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happyinjection · 1 year

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HC Novel ♦️7 Never No Dollars “Round 1 ~Leo Constantine Pinochle~” (1/2)

A strong and unnatural force of wind hit my whole body. Thinking that he had managed to escape he let out a sigh of relief, but it seemed that he had no idea of my presence since we were swallowed by the winds.

“Oi, Wallace.”

I called out to the man.

Judging from the fact that he was dressed in a dark gray suit that was tailored just recently at Old Maid, he seemed to be in top shape.

However, it clashed terribly with his short blond hair which had its sides cropped, revealing the true colors of this man child. The word decency was definitely not in his books.

The radiant blue of his eyes reminded me of cheap ambitions that small fry villains tend to have, it made me want to throw up.

I gave him another warning.

“Surrender. Unless you want me to get rough.”

“Damn you! You bastards are persistent!”

—I was in the rural areas of the state of Polostick. In Polostick, farming and livestock farming were the mainstays of life, so this freight train packed a huge amount of crops and was currently on its way to Spada, the capital state.

Surrounding us were vast grasslands. Not a single soul could be seen. Ahead of us, a mountain range was in the field of view, and once we passed it we would’ve crossed to Spada.

I and Wallace were facing each other on top of a freight train container. Wallace was standing on one of the cars behind the one I was on.

The man’s name is Kai Wallace. He was a rogue broker who dabbled in the business of stolen goods, extorted items, and even drugs.

Since I got tipped off that Wallace was going to make a deal at a certain location I intended to apprehend him, but he escaped, one thing led to another and it happened that we ended up here.

“This shitty brat……”

Wallace threw his hand into his pocket.

“Watch your words, peasant.”

For a moment, I lost my cool and acted childishly by taking up his bait, and quickly reflected on it.

“A brat should accept being called a brat! I’ll show you how adults work! You’ll drag your ass home crying!”

—Come at me.

Wallace held a card between his fingers.

It was the No. 6 of Spades.

On the card’s reverse side, there was a mark made by combining four suits put at the center of a black background. An intertwining pattern of golden patterns and embellishments overlaid it.

Holding the card, Wallace thrust his hands forward and crossed them.

“‘Play!’”

On his cue, while emitting flashes of light as though it was exploding, the card disintegrated right away.

The hem of Wallace’s suit fluttered violently due to another force that wasn’t the resultant wind from the moving train. Around us, the overall amount of energy increased at that instant.

“—‘Juggling Gun’!”

At the back of Wallace’s hand, a shape appeared and stood out clearly like a bruise. It was the same shape of a spade that was also on his card.

The energy that was floating in empty space turned into streaks of bluish light, wrapping around Wallace before eventually gathering in his hands. After that, the force that was generated in the field engulfed both of his wrists and began to spread up to his fingertips.

—In the blink of an eye, Wallace’s hands were encased in a pair of leather gloves.

They were decorated with circles large and small in various shades of muted color tones. Each circle was stamped with one gun-shaped symbol—making up a total of six. At his wrists, something that looked like thin frills were sewn, giving them the appearance of a clown’s gloves.

Just by looking at them, I could see a newfound resolve that was full of vitality and ambition—a determined spirit forming in Wallace’s hands.

Lips curving into a smirk, Wallace raised his gloved hand up to the sides of his face and made a mocking gesture.

“Brat. Now’s a good time to return to your mama. I don’t want to kill if I don’t need to. But I’m not against murdering children.”

Perhaps because he was so confident, Wallace had a relaxed look on his face. Following his remark, six spheres of colorful lights materialized from his gloves.

“Bwaha!”

When he held his hands up while cackling in an inappropriate manner, the six spheres of light floated up as well. They circled around Wallace’s upper half.

In an instant, the lights had transformed into six guns. I watched as the guns floated in the air. No matter how you see it, they looked every bit like the real thing.

Moreover, when Wallace spread his palms and gently moved them up and down, the guns hovered in all directions, resembling a circus’ ball trick. The movement defied every law of physics in the world, such as the existence of gravity or air pressure.

…..Gun juggling, huh. Absolute nonsense.

“It’s showtime!”

Wallace pointed his finger-gun at me. One of the six guns opened fire.

I leaned backward, then while using my hand as a pivotal point I rolled out of the way. The wind got me knocked off balance for a moment.

“Bwahaha!”

When Wallace empty-handedly flicked his hands back and forth as if he was firing a barrage of shots, the rest of his guns followed his movements.

Then, seemingly chasing after me, they started firing one after another. I immediately retreated, and with the sound of clashing metal, the number of dents on the container increased with each bullet that was shot.

I clicked my tongue.

What a hassle. Dodging six bullets at once on a moving freight train is difficult.

That being said, no matter how many crude weapons he is able to manipulate——.

“You’re no match for me.”

“Thanks for your patience!”

Another man’s voice was heard.

Coming up from behind a speeding car entered our view. A classic car with a blue body color, “RAIKA”.

It was a two-seater convertible. The electricity-powered hard top, which also served as the roof of the car, was closed. From the driver seat’s window, a fair-skinned man whose flowing hair had silver tips craned his neck with his elbow hanging out. That man whose crimson suit and frivolous personality mesh well together was—

“A ladies’ man must apologize for keeping people waiting.”

My own subordinate, Chris Redgrave.

“Manager! Are we good to go?!”

“You’re late. I’ll save your lecture for later. Shut up and just do your job.”

“Ouch. You’re as uncute as ever!”

Before Chris had finished speaking, I had already jumped out of the way again to dodge a bullet. Wallace noticed RAIKA and got provoked.

“An aid?! Jump over if you can! I’ll turn you into a beehive!”

RAIKA became Juggling Gun’s new target.

“Oof!”

Chris swerved the steering wheel to avoid the bullets, which caused RAIKA’s body to shake from side to side.

“That’s dangerous! Oi, you punk! Can’t you see that you almost put a hole in my beloved car!”

Chris leaned out of the window while spitting curses.

“Chris, just hurry up already! You retard.”

“Aye aye. Wendy, you heard the boss!”

As Chris pulled himself back into the car, RAIKA’s hard top roof opened and revealed a woman occupying the passenger’s seat.

She was wearing a light gray suit and pants, as well as pink buttons and a necktie. When she stood from her seat, her black hair which was tied up using a single hair tie whirled in the wind.

That was Wendy Sato.

In her hand was a briefcase.

“Whoa! Wendy, take off your shoes!”

Chris’ eyes, adorned with meaninglessly long eyelashes, widened. The sharp glint in Wendy’s own black orbs had already spoken for themselves.

“This isn’t the time for that, idiot! Drive faster!”

Biting back his tongue bitterly Chris picked up his speed, then yanked the steering wheel to bring his car closer to the freight train.

Wendy made a wide throw using the momentum of her entire body.

“Manager! Take——this!”

“The hell’s that?! Stop meddling!”

Wallace aimed and released a barrage of bullets at RAIKA.

“Oof!”

This time, to avoid getting shot he quickly slammed on the brakes. The rapid deceleration caused RAIKA to disappear from our sight at once.

However, as for the briefcase which Wendy had thrown forward, it was still floating through the air.

“Tch!”

The next sequence of events happened in a flash.

Wallace’s Juggling Gun pointed their muzzles at the briefcase and fired a round of shots. Several shots hit their target and ricocheted, blowing up the lock.

In the midst of this, I reached into my pocket, then pulled out my card.

“Play—”

The case went unlatched mid-air. From the inside, confetti-like papers about the size of my palm erupted.

“Mo-money?!”

Wallace shrieked in a shrill voice like a fool.

Exactly, they were our country’s banknotes. Some of them seemed to have gotten shredded by the gunfire, but most of them were still intact.

“‘Never No Dollars’!”

As soon as I murmured it, just like Wallace’s previously did, my card disappeared into a luminous flash similar to fireworks. Then, the energy surrounding us turned into streaks of light which twirled around me.

“Why are you so surprised? This can’t be your first time seeing money.”

I shot him a grin dripping with sarcasm.

I thrusted both of my hands forward, spreading my fingers apart. The back of my palm gradually grew warm.

As though oozing out of my own body, a trump suit’s diamond symbol appeared there.

At about the same time, some form of energy wrapped around my hand starting from my wrist to my fingertips. It was warm, but simultaneously cold. It felt like the force of life itself.

Finally something popped on the back of some of my fingers. They were rings symbolizing dignity which were suitable only for me.

I spared them a moment’s glance, then raised my head.

Grasping the hem of the glove I was wearing,

I dug my fingertips deep into the leather, then tried to focus.

The banknotes floating in the air gathered around me, fluttering.

“Hey, Wallace. You’re making a dumb face.”

I spoke to Wallace.

“What the hell are you doing throwing away this much money?! That’s a waste!”

“Pfft—hahaha.”

Getting worried about money when faced with my powers, what a stupid and pitiful man.

“Don’t get shocked, they’re just pocket change.”

The No. 7 of Diamonds “Never No Dollars”.

It has the ability to transform cash within reach into anything of equal value. The money that Wendy threw at me came from my own stash. Perhaps offended by barely contained sneer, Wallace silently pointed his guns at me while furrowing his brows in anger.

“……Oh, you’ve got some guts. Fine by me. I’ll play along with your cheap games. Go compare and see for yourself. Then lament your inferior standing.”

Without missing a single one, the banknotes fluttering around me gathered in the palm of my hand. Once the whirlpool of banknotes died down, a flash of light shone through.

Stepping back, I took a stance.

What materialized next was high-density steel. The weight of the gun fell on my hand and my entire body. In my hand, a rotating, multi-barreled machine gun usually called the gatling gun appeared.

“Wha, w-w-……what the hell is that?!”

Wallace was obviously thrown off.

“Remember this, peasant……”

My left hand held the handle which supported the weight of the entire gun, while my right aimed it to the sky. What I summoned was a heavy firearm designed specifically for me. Although the body size to weapon scale seems off, it still fits my grip perfectly.

A lion-shaped relief carved at the tips of the six muzzles of the gatling gun shone under the sun. I pulled the trigger and the barrel began to spin, its speed increasing rapidly.

“…….Everything bows down before money.”

Perhaps because of his lack of combat experience, Wallace wasn’t quick enough to react. He became intimidated by my gatling gun, or rather, my nonchalance in wasting money.

I took my shot at him regardless. The sound of exploding gunpowder rang out. Ammunition connected to the barrel passed through at a tremendous rate, and bullets of equal number were ejected in turn.

“Uh……Uwaaaaaaaah!”

Wallace rolled away in cold sweat. Right where he had been, a hole opened up from the explosion. Had it hit him directly, his entire body would’ve become shredded in an instant, and the pieces would’ve been blown by the wind along with a spray of blood. I burst out laughing.

“Fuhahahahaha! Do you see the difference between this and your puny toy?”

“This shi……tty brat!”

Wallace hung by the edge of the container while shooting his gun at me.

“Oof.”

My glove glowed and the banknote in my left hand dissipated.

Juggling Gun’s bullets got repelled instantly. In my hand I had a bulletproof polycarbonate shield. Juggling Gun may be effective for surprise attacks or on a large number of opponents, but the force of each shot is not that great. With something to hold it with, I could stop it in its trajectory easily using mere raw strength.

“Oi, oi, Wallace. At this rate you’re going to lose. Act rational and just give up already.”

“Shut up!”

Wallace kept on attacking blindly.

“You won’t heed to my warning, huh. Then try not to die.”

Seeing an opening, I transformed some cash and set up a new ammo belt, threw the bulletproof shield aside, then started shooting with the gatling again.

Wallace jumped out from his hiding, maintaining a distance as he fled and hid behind the opposite side of the container. Not only does an X-Playing card bestow a certain ability to a compatible player, it also boosts their physical capabilities, allowing them to accomplish such feats. Now I was chasing him at my gunpoint.

“Manager! It’s not the time to be fooling around!”

“We’ll enter the city in a few minutes! Hurry up!”

From the RAIKA, which had somehow caught up and was running alongside us, Chris and Wendy yelled to me.

It’s okay if it’s coming from Wendy, but getting told off by Chris, who took his job lightly and was always messing around, rubbed me off the wrong way.

Let’s get this over with.

“Vijay!”

Right when I shouted, at a tremendous speed, something huge moved from the front to the back of a supposedly unmanned train car. Wallace must have noticed it too, as his eyes were glued to it for a moment.

Before he could do anything, vines had already grown from behind Wallace to get him. In snake-like, rapid movements they wrapped themselves around Wallace’s legs.

“Whoaaa! The heck? P-plants?”

Tiny, purple colored morning glory flowers began to bloom.

“Convolvulus althaeoides…”

A voice came out from nowhere.

“One of the many breeds of Convolvulus. I used ‘Green Green’ to help it grow, and then it’s willing to cooperate with me.”

From behind the container next to Wallace, a man with a calm face emerged.

Although he was being hit by the strong winds of a moving train, the winds seemed to blow a little gentler around this man, and his hair, which was slightly long for a man, was simply fluttering pleasantly.

“Hey, captivating people with flowers and speaking smugly like that is my job!”

Chris, who was still catching up with our speed, protested out loud.

“Smug, you said……what are you talking about?”

While asking so, he glanced at Chris with eyes that looked like the surface of an undisturbed lake. The question was devoid of sarcasm nor hidden intentions. That is just the kind of man he is.

Aside from the three-piece light green suit which Vijay wore, he also wore leather gloves in the color of dark lavender. There was a shape of a clover on his wrist.

Meaning, this man was also another player.

Chris repeated what he said.

“I said, you went overkill with using flowers! You should’ve got that without having me explain it to you!”

Vijay tilted his head, his face expressionless.

“Saying that using flowers means being smug is unfair to those who only love angiosperms. Cryptocarps that are equally beautiful also exist. However, from a scientific perspective it is a mistake to call them flowers—”

“Chris! I’ve told you again and again! Don’t dig too deep into what Vijay says!”

This time I was the one yelling at him.

“I don’t want to get caught by plants like this!!”

Several guns appeared and revolved around Wallace, shifting their target to the vines. When they fired frantically, the vines were torn and fled at once. No more constraints. It would have been nice if they held him for a moment longer.

