners are the friends you need to lean on, or shoulders to cry on during these times. The “swim in the deep end with me” quote from the video above is awesome to me as I’ve sent up the bat signal in my business before and called upon my pal Jim button of Village Brewery to wade into deep waters with me on issues in the past. It meant EVERYTHING to me that he dove in, headfirst with me!  It’s incredibly important to have people around you who, when they believe in your cause, are willing to stand with you on the front lines taking fire while  helping keep the flag in the air! Have those people around but also BE that person when YOU’RE called upon.

6. LEARN, LEARN, and LEARN SOME MORE- Regardless of the situation you've experienced, if you come away without learning and actively attempting to be better moving forward than you're an idiot. The entire WORLD is receiving a crash course on what acceptable behaviour looks like from all corners of humanity. The last few years have exposed a lot of mistakes humanity has made. The #MeToo movement, #BlackLivesMatter, and LGBTQ issues (to name a few) have allowed the world to learn how our past behaviours, past stereotypes, and even past ways of thinking are just not enough anymore. Being truly open to learning about what matters in the lives of those around us is truly eye-opening and incredibly important for loving forward progress of humanity. And without willing hearts, open to the opportunity to LEARN we'll all just be s bunch of angry internet trolls looking for people to attack who don't think the exact same way WE do or vote the same way WE do, etc!!

Finally, My hope for this blog is a call for PASSIONATE understanding and forgiveness. It's OK to be offended and it's OK to let a person or a business know how they've offended. The piece of the puzzle I've seen missing for some time now, however, is understanding and forgiveness. UNDERSTANDING that the initial outward appearance of a can of beer named after "KAREN" does not reflect the INTENTIONS of the great people trying to do great things for our community. But also the FORGIVENESS towards them once the issue has been raised. Most businesses today would stand stunned, eyes wide open, paralyzed in fear, and totally unaware of what to do next when faced with the attacks I've witnessed over the past year. Forgiveness is LIBERATING. It feels GOOD! But it takes empathy and compassion.

Imagine a thread someday where the offender realizes their mistake after reading criticisms they receive online. They regret it. They genuinely apologize. They learn a tonne, become more culturally aware, and the offended parties empathize with them, show them compassion, and openly forgive them for their mistake? Jack Handy probably said it best..."I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it"

[exyjunkies]

your writing is 11/10 and i would DIE if you could do jerejean with ‘your apartment is next to/above mine and i can hear you and your partner dancing and singing and the bed moving and you two laughing and talking in hushed tones and it won’t let me sleep so i bitch about it to you 24/7 and one day it stops and one day turns to one week and then months and i haven’t seen you smile in forever please let me in, i’ve been knocking for ten minutes’ au.

let’s try this one!!

au meme: jerejean + your apartment is next to/above mine

“Jeremy,” Jean whines, knocking multiple times on apartment number 23, waiting for some sort of answer.

The silence was incredibly frustrating, loud enough to make Jean grind his teeth. He wonders if he should just go back to his own apartment, which was just right next to Jeremy’s. He could always leave the pineapple upside-down cake he was holding right now just outside the door, and hope that it doesn’t invite their other neighbors to mooch off of it.

He doesn’t know why he cares so much, up until now. Jeremy is unavailable, for all intents and purposes. She wasn’t the perfect girlfriend, but Jeremy seemed to have such an amazing time with her. Maybe Jean just got used to calling him out for being too loud, even at the most ungodly hours. The worst one was them blasting Dancing Queen and singing to it. At 2 in the morning.

It’s been a few months since that last noise transgression. Ever since the silence started, Jean hasn’t stopped feeling weird about it.

(And no, Jean doesn’t ‘just want a reason to keep coming over to Jeremy’s’. No matter what Neil says. He’s not that type of guy.)

As annoyed at the noise as he was, Jean’s no stranger to being in love. He gets it. He thinks he was, at some point, in love with Renee - the one and only girl that has given him the time of day. Maybe part of what’s responsible for that was Jean’s (somewhat) commendable bravery in going all the way down to her organization’s office on 5th and asking her if she wanted to grab a bite for lunch.

Of course, working at a media company meant Jean was able to take as much time as he needed for his lunch break. It was only a matter of explaining to his superiors that he needed the time for a creativity breather.

Right after that, things were smooth-sailing… until they weren’t. It was a great four-and-a-half months, but for Jean, the relationship stopped giving him anything. It came to a point that he didn’t want to keep trying. And he was never one to lie about how he felt, not even after Renee admitted to him that she loved him. And so, over drinks and dinner that Thursday night, Jean broke it off, on the reason that his heart just wasn’t in the right place to keep the relationship going.

Which would’ve set off most girls, but Renee was several levels of understanding about it. Through her tears, she nodded, and held out her hand to ask, “Still want to be friends?”

Two months later, she’s dating one of her co-workers, and she tells Jean about it on a regular basis. Of course, Jean had to be the one that asked about it to get any info on the matter, but that’s only because Renee remains as angelic and wholesome as ever. That they remained friends was more of Jean’s persistence and less of Renee’s actual efforts to keep in touch. Still, they were better off as friends anyway.

She’s happier now, Jean thinks, a small smile on his face. However confusing that time of his life was, he’s still glad he was able to make her happy in his own way.

“Open up, Jeremy, you’re not fooling anyone,” Jean tries again, knocking on the door. His phone buzzes in the pocket of his joggers.

“Hello?”

“Jean?” Neil’s voice comes through the phone. Jean could hear the clinks of utensils against plates. “Andrew and I have some dinner left over. Wanna take it off our hands?”

In the background, Jean hears, “Moreau? Consider me out of here.”

“No thanks, Neil,” Jean replied, putting the phone in between his ear and shoulder. “Seems like your boyfriend remains resistant to any and all forms of human interaction apart from what he gets from you.”

There was a pause, and then Neil’s voice sounds farther away. “I put you on speaker. Andrew, be nice to the man.”

Jean hears a rush of water, presumably from their faucet. Andrew goes, “I can’t help it if one person in my life is already too much.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Neil cuts in, the tone of amusement very obvious to Jean. “It’s lasagna. Andrew made it. He used his knives. Without the violent undertones.”

“And how can you be sure it’s not–”

“Poisoned?” Andrew cuts in. The scrape of a chair. The setting of two mugs on the table. Then, “It’s because I’ve decided not to kill Neil tonight.”

“And it’s not as if you have any other plans, so. Please?” 

Jean huffs. “You know who I’m waiting on.”

“Jeremy? You’re still waiting on that guy?”

“He’s my neighbor, Neil, I can’t just not be concerned.”

“Yeah, sure, your ‘neighbor’. Please tell me you do not have an obnoxious food item to give to him right now.”

Jean, for lack of a better response, clears his throat. Maybe he really was that predictable.

“Well. That’s all I need to know. We’ll put the lasagna in the fridge instead of throwing it out if ever you decide to get it tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Jean replies sheepishly. He looks down at his pineapple-upside down cake. “Thanks, Neil. You know I’m only a few blocks away if you need me.”

“Awesome. Talk to you later.”

“Bye,” Jean sighs and puts his phone back in his pocket.

So maybe he was overreacting. Not having heard from Jeremy in a long time doesn’t necessarily mean he was in danger or anything. And if he was in a not-so-good place, who was Jean to Jeremy to even care about that?

The voice came from behind him. “Is that cake for me? Man, being out-of-town really makes me miss out on a lot.”

Jean momentarily froze. Holy shit.

His mind is a fury of questions. Out-of-town? So he wasn’t in danger or anything? Did he think to at least leave a note? What was he even doing out-of-town? Does he still have a girlfriend? Or boyfriend, for that matter? He did tell me he was bi, right? 

“H-hey, Jeremy,” Jean tries, slowly turning around. “Yeah, something I picked up on my way home from work. Figured you and your girlfriend would like to try it.”

Jeremy’s face falls a bit. “Shit, I really do have so much to tell you. Okay, first thing’s first. We broke up. Sort of a long time ago. Bit of a whirlwind, really. But it didn’t bother me for a lot of reasons. Maybe some are reasons we can discuss inside, if you wanna come in–”

“What.” came Jean’s reply, and it took him a second too long to realize how unintelligible that was. Stupid. “I mean– shit, I’m sorry that happened. Breakups suck.”

Jeremy’s laugh was warm and whole. “Don’t they all. But I remember telling you about all my problems with Diane, and you were the better listener. So it was probably for the best that she left me.”

And the plot thickens. “I can’t say I relate. I was the one who broke off my last relationship. We’re friends now though.”

Jean could swear he saw something flash through Jeremy’s face, but it was gone before his mind could completely register it.

“That’s good to hear,” Jeremy smiles, and it makes Jean’s heart beat just a little bit faster. He puts his key in, and adds, “If you want to tell me more about that, and about how much I’ve missed out on in the past few months, you’re free to come in and have a few slices of that cake with me. The commute back home made me hungry.”

Jean could practically feel Neil nudging him forward. So much for not overthinking any of his actions tonight.

“Sure,” he replies, and, after deciding that he’ll put off telling Jeremy how long he’s been knocking on his door, gingerly follows Jeremy inside his apartment. 

[takadasaiko]

Home from the War Chapter Two: Monsters

FFN II AO3

Summary: The Hargraves prove they're bad at retirement while the Keens find themselves with Tom's very angry ex girlfriend in their home.

Chapter Two: Monsters

Tourists filled the streets of Paris, leaving an already hot afternoon suffocated under the heavy blanket of thousands of people that didn't know the city or the language trying to find their way. It was, in Scottie Hargrave's opinion, the worst time to visit.

Or it would be if they were there for pleasure.

Dark eyes flickered up from behind her large sunglasses and focused on a man approaching. "Gabriel," she greeted, the corners of her mouth turning up. His own expression didn't lighten. Gabriel Moreau had been a sour man as long as the Hargraves has known him, but he was the best damn tracker this side of the world or the other. Irritable, brooding, and snappish, it took a special approach to get anything from him, but once they did he was gold.

"I thought it would be Howard," Moreau grumbled in perfect English.

"He was detained. You get me today," she answered in French. "Have a seat. Order something. It's been ages."

"The Hargraves never reach out without wanting something."

She shifted in her seat and pushed the chair opposite of her out with the tip of her red-soled pump. "But we pay generously."

Moreau looked at the chair suspiciously as Scottie took a bite out of her muffin, an innocent expression plastered across her face.

"That might fool anyone else," he grumbled as he took a seat.

"I'm not here to fool you, Gabriel. You know what I want."

"What is it you say? A needle in a haystack? This is a very large haystack, Scottie."

"I have faith in your abilities." He didn't look sold and Scottie loosed a breath. "Alright, Gabe. Money isn't what you're after. If it was we'd already have a deal. Name your price."

"This isn't about the price."

"It's always about the price."

"The people they worked for-"

"Are in prison. Or dead. Quite a few of them are dead. Alan, Peter, Laurel…. Patricia Morris took a bullet to the head about six months ago."

"From Raymond Reddington. I heard. He's dead too. Aligned with you."

Scottie tilted her head a little. "That was unfortunate, but had nothing to do with his alignment with us. Red made his own choice in the end."

"Saved your son's life I hear."

"See. You're already caught up. I'm not asking for anything more than a location. Howard and I will do the rest."

"You're digging your own grave," Moreau warned. "Your government will put Davis in prison whether you link him to your son's kidnapping or not. Why risk it?"

"Call it closure."

Moreau sighed. "I'll see what I can find. When I do, I'll send you the bill." He stood. "Whatever you expect, it will be more."

Scottie watched him leave. They had spent the last six months digging up anything and everything that they could about the people responsible for Tom's kidnapping as a child. They had uncovered multiple aliases that his adoptive parents had worked under - several with clear ties to the Cabal - but the trail had run dry. That's why they needed Moreau. He could find anyone, and despite his protests, haystacks were his specialty.

Tom was squatted down in front of his daughter's bookshelf and offering options for a bedtime story when he heard Liz call his name from the living room. Every instinct kicked into overdrive through his own exhaustion as he stood, motioning to Agnes. "Stay there, baby girl."

She didn't move and Tom regretted the fact that his sidearm was still in his bag. They had a spare in the lockbox in their room, but if Liz was in trouble he wasn't sure he could risk the thirty seconds it would take to duck into the room, open the safe, and get back to the front. He didn't risk it, instead moving carefully down the hall towards the front.

He stopped, blinking hard at what he found. Gina Zanetakos stood just inside their door and Liz stood next to her, having apparently let her in. She didn't look happy about it though. His wife looked pissed.

"Gina, what the hell-?" Tom tried, but she was already moving. He thought he heard Liz shout, startled by the switch, but it was nothing he hadn't seen from the blonde operative.