He stepped hard on the container to leap forward.

Even with the help of inertia, if you jump in the midst of these strong winds, your body would fly all the way to the back of the train. Wallace ended up being right in front of me.

“Tch—!!”

By the time he realized it, it was too late.

I landed a kick on Wallace’s chest, and at the same time, using the banknotes clipped in my pocket I conjured up a small gun. To hold him in his place, I grabbed his necktie and pulled it up. Then I held the muzzle to his temple.

I sensed Juggling Gun catching me behind my back, but I pressed on without budging in the slightest.

“Shall we try? It’s either I die, or you die.”

As I leaned over Wallace, I looked straight into his eyes and spoke. Without much dawdling, I asked him in a serious tone.

I had been in this situation before. The best way to deal with it, is to make them understand that there is no room for compromise and negotiation. I was serious. I was resolute.

Then, I watched as the energetic glint in the blue of Wallace’s eyes glazed over. He might be unaware of it himself, but such was the color of defeat.

The guy had reached breaking point.

“End the play.”

Without giving a reply, Wallace held out his hand forward. At the same time his gloves disappeared, the No. 6 of Spades appeared in his hand. When I checked behind my back, the guns had also disappeared even though they were just floating there a moment before.

“Uhuhu……….what do you plan to do with me. Turn me in to the police? Let me tell you, I won’t say anything, neither do I have anything to tell.”

Seeing that Wallace was attempting to put up his toughest facade, I could not help but crack a smile. I snatched Wallace’s card from his hand with my fingers.

“Damn…..! My card…..!”

Frustration was clear on Wallace’s face, that he started rubbing it in distraught. Once again that face looked so amusing, I had to try to suppress my laughter.

“We’re not interested in your criminal records. Unfortunately, due to your role, we must turn you in to the police. Eventually.”

“…..What does that mean.”

“For our convenience, I still have some questions to ask you. See, Wallace. The word on the streets said that no matter who the client is, as long as there is money, you would be willing to act as the broker in any kind of transaction.”

While observing the No. 6 of Spades on my fingertips, I spun it around.

“Wh……what are you talking about? You guys are after the ‘X-Playing Cards’, right. True, that card is mine…..but no, aside from the No. 6 of Spades I don’t know anything else.”

“Kuhaha,”

It was so ridiculous that this time I could not stand it, I burst into dry laughter.

“You may be a broker without a shred of morale, but you still have the pride of a businessman. Doesn’t defending your clients work in your favor?”

I raised my leg and stepped on Wallace’s shoulder, screwing in the soles of my leather shoes as hard as I could.

A quiet cry escaped him.

“Stop playing dumb. Just who do you think I am?”

I kept on smiling. Wallace contorted his face in pain.

“Well, whatever. It is not our job to interrogate you. From here on we’re going to hand you over to where you belong. What happens after that is beyond me. You’d better hope that you’ll be allowed to keep your life.”

Before I knew it, Vijay was standing behind me, his hand on my shoulder. Perhaps he wanted to tell me to stop, but I knew that already. I’m not so stupid that I need to be told off by my subordinates. I was just having a little fun.

I stood up, straightening my collar. Two golden rings each held in the mouths of two lions, the motif which adorned my chest, rang softly.

“Vijay, go and take Wallace to the headquarters. Since you’re new and probably not familiar with the steps, first you should contact Bernard to confirm the procedure.”

“Got it.”

Vijay had only recently become my subordinate. I got busy shortly after I was entrusted with a branch store, thus we did not have anyone to show him the ropes. That being said, he was already decent as it is, so that already put him above Chris. He also seemed to be quickly getting along with Wendy.

“Chris and Wendy will be doing clean-up of the scene. I’ll contact the headquarters and the police to keep this off the news.”

“Got it.”

With a small nod, Vijay activated Green Green, and let the vines tied Wallace’s hands behind his back.

Vijay gave a small bow.

“Well then, let’s meet again at the branch office, manager.”

“…..Just Leo is fine. It’s not like we’re strangers. You don’t have to be so formal.”

“Okay, Leo.”

Vijay seemed to have a faint smile creeping up his face, but it was probably just my imagination.

Looking down from the top of the container, I saw that Chris and Wendy were still in the RAIKA catching up with us. They pulled up as they were about to crash into the train.

Chris pointed at my feet and gestured as if saying, “get rid of the dirt”.

I snorted, ignored him, and jumped into RAIKA. Chris screamed.

“Come on! Gimme a break!”

Since RAIKA has no rear seats, I landed on the trunk.

Chris glanced at me over his shoulder and sighed.

“This is why I hate kids, thirteen year olds won’t listen to the adults.”

“Shut up, you’re still a minor too, aren’t you.”

“Um, by the way, this is a two-seater, so where is Leo going to sit?”

Said Wendy, who suddenly remembered that I am their superior. I was tempted to tell her to move aside, but still.

“Here is fine.”

I shoved my legs between the seats and rested my elbows on my knees. When I reminded myself to end the play, the gloves disappeared without a trace and transformed back into a card. Just like that, I slipped it back in.

“Isn’t it dangerous to sit there, though? Is that really okay?”

“Don’t worry about it. If I lose my balance I’ll grab on Chris’ eyelashes.”

“If you do that, won’t my eyelids get torn off? I’d rather you grab on my hair instead.”

Thus RAIKA continued on its way to the state of Spada.

My name is Leo Constantine Pinochle. I am the son of the president of “Pinochle”, a long-established automobile manufacturer with an extensive history, as well as the heir to the proud family of Pinochle.

I am also the manager of Pinochle’s Old Maid branch office—and the leader of “High Card”.

♠️♥️♦️♣️

TL notes: I’m not a professional translator so feel free to tell me if you spot any errors! Please do not repost this translation anywhere. The fact that I actually had to google what Vijay is saying... this man...

#hc novel never no dollars #translation #high card #kai wallace #leo constantine pinochle #chris redgrave #wendy sato #vijay kumar singh

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ashortdropandasuddenstop · 2 months

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I have dyscalculia. But the moment you told me your birthday is on the 31st, I immediately set a calendar reminder (two, actually: one for 30th if I accidentally forgot), not to brag, but I ended up not needing it.

Angel, you're a wonderful friend, amazing writer, compassionate, beautiful person in every meaning possible. You're creative, inspiring and enabling regarding my batshit Captain, her disaster crew and her equally crazy ancestors. Words cannot express how grateful I am to call you my friend. Your take on James Norrington is unbeatable; that's a fact. He's everything: the proud Commodore, the disgraced mess/pirate seeking redemption the wrong way, the Admiral with a storm of emotions trapped inside, and at last but not least the yearning, sensitive man with emotions as deep and vast as the ocean. You capture EVERY aspect of his and build it into your writing so seamlessly. Also don't think I'm not looking at the Vampire AU, unfortunately I just don't have enough time to properly throw someone from the family at him!

I've already told you, but time to remind: You are the reason why this blog & @.pirataimperatix exist besides my own stubbornness. Because of your kindness, creativity, flexibility and actual interest to explore many dynamics ranging from an almost murder to domestic life as the Caribbeans' power couple. I am eternally thankful for your open, brilliant mind.

I've scheduled many surprises (No I'm not telling) throughout the day for you to look out for, I hope you will like them and if time lets both of us, we can unravel the hidden meanings & symbolisms I've sneaked everywhere. I wanted this ask to be the first you see as a 'proper' kick off the celebration. So I wish you a very happy birthday, may you have luck along with a fulfilling healthy long life!🎊💖🎉💗🎆💕

Thank you for everything & here's to the many more uncharted territories,

Jasmine

//Awww sweety!! This was such a lovely thing to wake up to and made me tear up. You are definitely one of my oldest friends on here and I treasure you and your imaginative mind to spin vibrant tales with always!

#out of wig

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wqintraining · 1 year

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NEW X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES -SEASON 2, EPISODE 11

We open at the school, where it's the final week of the school year, and everyone is getting ready for Summer.

Among the adults, Northstar, Nightcrawler, Dani, Karma, and Warpath are toasting to actually keeping this place going for an entire school year, without it getting blown up. Jean-Paul calls for Allison to come and join them, but she's on the phone, excited as it seems she finally got a new agent, and he has good news for her.

Cutting to the kids, Sofia is live streaming in her room, modeling bathing suits for her followers and letting them vote on which ones she should wear. She gets a paid message asking which one Julian likes best. She reminds her followers that they're friends again, but they aren't back together, so his opinion doesn't matter. Even if she wanted to ask, she doesn't even know where he is right now.

Cut to Julian and Noriko making out on the floor of the Blackbird's cargo bay. They wanted to spice things up a little so they stole the key. Noriko zaps him when he tries to grab her ass.

Laura is still helping Brian study, and he's actually doing well. Laura nods in approval.

The Cuckoos, no longer in the med bay, try to say hello to Cessily in the hallway, but she refuses to even speak to them, brushing past them. The sisters hang their heads.

In Beast's lab, Hank is quizzing Roxy on a vast range of subjects, interspersed with assigning her various tasks to complete as she helps him with a project. Roxy is saying and doing everything right, and loving this. Beast recites a poem and asks Roxy who wrote it, with Bling! disappointed in herself for finally forgetting something. Hank was just messing with her though. That's one of his originals, and he just wanted to know if she liked it. Roxy laughs and punches his shoulder.

From a happy moment to a solemn one, Kitty is sat down with Sooraya, allowing her to listen to a goodbye recording Storm left for her. She makes sure Sooraya knows she doesn't care about her any less, and that she will always be there for her. She knows she will do great things and hopes she and her mother will be happy together. She also hopes she remembers what she told her about Emma. Kitty puts an around around the saddened Dust.

In Emma’s penthouse bedroom, she’s half-asleep and she’s held in the arms of an equally half-asleep Scott, both naked and under the covers, as the sun peaks through her window.

Scott hums that he should really be getting up for work, but Emma moans back that he should stay. If she’s on a brief leave of absence until Charles arrives to help her, he should stay with her. Scott, nibbling at her neck, would love nothing more, but with Storm gone, they can’t take time off together.

EMMA: “Mm. How inconsiderate of her.”

Emma senses Scott’s mood shifting at her mocking of his friend and turns over to put her hands on his face.

EMMA: “Are you about to get all mopey over me driving away your wife and closest friend again?”

Scott looks hurt for a moment, before smirking and kissing her on the lips. As they make out and are on the verge of resuming having sex, there’s a knock on the door. A female staff member informs Ms. Frost that breakfast is ready.

As Emma thanks her, Scott compliments the way she employs visible mutants almost exclusively for her personal staff, as no one else would hire them. Emma laments that she, unfortunately, can’t employ all of them, simply not enough work to be done, but that’s why she lets the rest of the interested clean ones simply live in her homes around the world, provided they follow her rules.

SCOTT, crawling out of bed: “You are just full of surprises.”

EMMA, smacking his ass: “Who doesn’t love surprises?”

In a prison, John Sublime is seated in his cell, frustrated and rapidly tapping his foot. As he does this the room is blown off the facility. Sublime, fearful, looks up, and finds two sentinels hovering above him.

Sublime mocks the irony of what he deems his situation to be. Machines designed to kill Mutants are about to kill the ultimate enemy of those vermin. He shuts his eyes and accepts his incoming death, but it doesn’t come. As Sublime opens his eyes, one of the sentinels is offering a hand for him to stand on. They aren’t here to kill him, they’re here to save him.

Sublime gets on and laughs maniacally, as they fly away.

At the school, Scott and Bobby are walking through the hallway, trying to decide on a new team member. Scott thinks there’s no one who could possibly replace Storm, so they just need to focus on who’s qualified, and what unique skills they have to offer, rather than questioning if they meet Ororo’s standard.

SCOTT: “Maybe Northstar. He’s been itching for a spot all semester, and right now the only team member we have capable of immediate response to a far-off crisis is a demon we can’t trust. We could use a speedster.”

Despite Scott’s logic, Bobby shoots that down. He’s JUST starting to figure out this whole, “Might Be Gay” thing, and he doesn’t need to be further confused by spending time with the bitchiest flaming gay he knows.

SCOTT, teasing: “Afraid he’ll hit on you?”

BOBBY: “As a matter of fact, yes.”

Bobby thinks Storm had the right idea. They need more of the old crew to balance out their former supervillain, former assassin, and current evil overlord.

BOBBY: “How about Colossus? We need a new powerhouse, he synergizes with Kitty, he could help control Magik, and–”

Scott cuts Bobby off.

SCOTT: “No.”

BOBBY: “Huh?”

SCOTT: “No Colossus.”

BOBBY: “What are you–?”

SCOTT: “No. Colossus.”

Bobby doesn’t entirely get it, but he shrugs it off.

BOBBY: “Maybe Bishop?”

Before Scott can give his thoughts on that, he receives an alert on his phone. They need to move. There have been sentinel sightings.

In Noriko and Sofia's room, Nori is panic-cramming, shouting as she questions why she didn't study earlier. Sofia, who's still streaming, pans her phone over to her so her viewers can witness her freakout.

NORIKO: "PRINCESS, YOU GET THAT CAMERA OUT OF MY FACE, OR I WILL FRY ALL OF YOUR SHOES!"

Sofia giggles, turning the camera back to herself.

SOFIA: "Would you all believe she used to be polite, courteous, and a good student?"

NORIKO, off-screen: "I regret telling any of you assholes anything!"

Sofia teasingly blows a kiss at her.

Sofia thinks of what she was talking about before, and gets back to it: the end of year dance. She starts talking about how she has a few dresses on hold and she's trying to figure out which one to get, but her fans do not care one bit. All they want to know is if Julian has asked her out yet.

She tells them all directly that, no, he has not asked her. He respects the boundaries they set. Naturally, the chat only finds that to be romantic. Sofia insists that respecting basic boundaries is not praiseworthy, but the chat just fills up with red and gold hearts.

Sofia softly mumbles her annoyance in Spanish, only for the chat to progress to saying she should just ask HIM out.

Noriko's ears perk up at Sofia's reaction to this.