Tom got his arms up to deflect the first swing, the second coming at him fast and it connected hard with his right side in a way that told him she had done her homework about his injuries a couple of years before. The muscles protested the blow and Tom felt the breath leave his lungs as he stumbled a little, narrowly missing the next raging strike. He lashed out, the kick driving her back and he straightened in time to see Liz leveling her gun at Gina.

"Hey! Unless you want to take a trip to the hospital tonight, don't take another step."

To her credit, Gina didn't come at him again, but she locked a glare on him he hadn't seen in years. "Need to have the ball and chain fight your battles?" she snarled.

"You break into our home and one of us is going for a gun," Tom answered with a shrug. He opened his mouth to repeat the question he had tried to ask when she had jumped him when a little voice sounded from the hallway.

"Daddy?"

Tom whipped around to see Agnes in her princess pj's, book in hand, and a terrified look etched into her round face. Tears were building as her dark blue gaze shifted to Liz who still had her gun drawn and they were within seconds of a four-year-old meltdown. Even as he turned a look on Gina - one she would know well. One she would know better than to question - he could hear Agnes' sobs starting. "Don't," he snapped dangerously at Gina and saw her give the barest nods as she stared at the little girl.

Liz lowered the gun, tucking it away and out of sight and Tom scooped Agnes up, holding her close as he collapsed against his shoulder. Hot, wet tears were already soaking through his shirt and he bounced her. "Hey, kiddo. It's alright. Everything's alright." His calm voice didn't do much and she tightened her grip. She was saying something. He knew she was saying something, but between the sobs and the hiccups that were starting it was impossible to tell what.

Tom tried to keep his movements smooth so he wouldn't startle her more when he felt a hand on the small if his back and he saw Liz had covered the distance and was circling so that she could stand with them. She reached out, her touch finally calming Agnes a little and she was piling into her mother's arms without warning. Liz looked up and Tom offered a thin smile. "I've got this."

"I'll be right back."

She wanted to be involved in the conversation. Even if she hadn't said it in so many words, her tone was loud and clear. Tom nodded and grimaced as Liz took Agnes to the back. She would be asleep before Liz put her down, no matter how much the display had frightened her.

"She looks like you."

Tom turned and saw some of the rage had faded from Gina's eyes. Some. Not all of it. He swallowed. She knew. That had to be why she was there. She knew. "Yeah."

"I never could have imagined," she said softly. "You. This."

"I like my life."

"You were always good at lying to yourself," she murmured.

Tom reached a hesitant hand to his side that was beginning to ache as the adrenaline faded. "Liz and Agnes are everything to me."

Brown eyes watched him. "I believe that, more or less."

"What you believe doesn't really matter."

She hummed and looked around. He saw her study the little details of the new home. "It does," she said slowly and her gaze flickered back to meet his, That anger smoldering dangerously. "Because if I trust you or not will decide if I kill you and your little FBI bitch tonight."

Tom felt his own temper flare. "You so much as look at them wrong and-"

"You'll what?" She stepped closer. "That's your problem, Jacob. When it comes to me, you've never been able to pull the trigger." She was in his face now and he didn't budge. "You know I can. And I will. To protect what's mine."

"I don't have any problem putting you six feet under," Liz warned and Tom saw Gina's gaze flicker over his shoulder to where his wife had reemerged.

Gina snorted and made a show of stepping back. "Why have you been digging through our financials?"

Yep. She knew. Tom sighed and ran his hand through his dark hair, standing it on end. Liz moved past him and he nodded towards the couch and chairs. "You asked about Asia."

Gina Zanetakos made herself at home in the chair opposite of the couch with a beer in hand and an expected look. Tom's expression was closed off. Focused. Those expressive eyes were cold and shut off. Typically Liz could read the underlying subtleties that played out just behind the mask, but there was nothing that night. It reminded her of the day that the Pavlovich brothers had delivered him to their townhome after everything had come out. She hated it.

Gina locked her glare on Tom. "How the hell did you find Cecil?"

He shrugged. "Didn't take a lot. He's still in touch with Zhou. You'd be surprised to know how many people don't know I'm gone."

"Who's Cecil?"

Both Tom and Gina turned, almost like they had forgotten that Liz was there. Tom blinked hard and she recognized an intentional reset of sort. "He's moved money for St Regis for…. years." He turned to Gina. "He was there before I came in."

She shrugged. "I still haven't found anybody that was there before him."

Liz nodded, sitting back on the couch. So Tom had been in Asia to track down St Regis' money man. As much as she wanted to know why, she didn't dare flaunt it in front of Gina they Tom had left her out of the loop. They had to play this smart.

"You still haven't told me why you reached out to Cecil."

Liz watched her husband's gaze harden a little again. "I needed to make sure."

"I think we're past the point of vagueness, Jacob," Gina grumbled. "What do you want?"

Liz saw the barest clench in her husband's jaw before he answered. "St Regis."

There was a hush that fell over the room and no one moved. Gina was the first one to loose an audible breath. "You left." The two words escaped her lips with a venom that sounded like betrayal, and with the way she was seated Liz was half ready for her to come swinging at Tom again.

Her husband grimaced. "Halcyon's looking for ways to overhaul our training methods. Bud's program -"

"You told me it drowned people."

"It does. As it is, it does, but the core training's solid. It's the fact that we got dumped in as kids that..." Tom's lips twitched down. "I know it's not going the way you planned, Gina. You've had four years and you'rer bleeding money."

"You want to buy St Regis," Liz breathed.

"Yeah."

"No," Gina bit out immediately as she stood, slamming her beer down on the coffee table between them. "You had your chance. You chose her over everything."

"My guess is they've given you this long because of who you are, but you and I both know it won't last. They'll clean up. You know how this goes."

"I do, and I don't need your help. Stay away from my people. If I catch you near them again I'll put you down myself." With that she turned and stormed out of the apartment, the threat hanging heavily in the air. Neither Keen moved for a long moment.

Finally, Tom drew a breath. "I was gonna tell you," he murmured. "I just… didn't know if it was even plausible."

Liz swallowed hard, half a dozen starts to her question spinning in her mind and being replaced by another before it ever left her lips. After a few failed triest she forced herself to look at him. "Help me understand this, because right now al I'm seeing is a reallystupid move to open up all sorts of terrible things from your past that put the three of us in in the crosshairs of a dangerous organization that you had managed to slip away from."

"Liz-"

"Your ex was in our home and threatening to kill us. Why, Tom? What the hell could possibly-"

"Keep your voice down," he snapped, dark gaze sliding back towards Agnes' room.

She tried to steady herself and held his gaze as it returned to her. "I understand that you might feel the need to take control of some aspect of your past to try to balance out the fact that Scottie and Howard have been-"

"Do not try to shrink me, Liz." He squeezed his eyes shut, resetting himself, and he fell back against the couch. "Will you let me explain without trying to turn me into a patient?"

It was Liz's turn to grimace. He hated that. He'd told her before that he had had one too many social service therapists convinced that they could figure him out and that they thought they had. They slapped every useless label on him they could and it did nothing but isolate him further. He hated it, and she couldn't blame him for that. "Sorry."

He offered a thin smile, accepting the apology. "I knew something was off when she showed up in Costa Rica. If she trusted me she wouldn't have shown up herself, but she still took the job."

"So you started looking into the organization?"

"When I got the chance, yeah." He leaned back and Liz reached out, her hand brushing his leg and he dropped his own to hold on. Long fingers wrapped around hers. "I know the contenders that'll try to push her out. Bud screwed kids up, even I know that, but these guys…"

Pieces fell into place. Tom had always had more conflicted views than Liz did about his time with St Regis, both feeling like he had been saved and twisted up all at once when he had accepted McCready's offer. He saw what the man had done, at least in a way, and what happened to the kids growing up in the organization now. It was an emotionally charged conversation if they ever broached it and Liz was always hesitant to push him on it.

But here, now, he was the one poking at it.

"What if you handed it to the Task Force?"

Tom turned to look at her. "Liz-"

"Just hear me out. St Regis is huge. You have intel that could bring them down. It's well within the arrangement you have between Halcyon and the Task Force. Ressler won't fight you on the intel you need for them and we can stop them from turning kids into-"

"Monsters?"

The word cut through her argument and Liz caught his gaze. "You're not a monster," she said firmly.

"Because of you." His fingers tightened around hers again and she saw the struggle to put his feelings into words that made sense. "You…. Not everyone gets the chance you gave me, Liz."

"We'll make sure they're taken care of, Tom."

"How? Turn them back over to social services? How do you think they ended up in St Regis to start with?"

She pursed her lips together. "What would you do differently?"

"I was thinking about setting up some kind of program through Halcyon. The board loves charity projects and it'll keep them off the streets and out of the system. Give them a chance. The ones in now, if they wanted, would have the choice to get hired on at Halcyon at eighteen. Maybe later. If they wanted out they're free to leave."

They sat in silence for a long moment and she leaned into him. "You've been thinking about this for a while."

"Yeah," he breathed after a beat.

"I wish you'd told me."

"Doesn't matter now. All of that was balanced on Gina being willing to turn it over."

"Wouldn't the people you said would be after her fight you on it?"

She saw a small smile tilt his lips. "You think I wasn't going to offer Ressler something in all of that?"

Liz laughed and turned to kiss his shoulder. "Let's talk to him. Maybe we can still find a way."

"I just don't want those kids going from bad to worse. Least where they are now they can fight back."

"Hey." She waited until he looked at her, those eyes meeting hers. "McCready was the monster, not you."

Tom gave her a thin smile and she leaned up, her lips against his. "I know you, Tom Keen," she murmured. "Better than anyone."

There was a small sound of acknowledgement and pulled her into the kiss a little deeper. She sank in and she felt his his hands moving down her back, toying at the zipper on her dress that she still wore from the party, and she fought the frustrated sigh as she pulled away. "Agnes is in our room," she warned.

He loosed a breath and nodded, kissing her lightly. "We should be there if she wakes up," he acknowledged softly.

"After tonight, yeah."

She stood and he caught her hand, pulling her attention back around to him. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you right away," he said, and there was a sincerity there that she believed.

Liz squeezed his hand. "We'll figure it out."

He stood, his arms circling her waist and he pulled her a little closer. "I don't deserve you."

Her smile was real as she leaned in, her cheek pressed against his chest as he pulled her close. She stood there for a long moment just listening to the sound of his heart beating steadily in his chest. She had him, and she wasn't going to let him go. "I'm glad you're home."

"Me too," he answered softly, kissing the side of her head. "C'mon. We'll figure out how to read the Task Force in tomorrow."

Liz nodded, letting her hand drop down into his and she followed him back to their bedroom. Agnes was snoring, sprawled in the middle of their bed, and the exhausted little girl didn't even stir as they changed and crawled in on either side of her. Liz pulled the covers up and she finally turned, cuddling close to her mother, and a sense of peace settled in despite the evening's events. They were there and they would fight to be safe. No one - not Gina, or St Regis, or any other of the real monster's from Tom's past - would take her family from her.

TBC

Notes: I will forever be sad that we didn't dive further into St Regis in canon. It seemed like such a perfect opportunity for the task force to take on. So here we go. If they won't I will lol

Next Time: Tom talks to Ressler, Howard gets himself into some trouble, and Liz tries to convince her therapist to sign off on her reinstatement.

[vprgirl1887]

Tagging: @sophiagriff

Your first kidnapper kept his face hidden from you. He was roughly the same height as Brock, and though he definitely had big muscles beneath his t-shirt, he was nowhere near as bulky as Brock was. He had brown eyes that watched you and Lorraine closely from beneath his ski mask, and he had light skin.

There was a tattoo on his wrist. It had taken you a couple of peeks to figure out what it was, but you’d decided that it was a scorpion. Or a lobster, but you weren’t sure who would get a tattoo of a lobster. 

He had a deep, gruff voice. He definitely sounded scary, and he looked it too. The biggest problem - aside from being held hostage in a basement - was that you didn’t know what he wanted. Lorraine didn’t, either. He’d been holding her hostage for three months now, and you for a day, and yet neither of you had any idea why.

“Officer Moreau,” asked one of the older officers in the room, “could you explain to me why, exactly, this man is here?” Brock glared at the older officer, but he knew that Moreau could handle it.

“Well, Mr. Lesnar here is the guardian of the new missing girl, Angel,” Officer Moreau replied. “Quite frankly, he’s very powerful, he has a lot of money, and he could best any of us in a fight. We’d be stupid not to let him assist us where possible. Also, he insisted.”

“Let’s focus on the task at hand,” said another officer, whose name Brock seemed to recall overhearing as Officer Ross. Ross was in charge of the case of that missing girl, Lorraine, whose family had initially contacted Moreau about Angel. “So our primary suspect is obviously Arnold Thrane.”

“Who’s Arnold Thrane?” Brock asked. Ross and Moreau exchanged a look.

“Thrane moved here from Toronto almost a year ago,” Moreau said. “He had just recently finished a prison sentence - a much shorter one than he should have had, if I daresay - for involvement in human trafficking.”

“He got a shorter sentence because he cooperated with the investigators,” Ross chimed in. “He gave them names - lots of names - and helped them find lots of the missing girls. He also testified against the others who worked with him.”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on Thrane, but we haven’t noticed anything abnormal,” Moreau continued.

“To be fair, anyone in the human trafficking business would be stupid to work with Thrane after what went down in Toronto,” chimed in another, younger officer. “Thrane is known to law enforcement, and if he got caught, he’d sell you in an instant.”

“Unless the person didn’t know his history or was willing to take that chance,” Ross replied. “After Lorraine Bourgeois went missing, Thrane was the first person we turned to, but he had no information.”

“We questioned him quite vigorously,” Moreau added. “He insisted that he knew nothing, though, so we had to let him go. We’ve been keeping track of his communications, and he’s had a lot of messages about ‘cargo’ with a couple just outside of Calgary. Naturally, we were suspicious about that, but he claims that he’s taken up woodworking - even showed us a few pieces.”

“Obviously, we didn’t have enough for a warrant, but most of us have been pretty certain that he’s got Lorraine somewhere,” Ross added.

“What does any of this have to do with Angel?” Brock asked, frowning. “Do you think he has Angel, too?”

“Angel and Lorraine are similar in appearance,” Moreau said. “We doubt it’s a coincidence. On top of that, Thrane rented out a van from a relatively sketchy source today - he’s picking it up around lunchtime, and then he’s arranged to go to the couple in Calgary with it.”

“We can arrange to intercept the van,” Ross said. “If we have a stop set up outside of the city that everyone has to go through, it won’t look like we’re targeting him and he won’t be able to circumvent it.”

“Plus we could have officers a short way back, just in case he decides to turn around when he realizes we’re there,” chimed in another officer in the room. “You know, someone to follow him while we figure out something else.”

“What if I follow the van with my truck?” Brock asked suddenly. “I could wait outside the rental place and, you know, subtly follow him home.”

“A truck’s more inconspicuous than an unmarked cruiser,” agreed Moreau. “I can get you a radio so you can communicate with us. If you can see what he’s loading into the truck then that’ll be even better. He probably won’t load the girls in there if there’s a cruiser nearby, even if it’s unmarked - he knows what to look for - so you’d be our best bet for that.”

“Remind me again why he’s allowed to be part of this?” asked the older officer who’d first objected to Brock being here.

“He has a lot of money and power,” Moreau said, frowning as he looked at the other officer. “We don’t really have much say here. This sounds like a good plan - set up a stop along the route he’ll have to take to get to Calgary, and have Mr. Lesnar follow along in his truck.”

“Agreed,” said Ross with a nod. “Let’s see if we can get our girls back.”

[thefaeriereview]

Tour: Sleeping with the Enemy

https://ift.tt/3n2JsXV

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY Jackie Barbosa Historical Romance When Mrs. Laura Farnsworth discovers the blood-stained body of a man wearing the distinctive red coat of the British army, her first instinct is to let dead dogs lie. It has, after all, been just two days since the Battle of Plattsburgh, and the disposition of enemy corpses is hardly her purview. But then the man proves himself to be very much alive by grabbing her ankle and mumbling incoherently. After almost twenty-five years in His Majesty’s service, Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Langston never expected to wake up in heaven, much less being tended by an angel. But when he regains consciousness in the presence of a beautiful, dark-haired woman and with no memory of how he came to be there, what else can he think? Except it’s rather odd for an angel to have an American accent. As the long-widowed Laura nurses the wounded Geoffrey back to health, the attraction between them heats from a simmer to a boil. Bound by his oath to the British crown, Geoffrey should be working to find his way back to his regiment and from the, to England. Instead, he’s sleeping with the enemy…and thereby committing the crime of desertion if not treason. But then, who’s going to find out? If only Geoffrey didn’t have a family back home who refuse to take “missing in action” for an answer.

REVIEW

 4 out of 5

Sleeping with the Enemy is a wonderful war-time romance. This is one of those historical romances that you can curl up with a cup of tea and enjoy. I loved Laura. She's strong and independent, but her heart misses having something more than just her son to care for, especially now that he's about to become an adult. Geoffrey is an officer - wounded and on the wrong side of the war. Despite tension from outside, there's an undeniable spark between them, and it was nice to escape for a few hours into their world. 

Amazon Kindle   *    Kobo    *    Nook   *   Apple

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  Other Books by Jackie Barbosa:

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  Chapter One Plattsburgh, New York – September 13, 1814 It was the flicker of red in her peripheral vision that first caught Laura Farnsworth's attention. A bright, unnatural red that didn't belong in the tangled underbrush of the forest that lined the narrow dirt road. "Daniel," she said, placing her hand on her son's arm to draw his attention, "stop the wagon." He drew back on the reins, slowing the horses, even as he turned a querying gaze on her. "What for?" In answer, Laura pointed toward the unbroken patch of red that peeked out from between the trees on the left side of the road. "What do you suppose that is?" Her son squinted as if doing so would help him answer her question, then shrugged. "I don't know. But surely it's none of our business." "Maybe not," she admitted, rising from her seat on the hay wagon's bench, "but I'd like to have a closer look, just the same." "Wait." Daniel's tone carried a trace of fear. "It could be some kind of trap." Laura kept moving, gathering her skirts to avoid tripping as she stepped off the wagon. "The battle ended two days ago. If the British were laying traps for average citizens, I should think we would have encountered one before now." "Still…" She turned her most quelling maternal gaze on him. "I will thank you to remember who is the parent and who is the child here." Granted, she had a hard time thinking of her seventeen-year-old son as a child, given that he was a head taller than she and broad as an ox. It had been years since she had been able to get him to obey her by physical means, which meant she'd had to learn a long time ago how to enforce her rules by moral authority alone. He sighed and set aside the reins. "Fine. I'll come with you." Laura waited while he clambered down and then began picking her way through the undergrowth. When she got close enough to make out what she was looking at, she gasped with a combination of surprise and distress. Lying face down on the carpet of leaves and branches was the body of a man clad in the red coat and black breeches of a British soldier. The back of the coat was liberally spattered with brownish splotches that could only be dried blood. His hair, a pale shade of brown that reminded her of fresh apple cider, was also matted with blood at the base of his skull. He must have taken a terrible blow to the back of the head during the fighting and somehow managed to make his way here, where he had expired, miles from the battlefield where his body could be claimed.         Poor man. No one deserved to die alone and lost like this, not even an enemy soldier. After all, attacking her town and killing people she knew had probably not been his idea. And his family should know what had become of him. Have the opportunity to bury him. She turned to look at her son, whose complexion had gone ashen pale. Daniel was hardly a stranger to death, having lost his father at the tender age of seven, but Laura had taken a good deal of care to protect him from the more unpleasant aspects of her husband’s passing. Certainly, Daniel had never before seen a dead person who had not been prepared for burial, and the obvious violence that had been done to this man before his passing was shocking, even to her. “At least he is out of pain and at peace now,” she said gently. “We will have to drive back to town and tell Reverend Shackleford about this. He’ll be able to get a message to Fort Moreau so they can come retrieve the body and return it to the British.” Daniel’s nod was slow, but his color improved slightly. “Makes sense. But…shouldn’t we do something to try to protect the body from scavengers?” That was a good point. It would be hours before anyone from the fort would arrive to collect the corpse. In fact, now that she thought about it, the man must have expired quite recently, for there was no hint of predation. Nor, come to think of it, did she detect any of the foul odors she associated with death. Though she could perceive no signs of life at this distance—no rise and fall of chest, no twitch of limbs or digits, no breath stirring the leaves beneath him—perhaps she should take a closer look, just to be certain. Lifting her skirts again, she edged through the brambles until she was near enough to the body to stoop down and touch it. “Mother?” “We should be su—” Her words ended on a startled shriek because the corpse’s hand shot out and grabbed her ankle, large fingers closing tightly around her boot. “Mother!” Daniel’s panicked tone echoed her own as he thrashed his way to reach her side. The dead man was most certainly not dead, but quite alive, and his steely grip easily resisted her efforts to pull free. Daniel caught her by the shoulders to keep her from toppling over as she continued to yank against the man’s grasp. Over the wild pounding of her heart—not so much the result of fear as of surprise—she could hear the man’s voice, thick and raspy, as he mumbled words she couldn’t make out but that she understood well enough, despite their incoherence. Help me. Please. “It’s all right,” she reassured her son as her shock subsided to be replaced by concern and compassion. “He isn’t hurting me, and he certainly can’t hurt you in his condition.” She ceased trying to loosen the man’s grasp on her ankle and bent her knees to get closer to him instead. Placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, she said, “Have no fear, sir. You’re safe now.” At her words, his grip relaxed and his mumbling ceased. He had slipped back into unconsciousness. *** Getting the wounded man—who, based on the epaulettes on the shoulders of his coat, must be an officer, not an enlisted soldier—from where he lay to the wagon was no mean feat. Daniel might be large and strong for a young man in his late teens, but the British officer was nearly as big as her son and a dead weight, to boot. Daniel could not have carried the man more than a few staggering steps without Laura’s assistance. Although she worried about doing further injury, she and Daniel had no choice but to roll the man over onto his back before moving him. He groaned in what was undoubtedly pain as they turned him but roused no further. Laura couldn’t prevent herself from drawing in a sharp breath at her first glimpse of his face, for though his bronzed skin was smudged with dirt and his eye sockets had the sunken appearance she associated with a prolonged lack of water, none of this detracted from the arresting masculine beauty of his features. Several days’ worth of stubble covered his strong, square jawline, which was punctuated by a tidy cleft in his chin. He had sharply delineated cheekbones and a well-proportioned nose that skewed just slightly at the bridge, suggesting it had been broken at least once. His cider-colored hair was a trifle overlong and clung to his well-proportioned forehead, which made her notice that his eyes were well-spaced and possessed of thick lashes a shade or two darker than his hair. She wondered what color those eyes were, and immediately berated herself for giving such a trivial question even a second’s consideration. What sort of woman thought about such shallow, inconsequential things when a man might well be dying at her feet? A shameless one. Or a lonely one. Once the man was on his back, Daniel stooped down and carefully lifted his head and shoulders while Laura grabbed his legs at the knees. Together they managed to carry him the ten yards to the wagon. Fortunately, today’s trip to town had been for household supplies, not feed for the livestock, so there was plenty of room in the bed of the wagon. The jolting journey from there to the farm would likely have been unpleasant for the man had he been awake, but he remained insensible. And Daniel argued with her the entire way. “We should take him to the hospital at the fort. Turn him over to them. It’s not our job to take care of wounded soldiers. Especially enemy soldiers.” “We have a Christian duty to help anyone who is sick or injured,” Laura answered. “Friend or enemy.” “Taking him to the fort would fulfill that duty,” her son retorted stubbornly. She glanced over her shoulder at the unconscious man. His lips were cracked and bloody, and his sun-bronzed skin had a sallow, lifeless undertone. If they hadn’t found him when they did, she doubted he would have survived much longer. “He’s British, Mother,” Daniel continued, his jaw set at that stubborn angle that still reminded her of his father. Her husband, gone ten years and more. If it weren’t for their son, who looked so like him, she wondered if she would even remember Samuel Farnsworth’s face. Sometimes, she wasn’t even sure that she truly did. “What if he’s not as injured as he appears and means us harm? Means you harm.” “What if he is as injured as he appears and dies before we can get him to the fort?” Laura gave her son the hard, narrow-eyed stare that she’d been using to cow him since he had grown too big for her to bend him to her will by physical means. To her gratification, he flinched ever so slightly. It still worked. “He could die on the way to the farm.” Dear Lord, she hoped not. Her throat tightened painfully at the very idea. Something had happened in those few seconds when the man she’d taken for dead had grabbed onto her and begged her for help. A tug at her heart, an answer to a longing she hadn’t even known existed inside her. This man needed her. And it had been so long since anyone had truly needed her. Oh, certainly, she felt she was useful. Her life was positively chock-full of activity, sunrise to sundown, after all. Running both the household and overseeing the day-to-day operation of the farm kept her busier than a flail on threshing day, and there was always someone who wanted an answer to this or a decision about that. But the reality was that very soon, Daniel would take control of the farm. He was, in fact, perfectly capable of managing things himself now, though by legal formality, the farm would not become his until his twenty-first birthday. But whatever the law might have to say about it, Daniel did not need her help any longer, and Laura rather suspected that, should she up and vanish, he would quite handily sort out the household side of things as well. She’d raised a competent son, as she’d intended. She just hadn’t realized what would happen when his competence equaled her own. How…empty it would make her feel. And then there he had been, a person in desperate need of someone to do the right thing, and that someone seemed to be her. Not that there was any way she could possibly explain this to her son, whose concern was not entirely misplaced. So she said, “And if he does, we will know we did everything we could to save him by trying to get him to help as quickly as possible. If we take him on an hour-long journey, we will have no such assurances.” “And if he is too injured for you to help him? If he requires a surgeon to save his life? I know you know what you’re doing when it comes to treating common illnesses and injuries, but for all we know, he has been shot or stabbed or has some other condition you won’t be able to do anything for. Then what?” Laura bit her lip and visualized what she had observed when they had turned the man onto his back before transporting him the wagon. Aside from a few drops on or near his shoulders, all of the blood on his coat had been on the back. If he had been shot or stabbed, there should have been one or more holes in his uniform, but she remembered none. All of his limbs had appeared undamaged, with no evidence that they had been broken or crushed. Everything she had seen indicated that his only injury was to the back of his head, where someone had struck him hard enough to draw a significant quantity of blood and likely fracture his skull. That could, of course, have done serious harm to his brain, but if it had, there was nothing a bonesaw could do for him that she could not. Well, short of amputating his head, she thought with grim humor, but that seemed unlikely to be therapeutic. After a long pause, she answered Daniel’s query. “Then I will have to answer to God for my error. But given what I have seen, I believe all he needs is water and food, once he can manage it, and to be kept dry, warm, and clean so that he can heal. The rest is up to the Lord.” *** Laura’s initial visual assessment of the British soldier’s wounds proved accurate. Aside from a few scrapes and bruises likely sustained on a stumbling trek through the forest to where she and Daniel had found him, the only injury was to the base of his skull. The blow must have been delivered in close quarters when his back was turned, which seemed an odd way for a soldier to come to harm in a battle that had been fought mostly by mortar and gunfire, but then, she supposed it was possible for hand-to-hand combat to occur even under those circumstances. The incongruity bothered her nonetheless. After Daniel and Joseph Robinson, the freeborn Black man she had hired ten years ago to be her foreman and orchardist, had undressed the man, bathed him according to her specifications, and then tucked him into the bed in the downstairs bedroom—her bedroom, normally—Laura undertook the task of his day-to-day care. Although none of them were familiar enough with military insignia to guess at the man’s precise rank, the star and crown on his epaulets certainly suggested he held a position of some importance. Despite the fact that British forces had decamped from the area, Laura could not imagine that no one would be looking for the missing officer. As one day stretched into the next and then into another, however, her concern that soldiers might turn up on her doorstep demanding to know what she had done with the wounded man faded, to be replaced by concern that he stubbornly continued to not wake up. Though he reflexively swallowed the small amounts of water and meaty broth she dribbled into his mouth several times each day and managed the other routine bodily functions often enough that she no longer worried he would die as a direct result of injury or infection, as two days turned into three and then became four, she had to face the very real possibility that the damage to his brain had been severe enough that he would never regain consciousness. At some point, water and broth would no longer be sufficient to sustain him, and he would die. Perhaps Daniel had been right. Perhaps they should have taken him to the fort. At least then, it would not be her burden to watch another man die by inches despite her efforts to save him. It did not help that every day, Daniel pointed out that there was no reason they could not transport the man to the fort’s hospital now. His condition, while not improving, was clearly stable enough to allow for the journey. Wouldn’t he be better off in the hands of people whose job it was to treat the sick and wounded? The worst of it was that she knew her son wasn’t wrong. There was no reason for her to continue pouring so much of her time and effort into caring for a complete stranger. A man whose name she didn’t even know and who, if he regained consciousness, would likely consider her an enemy. A man she ought to consider her enemy, given that the United States and Britain were at war. Part of the reason she resisted was sheer pigheadedness. Laura liked to succeed. After Samuel’s death, she’d thrown herself first into raising their son and then into transforming the family farm from a subsistence-level operation into a money-making enterprise. This she had accomplished by quadrupling the size of the apple orchard and planting varieties good for making cider, which she sold to the local taverns and townspeople alike at a healthy profit. The first few years had been difficult, of course. She’d had to take all her hay fields out of production to plant the new trees, which meant she had to purchase hay for the livestock rather than growing it herself while at the same time waiting for the trees to reach maturity. But she had persevered despite the obstacles now the farm made a tidy profit each year which she reinvested into the continued expansion of the orchard and the equipment she needed to press and age her cider. Giving up simply did not suit her, and turning the wounded lieutenant colonel over to military doctors would be an admission of defeat. But the lion’s share of the reason, she was forced to admit to herself, was curiosity. Ever since she’d found him, she had been plagued with questions. How had he been injured? How had he come to be lying in the woods near her home, miles from the battlefield? What was his name? Where was he from? Did he have a wife and children? What color are his eyes? And so each night, she promised herself that if he did not waken on the morrow, they would do as Daniel wanted and take him to the fort. And each day, she utterly failed to do so. Until mid-afternoon on the fifth day.