Sofia says she can't, but she blushes as she says she doesn't even want to. The chat keeps up the pressure, no matter how much Sofia tries to argue she shouldn't, but her fans hit at the heart of the matter: if they're already spending time together again, if they trust each other again, and if they love each other, they should be together.

Also they're just stupid hot together.

SOFIA: "...love?"

Sofia takes a moment to think, but ultimately cheers that, yes, she's going to ask Julian out!

A stray burst of electricity blows up Sofia's phone.

SOFIA: "Noriko!"

NORIKO, as red-faced as Sofia: "Sorry!"

As Scott gets ready to take off in the Blackbird, he's joined by Wolverine, who notices they're all on their own.

LAURA: "This is it?"

SCOTT: "Emma is off-duty, Sunspot and Magik aren't picking up, and Iceman and Kitty are already en route to the other location sentinels were spotted. This will have to be enough."

Laura snarls. She thought there weren’t any sentinels left. Cyclops thoughts so too, but there’s always someone who’s going to make more. There will never not be humans desperate to see them dead.

LAURA: “...but we don’t kill them back.”

SCOTT: “Not unless we have no choice.”

LAURA: “Already a step past where you started.”

Scott says nothing to that as the plane takes off.

Laura continues to grind her teeth. These monstrosities are never hurting her friends again. Ever.

At the Grindstone, Mercury, Dust, and Bling! are having coffee. In the background, Luna is receiving a shipment of party supplies. Roxy thanks her for letting her rent out the place on Friday night to celebrate after finals. Luna says it's no big deal. She certainly offered more than she makes on a normal night.

LUNA: "Honestly, I'm not sure this place would even still be open if you girls and your friends weren't such caffeine addicts." Luna starts walking off with the shipment. She turns back to the girls. "Seriously, you should all talk to a doctor about that."

Once she's out of sight, the girls all sip their coffee.

Roxy's positive mood shifts as she sighs. Soo asks her what's wrong, with Cessily explaining for her girlfriend that it's about Dr. McCoy, and how he isn't going to be returning after the Summer.

Roxy follows up that the rest of the friend group has Emma and Dani and Kitty and even kinda Cyclops because they're the X-Men in Training. But she only really has Beast. He's the only adult here who's really invested in her, the one who’s helped her find a whole new part of herself, and she doesn’t want to lose him.

Sooraya can sympathize. Yes, the others she mentioned care about her, but she isn’t blind. Julian and Sofia are Ms. Frost’s priorities, Noriko and Sofia Ms. Moonstar’s, and Noriko Ms. Pryde’s. Storm didn’t have a squad, but she had her.

Cessily tries to cheer her up, saying at least the timing isn’t too bad. Her mom is going to be flying in soon!

SOORAYA, shaken by Ororo’s words: “Yes. She will be. Ms. Frost has made all the accommodations.”

Roxy, seeing that Soo may actually be doing worse than herself right now and could use a distraction, recommends an album to listen to. It’s too late for Ms. Munroe, but she’s going to see if she can convince Dr. McCoy to stay. By the time she’s done that, she wants to know everything Soo thought about the album. Nothing destresses the mind like music. Soo isn’t sure, not exactly a fan of American music, but Roxy promises she’ll like what she has in mind. Sooraya reluctantly agrees.

Roxy asks Cessily if she’s down to help her with Beast, and, to her surprise, Cessily says no. She still needs to train more for finals. She’s oddly tense as she says this, but there are enough emotions flying around already that the others don’t push. Roxy just wishes her luck and kisses her cheek.

The three all drink.

ROXY: “You know coffee CAN be bad for mental health.”

BEAT.

The three continue to drink.

In Milan, Italy, a sentinel flies over the city’s skyline. Running away from it is a pre-teen boy made of rocks, dressed in baggy basketball attire. At the same time he’s running away in terror, he shouts out to the sentinel unconvincingly that if it comes down here and fights him man to robot, he’ll kick its ass.

A blast from the sentinel blows up the street underneath the boy and sends him flying. Before it can finish him off, however, the sentinel itself is blasted back by the Blackbird.

SANTO, fleeing: “Wooh! Take that punk!”

Laura tells Scott to drop her on its head and let her deal with it, but Cyclops doesn’t want to rush in. For all they know, this could be another one of those more advanced sentinels Nova had under her command. Laura questions how the X-Men ended up killing those.

CYCLOPS: “We didn’t. Jean did.”

Before they can make a move, the Blackbird is contacted.

SUBLIME, over the coms: “Hello, X-Men. Don’t mind me. I was just having some fun while I waited for your arrival.”

CYCLOPS, growling: “Sublime.”

John doesn’t know who else is aboard the plane, but he’s happy to see Scott. He needs to pay him back for last time.

JOHN: “I hope Emma is with you too. All of my remaining U-Men are still dying to be telepaths. If she isn’t, perhaps you could be a sport and return No-Girl.”

Before Scott can say anything, Laura shouts that this sick freak isn’t ever seeing her again, and she isn’t going to let him ever cut up another little girl. Sublime laughs.

SUBLIME: “Is that Wolverine? Oh, don’t be afraid. I’m only interested in cutting up real girls.”

Laura snarls as Sublime laughs. Cyclops asks how he escaped prison and built sentinels, but Sublime doesn’t “feel like answering”. He’d much rather get to the killing.

The sentinel transforms, indeed revealing it to be a super sentinel. It flies toward the Blackbird, but before it can reach it, Laura jumps out the door and is blasted toward the death machine by Cyclops, claws out.

On the basketball court, Julian is both playing and training, as he tries to dribble the ball via telekinesis, without projecting his all-too-visible green energy. It’s straining on his head even to get started and, as soon as he starts making headway, Noriko speeds in, completely breaking his concentration.

Julian stumbles back, Noriko teasing how he somehow still isn’t used to that. As Julian catches his breath, he whispers in frustration that he can’t make out right now; he wants to be able to show off contactless telekinesis at finals.

NORIKO: “Don’t worry, that’s not why I’m here. Cause we’re done.”

Julian questions what she’s on about. He KNOWS she’s been having a good time. And yes, she has, but that doesn’t matter.

NORIKO: “Sofia is planning on asking you out, and you are going to say yes.”

Julian’s face lights up. He KNEW he was winning her back. Noriko should have seen them when they were fighting Ms. Frost together. It was just like before.

JULIAN: “But why does that mean we need to stop?”

Noriko slaps Julian.

JULIAN: “You know I never hit you.”

NORIKO: “I never deserve it.”

Noriko explains that, no, Sofia is not the kind of girl who’d be okay with her boyfriend having a sidepiece, even if they were just making out, nor does she herself WANT to be a sidepiece. And, even if they were both okay with that, they’d need to admit to Sofia what they’ve been doing, and Sofia would be hurt by both of them not telling her sooner, and possibly hate them for making out with her boyfriend and not waiting like they said, respectively. She’s not hurting her best friend like that.

Julian thinks about it and admits she’s right. God, he can’t wait for her to ask. He knows it’ll be magic.

JULIAN: “But…if we’re not having a fling anymore.” Julian smirks and charges up with energy. “Then it’s back to basics.”

Noriko takes a stance and lights herself up, smirking back.

NORIKO: “Bring it.”

In Beast’s lab, we’re introduced to Forge, as Hank shows him around where he’ll be working next semester. Forge immediately starts complaining about and criticizing various processes and, in his mind, outdated tech, Hank uses. Sitting down in Hank’s chair, he doesn’t even think THAT is comfortable.

BEAST: “It provides extra support for your back. And I shouldn’t be surprised a lesser genius like yourself can’t understand why things are set up this way.”

FORGE: “A “lesser-genius”, huh? My mind is constantly innovating. You’re just a book nerd.”

BEAST: “Why you–”

Before these nerds can continue to argue, Roxy knocks on the open door, asking if now is a good time.

Beast smiles and welcomes her in, introducing her to Forge as his prized pupil. Roxy is honored to meet him, and Forge, a fan of her parents, is happy to meet her too.

FORGE: “I hope you haven’t learned TOO much from Fuzzy.”

BEAST: “Oh she has. Which is why she has SO much to teach you.”

Roxy mumbles to herself this is really awkward as Forge sees himself out. He’s looking forward to working with Bling! next semester.

As Hank sits down and explains to Roxy how important it is to find a chair with proper support, he asks what she needs.

ROXY: “I…I don’t want to work with Forge next year.”

Beast laughs. Even she can tell he isn’t as smart as he thinks. Roxy shakes her head no. That isn’t it. She just doesn’t want him to leave.

ROXY: “I’ve learned so much from you, and I don’t want that to stop.”

Beast gets back up and assures her he’ll never stop teaching her if that’s what she’d like. The wonders of modern technology can make it seem like he’s right here with her. Roxy says that isn’t enough; she wants to keep working side by side with him.

Hank is sorry, but that isn’t possible. She’s a student, and she needs to stay here. And he doesn’t feel like he belongs here anymore. As if there was still any doubt, Storm’s departure made it clear his time was done as well.

Roxy tries to sway him, telling him how she gets how Ms. Frost and Mr. Summers might seem kinda shady, especially after what just happened, but he shouldn’t leave because of them. And she knows they aren’t all bad. Ms. Frost has been nothing but good to her friends, and she’s even helped her and her family. Beast sighs and shakes his head. He really is sorry. He’s come to care about her a great deal, but he honestly hadn’t realized she’d become so attached.

ROXY: “You didn’t realize?! You’re supposed to be the smartest! All my life, I’ve been the celebrity hip-hop girl. And I love that. But you showed me I could be something more. I’d never thought my brain was anything special, I’d never put any thought into building new things. And now I can’t even sleep without a journal next to my bed to write down ideas. I need you to keep teaching me more. Please. Don’t go.”

Hank isn’t sure what to say, and before he can think of anything, his phone rings. For a second, we see the name of the person calling him is, “Crystal”. He’s sorry, but he has to take it. It’s important.

Bling! glares at him.

BLING!: “Sure it is.”

Roxy walks out, furious with her mentor.

In Italy, Sublime’s sentinel swats at Laura, but she digs her claws right into its hands and sticks onto it. Sublime mocks her, questioning what exactly she plans on doing next.

Elsewhere, it’s shown that Sublime is remotely controlling both this sentinel and one doing battle against Iceman and Kitty, from a tablet. He tells her that he’s aware of how these sentinels performed the last time they were active, and he knows there isn’t a damn thing Cyclops or Wolverine can do to stop it.

SUBLIME: “Iceman, perhaps, but from that fight will at least come data.”

As Laura pulls one of her hands out of the machine and tries to climb, Sublime casually attempts to shake her off and let her plummet to the ground. Laura’s attempts to stay clung to the sentinel are further deterred as Cyclops fires multiple missiles at it. Laura falls as the sentinel is knocked back, only barely able to cling onto the sentinel’s foot.

Sublime is surprised Cyclops would do that.

SUBLIME: “Since when does the X-Men’s noble leader endanger his teammates?”

CYCLOPS, while Laura struggles to resume her climb: “I’m not in the mood for questions either. Unless you’re ready to tell me who you even are.”

Sublime’s response is to hit the Blackbird with a surprise attack, sending it into a spin. While Laura takes notice of this, she has nowhere to dodge as the sentinel’s extended arm knocks her off of itself. Laura is sent falling, and Scott struggles to keep the Blackbird from crashing into Milan.

Outside the school on one of the benches, Sofia is grinning at her phone as she works to get everything set up for what she has planned. Notably, it’s a different phone than the one Noriko blew up earlier.

“Studying hard?”

Dani approaches her from behind and sits down next to Sofia, as she sticks her phone in her purse.

Sofia laughs and says no, she's all set for finals already. She's going to be asking Julian out later, and she wants to make sure it's spectacular, as she'll be doing it live on stream.

DANI: "That sounds ridiculous, but also perfect for you two."

Dani still doesn't have the warmest feelings toward Julian, but she's happy that the two have worked out everything that went on between them and, to his credit, he's never hesitated to throw himself head first at any villain he's encountered.

DANI: "Then again, that's also why he ends up in the infirmary so much."

Dani isn't surprised that Sofia is all studied up while so many of the other kids are cramming. She's always been responsible and on top of things, always working as hard as she has to to achieve her goals. The girl who couldn't even fly properly when she first came here may now be the most talented among the most talented squad.

DANI: "And all this while having been through so much before you came here, and more than almost anyone since coming here. I'm so proud of you."

SOFIA, loving the praise but also embarrassed: "Ms. Moonstar, stop…"

DANI: "Afraid I can't. We all have our eyes on you, kid. And now’s the time to show us exactly what you've learned."

Sofia grins excitedly until Dani harshly pats her on the back.

DANI: "Don't get too distracted by your man."

Sofia smirks at her.

SOFIA: "Were you always focused on becoming an X-Man? Or was there anything between you and Cannonball or Sunspot?"

DANI: "Nothing that I would ever tell you about."

In Milan, Laura rolls around in mid-air, teeth grit, as she tries to make as effective a landing as possible. Cyclope, meanwhile, is struggling to keep the Blackbird from crashing into the terrified civilians below.

Sublime laughs as he watches this, hoping the Blackbird crashing kills “Rock Boy”. That would be hilarious. He briefly turns his attention to his second sentinel, which is battling Iceman on his own, while Kitty has moved to evacuate the immediate area.

SUBLIME: “Cocky bastard.”

Laura braces for impact, but just before she can collide with the ground, Scott is able to gain control of the Blackbird and swoop in to save her, directing the plane under her so she can stick her claws through the roof.

Sublime slams his fist in disappointment and growls at Laura that she’ll be a stain on the pavement sooner or later. It’s bad enough Mutants exist at all, but that humans are actively cloning more of them is far too much.

Laura scratches her claws against the Blackbird.

CYCLOPS, over coms: “You okay?”

WOLVERINE: “Never.”

CYCLOPS: “Right, forgot who I was talking to.”

Scott’s put together a plan, but he does have to ask something to make sure it will work.

CYCLOPS: “You know how to fly this thing?”

Laura smirks.

In Roxy's room, she's by herself, sitting in bed, in a bad mood, surrounded by stuffed animals and strumming on her guitar.

There's a rapid knock on the door. Roxy tells them to come in. An overjoyed Sooraya enters. She listened to the bands she sent her and LOVED them. She'd never even heard of "Arabic Rock".

Roxy's still in a funk so she can't share in Soo's joy, but she is happy for her. Soo sees something is wrong and asks her what happened with Beast. And why is she surrounded by stuffed animals?

ROXY: "Pixie went to a party with some of her friends. She didn't want to leave me alone."

Roxy tells Sooraya that she couldn't convince Dr. McCoy to stay. Even when she poured her heart out and told him how much he means to her. He sucks!

Sooraya thinks about what she should stay, before asking if she's talking to Cessily about this. Roxy huphs no. She's been too stressed over finals to spare her a moment. She doesn't even get why. She's been helping her, and she knows she'll do fine!

SOORAYA: "I see. And did Dr. McCoy say why he is so adamant about quitting?"

ROXY: "Nothing I didn't already know. He bailed on me to take a phone call. Probably his girlfriend or something."

Sooraya tells her that doesn't sound very conclusive. Maybe she should try again. Roxy bristles. Soo rolls her eyes.

SOORAYA: "Or maybe it was important because he's one of the most politically active X-Men?"

Roxy says maybe, but it doesn't change anything. He's more annoyed with Mr. Summers and Ms. Frost than he likes her. More than he wants to see her flourish. Going back wouldn't change anything.

Sooraya puts together the problem and sighs.

SOORAYA: "You've never been told "No", have you?"

ROXY, off guard: "HUH?"

Soo explains that she's spent more time around people with affluent backgrounds this past year than she ever would have wanted to. And compared to most of them…

SOORAYA: "Megan is eccentric in other ways, Sofia doesn't really come from that world, and Noriko is Noriko"...

Roxy is much more normal and down to Earth. But she's still incredibly privileged. Rich and famous parents who love and accept every part of her at home, and a cool, popular celebrity everywhere else. Yes, obviously, it's not all been great for her, no one here has it easy, but she's never failed to get what she wants from the people whose opinions she actually cares about.

Roxy tries to argue but…

ROXY: "That's not..I don't…shit."

Soo tells her that they can't always get what they want, and even if someone does care about her, they may still need to prioritize themselves; that isn't wrong.

SOORAYA: "Maybe for a parent, but not a teacher. He's had students before us, and he will have students after us."

Roxy sulks and mumbles that he did say he wouldn't mind continuing to teach her remotely. Soo encourages her to accept.

Roxy processes all of this and smiles.

SOORAYA: "All settled?"

ROXY, smiling: "Not just yet."

Iceman continues to fight one of the super sentinels on his own, annoying Sublime as it’s clearly losing. If the most advanced sentinels to date can’t even lay a hand on a single X-Man, regardless of their power, maybe he should toss his own hat into the ring. Certainly, he could built something better.

Elsewhere, the Blackbird circles the other sentinel, with Sublime failing to strike it down again. Sublime resumes his taunting tactic, his focus remaining on Laura, who is still riding on top of the plane.

SUBLIME: “I know your creators, X-23. I could appreciate some of the fine work being done at The Facility, but they failed to listen to my warning when it came to making you. A Mutant’s natural state is to be an enemy of humanity, but even if it wasn’t, they would have found better results by taking Wolverine’s genes and putting them in a human. Perhaps someone more competent could have saved Genosha. At the very least, if you hadn’t been born…your mother would still be alive.”

Laura roars as the Blackbird circles behind the sentinel’s head, jumping onto it. Sublime grins at having baited her right back where he wants her. With a press of a button, energy fields surround both sentinels. This is their ultimate ability. Channeling all of their power around themselves, before releasing it in waves of mess destruction. Nova wasn’t exactly considered with civilian casualties when designing them, and neither is he.

Delighting him in the moment as they charge, Laura is caught in the energy field, pieces of her flesh and costume rapidly burning off. Sublime laughs and questions what Cyclops will do next. Scott doesn’t respond, nor does he move.

Laura grunts in pain as the sentinels charge and tension mounts, until…

SCOTT: “GO!”

Moving as a blur as if not in agony, Wolverine Laura claws away at the outer armor of the sentinel’s head, before leaping around the giant robot and doing the same to its arms, legs, and torso. With all the energy that re-enforces the exterior being projected outward, it’s just metal. Strong metal, but not stronger than adamantium.

When she’s done, the half-still-regenerating-her-flesh Laura leaps off the sentinel and into the opened door of the Blackbird, where she swiftly switches places with Cyclops.

Sublime questions what the Hell they’re doing. Cyclops smugly tells him they were able to learn everything about these sentinels from the wreckage Phoenix left behind. He knew the best way for him and Laura to beat the sentinel would be to bait out its strongest attack, have Wolverine weaken its armor, and then finish it himself. All the while Sublime didn’t even notice, that he’d been slowly leading them away from the populated area below.

CYCLOPS: “You just made two critical errors. Thinking I don’t plan for everything.” Laura fully heals and grins. “And thinking a little pain will ever put down Wolverine.”

Cyclops on his com asks Kitty if her area is clear, which she confirms. He tells Bobby to go crazy.

An infuriated Sublime, refusing to lose again, fires off both sentinels’ attacks. The energy waves are met by a massive spiked glacier cutting through one and annihilating the sentinel on Iceman’s end, and the uncovered eyes of Cyclops on the other. While Scott’s full power doesn’t overwhelm the sentinels’ attack as easily as Iceman’s counter, the end result is ultimately the same.

Sublime roars in rage as he throws his tablet on the ground. It doesn’t break though, allowing Cyclops, as he gets his visor back on, to tell him that he’s next.

In Julian's room, he's lying down in bed, cracking his arms and neck. He enjoys fighting Noriko, but she has started hitting like a truck. At least he can still mess her up as much as ever right back. Before he can get too settled, a breeze brushes past him. A smirk spreads across his face as he floats up and feels it coming from underneath the door. Opening it, he expects to find Sofia but no one is present. Instead, he feels another breeze. He realizes she’s telling him which way to go.

To his surprise, the breeze ends up leading him to the danger room. Unsure if she can even hear him, he calls out to Sofia that the place is still shut down. Over the winds, a whisper is carried into Julian’s ear.

SOFIA: “Since when are you against breaking a rule?”

Julian laughs and uses his telekinesis to forcibly open the doors to the danger room’s control room. He grins as he sees Sofia seated inside, smiling right back at him. Unusually for her, she isn’t wearing makeup.

SOFIA: “Took you long enough.”

Julian asks Sofia what this is about. Is it what it seems like or…?

Sofia stands up and tells him she had this whole plan for how she wanted to do this. She’d already gotten Rubbermaid to agree to film them, she’d picked out her dress for the dance so she could wear it now…but she decided to just keep this between them instead.

SOFIA: “It’s like I told you. If I have this wonderful place and my friends and…you…then I don’t need to put my whole life online. I don’t need to be someone I’m not.”

JULIAN: “So I’m more than a friend then?”

Sofia rolls her eyes at that being all he has to say as she approaches him and asks him if he remembers the last time they were here. Julian does: it was when he tried to get back together with her, and she, with good reason, broke his heart.

SOFIA: “Yes, it was.” She takes his metal hands. “Ask me again.”

JULIAN, the happiest man in the world at this moment: “Ask you again?”

Sofia nods.

Julian takes a telekinetically enhanced deep breath, making Sofia giggle.

JULIAN: “Will you give me one more chance, Sofia? One more chance to be the man you deserve?”

Sofia smirks as the music swells.

SOFIA: “No.”

Julian’s face crumbles and the music stops.

JULIAN: “What? But you just…”

Sofia cuts Julian off and the music picks right back up as she kisses him. Julian takes her in his arms, with one hand on her head and one on her ass. They make out passionately.

SOFIA, pulling back, looking right into his eyes: “I’m sorry. You deserved one last punishment.”

JULIAN, laughing: “And you...have never looked more beautiful.”

The two resume making out, as tk energy and wind effortlessly close the danger room’s doors. They only get more excited as the lights unexpectedly go out.

On the Blackbird, Laura compliments Cyclops’ strategy and the power of his Mutation. She can see how witnessing the latter won Ms. Frost over.

LAURA: “When we find Sublime, will he experience that as well?”

Scott tells Laura he’s sorry. She came to him to learn right from wrong, when he was still in the process of learning that himself. And he thinks he finally has the answer…for himself. Killing is unacceptable unless absolutely necessary. For himself. Everyone’s morality is different, and each person needs to figure out what’s right for them. He shouldn’t have tried forcing his strict morals onto her, but help her find what was right for herself.

As an X-Man, his rules for when killing is acceptable apply. But he’s not going to judge her for deeming a situation “necessary” when he wouldn’t.

Laura keeps her thoughts on all that in her head, but she thanks him. Not just for the apology, but for teaching her at all. She isn’t the person she was when she first came to the school. She probably wouldn’t have been able to maintain the relationships she has for this long without him. Logan told her she was more than a weapon. Cyclops has made her believe it.

Scott is sure to make sure she gives enough credit to herself. She’s been the one doing all the work. And she hasn’t just improved socially. As a fighter, she’s exponentially stronger than when they first met. Being on the X-Men and dealing with the types of scenarios they face has really–”

Scott trails off. Laura questions what’s going on. Scott shakes his head and says it’s nothing. He just had an idea. He smiles as the Blackbird flies into the sunset.

We enter a montage as finals arrive at last, the kids all taking their exams and undergoing their performance evaluations with their powers. During this, we see Julian and Sofia back together and the rest of their friends happy for them, save for Surge, who’s clearly forcing herself to smile. The montage ends with kids, days later, gathered in the hallway to see the class rankings that have been posted. None of the main cast are here, save for an especially eager Cessily.

We briefly get to see who made the top 10 in both academics and performance.

ACADEMICS:

QUENTIN QUIRE ( ORIGINALLY JEAN'S SQUAD, TRANSFERRED TO KARMA'S)

ROXANNE WASHINGTON (BEAST'S SQUAD)

SOFIA MANTEGA (DANI AND EMMA'S SQUAD)

SARAH VALE (BEAST'S SQUAD)

THE STEPFORD CUCKOOS (EMMA'S SQUAD)

SOORAYA QADIR (DANI AND EMMA'S SQUAD)

PARAS GAVASKAR (BEAST'S SQUAD)

JULIAN KELLER (DANI AND EMMA'S SQUAD)

LAURA KINNEY (SQUADLESS)

HISAKO ICHIKI (CYCLOPS' SQUAD)

PRACTICAL EXAMS:

THE STEPFORD CUCKOOS* (EMMA'S SQUAD)

SOFIA MANTEGA (DANI AND EMMA'S SQUAD)

JULIAN KELLER (DANI AND EMMA'S SQUAD)

NORIKO ASHIDA (DANI AND EMMA'S SQUAD)

QUENTIN QUIRE (FORMERLY JEAN'S SQUAD, TRANSFERRED KARMA’S)

SOORAYA QADIR (DANI AND EMMA'S SQUAD)

HISAKO ICHIKI (CYCLOPS' SQUAD)

VICTOR BORKOWSKI (NORTHSTAR'S SQUAD)

BEN HAMMIL (NIGHTCRAWLER's SQUAD)

DALLAS GIBSON (CYCLOPS' SQUAD)

*Laura was not allowed to be counted

Cessily, seeing this, punches the wall and hangs her head, tearing up.

CESSILY: “I will catch up.”

The Cuckoos arrive and notice Cessily having a rough time and consider approaching her, but they turn away, knowing she wouldn’t speak to them anyway.

In Beast’s lab, Hank is packing up the last of his things. As he sighs to himself that he hopes this plan can return to being the home he once knew one day, Roxy enters.

Hank puts his things down, happy to see her come back, and congratulates her on being salutatorian. Although to be fully honest, he’d expected and hoped for her to be #1.

ROXY, shrugging: “History class messed me up a little.”

Beast asks if she’s here to say goodbye. Roxy says “Yes…kind of”. She wanted to see him off, but she also has three requests. One, that he continues to tutor her remotely. Two, that he’ll stick talk about his projects with her and ask for her input. And three, that after graduation, and maybe college, she can come to work for him.

Beast is flattered. He of course is happy to oblige all three of her requests, but the last one surprises him. He’d have thought she’d want to follow in her parents’ footsteps. Roxy says she does. But she’s not exactly planning on going into the superhero game like her friends, she figures she can be a celebrity by day, scientist by night.

ROXY: “And before you say anything, yes, I know how entitled that sounds.”

Hank shakes his head. He doesn’t think that sounds entitled at all. He just sees a young woman who knows exactly what she’s capable of.

HANK: “And teaching you that will always be what I take the most from my resumed time here.”

Exchanging smiles, Roxy and Hank shake hands.

As Roxy exits the lab, she's met by Soo, who asks how it went. Roxy confirms that everything is great, and thanks her for her help.

ROXY: "Hey, would you and your mom want to come stay with my family for the Summer?"

Sooraya is shocked by this offer, but Roxy explains that she noticed she seemed hesitant about accepting the housing Emma set up, and it's not like she doesn't have the space. Sooraya isn't sure it's right to accept the offer, but Roxy tells her Cess is already going to be staying with her, and the three of them can have so much fun.

After taking a moment to think about it, Sooraya happily accepts.

In a hotel suite, Sofia and Julian are in bed together. Light cracks through the curtains and Sofia is snuggled up against Julian’s chest.

SOFIA: “I cannot believe we missed out on seven months of this.”

JULIAN: “As if I couldn’t hate myself for being an idiot more.”

Julian kisses the crown of her head.

SOFIA, completely at peace: “I love you. Idiot or not.”

JULIAN, equally peaceful and without hesitation: “I love you too.”

The two share a quick kiss.

Sofia stretches her arms as she yawns. Julian notices there’s a new charm on the bracelet she always wears. She explains that her old friend, Derek, used to bring her back charms from wherever he traveled with her father for business. Ms. Frost must have remembered she’d said something about that, as she gave her this after she got back from France.