_____________________

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    Jackie Barbosa can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be an author when she grew up, but there were plenty of times when she wasn’t sure she ever would be. As it turns out, it just took her about twenty years longer to grow up than she expected! On the road to publication, Jackie took a few detours, including a stint in academia (she holds an MA in Classics from the University of Chicago and was a recipient of a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities) and many years as a technical writer/instructional designer for a data processing company. She still holds her day job, but her true vocation has always been writing fiction and romance in particular. Jackie is a firm believer that love is the most powerful force in the world, which that makes romance the most powerful genre in the world. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise!

 WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

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[kazayu]

If I had a heart

Fandom: Vanitas no Carte Pairing: Vannoé Rating: G Words: ~2.4k

Summary: "Why don’t you ever sleep?"Vanitas shuts his eyes and sighs. Apparently, Noé has decided he’s feeling talkative tonight and he isn’t quite sure he’s up to the task. He contemplates fleeing by the window."What do you dream about?" He asks instead. "What is it about rain?"

Noé doesn't sleep quiet.

It shouldn't come as a surprise and in truth it isn't.

Vanitas has long realized Noé never stops moving, constantly shifting, slow, careful, micro movements even when he gives the illusion of stillness. If Vanitas had found it odd at first, this perpetual motion that doesn't seem to have a beginning nor an end, he's become used to it. Stillness would fit Noé like a pair of over-sized trousers. Plus, there is something rewarding knowing he chooses to remain at Vanitas' side in spite of it.

Though, Vanitas thinks, maybe there is nothing extraordinary there. He does have a knack for flattering himself over trivialities and Noé does seem like the type to flee within the careful boundaries of his own impulses. If he were to try and explain it, he would probably say it's something like relying on a tide, knowing it's bound to recede and trusting it to come back simply because it's within the order of things.

The light pitter-patter of rain on their roof and the cool breeze their window is letting through offer a welcomed truce from the noisy hubbub of daylight-Paris. It strengthens the pungent scent of flowers and Vanitas almost wishes he could sleep.

Alas, it seems like tonight is one of those nights where his mind just won’t stop running in circles.  Nightmares awaits in the dark and Vanitas would much rather wait it out and pass out from exhaustion than surrender to unpleasant dreams and restless sleep.

Behind him Noé shifts. His breathing is shallow; he’s probably dreaming and Vanitas would be willing to bet his dreams aren’t the pleasant kind either.

Sometimes he wonders how many layers there are to Noé. He wonders, once stripped of that naive and happy-go-lucky persona, what tragedy he would find woven in Noé’s bones or what he would see in his blood had he possessed the same ability the vampire has. Pain has a way of etching itself under people’s skin, Vanitas knows that all too well. And Noé is either a paradigm of resilience or a complete fool for acting the way he does.

Vanitas leans toward the latter.

He extends his hand out the window. From the looks of it, rain will probably halt before morning, leaving strips of fog to welcome dawn. But for now water is dripping from the roof and onto his gloved arm with a muted sound and when he angles it upward, droplets make their way to bare skin. He shivers.

Prompted by something fierce and sudden, he decides to take his gloves off entirely.

The rain on the exposed skin of his arms is cold. It feels odd. Satisfying. Vanitas revels in the foreign sensation.

It’s surprisingly freeing.

He avoided a wealth of unnecessary stares and intrusive questions by covering his arms, but as habits go he hardly ever bothers taking the gloves off anymore.

His heart is beating faster in his chest like he’s committing some kind of sin by baring his mark for all to see. The scar left by the Vampire of the Blue Moon is a peculiar one. Not unlike cracks in marble, it made ruins out of skin. Granted, no one is around this time but the exhilaration he feels is the same he felt back at the vampire ball.

Vanitas absentmindedly thumbs at Jeanne’s mark of possession. If that first scar made rumbles out of his soul, Jeanne’s grew thorny vines around its debris.

Water runs over his bare arms and the rose on his neck thrums and he tries not to think about how a mark of ownership etched into his skin is the closest he’ll ever get to a sense of belonging.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, far enough to be muffled but loud enough to rouse Noé from sleep.

In an expected show of maladroitness, Noé falls to the floor with a loud thump and he gasps, slowly coming back to reality. The noise has Vanitas turning back, water dripping from his fingers. Noé stays there for a bit, blinking up at the ceiling and seemingly unaware of Vanitas’ presence.

When Vanitas expects him to stand up, Noé simply curls up on himself and clutches the pillow that followed him to the floor. He looks miserable.

"The bed would be more comfortable," Vanitas says before he can stop himself. He wipes his wet hands on the fabric of his pants, as if to erase the trace of his moment of distraction.

Noé doesn’t startle, simply glances up to meet Vanitas’ stare like it’s no surprise for him to find the other man there. Something in Vanitas’s chest aches at Noé unguarded expression, something overwhelming and terrifying that he swallows up right away.

"Surely that must be why you never sleep in yours."

Even with their room shrouded in half darkness, Vanitas can’t miss the way crimson eyes trail on the exposed skin of his arms, halting on the jagged scar left by the Vampire of the Blue Moon. For someone just barely awake and halfway across the room, Noé is oddly perceptive. Vanitas doesn't bother with an answer and turns around to face the window again, fighting the urge to cover up his arms.

"Why don’t you ever sleep?"

Vanitas shuts his eyes and sighs. Apparently, Noé has decided he’s feeling talkative tonight and he isn’t quite sure he’s up to the task. He contemplates fleeing by the window.

"What do you dream about?" He asks instead. "What is it about rain?"

He doesn't really care about an answer, aiming to make a point. They both have secrets of their own and Vanitas won’t probe if Noé doesn’t and he expects the opposite to be true as well. This weird status quo of theirs has proven to be quite efficient until now.

For a moment he thinks it worked, but then he hears Noé moving. “I feel lonely when it rains,” he says softly, “I’m not sure why.”

Vanitas almost rolls his eyes. Just like that, huh? Of course. He should have known. But Noé is not done yet.

“Can I... see it?”

Vanitas tenses involuntarily. “See what.”

The request doesn’t put him on edge, but the hesitation it’s laced with does. Noé runs head first into everything, including conversations. Noé hesitating means he’s testing boundaries again and Vanitas will have none of it.

“What is it?” he insists, voice cold. Even though Vanitas knows the vampire refers to the mark on his arm, Noé is going to have to work if he wants an answer, starting by asking complete questions. “What is it you wanna see?”

“The kind of face you’re making.”

Vanitas’ breath catches in his throat. His heart is beating so loudly he can’t hear the rain anymore and he mentally curses Noé’s unpredictability.

He takes a few second to collect himself, relaxing his features into a carefully crafted mask. Noé can read what he wants on his face, but Vanitas won’t let him see vulnerability, even if it kills him.

Noé is sitting with his back to his bed, staring intently at him with that expression he makes when something has caught his attention. “You’re too far for me to see.”

Why the hell should I care, Vanitas thinks.

“Liar,” he says, stepping forward.

He crouches down in front of the vampire, meeting his stare with feigned confidence. "Good enough for you?"

Drowsiness adds a certain softness to Noé’s features. His hair is disheveled, shirt hanging low and exposing his collarbones while his eyes are blinking away remnants of sleep as they scan Vanitas' face. He doesn’t have Vanitas’ reticence to display his emotions and Vanitas imputes the hints of something dark and mournful he sees in Noé’s eyes to the dream he just woke up from.