JULIAN, as Sofia plays with the bracelet: “It was a gift from your mom, right?”

SOFIA: “Yes. The last thing she ever gave me. Before…”

Julian pulls her nice and snug into his arms, not about to let her spiral.

JULIAN: “Before she passed away. And if she were still alive, she’d be the most proud woman in the world.”

A part of Sofia wants to spiral, and yet she can’t find anything except comfort in this moment.

Sofia’s phone vibrates. Not wanting to move she blows it over to her.

She’s received a text message from Dani. The X-Men need to speak to her immediately.

Wind Dancer, in uniform, arrives in Cyclops' office, where she's greeted by him, Emma, Kitty, Iceman, Wolverine, and Dani. They thank her for coming and she asks what this is about.

DANI: “Don’t you remember? I said we had our eyes on you.”

This does not make things any more clear for Sofia.

Cyclops tells Sofia that, since the kids’ first few weeks here, he’s believed she had the most potential out of any of them. And time after time, she’s proven him right. Always getting stronger, always pushing harder, always being responsible, and always getting back up no matter what life throws at her. And now, she’s finished the school year with the highest combined academic and performance scores.

KITTY: “There was no actual school when I came here. I learned everything on the job.”

LAURA: “And I’ve learned more than ever being part of the team.”

BEAT.

SOFIA: “What are you all saying?”

Emma laughs.

EMMA: “It’s exactly what you’ve been dreaming of, Darling.”

Scott walks out from behind his desk and holds an X badge out to Sofia. She’s in shock.

CYCLOPS: “Wind Dancer, we’d like you to join the X-Men. Are you interested?”

ICEMAN: “No pressure, kid. If you don’t think you’re ready, we can always–”

SOFIA: “YES!”

Sofia enthusiastically takes the badge and thanks them all so much for this opportunity. She hugs Dani. Spinning around to see Laura, she asks her if she had anything to do with this.

LAURA: “Maybe a little.”

Sofia grins and gives Laura a peck on the cheek. Laura blushes.

Cyclops tells her this is going to be a lot of work, and it’s going to be more dangerous than anything she’s faced, but they all believe this will make her one of their greatest heroes down the line.

SOFIA: “I am not afraid. And I won’t let you down! I’m ready for anything.”

Elsewhere, Sublime is beating himself up over yet another defeat, questioning what he’s supposed to do now. Just then, a third sentinel arrives, hovering over him. Sublime insults the machine. He doesn’t know who’s sending these hunks of junk, but he isn’t interested in playing along with them again. After he’s done with the X-Men, he may just try and find out who’s behind this.

The sentinel raises its arm and obliterates Sublime with an energy blast. The sentinel then grows out long hair on its head and coats itself in a new, blue armor.

SENTINEL, in a feminine voice: “My turn.”

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

CAST CHANGE:

Sofia Mantega AKA Wind Dancer is now part of the main X-Men team.

#New X-Men: The Animated Series #New X-Men #Academy X #Scott Summers #Emma Frost #Kitty Pryde #Roberto Da Costa #Laura Kinney #Bobby Drake #Illyana Rasputin #sofia mantega #julian keller #noriko ashida #sooraya qadir #cessily kincaid #brian cruz #roxanne washington #the stepford cuckoos

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biohazard-inevitable · 2 years

Text

Meditate

Part 10 of the dragon and the fox!

It had been some time since Mondatta had arrived and Zayne had done his best to avoid him at all costs, though he couldn’t help the guilt that came with his avoidance. Mondatta had been nothing but kind and open to him, and yet all Zayne could think about was the authority he held, authority that felt too similar to Sojiro for Zayne to be comfortable with. Logically, he knew Mondatta wasn’t like him, that Mondatta would never do the horrible things that Sojiro would, but still he found cowardice in his heart.

He was surprised when he awoke one morning to a small note by his bedside (if you could even call the sleeping bag they purchased at the market a bed). It had elegantly calm writing, addressed to the assassin it read:

Dear Zayne,

I am aware you seem to find me intimidating, so I am writing to you in letter format so I won’t startle you with my presence. I understand if you wish to decline this offer, but seeing as we met in a less than favorable situation, I would like to offer to meet in a more private locale. I do daily meditation at the peak above the main temple every morning if you wish to join me on your own terms.

Sincerely, Mondatta

Zayne was admittedly too nervous to take up the monk’s gentle offer the day the note appeared, though after discussing with his shadow and Shugo for a little bit, he eventually gained the courage to at least try and talk to Mondatta, reminding himself that his fears were irrational and baseless.

He began his trek at dawn, not really having slept much as anxiety gnawed at the back of his conciousness, dulling the morning chill as he made his way slowly up the mountain path until he reached a small, quiet clearing near the top, the dark indigo and lavender of night already making way for a dusky navy as the sun began to rise over the himalayan mountain range, glinting off the soft white metal of Mondatta’s body, adorning him in an almost ethereal golden glow like fire as dawn swept over the vast view below.

“You… wanted to meet with me sir?” Zayne spoke cautiously towards the omnic who’s back was turned to him, his pose relaxed and gentle as he meditated.

“Ah yes, Zayne was it?” Mondatta spoke, softly and slowly as not to startle the human anxious hovering behind him as he patted a small mat beside him. “Do feel free to sit down if you desire, I’m sure the walk up here was a little tiring so early in the morning. You may also move the mat away if you are not comfortable with the proximity.”

“I’m sorry sir… for running away that day you returned…” Zayne apologized as he cautiously approached, dragging the mat on the ground further back towards the spot he entered from before sitting down apon it, pulling his jacket in close around himself for warmth. “It was rude and insensitive of me, and I apologize.”

“You needn’t apologize for a fear you had no control over, dear child.” Mondatta assured, making no move to change his position. “And please, merely call me Mondatta, there is no need for such formality with me.”

“Sorry sir- Mondatta…” Zayne corrected as he tried not to focus on the way his heart hammered in terror in his chest. “Force of habit with people like you…”

“People like me?” Mondatta asked with peaked curiosity. “What ever do you mean?”

“People with a lot of authority… I’ve… never been good around people like that.” Zayne admitted, peering down at the valley of snow and gold below them as the sun continued to shimmer across Nepal. “Cops, goverment people, public speakers, teachers…. Parents… I’ve never been good with any of them.”

“And why is that?”

“I just- I get scared that if I fuck up, something bad will happen to me, and I don’t have my brother Genji anymore to protect me like I did when I was a kid.”

“I know it isn’t much coming from me, and that you’ve probably already heard it, but I would never lay a hand on you, nor anyone who stays peacefully in our monastary.”

“I know, and thats the fucked up part…” Zayne laughed dryly. “I know that, and yet I’m still scared of you.”

“Well perhaps you only need time to get used to my presence then.” Mondatta offered, a tilt of a smile to his tone. “After all, you may visit me at any time.”

“Thank you si- … Mondatta.” Zayne sighed before standing back up, the anxiety not having left the back of his mind. “But I think I still need some time before we can have… longer conversations.”

“Of course,” The monk spoke with a nod to himself. “I hope to have you visit me again, whenever you are ready.”

With that, Zayne began back down the mountain, his body warming with not only the morning sun’s embrace, but also the affectionate words spoken by Mondatta, a promise that held some form of security to it, some control that the assassin could hold over their meetings instead of the raw authority that Sojiro once held.

B-Sides by Emile part 2

Part 11

#the dragon and the fox #mondatta #overwatch #self insert fanfiction #AAAAAAAA THIS IS JUST SO GOOD #its short but i personally feel its really good #adjusting to mondatta and authority figures is new #therapy with mondatta #i like this guy so muchhhhh #emile was right hes such an amazing dad

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seiya-starsniper · 2 years

Text

and if I get burned, at least we were electrified - Chapter 3

Link on AO3 [here]

Chapter Summary: Time for a Dreamling reunion! And a guest appearance by Johanna, because I love her to pieces, and someone needs to keep Hob in check while The Corinthian is away.

The Corinthian has been gone for almost a year.

Hob had taken a week off work after the blond had left to process. He hadn't been able to stay in his flat that whole week, opting instead to crash at Johanna’s. Everything in the flat reminded him of The Corinthian, who hadn't even bothered to pack a bag, just vanished into thin air. Johanna had forced him to start categorizing all her magical artifacts after two days, and Hob was all too happy to have something to take his mind off things.

Afterwards, between travel shutdowns, his university absolutely falling to madness trying to transition to online, and an uptick in supernatural activity (pandemics don’t stop supernatural beings, who knew) so vast that Johanna had asked for his help on a few jobs, Hob hadn’t been able to even go look for The Corinthian even though he had a very good idea of where he was. Or well, at least, what country he was in.

Hob had tried calling, texting, hell he even rang up the witch coven in Edmonton asking if they knew a summoning spell to get him to come back, all to no avail. Johanna didn’t know anything either. She had never even heard of a nightmare walking around the earth prior to The Corinthian.

“You know mate,” Johanna says now, sympathetic, over their fourth round of drinks. She’d practically had to drag him out of the flat tonight. “I hate to say I told you so but…” she doesn’t finish her sentence. Hob knows what she means. Johanna had not reacted kindly to Hob moving The Corinthian into his flat. She’d cursed him and called him every name under the sun and had told him she wouldn’t come to an idiot’s funeral. She'd said the relationship wouldn't last a year before The Corinthian would get bored, gut him, and leave him.

She had come around, Hob remembered. Eventually. Reluctantly.

Two years after The Corinthian had moved into his flat, Hob and the blond had been tracking a suspected child serial killer. It hadn’t taken long for them to locate the killer’s hiding spot in an old crumbling castle, and on the night they moved to confront him, Hob had been surprised to run into Johanna right outside.

"What the hell, get the fuck off my turf mate," Johanna had said when she spotted them.

The Corinthian growled in response, and Hob heard it come through all three mouths, which meant he really didn’t like her and that complicated matters.

“Johanna, lovely to see you as always, mind filling me in on why you're here?” Hob asked, trying to lighten the situation.

“Why are you here, I thought the bastard only ate human eyes-,”

“Oh, I like any and all types of eyes, in fact I'll bet the eyes of a Constantine would taste divine,” The Corinthian responded and Hob knew enough about the Corinthian to recognize he was trying discreetly to reach for the knife in his jacket. He stuck out his hand to stop him.

“Ok whoa whoa, Cory, first off, no, Johanna's off limits, not only is she not a criminal, she's also my friend ,” Hob said, gripping the Corinthian’s wrist to show he was serious.

“Your friend who taught you how to blow me up too, if I recall,” The Corinthian noted, a sour tone in his voice, but he didn’t struggle so Hob took that as a good sign.

“Yeah, pity none of it stuck.” Johanna retorted.

“I'll make your death stick you fucking-”

“All right, all right, you're both super scary, that's great,” Hob interrupted before they could get fully off topic with their juvenile antics. “Now, Johanna, there is a child in there that I have been asked to retrieve. His mum's worried sick and the Yard is just spinning their wheels. As much as I'm glad to see you, you being here worries me. Could you tell me why?”

Johanna had softened instantly, then looked utterly miserable at the news.

“The thing in there's an ogre. I'm sorry Hob, I don't think the kid's still alive,” she said sadly.

The reveal broke Hob's heart. Still, he didn't want to give up hope.

“Let us come in with you then," he'd said. Johanna gave them an offended look at the idea she might need help.

"I know, I know." Hob continued. "You're a big girl and you've been doing this for a while, but Cory and I aren't fragile, far from it, so there’s no need to worry about us, even if we do get hurt. Plus, I want to at least find something, if only to bring closure to his mum.” Hob pleaded. He really did not want to return to the woman empty-handed. Johanna looked like she wanted to argue, then decided against it and after a quick rundown, the three of them went inside together.

The resulting fight had been messy. Turns out, there was a whole family of ogres in the crumbling castle. Johanna had been able to take down two before the third had broken her right hand. Hob and The Corinthian had disemboweled it thoroughly in revenge.

In the end, Johanna was right, there was no living child in the castle that they could find, only scattered bones and discarded clothes. Hob would have to break the bad news to the distraught mother. He did manage to locate a jacket that matched the one of the photographs the woman had given him. Proof that her child had been here and gone. There was no need to look for anything else.

The Corinthian easily sensed the dour mood between Johanna and Hob, and had gone off to go eat the three pairs of ogre eyes in private once he’d separated them from their owners.

He’d come back a short time later in a considerably brighter mood, which Hob found a bit inappropriate, but he reminded himself that The Corinthian was who he was, and he’d probably had a good meal, so at least there was that. They'd have a talk about proper human passing behavior later.

“I know where a whole lot of other ogres are!” The Corinthian bragged. "And a whole lot of children, who are very much, Not Dead. ” Hob could practically hear the capital letters in the blond’s voice, and he raised his head so fast he was pretty sure he gave himself whiplash. He swore he heard Johanna let out a surprised gasp.

Well. The Corinthian now had their full attention.

“Also, I forgot how delicious non-human eyes are, I’ve changed my mind, we should absolutely meet like this more often, Constantine, I would love to get some Fey eyes next time.” The Corinthian continued. “In fact-”

"Cory, where are the damn children?" Hob snarled. The Corinthian's returning feral grin meant he was playing coy on purpose.

"Oh, there’s a hidden dungeon right downstairs.” The blonde shrugged, as if the news didn’t change absolutely everything about the night. “About 30 or so of them. Apparently there’s going to be some sort of family reunion in the next couple of days, so all those kidnappings were prep work for the big feast!" The Corinthian spread his arms wide for emphasis.

"But you know how ogres are, they like their food fresh so they’ve been trying to plump up the kids with all sorts of garbage to make ‘em taste sweeter."

“So wait, what you’re saying is-” Hob’s hope is so fragile, but could it be? They didn’t know how many children had been taken, but thirty was quite a lot, so maybe-

"Well, there were definitely some children who were eaten the last few days, just as snacks, mostly homeless orphans, but the one we were looking for is right downstairs Hob!" The Corinthian then turned to Johanna and gave her a conspiratorial grin. "And the rest of the ogres have no idea their hosts are dead so…"

Johanna’s answering devilish grin once she realized the implications had fit right at home with The Corinthian’s. They looked like a pair of naughty children who'd just gotten away with stealing sweets under the adult's noses. Johanna would receive a massive payment for taking out an entire orge's nest and Hob would be able to reunite a single mother with her only child.

"You've got a little something on your face, love," Hob said later, once they’d left the castle and arranged for the kids to be picked up. He leaned in to swipe the fluid from the blond's face but as soon as he began pulling his hand away, The Corinthian took it instead and licked up Hob’s fingers as if he were licking the blood off one of his own knives. Slowly. With intent. He stared right into Hob’s eyes while doing it too.

"You two are disgusting! " Johanna had yelled before storming off. Hob would’ve thought to chase after her to at least say goodbye, or try to coordinate getting rid of the rest of the ogre nest, but his brain had short-circuited entirely.

He had never driven home so fast before. The Corinthian had distracted him the whole 25 minute drive.

Hob’s immediately snapped out of his reverie and back to the present by Johanna,“Penny for your thoughts?”

“Just thinking about the ogre nest,” Hob answers. No need to elaborate past that. Certainly no need to tell Johanna the details of what happened afterwards.

Johanna grimaces like it's a bad memory. It probably was. Even with the happy surprise of finding all those children alive, her hand had taken at least a month to heal.

“Why are you thinking about- oh you fucking sop. Disgusting, the both of you were that night.” Johanna downs the rest of her beer.

“Look I know the eyeball munching thing takes a bit to get used to but-”

“I wasn't talking about that, although honestly, the eyeball thing is not erotic no matter how many times you try to explain it, you're just a freak.” Johanna interrupts.

“What was so disgusting then?” Hob asks, curious. He knows his tastes have always been, perhaps, on the other side of eclectic, especially in the last century, but Johanna has had plenty of non-human dalliances herself, he’d have thought she’d have been more open minded about things. “He made sure he was out of sight when he ate all their eyes, when we thought all those kids were dead. The epitome of politeness, if you ask me.”

“You really don't know? God the thing doesn't even have eyes-”

“He's not a thing Johanna-”

“But anyone could tell he was so far gone for you, it was nauseating. He looked at you like you were the only thing worth looking at in the whole damn universe. And you were doing the exact same thing back at him. Like a goddamn romance novel from Hell.”

As much as she's insulting him, Hob knows she's also trying to reassure him. He's thought about their last night nonstop, turning it over and over in his head. He still doesn’t have any answers for why the blonde left the way he did.

“I just don't know why he left,” Hob groans, frustrated with the line of thought. “Especially after I gave-” Hob stops suddenly, realizing he hasn’t told Johanna what happened that night. He wasn't ready for her judgment on his actions back then, and he’s not sure he’s ready now, but it may be too late to back out now.

“…after you what Hob?” Yep, no backing out now. She’d been trying to get this story out of him for a while, and now that he thinks about it, the drinks were probably a means to multiple ends.

“Well I mean….we had this job go terribly pear shaped,” Hob starts, praying that he can focus on the minutiae of the botched job and get Johanna lost in the details.

“ What. Did. You. Do . Hob?” No chance of bullshitting his way out of the conversation now.

“I lost an eye, all right!” Hob admits. “And you know I can grow those things back like grapes, and the eye was still perfectly intact so I just thought…”

“You gave him YOUR EYE?” Johanna practically yells. Well now the whole bar is staring at them, and Hob can tell a few of them are checking to see if he still has both eyes. He really should have just insisted on taking her to the private back room he’d built for his business meetings, but Johanna just plopped down at the bar when they’d come downstairs, wanting to be as close to the beer taps as possible.

“I didn’t want it to go to waste!” Hob frantically tries to whisper, then tries and fails to put his hand over Johanna's mouth.

Johanna looks heavenward, as if that will somehow provide answers. Or a pity smiting to escape this conversation, Hob's not entirely sure.

Finally, she sighs.

“Look…” she tries. “Maybe he just got overwhelmed. Has to process things alone before he can come back. You've got a whole lot of memories in that noggin of yours, and he probably got spooked by something,” but Hob knows neither of them believe it. Still.

“It felt like a final goodbye, but you're not wrong,” Hob concedes. “I don't know what he saw, but whatever it was definitely spooked him. I wish he would've just asked me instead of running off. I couldn’t even go after him with all the shutdowns happening right after, and he still won’t pick up my calls. I'd be off there chasing him down now if I could take the time off from classes.”

There's silence for a beat. Then, "S'not just the job keeping you here though, innit?" Johanna slurs.

“What do you mean?”

“Your Stranger. The one who gave you all this,” she gestures at him. “You're still waiting for him, aren't you? It's why you won't leave the UK for anything, travel restrictions be damned. You could do video lectures from anywhere now too, but you’re here waiting for a man who you’re not even sure still wants to see you.”

“Hey now, that’s not fair, I still have other duties to attend to here too! Plus I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for Cory,” Hob tries to defend himself.

“Yeah, but that's not the point , Hob. The point is you're waiting on some guy to show up to this pub and maybe you stopped waiting every week with your blond man around but now that he’s gone and left you, you're right back at it waiting for a different man who left you like a lovesick fool.” She points at him. “You, my friend, have got a problem. ”

Hob downs the rest of his whiskey instead of answering.

—

When Hob heads upstairs to his flat, warmed from both the whiskey and Johanna's company, he runs his fingers over the sigil The Corinthian had carved into his bed shortly after he'd begun living with Hob. He smiles ruefully at the memory. It was the first time The Corinthian had opened up to him about what kind of supernatural entity he was.

Hob had spent the better part of the last century living with either restless, dreamless sleep, or with nightmares that shook him so much he'd wake up screaming. It had been a long time since he'd had any other type of dream. His condition started around the time the Sleepy Sickness started, and Hob had been glad he hadn’t fallen prey to some of the more severe conditions, such as no sleep at all, or a perpetual sleep. Hob had made it a habit to avoid doctors and it would’ve been rather hard to explain himself not aging while in either of those states.

It didn’t take long after moving in for The Corinthian to offer up his services to alleviate Hob of his troubles. Turns out, the Quora article was right after all.

"So, what, you're a nightmare and doing this will help stop me having bad dreams?" Hob had asked as he watched The Corinthian inspect his bed for the perfect spot to carve.

"It'll keep the others of my kind away, yes. I haven't been back in an age, but I know most of the other nightmares have gone absolutely feral in our creator's absence.” The Corinthian grinned, as if the knowledge greatly pleased him. It probably did.

“The creator who tried to kill you? The one who went missing, and that’s why we have the Sleepy Sickness?” Hob asked and The Corinthian nodded.

“The one and only. I’m sure the realm’s a bit of a mess, but the other nightmares should still leave you alone once I put my mark here, if they know what's good for them." Hob swears The Corinthian’s grin grew even more feral.

"And what exactly is this mark?" Hob tapped at the symbol The Corinthian had put on paper to show him what he’d be carving. “A protection spell of some kind?”

"It's my name,” The Corinthian replied. “My true name, from when I was first born into existence. It means that I’ve claimed you as my dreamer, and you’re mine."

Hob's breath stuttered in his lungs. He'd wondered if The Corinthian could tell the effect the sentence had on him. It was the closest the blond had come so far to saying what Hob meant to him. Hob already knew at that point that he was falling for the nightmare, and this certainly wasn’t helping his case.

"Go on then," he said, possibly a little (a lot) more breathily than he meant to. "Carve your name into my bedpost. Show everyone that I'm yours."

The Corinthian had also cut his name into Hob’s chest, right beneath his collarbone (for extra insurance, he said) later that night, right after he had sunk his hips down onto Hob’s cock. The twin sensations of pain and pleasure had nearly driven him over the edge, and Hob had needed to grab the base of himself to stop himself from coming too early. The Corinthian, little shit that he was, took that as a challenge.

The wound had healed of course, but Hob still feels the mark there, like a ghost. He had kept the paper drawing in a folder too, because he was sentimental. He wonders, not for the first time, if he’s able to be tattooed, but he’d always been too afraid to go into a shop in the event the tattoo doesn’t take with the way his skin heals, and he’d have to explain himself. For now, the mark on his bed will have to do.

The nightmares stopped entirely after that night. Hob's still not sure how exactly the whole naming, claiming, thing works, but he's started praying to it at night, wishing for The Corinthian to stay safe wherever he was, but mostly wishing he would just come home.

–

Almost two years after The Corinthian leaves, The Stranger walks into The New Inn and stands in front of Hob's table.

It's the first time in a long time Hob forgets about The Corinthian. All he can do is stare at the ethereal being in front of him and think finally.

"You're late," Hob says, and realizes he's smiling. It's been so long since he last smiled genuinely that it feels both foreign and comforting at once.

What he doesn’t expect next is to see his own smile returned. Even if he had the most expensive and high quality camera known to man on hand, Hob doesn’t think any piece of mere human technology could capture the brilliance.

“It seems I owe you an apology,” his Stranger says. “I've always heard it impolite to keep one's friends waiting.”

Friends. His Stranger had called him his friend. He's acknowledged their bond, their companionship. Maybe a little bit later than Hob had been hoping for, but it was worth the wait. His friend was worth all the time in the world.

Hob’s centennial companion pulls out the chair in front of the table and sits down across from him. He hasn’t stopped smiling. Neither has Hob.

Time passes like that for a while. It’s not awkward, there’s no tension, just pure contentment to look at each other for the first time in 133 years. If Hob didn’t know any better, he’d think he’d think he’d died without his knowledge and gone to heaven.

“Hi dear, can I get you anything?” The waitress’s sunny question shakes them both out of their trance.

“Anything my friend wants, my treat Anna,” Hob says before the other man can answer.

“I thank you, Hob,” his friend answers then turns to Anna, his smile more muted now, but not any less dazzling. “A glass of dry red wine please, the oldest vintage you have available.”

“You and your wine.” Hob laughs when Anna leaves. He recalls that wine, usually a red, would be the only thing his friend would ever order at their meetings. Some things just never changed.

“It is, admittedly, one of my favorite inventions by humans,” the dark haired man replies, then purses his lips. “And I have been without it for quite some time.”

“Have you now?” Hob asks, sensing a story. “Well then, you can have all the red wine we have here, I don’t mind.”

“We?”

“Ah yeah, this place, The New Inn? It’s mine.” Hob admits. “I don’t really get too involved in the operations side of things anymore, but I tend the bar from time to time when there’s no classes. I know you probably saw, but the old White Horse was going to be turned into flats by some reprehensible folks, and I’ve had enough wealth accumulated over the years that I was able to stop the whole operation in its tracks. Couldn’t keep the damn place open though, so I decided to build on the land right by it instead.”

“You…built a pub? So that we could continue to have a place to meet?” The other man asks, astonished.

“Of course! Isn’t that what friends are for?” Hob replies. He really hopes he hadn’t read the whole thing wrong and his friend doesn’t walk out on him again for presuming things. It’s only now just occurring to Hob that building an entire pub for someone, even a not entirely human entity, is a bit much.

Of all the reactions the Stranger could have had though, the absolute last one Hob expects is tears.

“Even after I was forced to miss our last meeting. Without knowing if I had abandoned you or not, you still kept your faith in me? Enough that you built a place so that I may take sanctuary after my imprisonment?” The Stranger's voice is filled with unbridled emotion as more tears freely spill down his cheeks.

Imprisonment? Well now. Hob has a whole lot of questions, but first and foremost, he had a friend to comfort. He reaches across the table and takes the man’s hand in his own. Squeezes it for good measure. It’s the first time they’ve ever touched in 700 years and it feels electric , more so when his friend begins to run a hesitant thumb along his.

“My friend,” Hob says after a brief silence. “I would build you thousands of sanctuaries across the world, no, across the entire universe, if I meant that I could meet you at each one and offer you a place to rest.”

Hob decides to take a chance. To be bold. He’s already gotten more than he could have ever hoped for, what’s one more risk?

He reaches over with his other hand to wipe the tears from his friend’s face. The other man looks shocked, as if he hadn’t realized he were crying. No, more like he had forgotten. What had filled his friend so full of grief for so long that he could no longer comprehend his own tears?

“I know it’s customary for me to update you on everything I’ve been up to in the last hundred years.” Hob says. “But I think I’d like to know what’s happened to you instead, if you’re willing to tell me. However much or little,” he adds, reassuringly.

His friend is quiet for a long time, expression contemplative. Anna comes back with the wine, raises her eyebrows, but blessedly, does not mention the emotional moment fraught between them.

“I’ll come back with the rest of the bottle in a little bit, just holler when you’d like it, all right?” she says and in a flash she’s gone, leaving them to their privacy.

The Stranger still hasn’t let go of his hand, and does not appear to want to. He instead uses his free hand to pick up the glass Anna had left so he can sip at his wine. After a few minutes, he sighs and begins to speak.

“Do you remember, in 1789, when we had spoken about how beings such as us could be hurt, or captured?” the Stranger asks solemnly.

Hob remembers. He nods and squeezes their hands together, prompting the man to continue.

“In 1916, a man named Roderick Burgess had sought to capture my sister, Death, in an attempt to resurrect his son lost in battle.” the Stranger says. “His spell entrapped me instead. He then used more magic to bind me within the basement of his estate, and I lay there for more than 100 years. Roderick demanded many things from me, his son alive again, riches, immortality, all of which were not things that I could give, nor would I have wanted to, if I could.”

There is so much in that first bit that Hob doesn’t know where to start. He goes with the most pressing question he has.

“But I thought Roderick died in the 1930s! Why couldn’t you escape then?” Hob remembers now, with a sinking feeling, that there were plenty of rumors about Roderick Burgess having trapped the Devil in his basement. He wishes he’d looked into it more, wishes he could’ve found his friend earlier and broken him out of that awful prison.

“Roderick did die, in 1926 actually, and his son had offered me freedom, if only I would not hurt him and his lover in revenge for my capture.” his friend confirms. “The son was young when his father took me, but he was nearly an adult when he murdered my raven companion, Jessamy, on the order of his father. I could not forgive him for that." His Stranger now grips Hob's hand at the memory, pained anger crossing his face. Hob wants to wipe away that expression too.