Vanitas can’t say just how long they remain like this, an unspoken challenge to see who will unravel who first, pushing and pulling at newly established boundaries until a comfortable middle ground emerges. He loses track of time and there’s no way to know for sure if the stars he sees in Noé’s eyes are a trick of his mind or a trick of his treacherous, treacherous heart.

Noé finally tips the scales when he extends his arm forward. Not demanding, but asking. As much as  it infuriates him, Vanitas finds he doesn’t mind meeting Noé halfway.

Noé's hand on his wrist is burning. "Vanitas, you're freezing." He looks torn between curiosity and genuine concern. "Whatever were you doing in the rain, anyway?"

“You’re just full of questions tonight, aren’t you?”

"I'm trying to understand," Noé responds, bringing his attention back to Vanitas' arm.

Vanitas wonders what in the world there is to understand.

“So, this is the mark of possession, the one from the Vampire of the Blue Moon. I didn't get a clear look at it last time.”

His eyes are shining but Vanitas can tell he is trying conceal his interest. Noé is holding his wrist delicately enough that he could retrieve his arm back anytime he wants. However, Vanitas doesn't move, figuring he can indulge Noé’s curiosity if it means satisfying his own. Noé doesn’t look half as wary as he should be with such a powerful mark of possession in proximity, let alone two. What an odd ball.

“It looks like your arm might fall apart,” Noé murmurs, "with all these fissures."

"Who knows?" Vanitas muses. "One of these days, it just might."

Noé glares. "Please do not joke around, Vanitas."

He skims his fingers over the mark and Vanitas has to repress a violent shiver. "Does it still hurt?"

Judging by his question, Noé probably misread his reaction and Vanitas shakes his head. "Not really."

"What about these?"

This time, he inhales sharply and doesn't answer. Noé has grabbed his other arm, the one covered in scars, cruel account of his time spent in Moreau's lab. Some are clean, thin stab wounds, others nasty burns, and although they've all stopped hurting quite some time ago, nothing compares to the searing pain that comes with remembering how he got all of them.

“Moreau did this to you." Noé's voice has gone incredibly soft. That someone could manage to sound this kind while being this furious is beyond Vanitas.

“Some of it,” he says. It comes out strangled.

Never has Vanitas fathomed that silence could be compassionate.

Noé remains quiet and he loathes every second of it. More than anything, Vanitas loathes how sadness attaches itself in the crease of Noé’s brows and the tug of his lip and he loathes how similar his expression is to the one he was wearing when he woke up only minutes ago. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with something that would cause Noé any grief.

"I think," Vanitas says, retrieving his arm and holding it against his chest,"that you should be careful not to stain anyone with that bleeding-heart of yours."

Noé brings his arms around his knees. "Vanitas, I wish none of it had happened to you.”

Vanitas sighs. If they had been coming from anyone else, he would have doubted the sincerity of such words, but it’s Noé so he knows it’s heartfelt and it hurts all the more. "Regrettably, my dear Noé, you can’t change the past.”

Noé opens his mouth and closes it and Vanitas knows he’s hesitating again.

“What now? Out with it!”

“Vanitas, I’ve been wondering, who exactly is no. 71?”

“Who is Louis?” Vanitas counters, not entirely surprised. Noé shoots him a look.

By all accounts Noé is no stranger to restless nights, meaning he’s not spared from sleep-talking. Vanitas had stored that information away for future use but Noé started it so it’s only fair he responds.

Noé looks away, his expression growing distant and oh so impossibly sad. “You don’t have to deflect questions you don’t want to answer, you know. Just tell me you don’t want to.”

Vanitas snorts. “And who is deflecting questions now?”

“Louis was a dear-”

“Don’t tell me!” Vanitas interrupts, his hands over his ears, “I don’t want to know.”

Noé blinks and considers him in silence.

You're weird, Vanitas," he finally says, "Usually, when people ask questions they expect an answer."

Vanitas barks out a laugh. "And usually whoever answers expects another answer in return." And I have no interest in spilling my heart tonight.

He stands up in one easy movement and stretches. "You should go back to sleep."

He motions to step away but Noé catches his wrist with inhuman speed. "Vanitas," he calls, "I told you I was staying with you. I do not expect anything of you and you do not owe me anything."

He says it like it's a given and it explains everything. Like he's not lying when Vanitas knows deep down Noé seeks some kind of redemption with the Book of Vanitas. No one is that selfless, but that's just fine with him. If he has to owe someone, he'd rather it be Noé. And if that's the kind of salvation Noé desires, Vanitas will hand it over to him, come hell or high water.

"Heh."

Vanitas twists in Noé's hold and entwines their fingers. He pivots and leans down, placing his other hand on Noé's mouth and muffling his noise of surprise.

He smiles. "Or maybe I do, you hopeless vampire," he whispers without any bite. Maybe I owe you everything.

The both of them are already breathing the same air and really it's no effort for Vanitas to inch ever so closer and press his lips to the back of his own hand.

It's soft and delicate and everything Vanitas is not and Noé's eyes grow wide. His breath is warm against Vanitas's fingers and for a fleeting moment he kisses back, lips pursing against Vanitas’s palm.

Before he can decide if Noé means it, Vanitas breaks the spell. He laughs, stepping away and climbing in Noé's bed without waiting for his reaction. He shoves himself underneath the covers. "I think I'm going to rest for awhile."

His voice is muffled by the heavy comforter on top of him but he knows Noé hears him anyway. He holds his hand to his chest, trying to ignore the way it tingles where Noé's lips touched his skin but that's no easy feat when he's surrounded with Noé's scent.

Noé doesn't comment, but Vanitas feels a pillow sliding under his head. He adjusts his position and sighs. "Would you mind staying for a bit...Noé?"

He immediately bites his lip, hating how defenseless he sounds.

He hears a chair being dragged on the floor. Noé hums, tranquil.

"No, Vanitas. I wouldn't mind at all."

[fantaesize-blog]

the most beautiful overture

Genre: soulmate!au with an alternative storyline

Word count: 5092

[ if soul mates were a legitimate phenomenon, we would all be lured by it’s false depiction of idealized romance ]

Note: This story was created for this, and this June Writing Challenge.

“To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.” - Jeanne Moreau

-

I live in a world where soul mates are a legitimate phenomenon, not supposed or imagined. Our vision is monotone until we experience a form of psychical contact with our other half — even a fleeting second of handholding can fill your mundane world with evocative colors, or maybe even an accidental shoulder touch. To put it in context, one day, you might be casually walking on the street, coming back from work at night, or even just out to buy a cup of soy latte on a Saturday morning and all of a sudden your black and white vision would be overflowed with vivid hues of colors you’ve never seen before. 

Every country has its own system of setting people up with their soul mates. Some would have the dates that they would encounter their soul mate written on their wrists ever since they were born, or hints about their other half inked on their back bone so they would have to search for them on their own, some stops aging when they reach eighteen and doesn’t starts aging again until they meet their soul mate so they can grow old together, or so I’ve heard that that’s the case. For us, we are stick with the system of having a monotone vision before we meet our other half.

So I might have already met my soulmate, but just the fact that I hadn't had a chance to touch them, I would never realise my soulmate might just happens to be the person who sat one seat in front of me during the bus ride yesterday, or the person who sat next table during my dinner last week, or even the person who is standing in front of me in the queue, right now. 

But anyways, yes I haven’t my soul mate, and I’m yearning to. I think it has already become an inclination and it is truly destructing my emotions.

See, the thing with this whole soul mate system is that everyone is caught up in this self-serving fantasy. We are so absorbed in this idea of having our vision being brimmed with colors other than black and white; we would anticipate it every single day. I can’t deny that I am not one of them, every night before I go to bed, I would have the wildest dreams of how my soul mate and I will meet, under the bridge, stargazing, a perfect replica of a midsummer night’s dream. 

I guess the tales that all my friends, family and relatives have told me really did imprint an effect on me. My mum and dad met during their university graduation dinner, my mother was tipsy and has accidentally spilled her champagne over my dad’s expensive suit, she was way too tipsy to realize she had worn her highest heels, and she stumbled a few steps backwards, only to be caught by my dad’s arm.  

It is the ideal romance, isn’t it? Only loving one person your whole life, and you won’t have to worry that they won’t love you back, because that’s usually the case – that have to be the case. That’s what my family tells me, when I’m young.

The peculiar cases however, were never spoken, were never brought up and were never mentioned. The people in our society, they aren’t oblivious, they aren’t naïve and ingenuous, oh they are perfectly acquainted and conscious of all the odd cases that are present. I am aware of the problems too, and there are way too many to count. 

Here, let me put it into a realistic context for you, using the soul mate system from another country that I mentioned above as an example. Let’s use the system where a person stops aging at eighteen until they find their soul mate. For centuries, there are people who kills their soul mate on purpose just so they can reign eternity. It leaks violence in every aspect – these cases are ubiquitous. 

Toning it down a little, there are people who platonically moves in with their best friend and realizes that they are actually aging, or people who thought they have met their soul mates but finds out they have never aged. There are plenty of people who falls in love with other people other than their soul mate, there are even more people who purposely denies their soul mate, for what ever reason they have.

Then we have the queers, the transgender, asexual people, who lives in constant despair every single day, worrying that their other half would not accept them for who they are. Then we have the people who are in poly relationships and things obviously get excessively complicated. Soul mates who have died young, and most importantly, people who do not know how to handle relationships once they have met their soul mate because they are so caught up in only loving their soul mate, so much so that they have never dated anyone else, or worst, had refused their feelings to a non soul mate.

Yes, now that I have mentioned it, are you starting to realize how broken this system is? Very.

Not only this, every system has its own dilemma and no one has a solution of fix it, because the happy and lucky majority who successfully meet their other half has no concern over these issues. I am not saying that I am going to self-sacrifice myself to change my country’s system, because I do not have the power to, and more importantly, I am still anticipating my encounter with my soul mate, because at the end of the day, deep down in our souls, we all wish to be in the blessed majority, including me.

I am just telling you the problems that I am conscious of, or more so, problems that everyone is conscious of, but of course, in the end, all that matters is yourself. You meeting your soul mate and having a colored vision – being educated in this society, we are all selfish people who put our benefits first.

-

“Miss, miss!”

Snapping out of my trance of thoughts, I pulled out my earphones and looked up to see a very good-looking man, holding my coffee. His facial features were sharp and clean, impressive really. With his fluffy locks and an enchanting big smile, I’m quite dazzled. How I wish I could see what lovely color those locks own. His eyes must’ve been blessed with an alluring shade that I could not comprehend, because I am still humbly living in my black and white world.

“Miss did you perhaps ordered a flat white?”

“Oh yes, thank you. Sorry if you have called my names a couple of times – was in my own bubble just now.”

“It’s all good. Have a lovely day.” 

“Right back at you.”

“Don’t worry. My day had been pretty well, it got better when you walked in.”

“Right back at you, again. Nice glasses by the way.” I gave him one last compliment before making my way out of the café shop.

But just when I was about to walk out of the door, I figured if it’s not now, then I am never going to do it, because honestly, he really does look exquisite. 

“Sorry I didn’t catch your name.” Turning my head and smiled, trying to make myself look poised. 

“It’s Taehyung.”

“Oh lovely. Well mine’s y/n.” I smiled again, with a composed manner of course. 

Taking a quick sip of my coffee, I failed to realize how hot it actually was. Coughing a few times, my cheeks were tickled with a blush.

“Slowly, y/n.” He chuckled. 

“Sorry. You make really good coffee though.” I laughed my way out of embarrassment.

“If you come back tomorrow, I’ll make you another one, and it will be on me.” He replied, with an almost flamboyant attitude.

“We’ll see, Taehyung.”

“If you do come tomorrow, come a little earlier, I might be able to slip out and earn us a good thirty minutes of break time.” He grinned.

“We’ll see.”

“We can get to know each other better!”

“Yes okay! I get your hint.” I laughed.

“So is that a yes?” He grinned.

“We’ll see.”

“You’re difficult.” He pouted.

“Well I guess you’ll just have to try harder, Taehyung.”

-

Finally walking out of the café with the tiniest smile lingering on my lips, I decided to head back home. I made my way to the bus stop that looked eerily scary, with its flickering streetlights and ridiculously quiet surroundings; I realized there wasn’t a single person visible.

But after five minutes of waiting for my bus, I realized I don’t want to go back home yet. I want to wander around the streets like I always do, because I have always loved the night more than the day, the wistful melancholy of the stygian night had always sparked an interest in me.