"My anger and pride kept me imprisoned for an additional 96 years, until finally, in their old age and near death, his paramour took pity on me and broke the enchantment imprisoning me.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hob breathes. “Was there no one you could call to for help? What about your sister, did she know you were trapped?” There is absolutely no way someone could defy Death of all things, especially if someone trapped her own brother. Hob makes a mental note to ask about the whole family tree later.

“My siblings all knew of my capture, and yet none of us are allowed to intervene in each other's affairs, unless asked. It is another thing my pride has cost me. I need only ask their help and any one of them would have come for me. Instead, I chose silence.”

“But that’s not fair! I know you’re not human and so you have different rules than me, but amongst us humans, we give help to our families even when it’s not asked for! Sometimes, especially when it’s not asked!” Hob argues.

“It is the way of the Endless, Hob.” the Stranger says with a finality that tells Hob the subject is closed. Hob wants to continue to press, but he asks instead,

“Endless, so that’s what you are then?”

“Yes. There are seven of us in total. And I must apologize once again for keeping you waiting on another thing for the last few hundred years. My name.”

Hob feels his heart stutter in his chest.

“I have been called many things over the years. My most recent name in human tongues has been Morpheus.”

Morpheus. It's a regal sounding name, fit for a king. Hob’s just getting used to the idea of it in his head when Morpheus speaks again.

“But as my friend, you may call me by my truest name, Dream.”

Dream. What a beautiful name. All of his names are beautiful, Hob imagines, and he’d like to learn them all.

“Well, Dream, my friend, can I buy you a drink and a meal then?” Hob asks, squeezing their hands together again. “I'll catch you up on all that you've missed.”

“I would be happy with anything you are willing to offer me, my friend,” Dream replies.

–

They get the rest of the wine, and Hob some food. Dream does not order anything for himself, content to partake in whatever Hob is willing to share, which is everything. He unfortunately has to relinquish his hand from Dream’s to eat, but they freely reach for one another when the moments allow. It is far from the regal meal he had offered to his friend in 1589, and yet, Hob thinks it tastes better.

Hob is now telling Dream stories about the last hundred years. It’s been quite possibly the most interesting century he’s lived through so far.

He shies away from anything related to The Corinthian. Hob had been a mercenary in his past life, killing for other people's money, so he knows Dream won't judge him, may even commend him for trying to do some good for people who slip through the flawed justice system. But explaining Cory is a story all on its own, and the memories are still too fresh and painful, especially with how things were left off (Hob still refuses to admit they've ended). Still, the blond was such an integral part of life in the last ten, no, twelve years . Hob is still counting the two years The Corinthian has been gone.

“Hob?” Dream’s voice snaps him out of his self-pity inner monologue. Hob forgot what he had been talking about, but he knows he needs to get back to more light hearted topics before he ends up crying at the table himself.

“Sorry about that, don't know what came over me!”

“You've become melancholy despite describing a happy memory,” Dream observes.

“Ah yeah, well.” Hob decides to open up, just a little. "I went through a break up not too long ago. Well it's been almost two years now, but we were together almost ten years before that." It's not much, but even admitting that The Corinthian left him out loud to someone else feels like tearing open a not yet healed scar.

“Ten years is not an insignificant amount of time, especially for mortals. It is understandable why you would be distraught,” Dream says. This time, it is the Endless who squeezes Hob's hand in reassurance.

“Yeah, I still miss him too." Hob says. “Didn't even get a proper goodbye, one day everything's perfect and then he just up and left.” He tries not to choke on those last few words, but it's more difficult than he'd like to admit.

“Him?” Dream asks. Right, Hob's only ever had female partners to speak of whenever they met once a century.

“Oh yeah, another fun 20th century thing I discovered, turns out I'm bisexual!” Hob declared proudly.

It really hadn't been that much of a discovery, nor had it come in the 20th century. Rather, it had been in 1789 when Hob had realized he may have inappropriate feelings for the man sitting across the table from him.

He had tried to gently bring up the topic in 1889, prefacing things with friendship first so as not to alarm his companion, but Dream had reacted so poorly to being regarded as a friend that Hob hadn't even gotten the chance to be romantically rejected.

And then Dream hadn't shown up in 1989 and had broken Hob's heart.

Hob is glad to know Dream didn’t abandon him on purpose, and he’s even more glad he waited for him and built them a new place to meet. But his heart is still too raw to even think about trying to start something with Dream, not when he's just gotten him back, not when his heart still belongs somewhere in America.

“But enough about me and my poor broken heart, let me tell you about the internet!”

Dream looks like he wants to press, but instead gracefully accepts the subject change and allows Hob to enlighten him about YouTube, memes, and Netflix.

–

At some point in the night, Hob catches sight of a breaking story on BBC, on one of the pub’s televisions. A British tourist had been found on a beach in Florida. His eyes are missing. The story then goes into the mysterious resurgence of killings by The Corinthian in the United States. It seems like there’s been a murder at least once a month, if not more, in the last two years.

Fucking hell Cory, what are you doing?, Hob thinks despairingly.

“What are you looking at?” Dream asks, curious.

“Terrible news mostly, sorry about that, I’m going to ask them to change the channel.” Hob says. He can’t stomach looking at this. Before he’s able to get up, though, Dream turns to look at the television screen behind him and his entire demeanor changes.

Hob feels as if all the air in the room has suddenly disappeared. If there were ever a reminder for the immortal that his oldest friend is not human, this is it.

"The Corinthian," he hisses, venom dripping on every syllable.

“Wait a minute, you know him?!” Hob asks, and his mind suddenly spins a thousand conclusions.

The Corinthian told Hob that he was a nightmare. His creator, the one who had tried to kill him, was a king, who presided over the realm of dreams and nightmares and he…

Hob suddenly has a flashback to ancient Greek history, the old poems, the name Morpheus…

Morpheus. Dream.

Dream is The Corinthian’s creator. The one who had tried to unmake him…in 1916…almost a hundred years ago.

Fuck.

Dream continues, unaware of Hob's panic. “The Corinthian is a wayward creation of mine. I was in the middle of unmaking him for some grievous crimes when I was captured by Roderick. I also have my suspicions that he provided advice to Roderick on how to keep me contained.”

Suspicions that Hob knows to be true. The Corinthian had told him once that he'd gone to visit his creator's captors to make sure he wouldn't get free. Hob feels wretched for not pushing The Corinthian more on who exactly his creator was but the blond had always been so cagey about his origins, and Hob had learned from his 1889 meeting with Dream not to push too many boundaries on supernatural entities. As far as he was concerned, The Corinthian was a survivor of a cruel, uncaring master and Hob was just glad to have him in his life. He's not sure how to reconcile the image The Corinthian painted of his creator with his centennial companion who certainly has a temper, but was anything but cold and unfeeling.

Dream stands suddenly, only barely managing to not knock his chair to the floor.

“I apologize, Hob, for cutting our time short, but I must reign him in before more are cut down by his selfishness.”

“Wait Drea-”

But Morpheus is already gone. It's so sudden, so familiar, that Hob realizes he's an idiot for not noticing it before.

Shit shit shit, Hob thinks.

He pulls out his phone and dials a number he still knows by heart despite not hearing from it in almost two years.

The number you have dialed has been disconnected. The operator automatically answers.

SHIT!

All Hob can do now is wait, and hope that his lover and his old friend don’t tear themselves apart. He’s not sure whose side he’d even choose.

#hobrinthian #sandman fic #the sandman fanfic #hob gadling #the corinthian #there's definitely still angst here but there's also some nice fluff sandwiched in between #enjoy #seiya writes #mystuff #seiya writes hobrinthian #seiya writes hobrintheus

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no-droids · 4 years

Text

Kar’taylir

gif credit @sersi

Part Thirteen of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 11.8K

Warnings: language, angst and fluff, descriptions of a dead body, no real smut in this one but there is some nudity and touching, uhhh i think thats it tbh

A/N: Omg hi hi hello this was written in a week and a half so please be gentle, also I’m back on my linguistics bullshit and I can absolutely guarantee a vast majority of it is inaccurate

***

Everybody is asleep and you’re just a complete mess.

Truly. And it fucking sucks, because this should be enjoyable. This is home. You’re in hyperspace, the hull is pitch black, the baby is asleep, and Din’s breathing is slow and quiet through the darkness. Your cheek presses to his chest as it rises and falls hypnotically, you’re comfortable and safe and this would normally be a dream. But your eyes are wide open right now and you are just going through it. Spiraling in the midst of the most stable surroundings you could possibly conceive.

You suppose that this is partially your fault. You don’t know why literally any part of you expected Din would explain himself without prompting from you, but you still couldn’t work up nearly the nerve necessary to ask. Every potential question you came up with contradicted your intent, every way you tried to mentally phrase it gave off the wrong impression. How do you ask somebody if they were being serious about something without revealing anything about your own intentions? You can’t—that’s a downside of staying silent.

Din hasn’t said a single word since he urged you to leave the shooting range earlier, and he didn’t really seem like the quiet didn’t suit him, if that makes sense. Yours was awkward, it fit you wrong. You struggled for words while he easily ignored their existence altogether, able to navigate the Crest into hyperspace and exist comfortably around you without ever addressing the giant bantha in the room. Maybe that’s part of the reason you floundered so hard—he didn’t avoid you, he held the kid while you took a shower in the small fresher, and even though he was quieter around you than he’d been in awhile, he gave no indication that anything was wrong at all.

You spent that time getting clean but also formulating some sort of plan. As you bathed in actual water for the first time in a week and scrubbed your body clean, you tried to figure out at least why you were having so much trouble coming up with something to say, but even then, words evaded you. You spent the entire time staring blankly at the metal wall, at a complete fucking loss.

When you came out of the fresher with wet hair and comfortable clothing to sleep in, Din was armorless and resting in your makeshift bed on the floor, the baby tucked soundly in his crib next to him. You turned off the lights and carefully found your way under the blankets next to him in the pitch blackness, feeling him lazily reach around you and pull you to rest against his chest. His fingers gently drew circles along your arm for maybe the first few minutes while you worked up the nerve to speak. You needed to say something, this was your chance—

But then his hand soon fell to rest in one place on your shoulder and he passed out. Helmet on, not even a few minutes of your quiet breathing next to him.

So now, you’re here, just… a little ball of stress in the middle of paradise. Hours have passed, you need sleep after such a physically exhausting week but it’s like you haven’t even processed the fucking proposition he presented to you yet. You’re having trouble even thinking the words, that’s how much he’s got you fucked up.

He said… hit the target and I’ll ma…. hit the target and I’ll marrrrr…

Fuck. You stay on that loop for ages until your eyes begin to grow heavy, until you just settle on thinking about it with them closed. Slow breaths from Din under one ear, the silence of hyperspace all around you—how are you supposed to contemplate when his body is so warm? No, you can ask tomorrow, you’ll ask him tomorrow.

Eventually, you’re able to drift off into a troubled slumber, dreaming of bells made of beskar that deafen anyone who rings them.

***

You wake up what feels like two minutes later.

It’s not, but you don’t know that. You’re so warm and the second your eyes open, they start stinging and burning and tearing up like your body just wants to cry for even being awake right now. You finally got to sleep—you moan pitifully and start to turn your head further into the warm blankets, but then a gloved hand smooths your hair back and a voice whispers quiet through the darkness.

“I have to go.”

And oh, his touch is just the gentlest thing, but what he says makes your already fragile mental state want to shatter. The first words he gives you in hours and they’re the ones you loathe to hear the most.

“W-Wha? No,” you whimper and automatically reach for him, your throat starting to close up. Maker, you’re so tired, you’re so tired, you feel so fucking emotional and vulnerable right now and you’re not even awake enough to realize it. “Why?”

Din just catches your hands and brings both of them together in front of him, slowly pressing your knuckles to the cold beskar on the face of his helmet.

“I meet with Karga in three days,” he murmurs back, voice pillow-soft and barely loud enough to come through the steel under your fingers. It’s gentle and lulling and it makes you want to sleep again, but you can’t and you feel like you could burst into tears for that reason alone. “He gave me four pucks, I need four bodies.”

You can’t argue with it, the logic is perfectly sound. But you still want to, and everything inside you revolts at the thought of allowing him leave like this without fighting for more. Which means you have absolutely nothing reasonable or compelling to say to appeal to him; all you’re left with the glaring truth.

“But I don’t want you to leave,” you whisper, tightening your fingers.

And, perhaps if you were even half-conscious, you’d wince. You’d cringe at the shake in your voice, you’d remind yourself that he has to make a living, he’s said it over and over again. If you were completely awake, you’d scold yourself for being such a needy mess, but right now, all you can think about is how much you want him to stay, just this once.

After a moment, you feel the gloves carefully collect both of your hands into just one of his, and then he slowly reaches out with his free hand to cradle your jaw.

“I won’t be gone long,” Din murmurs. “I can’t be.”

Your head turns slowly in his palm, and you’re just so, so sleepy. Your voice is small and your words slur. “Stay with me.”

Quiet, and though you can’t see him, the leather continues to press so warm to your cheek. Your eyes slowly drift shut, needing him to stay exactly like this, stay right here just like this. Karga can wait, the quarry can wait, the galaxy can wait—everything else can wait when things are like this, when he’s looking down at you breathing slow into his palm.

You’re almost asleep again when you hear him say something.

But… you have no idea what he says. You hear it. You hear his voice come through the pitch black, quiet enough to sit just on top of the silence and let the mysterious words simply become a part of it, but it’s strange. Like his cadence lilts in a different way, the vowels are longer than what you’re used to, and your comprehension abruptly falters like it would if he was speaking another language altogether.

Maybe it’s just because it’s the first thing to pull you back from the edges of sleep, that has to be right. It doesn’t sound like Basic because your mind is stupid and slow right now. You need to ask him to repeat himself, but all that you can muster is the soft sound of confusion, not even able to open your eyes anymore.