I gazed up to the monotone sky; I realized it had become a darker and dimmer version of grey. It must be almost time for sunset, I thought to myself, and why not enjoy my coffee and watch the transition of the sky turn from a mellow grey to an inky black. It would be the perfect way to end the day, way better than heading back home and locking myself up in my bedroom. Plus, the beach down the road looks exceptionally welcoming today.

I took my time to walked to the beach and the first thing I did was to make my way to the open waters. Submerging my feet into the icy ocean, I felt the numbness jolted up to my sand encrusted feet. I was out of space to realize the mellow sound of tides benevolently crashing towards my direction and I stumbled a few steps backward. Oh no, so maybe I shouldn’t have followed my own decision of going to the beach, because now I am going to fall on my butt and get soaked.

Unconsciously, I let out the tiniest scream, ready to fall backwards into the frigid water, but surprisingly I did not. Instead, a sturdy arm had reached out to grab mine and had steadied my balance. Turning my head to thank the person who saved me from having to walk home with a soaked sunflower dress, I realized its Taehyung.

-

Not just the ordinary Taehyung who made my coffee ten minutes ago, but a Taehyung with color.

With color.

I see it now, so clearly, his eyes were the shade of raw umber and burnt sienna.

-

With a confused mind and a wave of overwhelming emotions washing over me, I quickly behold my surroundings. The once monotone beach was now oozing and blasting with warm forgiving colors scintillated from the luminous yellow orb, radiating threads of soft coral light rays that mingle with the apricot colored sky. My ears are hearing the azure blue ocean whispering secrets while my nose are feeling its offer of sentimental salty kisses. My eyes are spellbound by this prelude to dawn and fascinated by its evanescent and short-lived golden glory.

The soft mellow sky was complementing the tranquility of the glimmering beach. My senses are hypnotized by the mellifluous untroubled waves and my vision are fixated on the sun shining graceful golden rays on the steady horizon, reaching out to tinge the landscape with soothing shades of orange. As the deep champagne and bisque color of the sun stables my frenzy heart with solace, the gentle breeze refreshes me from time to time as if it is worried that I will be parched and sunbaked by this golden inferno. It is truly a void free picturesque view, encapsulating a sense of poised caliber.

What an amazing palette of warm colors, I would never have thought the usual dull sunset could be this encapsulating.

-

“Hello to earth y/n? You okay?’ He gently shook my shoulders and the moment he touched my bare skin, I am punched with jolts of electricity.

It was the purest feeling of love. I am smitten.

“Y-yeah. I am fine. Thanks.” I never realized my eyes were still fixated on face, devouring his delicious features.

“Your eyes, they are so pretty.” I breathed out.

“Oh, thanks. Um, do you want to watch the sunset together? We can just sit on the sand if you want.” He asked. His voice giving away a slight hint of nervousness and anxiousness.

“I would love to, dear.” I smiled. My address of dear kind of had him off guard but at the same time assured him with confidence. Regardless, he still replied with his lovely smile that now, has a different effect on me. I felt warmth and safety.

“How did you get here so fast? Did you teleport?”

 “Totally y/n. Totally.” He laughed.

 “No, but seriously, how did you-“

“You were my last customer y/n. Besides, this beach is literally just five minutes away from the café.” He smiled.

 “Oh, fair enough.”

There was a short pause of silence.

“Hey, we should talk about it, don’t you think? After the sunset though, let me enjoy this moment.” I looked at him with the best puppy eyes and grin I could give, he seemed to like it, seeing him go wide eyed and gave off the most mellifluous laugh I’ve ever heard.  

I do not know what has gotten into me of being this brave; it must’ve been the system’s work – and so this is the feeling that everyone has anticipated in his or her whole life. No wonder people turn a blind eye to all the visible problems, I think I get it now, because in this moment, the only thing that mattered is him, is Taehyung.

“You sure like to daydream in your own little bubble don’t you, and surely you don’t like to explain things very clearly.” He gave me a confused laugh as he ruffled my hair.

“Oh sorry! I meant we should talk about us, you know. About you and me. I’m just, spellbound right now. It’s a lot of take in, I don’t space out a lot though, I’m usually way more alert -” 

“Spellbound by me?” He smirked. 

“What else Tae, what else.” I grinned and leaned onto his shoulder, feeling a strong sense of desire and need to cling onto him.

He looked down at me, gave me another one of his smiles and wrapped his arm around mine.

Within a few minutes, the mellowness of the sun is now dyed with a richer marigold and honey, leaving delicate smudges of peach, tea rose and daffodil tints to the sky. The sun rests prestigiously above the vast ocean, reflecting a portion of its incandescence. 

Seagulls are no longer visible in streaks of white and grey, but are instead stained into dusky silhouettes, teasing us from above with their atrocious music. Beating their wings while testing the briny water with little effort, gracefully outlining the gentle currents of wind and salty air as they soar through the smooth ocean with exactitude. 

A hazy view of Cargo ships could be identified from afar and the once domineering attitudes of palm trees are now prevailed by the giant tangerine orb - our marker of time. Becoming nothing but crestfallen shadows that sways back and forth with it’s only companion, the melody of the wind.

This entrancing view is giving me an abundance feeling of warmth and ease, stimulating my senses with serenity and ethereality, yet calming it with stability and delicacy. Although the sunset is still not quite as vivid, its coziness and silence gave me comfort as my intrigued gaze takes up its momentary beauty. Everything seems to blend into one dimension - the sea, the sky, the birds, the palm trees, and the people. It creates a sense of togetherness and unity, as if the sun and the sea have always been inseparable. 

“So, what brought you to the beach? Coffee boy.” I looked at him, grinning and shamelessly staring at his eyes. This is not me; I don’t do these cheesy actions, I blame Taehyung and his ridiculously good looks.

“I figured I had nothing to do after work so might as well just spare a little time at this beach since it was just down the road. Best decision I’ve ever made.” He exaggerated his last sentence and caused a few giggles to escape from my lips.

“Want to hear a secret?” He asked.

“Yes please.”

“You’re totally adorable.” He pinched my cheeks.

 “Right back at you.”

Wanting to see more of my beautiful surrounding, my eyes wandered to the other end of the sky. The other end was a mixture of azure blue and calmness, French blue and innumerable possibilities, making my existence look frivolous. Reaching the peak of the sunset, the gleaming sun now shines a much richer shade of tangerine and salmon, tinting the blue waters a few shades darker. The ocean catches signals from the gentle breeze as she softly pecks the sand with its lapis lazuli lips. 

The sun is surging its blazing strawberry and peach tones into the thin pumpkin-colored horizon like a pool of flowing lava, drenching every object it can reach. I watched with an unwavering gaze as the mixture of vermilion and crimson rays lingers in the air, making the horizon flushed with colors found at the heart of fire combustions. 

It was the feeling of peace and contentment to see the whole setting painted brilliant rouge and the ocean below mirroring its effect. I felt small as I was lying supine on the soft sand, amazed by the vivid burnt orange beams pouring through the slender aperture of fleecy clouds, exposing rich fruit punch colors. This exhilarating view is ephemeral and evanescent, only lasting for a few minutes before it leaves us to lust after its glamour.

-

“Hey, are you forgetting about me? I’m here you know.” Taehyung nudged my shoulder and buried his head into the crook of my neck.

“Sorry just getting lost in this scenery. By the way, Taehyung, it tickles.” I laughed.

“Oh so you are ticklish. I see.”

“Do not. I swear –“

“Calm. I won’t.” He ruffled my hair once more.

There was another short pause of silence.

“Taehyung, did you hear about the Italian chef with a terminal illness?”

 “What?”

“He pastaway.” 

“Not funny.”

“Bummer, I was just trying to cheer up the mood a little, with the sun setting and all, it’s starting to get a little bleak.”

“Oh then I have a good one, but if you laugh, I get to tickle you. Fair?” He smirked.

“Totally not.”

“Okay here I go.”

“I said totally not!”

 “Yes I did hear you, but I don’t care. I thought I would still ask because I don’t want to be an asshole and not give you a warning, you know.”

“How paradoxical for you to say this when you literally just without warning grabbed my arm five minutes ago and filled my vision with -”

“Wow y/n, I saved your ass and this is how you treat me?”

“Stop cutting people off! Don’t you have a joke to tell.” I rolled my eyes, but still grinning.

“Yes. What do you call a man with no body and no nose?”

“I don’t know.” 

“Neither do I, because nobody nose.”

There was a long pause of silence before I burst into fits of giggles, trying my best to hold them back in by covering my mouth, but not before failing miserably of course.

“Oh so you laughed.” 

“Okay, it was a little bit better than mine. I’d give you that. But let’s just continue to watch the sunset.”

-

Once again, this amazing scenery above me hypnotizes my attention. Scarlet auburn hues crept in, wiping out the last remains of bright marigold and coral, staining the once striking sky with melancholy and emblazoning it with seductive lilac and amethyst. 

The ball of fire is now weary, hurriedly falling behind the steady horizon, sinking lower in the sky and subdued into the fading scarlet lights. Regaining my other senses, hairs on my arm raised, locks on my head tousled as I realized the docile breeze was now wintry air that leaves tiny tingly bumps on my skin.

“Cold?” Taehyung asked as he took off his leather jacket and draped it on my shoulder.

“Mhm.” I replied.

“Come here baby.” He wrapped his arms around mine, rubbing it up and down to create friction.

My attention now diverts to the squawking seagulls that dances pirouettes over the food scrapes. It was an epiphany moment; the colossal majesty of the sunset gave me clarity.

I am now noticing the citrus and salty extravagant fragrances that are solely exclusive to the beach and the sand that are furbished into a dark copper color. With only a scarce amount of people lingering, gone are the bustling crowds and laughter and the enthralling combination of rich gold and fire. The only people left now are Taehyung and I.

“Hey. Do you want to hear a secret? I figured since you told me a secret, well I couldn’t say it was really a secret because it was literally just you telling me I’m cute but it would only be fair if I –“

“y/n. Just tell.” He laughed.

“Are you sure? There’s no going back.”

“What’s there to loose?”

“I really want to kiss you.” 

He looked at me, bewildered for the slightest amount of time. There was a moment of silence before he leaned closer. 

“Do it.” 

With that, I kissed him and the world fell away. Electric jolts filled up my body. Is it possible to see colours with your eyes closed? That’s what I am seeing right now. 

Ever so slightly, I opened my eyes to take a look at Taehyung. His face is aglow with sunlight, it was the most beautiful and gentle shade of gold. He is shining the most delicate shade of tan. Everything is so vivid, it is almost burning.

It was slow and soft - the kiss. Comforting in ways words would never be. He quickly replied by resting his hands below my ear, his thumb caressing my cheek as if it was the most delicate and expensive piece of glass sculpture, our breaths mingled into one. I ran her fingers down his jawline, pulling him closer until there was no space left between us – I could feel the beating of his heart against my chest. We kissed, like there was no tomorrow. We kissed, until each ounce of breath was taken away from us.

I pulled away first, being out of breath.

“Thank you, baby." I said in barely more than a whisper.

"Sweet cheeks, for what?" He replied with his now even lower and huskier voice. God, he is such an alluring piece of artwork.

"For just, being you. I guess." My voice wavers, exhilarated from the tension between us.

“Right back at you.” He smiled.

“How dare you use my words against me, you - ”

“y/n?”

“What?”

“You talk too much.”

He smiled and leaned in again, cutting my sentence off by bringing my lips back to his, knocking all the wind from my lings. I hardly had a moment to react before he pressed his tongue to the seam of my lips and, at my grant of access, delved inside my mouth. It wasn’t rushed; the kiss was sentimental, poisonous and fervent. 

His mouth was the combination of expensive rose champagne, the pleasant perfume of woods and heavy rain, it tasted like illicit drugs and endless obscurity waiting for me to unravel.

With the intermingling of our billowing breaths, my arms reached up and tangled around his neck. In an instant I had pulled away and arched up into his broad chest, moaning in the contact of his body heat against my own, before I drew back into his lips. His hand drifted to my hip. It settled there and pulled me closer as I inhaled sharply. I was against his warm chest, chiseled to perfection. 

Must he be so perfect? I could nearly feel the bulge in his pants before he took every ounce of his self-restraint to pull away first, leaving the both of us panting out shallow breaths.

“If we continue, I would fuck you right here, right now. So we should stop.” He panted.

I laughed, genuinely. He looked really cute.

“Okay. Does that mean we are saving it for another time then? Is that what you’re trying to hint?” I sniggered.

“I didn’t say anything. You said it yourself.” He raised both of his hand and placed them at the back of his head and looked away, half smiling.  

“Yes okay. Should we enjoy the last bit of the sunset then?” I smiled, giving him one more peck on the lips. 

“Definitely. Funny how we were telling jokes moments ago and now we are making out.”

“What can I say, it cancels out the cold breeze.” I smiled.

-

The last few rays of ember red lights are hastily casted down and then it is over, the sun has set. This ephemeral, fleeting twenty minutes of magic has left me mesmerized. Elegantly resting high in the sky is now the florescence silver moon, the luminous pearl that sparkles its lustrous radiance through the stygian night. 

Complementing this obsidian panorama are the evenly distributed gleaming speckles. The rhythmic collision of the inky navy water is now much more sonorous and resounding. The velvet midnight blue canvas have filled the tranquility of the sunset with desolation and all that is left to admire is an intoxicating Van Gogh seascape.  

“So, coffee boy. Now that the sun has set, let’s talk about us.” I turned to him and smiled.

“So eager to be my girlfriend already, I see. I would’ve guessed you were the shy type, but I think I deduced wrong.”

 “There’s still a lot you don’t know about me, Taehyung.”

“Right back at you.”

“Stop using my words against me!” I laughed.

“Anyways, just a question though, how are you so calm about all of this. Aren’t you amazed by this sunset? Not just the sunset, the whole surroundings - the sea, the sky, everything.” I continued saying.

“It’s alright. The sun’s pretty bright.” He shrugged.

“Taehyung it’s not just alright, it’s fucking beautiful.” I looked at him, wide eyed, a little offended he didn’t reacted as exaggeratedly as you had. 

“God damn, you just made yourself a hundred times more sexy by swearing. I love it. You’re making me really hard not to kiss you.” He nuzzled his nose against mine, before wrapping his arms around my waist again.

“Honestly. You should totally be my girlfriend.” He now looked up, into my eyes, the slight hint of nervousness radiating from him.

“Aren’t I already?” I laughed; slightly confused that he would still think I am not already his girlfriend the moment he filled my world with colors.

“If you don’t mind the whole soul mate system, that is.” He scratched his head, looking away into the far distance.

“Sorry?”

 He gave a long sigh, before he continued with his words.

“Because you know, our country’s very broken soul mate system teaches us to not love anyone else but our soul mate and that the only person we should love in our entire lifespan is our soul mate. I personally think that it is bullshit, never believed it. Maybe, one day if I really do meet her, then my state of mind would change. But for now, I will still criticize this system for as long as I can.”

He ruffled my hair and pulled me into his embrace once more, resting his head above me.

“This is just my opinion though, I’m sorry if I came off too strong. All my family members disagrees with me, always saying that the only person I need to cherish is my soul mate. Hell, I don’t even know if she exists, maybe she died young, or maybe she is a lesbian. Who is there to tell me if my soul mate would love me back, right? See, the problem I have with this society is that people don’t fucking realize the most visible problems.” He told me in one, long breath.

 “Y-yeah. That’s exactly what I am thinking before you handed me my coffee earlier.” I gave out a heartless chuckle.  

 What a cruel fate to have such similar minds sets. I thought to myself.

“Oh yeah? I’m glad then. Because honestly I would much rather date you than my I-don’t-know-where-she-is soul mate. You’re adorable, bold and beautiful, what’s not to love.” He smiled.

“Mhm. Some idiots just never realises that this system tricks you into thinking that you would always meet your soul mate without fail, yeah?” I managed to choke out my words.

“Exactly y/n, exactly. Thank god you aren’t stupid enough to fall for that. That’s my baby girl.” He continued to nuzzle his head into the crook of my neck, hugging me ever so tightly. 

Thank god he couldn’t see my expression right now.

“S-so, no colors? Not at all?” I mumbled into his chest, trying the hardest to comprehend the whole sudden change of situation.  

“What colors?”  

It is in this moment that I have regained my senses, I realized, I was so intoxicated with this alluring depiction of idealized romance, so absorbed with this megalomaniacal eminence of suddenly gaining a colored vision, and experiencing colors and shades that are just all too good to be true, I have single handedly brought myself up to the peak of euphoria and dragged myself back down to the state of desolation called reality, because ultimately, I have never thought it would happen to me, I have always thought I would be in the lucky majority. What a wake up call, what a direct smack to my face.

Being indulged with the intoxicating sensation of tender kisses, I had shamelessly believed that Taehyung was my soul mate, my other half, my partner for the rest of my life. Shameless because I had pathetically hypothesized this whole situation on my own. The thought that Taehyung did not gain his colored vision had never once crossed my mind, never once. 

The romanticized tales that my parents had once told me, I have always assuredly believed in them, hoping one day I would experience the same.

I did, for twenty minutes.

And the saddest thing is, the majority of people believes it for a lifetime, so much so that they turn a blind eye to the most obvious problem in this broken system – that it doesn’t always ensure a happy ever after.

♡ 

[mhdiaries]

Diary of Jane Boolittle

It’s against the law of the jungle for you to read my diary.

07.10

Dad wants to send me to a school called Monster High. It would require that I leave the jungle. I am not happy about it. Dad believes that I need to learn to socialize with other monsters my own age. He says that hanging out at a research station with a bunch of stodgy old mad scientists and monsters is not teaching me how to unlive in the real world and that I should have the opportunity to socialize with monsters my own age. Pffffttttt... socializing is for the birds. I know, I’ve asked them about it.

07.15

Despite my arguing against it, I am not out of the woods yet on having to go to Monster High. I know I shouldn’t be this opposed to going, it’s just that I’ve been living at that station since Dad and Dr. Moreau found me running wild through the jungle ten years ago and adopted me. It’s my home and I know I’d really miss it and my dad. He was the first phantom, actually the first non-four-legged monster of any kind I could remember seeing, and he understood the language of animals as well as I did. Well, almost, his accent is off a little when he speaks Jaguar but they’re too polite to point it out to him. Regardless, I argued that if I left the station they would lose a creature translator, which the mad scientists need for their research expeditions. Dad is just one phantom and he can’t be everywhere at once. I thought this was a pretty good argument until Dad and Dr. Moreau both reminded me that expeditions are always scheduled for the dry season, which corresponds with summer break. They also said that it would be more beneficial for the research station in the long run for me to learn how to better interact with other monsters especially since they wanted to start eco-tours to help support the station’s research and they wanted me to be the lead guide. Dr. M. said, “It won’t help us if you run and hide every time you meet a new monster.” I told them I would think about it.

07.25

This morning I came back from a run/climb through the jungle to find we had a visitor at the tree house, or rather two visitors. The first was a nightmare grazing in our yard. I had never actually seen one, at least not while awake, and she raised her head and snorted, “Who’s there?” before I even came out of the jungle. She must have smelled me because I am almost dead quiet when I walk. I answered back, “My name is Jane and I’m a friend.” The nightmare took a step back for a moment and turned her ears in my direction. She softly neighed, “You almost act like you understand what I said... how strange.” I assured her that I did understand what she was saying and she walked toward me, lowered her head and shook her mane. “Well then, I have an itch behind my left ear that I would dearly love scratched and as my rider is engaged elsewhere would you be so kind as to scratch it for me?” I happily did so much to her relief and enjoyment. “Tell me young one,” she asked, “how is it that you understand my speech?” I told her that I didn’t know but that I could always remember being able to understand and speak with creatures and animals. “Ahh,” she replied, “then you are the one my rider has come here to see. I believe she is waiting for you in your stable, err... house.” My first thought on hearing this was to head back into the jungle again. I would rather climb the tallest tree, in the strongest wind, on the darkest night, during the biggest rainstorm than meet a new monster. I’ve run into dragons that didn’t scare me as much but I summoned up my courage and slowly walked up the stairs. I could hear my dad, telling our visitor how an ocelot told him and Dr. M about a young ghoul living in the jungle on her own. My dad was curious so they set out to find me. It took a long time because I did not want to be found. Eventually they did find me and my voodoo sloth Needles living in a cave far from civilization. It took much patience and kindness but eventually they convinced us to go back with them. When I got to the top of the stairs I could see Dad and Dr. M. were having tea with a very properly dressed monster who was carrying on a conversation despite the fact that her head was sitting alone in the seat right next to her. When she saw me her hands reached over, picked up her head, placed it back on her shoulders and she stood up. Dad stood up too and said, “Jane, I’d like to introduce you to Headless Headmistress Bloodgood. She’ll be staying with us for a few days and has a proposition for you.” She smiled at me and said, “Hello Jane, I hear you’re interested in becoming a student at Monster High?” I knew I should have run when I had the chance.

07.26

Headless Headmistress Bloodgood is a very interesting monster. She is kind, polite and as I found out today, tougher than she looks. She asked me to take her on a tour of the surrounding jungle and seemed most interested in the place where Dr. M and Dad found me. I had my doubts whether or not she could keep up, for it was a long walk over difficult terrain to get there and the trails were too narrow and overgrown for her nightmare to travel. She would have to walk. She seemed to sense my doubts and assured me that she would not slow us down. I left Needles behind and told him not to follow us, to which he opened one eye, stuck his tongue out at me and then went back to sleep. Headmistress Bloodgood was true to her word and kept up with me, even when the trail got muddy and steep. She never complained or asked, “How much further?” She did ask about my ability to speak with animals and I told her that yes, I could speak and understand their languages but that didn’t mean I could control them. Animals have minds and agendas of their own and won’t always do what you ask them just because you speak their language. “Not unlike administrating a high school full of teenaged monsters,” replied the Headmistress laughing. We finally made it to my “old home” and even though the jungle had almost reclaimed it, the old hut was still there. We walked around and talked some more about my past, which I can’t remember, and my future, which I have to face. I like her a lot so maybe I will give Monster High a chance.

08.02

I do not know how long I lived in the jungle by myself before Dad and Dr. M. found me. Jungle creatures do not track time the same way that monsters who live in civilization do. We... I mean they, mark time by the dry and rainy seasons, or by events that are out of the ordinary like earthquakes and volcanoes or years where there is a lot of one kind of food and not a lot of another. So I’m not sure how old I actually am. I’m not even exactly sure what kind of monster I am. As a mad scientist, Dad has books on all manner of creatures and monsters but I do not seem to be in any of them. Not me specifically of course, that would be odd, but any monster like me. Dad says that the jungle is so vast that it’s possible there are kinds of monsters that haven’t even been discovered yet. The only clues I have are Needles and my walking stick - I never go on a hike without it, I feel it connects me to my mysterious past. I’ve asked Needles but he says about as much as the stick. I think he knows something but he’s not telling. Oh well, maybe I will find out and maybe I will not. I have a great unlife now so I am not about to complain.

08.15

I have made up my mind to attend Monster High even though it will be, I think, a scary stressful transition. Not that I plan on being a social butterfly - the whole thought of being in a room with more than three other monsters at once makes me want to find a tree to climb or a hole to hide in; but I know I cannot do that forever so I will make the best of it and hopefully I’ll be able to, if not exactly tame my shy side, at least make it play nice with other monsters.

[staffcommandershepard]

Cold, Hard War

I’ve been having a lot of feelings lately about the Control ending since much of my fics are about after the Destroy ending, so have this tidbit about Joker after Jo is officially pronounced KIA 

They could feel it. They could all feel it in their bones the second the reapers stopped their harvest, and just flew away as if nothing had even happened. There was cheering, crying in the streets, there was hope again and everyone knew they would wake up the next morning without fear of another attack. The Normandy tried to escape the Sol system and the relays were collapsing in on themselves, nearly tearing the frigate apart, however it just caused them to crash in a jungle on Earth. There were repairs to be made, work to be done on the planet, but that left them time to receive messages and vids from all over the galaxy all day. The war was over. But at what cost? No one knew anything yet, not for sure. They didn't want to know until she, herself, sent word or until she was found. That was everyone’s fear as they moved silently through the ship, helping where they could with the repairs, but Jeff sips from his glass in the lounge, not helping with anything because all he did was pilot Normandy. Even when it was up and running, EDI could do it without him. He takes another long pull from his glass as he stares down at his hands on the bar, his fingers making a hard fist as he tries to let his mind wander to other things, but what else could it wander to?

He was on Arcturus when they had met. He was a few years younger than Jo, but everyone knew who Jeff “Joker” Moreau was, and everyone was beginning to know who Jerrica “Jo” Shepard was. She was an up-and-coming Staff Lieutenant who was being promoted into the N7 program for her strive for survival on Akuze. She lost her entire squad there and he was scared shitless of that serious stare she would give him, until she sat next to him in the mess for lunch one day and the conversation they struck up was the one that lead to laughter and a friendship that he would never think possible in the intimidating staff lieutenant  who was shortly turned into the Commander Shepard who wasn't so scary after all. She was his best friend, like an older sister to him and she was there for him through everything, especially when he needed her most in this past year. He still hasn't heard anything about his family from Tiptree. He knew he was alone in the Moreau family, but now, with Jo gone...Jeff has never felt more alone in his life.

Her remains have yet to be located, meaning there is a chance that there are no remains to be found and she is alright, Jeff. We are wrong to assume of her death without evidence.

EDI has been trying so hard to talk sense into him and they were all careful not to bring up the topic to one another, even if it was the elephant in the room when they were all together. No one wanted to believe it because they had made peace with her death once already, but Joker knew it in his heart and he knew that they did too. It was in the quiet air on Normandy. It felt wrong without her; empty. He rubs his rough face with his hand, not remembering the last time he actually slept. When he slept, the nightmares came. He saw her going down with the SR-1 all over again. He hadn’t had those nightmares since before the Collector base blew up and the first night it came back was the last time he slept...it felt like centuries ago. He takes another sip as the lounge door opens, but he doesn’t want to look up. He felt like it was EDI, she kept checking on him with her physical form and when he sent her away for the second time, she checked on him through the comms. When he snapped at her a half hour ago, it was the last time she bugged him and he was ready to apologize, but the words shrivel up in his dry mouth when he turns around to find Kaidan in the doorway. “EDI and Traynor got the vidcomm system back up and got through to Hackett. He asked them to gather the crew into the comm room,’ he balls his hands into fists as they stare at one another, the deep circles under Kaidan’s eyes match Joker’s and it scares him as he pushes himself off the stool, stumbling a bit. Kaidan walks to him, but is shooed away as Jeff rights himself, walking out of the lounge and to the elevator with the shell of a man beside him. With Kaidan beside him, he could feel that fear come out. He knew he was getting as much sleep as Jeff was and that scared him even more. He didn’t even want to begin to know how Kaidan felt. It was the infamous secret kept safe with only the crew of the Normandy and it made his heart fall to his feet as he looked away from Kaidan’s emotionless face as he stared forward.

Everyone knew after Virmire what was going on between Shepard and her Lieutenant, and it became everyone’s game to poke fun at them. Watching Kaidan burn a deep red while she laughed was what kept them going all the way to the first battle on the Citadel, and it was the most well-kept secret after the first Normandy went down. Joker was the one who had to tell everyone that he had just watched their friend get spaced and watching Kaidan collapse under the weight of his own grief always haunted Jeff, and he was there for her after they had gotten into the altercation on Horizon. He held her that night and made sure she was okay, all the way up until the Collector base was destroyed and she had turned herself into the Alliance because she knew what was right. She had tried to contact him so many times in the months that she was under house arrest and he finally made his way over to her, begging James to let him see her until he eventually gave up and let Joker in. They got drunk that night and all she could talk about was Kaidan and how much she missed him. After Earth was attacked and they were on Normandy together again, he knew they would be alright. He could see it in their faces during breakfast and after they returned from missions together, everyone just knew and the torment returned. Jo was Jo again and Kaidan was Kaidan again, they completed one another, any one of their friends could vouch for that. And Jeff could feel in his bones that Kaidan knew exactly what Hackett was calling to tell all of them. Of course he didn’t want it to be true, and to see Kaidan lose her again, to watch his friends crumble to pieces once more and then crumble himself....

The elevator opens to a dead-silent CIC as Kaidan just marches towards the warroom. Campbell and Westmoreland are nowhere to be found, so the sensors are off as they make their way into the commroom, filled with their friends as the hologram of Hackett stands stern and ready before them. Jeff stands next to Liara, who holds her hands in front of her, but he can see them shaking as he rubs her back and she turns to him as she feels his hand touch her. He looks up from her hands to meet her gaze, her frightened expression causing his nostrils to flare as he tries to give her a reassuring look, but he just looks back up at Hackett. He can’t stay here for long after the news. He can’t watch this all over again. He stands up a bit straighter as Kaidan stands next to Garrus, saluting the Admiral as they all follow suit and Hackett just nods, shifting to stand with his hands behind his back. “At ease, everyone. Members of the Normandy crew, it’s good to see all of you in one piece, my crew has been trying to reach you for days now. Glad to see the comm’s back up and running once more. The war has officially ended, the reapers have ended their assault on the Milky Way and the Alliance is in disarray. We have lost contact with many groups all over Earth and we are attempting to reestablish connections throughout the galaxy to get a feel of what sort of relief efforts we will be dealing with and how to deal with them,” the shaky breathing throughout the room makes Jeff’s hands go numb as he balls them into fists to steady their shaking as he watches Hackett stroke his face and return his hands to behind his back once more. “We have, however, combed through the remains of the Citadel. Much of it is a smoking crater, we couldn’t make out a lot of the areas that we combed through, but the tower was where we picked through thoroughly. We located the remains of Admiral Anderson and I am sorry to report that he is officially a casualty as a result of this war. We have been completely unsuccessful in locating the commander. We have searched for seventy-five hours straight, switching much of the crew looking to allow the others rest and fresh pairs of eyes on the remains that were found, which were a lot. We did, however, locate her dog tags next to Anderson’s and I am sad to report that we have officially named Commander Jerrica Shepard KIA, killed-in-action. I am deeply sorry, for all of you, for your loss. We are headed to your location now to deliver the dog tags, along with her helmet that we located in London and to assist with any repairs we can to get you all back home. My thoughts are with you, Normandy.” His hologram disappears as they all stand there, no one moving a muscle as Jeff begins to feel a white-hot pain in his chest and his lip quivers as he closes his eyes.

He knew it was coming, he didn’t want to believe it was coming...Jo, their Jo, their best friend….He starts to hear the collective sniffles that aren’t sniffles anymore as he hears audible crying and sobs as he feels the tears roll down his cheeks. He covers his face with his hand as his legs grow shaky from standing, but he stands up a bit straighter when the familiar metal hand touches his forearm and he allows her to hug him as he holds her tightly to him, the feeling coming up through his chest and bubbles out of his throat as he sobs into her metal shoulder. There was no one in the world that understood Jeff and his humor like Jo, and there was no one who could dust a friend off and comfort them like Jo could. No one cared like she did. No one was as good a friend as she was and now they are all left with that hole in their hearts once more...but this time, it was permanent. It was the fear that they had all pushed aside for days now and a fear that no one wanted to talk about. Their collective worst fear is now brought to life. He didn’t know what to do without her, none of them did. They were all barely holding together for the two years that she was gone, God knows Jeff didn’t keep his shit straight. He was drunk for half of it, and the other half was him waking up to a cold sweat covering him after another nightmare about her. He was bothered every day that he lived on the Alliance base because everyone was too afraid to leave him alone, in fear that he would stumble the wrong way down a flight of steps and some days, he wish he had. He was responsible for her being spaced all those years ago, and then he got his best friend back thanks to Cerberus...only for the reapers to take her from them once more. Kaidan flashes through his mind as he leans out of EDI’s grasp, opening his eyes and turning to find him leaning over the counter in front of the vidcomm, staring at the floor as Jeff walks by Tali and Garrus’ embrace, both of them watching him as he touches Kaidan’s back. His shaking vibrates through Jeff’s hand as he watches him close his eyes, nostrils flaring widely as his face contorts and he knows what’s to come as Jeff wipes a hand under his own nose. He takes in a deep breath as Kaidan’s knuckles go white from his iron grip on the tech in front of him, his head leaning onto the screens as Jeff’s shoulders sag.

“Kaidan,” is all Joker gets out as he feels the shaking grow worse and the sobs becoming audible and Jeff closes his eyes as he feels tears well-up behind his lids once more. She touched so many lives, she’s saved so many and she can add every future life to that too because she’s the goddamn hero of the galaxy, and the people in that room were lucky enough to call her more than a friend. She was their family, she kept them all together. She would’ve made such a great mom, a great wife to Kaidan, and to watch him turn into this killed everyone the first time...but he wasn’t as bad as this. They were serious back then, but Jeff knew what they had talked about, they all did. They drunkenly made living arrangements in front of their friends and while sober, they had shown their love in person because it was war and time was too short to hide the love they had for one another...who knew time was far shorter than any of them realized? The silence amongst the group almost returns, but the only sound they all hear this time is Kaidan’s heart shattering before them.

It was never a secret to them how he felt about her, but goddammit, Jeff wish it was now. He couldn’t do this...but he had to. For her. She would want him to take care of Kaidan, to be strong for everyone, to not let them drift like they had before. He wipes his face again, Liara touching Kaidan’s other shoulder as she leans on him, pulling at him with Jeff to get him to stand as they feel his legs buckle beneath him. He nearly takes down the two of them, but they don’t let him sink to the floor. Loss is the hardest thing they have all had to deal with during this war and losing her for good this time is the hardest thing they will all have to deal with, especially since this isn’t all of their friends. Someone will have to inform Wrex and Grunt as they try to rebuild Tuchanka, not to mention Miranda, Jacob, Jack, Samara, god only knows who else has made it through this hell and is going to have to mourn the loss of the one who brought them all together in the first place. No one will know for sure what to do after this, what to do with Normandy. She would want them to help with relief efforts, to help as many people as they can to rebuild what was lost during this awful war. She’d want them to move on….Jeff closes his eyes once more as the tears flow and he feels a large hand grip his shoulder as he opens his eyes to find Garrus’, the sadness in his stern face hurting his heart even more as he looks back to Kaidan. They did this once before, they know they can do it again...could they do it again? Jeff felt it in his heart that he couldn’t, he can’t even stand to watch Kaidan become this and then there was Liara sobbing uncontrollably, Tali sniffling through the suit, Garrus’ stern expression to hide the hurt, Steve crying in the corner, James not making a peep to try and hide the crying, Ken and Gab holding one another while they cry together, Samantha covering her mouth to hold the sobs in, Greg silently crying as he tries to console Karin, but Karin can’t be consoled….Goddammit, EDI is a machine, an artificial intelligence who is programmed to feel is feeling the loss of their friend deeply as she stands there with a sad expression on her metallic face as she stands behind Jeff. Even Javik who hasn’t even know her for more than a few months stands in the corner with his hands held in front of him as he holds his head in silent respect for her. The prothean who, just a month ago, coldy fought with Liara over her mourning the loss of her planet, is silently mourning the death of Shepard. She deeply touched all of them...she has to hold them together. She will continue to hold them together. Jeff looks up at Garrus again, the hand on his shoulder gripping his tighter as they look at each other, his lip quivering again as he knows it’s over. It’s not just end of an era, it’s the end of the good days of having her back. He won’t hear her laugh anymore, she won’t come and ask EDI her humanity questions, she won’t get stupid drunk and sing loudly, they won’t get to make fun of her dancing anymore. He feels that awful feeling in his chest again and his shoulders slump as he looks next to him to Kaidan, more tears streaming down his face as he shakes his head. He can’t fall apart, not in front of everyone like this. Someone has to be strong for all of them...Jeff didn’t really know if he could do it, but he has to try. He pulls his shoulder out of Garrus’ grasp and slings his arms around Kaidan, hugging him as he closes his eyes, hearing him sniffle in his ear. Jeff hugs him harder and the sniffling turns into sobbing as Kaidan hugs him back, burying his face into Jeff’s shoulder as he mourns the loss of his love and there isn’t much else Jeff can do. There won’t be much anyone can do after this point except try to console his crying. Losing her is the hardest thing any of them has to go through years ago, but now...now it’s final.

They have each other and that’s what matters. The missing faces will forever haunt them and for some, it will be at the bottom of a glass, but no one knows what will happen next. Jeff knows he’s going to stay with the Alliance to help where he can with survivors and has no choice but to be strong for all of them because someone has to be. Kaidan is far gone by now and it’s understandable. That’s what war does to people though; cold, hard war and it’s nothing without loss and sacrifice. Jo saw so much of that in her life. She gave hers protecting this galaxy from a threat that they all knew was coming, but no one wanted to listen. She fought for years with the heads of the Milky Way to find a resolution for this and instead, it built a resistance for when they came tearing through the atmospheres of every single planet. She knew what she had to do and dammit, she got it done. She pulled together every race in the galaxy, millions of people to help defeat this threat. She defeated Saren and Sovereign, she was killed by the Collectors only to come back from the dead to defeat them and Harbinger, she brought together the turians and the krogan, the quarians and the geth, she cured the genophage, she found the last prothean hidden away on Eden Prime, she fought to find Leviathan and succeeded, she took down Cerberus, and she took down the goddamn reapers. There isn’t a single person in this galaxy as accomplished as her and there never will be. She gave her life knowing that she did all of those things to help people and she will forever be remembered as the woman who saved the Milky Way. She will always be a piece of their family and they’re not going to drift like they had once before, Jeff will make sure of that. They can pull through this together because they're a family. No one can take that from them. Not ever.