His hands pull away from you and once again, you suddenly can’t decide between sleep and crying, quickly lifting and trying to reach out for him in the darkness. You can’t feel anything, it’s like he’s completely disappeared from where you assumed he’d be, except then something tiny is placed into your hands instead and it makes an unhappy little sound at being disturbed. You automatically hold the baby close to your chest and strong hands touch your shoulders, urging you to lay back down again.

“Leave the engine running, you’ll freeze if you don’t,” he mutters, quickly tucking the blankets up under your body while you close your eyes and feel the tears wet your lashes. Fuck, you’re so exhausted, you just need to sleep. “If I’m not back in sixteen hours, I’ll use my e-comm and you’ll have to fly out to me.”

He steps away from you, walks quickly and with purpose to the side of the hull, and a blast of frigid air fills the room before the door is slammed shut behind him.

***

Your head hurts.

Sparks and wires give your fingers mean, zapping reminders to pay attention every time your focus slips, but you still feel like you’re in a daze.

“Come on,” you drone, trying to use your voice to snap yourself back into the present, but the sound of it isn’t even interesting enough to pull you away. “Come on.”

Maker, you’re going fucking crazy. Is this just all an elaborate scheme to make you experience the same kind of insanity he told you he struggles with in your absence? Because you don’t like this—you hate feeling like this, you can’t concentrate on anything and even if he hadn’t instructed you to do so, you’d likely still be counting the hours of his absence.

Fourteen have passed so far, not the sixteen you’re waiting for but getting close. It’s one thing you’ve been able to accomplish. Counting. You can still count right now, so at least there’s that.

Oh, and another hoop you’ve jumped through. Understanding words. You can listen and repeat, even if you still can’t fully comprehend, but you’re getting there.

Din said… hit the target and I’ll marry you.

He said that. Yep. You’ve accepted it, you’ve accepted the words that were said. Indeed.

Okay, but now… like…

What did he mean by that? Why did he say that?

No matter how much you tell yourself he was just messing around—no matter how many times you offer up that perfectly logical answer to the burning question you’ve been sitting on, you still aren’t satisfied with it. Something keeps tugging your mind back to it, a tether constantly pulling you away from the work that’s designed to be your distraction.

You frown down at the box of machinery. Whelp, if he was serious, he’d probably immediately take the offer back after witnessing your behavior this morning. You embarrassed yourself terribly, you acted like a clingy baby in the looming shadow of unconsciousness and what’s worse, you can’t even remember what he said after you begged him to stay. It could’ve been a quiet, “Stars, pull yourself together,” for all you know.

And honestly, just… fuck these electronics. You’re at the point where you’d probably cheer on whatever brutal impact damaged them so atrociously if you weren’t also well aware that this box was very likely attached to Din’s chest when it was crushed. The magnetics are a complete mess, and you’re mostly just attempting to see how the individual components of each piece are supposed to communicate. Turning the switch on doesn’t do much at all besides make the capacitors put out heat. Not enough to shut it down or be a hazard to the housing when you close it, but enough to know that it’s going to present a problem for you at some point.

What’s more, you’re so lost in your own thoughts and busywork that you don’t see two green ears poking out over the top of the pile of armor on your temporary workstation (literally just the floor) until one of the thigh braces comes clattering down and the whole thing collapses with a ruckus.

You suddenly shove the metal box away from you in frustration and you reach for the little troublemaker with a sigh, scooping him up and getting to your feet.

“This isn’t going to work,” you grunt to him, hearing your words better for some reason when you direct them at the baby instead of talking to yourself, and his eh? allows the thoughts to come clearer and easier. No, you can’t be distracted when your distraction is just another part of your status quo, you can’t use fixing mechanics to occupy yourself because it’s what you’ve done to occupy yourself your entire life, it’s worn off at this point. You need something newer. Something that takes your entire focus to do.

Eventually, your eyes drift over to the one metal panel on the wall that you’ve rarely ever opened. One that takes up a comparatively enormous amount of space in the hull considering what you know it holds. You eye the kid in your arm, who suddenly has sneaky painted all over his expression. “You thinking what I’m thinking, demon?”

He squeaks his affirmative and you move over to the armory, pressing a few buttons before the doors slide open by themselves. Because of course Mando invested in hydraulics for the gun closet but not for the hidden cot he used to sleep on, of course.

“Maker above,” you groan as the metal slides open, needing to lift your chin to eye the enormous collection. How many fucking…? All this for just one person? What does that big one in the middle do that the others stacked strategically around it don’t? They all kill whatever you point and shoot at, you’re assuming? Are you missing something?

The baby makes a tiny sound of awe as you carefully look over your choices, not expecting nearly this many to be offered, before settling on one that looks the simplest. A sleek silver one that’s still too big for your hand but smaller than anything else on the rack.

Grabby fingers reach out for the shiny metal as soon as you remove it from the shelf and you very purposefully set it down out of his pitiful wingspan. “Nope. Now come on, gotta bundle up.”

You make your way back over to the bed and pull one of the thickest blankets up, settling it over the open shield and then situating your partner in crime in his usual spot inside. You strategically stuff and stack the fabric around him to make sure he’ll be warm enough in what you know has to be far below freezing temperatures, lifting it up over his ears and wrapping it around his neck in a loose hood. He blinks up at you with gigantic eyes and an open mouth, clearly thrilled about your willingness to go on an adventure with him this time instead of being the tall nuisance that consistently holds him back from one, and you scoff down at him as you partially close the lid on his levitating nest of blankets for extra protection. He should be warm enough, you’re not going to be outside long.

And then you pull out nearly half the amount of clothes you own and suit up in what feels like ten layers before grabbing the blaster. The swirling wind nearly shoves the heavy hull door into you as soon as you open it and—Maker.

You look back at the kid behind you for a second, wondering if it’s too late to change your mind. His expression narrows and he makes a triumphant ha! while pointing three fingers at the grey blizzard through the small open space in his crib. Try as you might, you can’t ignore a call to arms when delivered with such ferocity.

Both of you step outside and take in the view after you wrestle with the door to haul it shut. You don’t know the name of this planet but from what you can see, it’s one giant ice ball, mountainous and cold as fuck. Though, to be honest, your only indication that it’s truly cold as fuck is the continuously accumulating snow blanketing the landscape and the flurries dancing in the whipping wind. You’re too warm-blooded for climates like these—anything below room temperature and you’re freezing, you have absolutely no tolerance for cold whatsoever.

Keeping that in mind, you don’t travel far at all. Just a few steps beyond the entrance to your shelter before eyeing what appears to be a large white boulder in the distance. There’s a solid target, you figure—you’ll be able to see chunks splintering off when you hit it and the ice isn’t strong enough to bounce plasma back, you won’t have any ricochets.

Okay. Okay—safety, where’s the safety on this one? Ah, yes, okay—safety, off. Stance, find your stance. There it is. Alright, now lift. Lift, get that stupid frozen ball right in your sights, line it up. Hold. Hold. Hold.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale—

Fire.

You watch with bated breath as the bright red bolt launches from the end of the barrel and travels across the distance before melting a hole in the snow just to the right of your target.

“Mother fucker!” You yell into the frigid landscape without warning, suddenly infuriated. What’s the point of even having a sight if every gun is just gonna say fuck you no matter what? Could there be some sort of mathematical reason why you seem to be fucking atrocious at this, you wonder? Are you fucking up the angle somehow while trying to read the scope? Should you just ignore it and try to aim without thinking too hard?

Admittedly, you spend the next five minutes shooting at that stupid fucking thing, not making a single shot. It’s not been long at all, but your entire body is already trembling uncontrollably and it is just too fucking cold out here. Freezing your fucking ass off isn’t going to help your aim of course, but it’s almost just tragic at this point. Either you’ve got to accept that you’re just absolutely hopeless at this, or you’ve got to… blame the little womprat behind you for messing up your shots, yeah. It wouldn't surprise you.

As a last ditch effort, you consider trying something a bit ridiculous to see if he really is fucking with you.

“I’m firing one last shot,” you call out loudly over the sound of the bristling wind and flurries, making sure he can hear your narration from his little blanket cave behind you. “If I hit the target… I will present our demon overlord with a chunk of raw meat later for dinner.”

You give the offer a moment to sink in before raising the blaster, and then you jerk it up at the very last second while pulling the trigger. The arc of plasma quickly disappears into the gloomy skies over the top of the ice boulder, completely straight.

You switch the safety on and turn around to say something smart to him, but… well. Uh. That’s an empty crib.

Sudden panic rips through you at the sight of the wide open shield, the blanket left abandoned inside. Your head whips around in horror, wondering where the fuck he could’ve gone—but then you’re able to spot tiny footprints in the snow. Your eyes quickly follow them up and see the baby wading his way up a large hill, slow against the terrain and trying in vain to get to something at the very top.

You drop the blaster and bolt through the blizzard to get to him while calling out through the freezing air and wishing, not for the first time, that you had a name to roar and strike fear into his tiny little heart. In this case, you prefer a middle name as well.

Finally reaching him and yanking him up from the snow, you tuck him under the warmest part of your arm and open your mouth to start venting the terror from your body, but he makes a distressed noise and starts climbing. You fumble with him on your way back down, not expecting that response, but he’s so distraught and preoccupied that he’s unable to stay still, trying to find different ways of escaping your grasp and making more and more sounds to indicate something is wrong.

“What the fuck are you—” you stuff him into the shield and at least get the blankets wrapped around him before looking back and trying to spot whatever he’s still wiggling and attempting to get to. Frustrated cries start filling the icy air and… okay. “Okay,” you tell him, your breath puffing like smoke in front of you, “okay okay, we can go look, but you need to stay warm.”

You clutch the edge of his metal shield and urge it to follow you back up the snowy hill, feeling the crunch of your feet disappear further and further into it as you climb. Your outer two layers are probably soaked by now—stars, it’s so fucking cold. You know you’re not exactly the best judge, but you’ve been outside less than five minutes and you’re already worried about getting sick or frostbite, already jumpy and wanting to go back to the warmth of the hull.

But as you reach the top and look out in the distance, you can just barely make out a familiar metallic glint on the horizon.

Your heart picks up, but the baby makes another distressed sound. Not… happy, not thrilled that his dad is coming back. Some strange sort of dread begins to fill you, carefully holding the kid in his shield with one hand and looking at the bright reflection of light a little ways away just to make sure it’s…

No, it’s not moving. Not disappearing and reappearing, not catching the sunlight differently. Completely stationary in this absolutely horrendous weather.

You immediately make your way in that direction, your body deciding to outright abandon its trembling in the wake of this newfound worry. You’re suddenly sweating, way too warm. That’s Din, you recognize the glint of his armor anywhere, but why isn’t he moving?

The closer you get, the faster you move and the more you’re able to see. He’s laying facedown in the snow. There’s quite a bit of it covering the back of his cape, maybe a few inches, and… there’s also someone laying equally as lifeless behind him. Your heart is slamming now, you’re doing your best to run in the unforgiving terrain, and you finally see that it’s… a corpse, a frozen corpse is behind him with a rope tied around its ankles, clutched tight in Din’s unmoving fist as it lays against the pure white backdrop.

“Mando?” You call out, dropping to your knees as soon as you reach him. “Hey—hey, can you hear me?”

The beskar strapped to him is frozen over and feels colder than ice when you try to shake him. He doesn’t respond. He’s dead weight; you do your best to turn him over on his back, but you still get nothing from him. You shove your trembling fingers up under the helmet, and the only reassurance you have that he’s even alive comes from the petrifyingly slow pulse beating underneath. His skin is ice cold.

Shit, he’s still breathing but he’s hypothermic, you have to get him back to the Crest right fucking now.

You fumble to get in position above his head while hooking both your arms under his, before leaning everything you have into it—but fuck, he’s so heavy. You can barely lift him even just a few inches off the ground—the snow is deep, his armor makes him weigh a ton and the fabric wrapped around him is sopping wet. You try again, making a tight sound in your throat while you haul, but it’s no use.

“Fuck,” you curse, starting to panic even fucking harder. You’re gasping and breathless and getting dizzy and scared, continuing to try and find different angles to heave—

—until suddenly the burden is lifted.

You nearly fall backwards on your ass at the abrupt removal of tension, playing tug-of-war with a team that decided to give up with no warning. But it’s like it almost doesn’t even phase you; you don’t even look behind you to see the baby’s eyes closed tight in concentration, you just recover and pull with both arms, feeling Din’s body gliding easily along the snow now and leading him all the way back down the hill.

Once you get inside the Crest and shut the door to the raging blizzard behind the three of you, there’s an extended moment where you just… you don’t know what to do. You know all about how to deal with heatstroke, but this is the opposite—he either spent too long in the cold, or he exhausted himself trying to get back too quickly and then spent too long in the cold. He said he’d use his e-comm if he wasn’t back in sixteen hours—was that the cutoff? The point where the temperature outside would shut his body down and he’d need you to come get him?

Regardless, you need to warm him up. Yes, that’s your priority, and you figure the quickest and safest way to accomplish it has to be the shower in slow increments. The kid helps you move Din into the tiny fresher in the hull and then you sit on the floor with him, holding his limp body to your chest while reaching up to turn the faucet on.

Cold water sprays down and then suddenly—oof, he’s heavier than fuck again. Air leaves your lungs and your neck cranes back under the unexpected increase in pressure on top of you to see the kid climbing down from his shield, no longer focused on mentally bearing most of his father’s weight or directing his own hovering form of transportation along behind you. The baby disappears out of sight and you huff, completely trapped under Din as freezing water rains down on you.

Fuck, it’s so cold. It’s way too fucking cold for you, but your core body temperature is also mostly normal right now. Din’s isn’t, you’ll probably shock his system if you try to warm him up too quickly. So you reach up and twist the knob, keeping it at a temperature he’d probably find just the slightest bit warm while inspiring violent shudders from you.

“H-Hey, I’m gonna t-t-take this off, o-okay—” you stutter down at him, knowing damn well he isn’t conscious to hear you but giving him that reassurance on the small chance he is, and then reach with trembling fingers to work at his armor. You worry that the beskar is keeping the cold trapped the same way his clothes are, like having solid pieces of ice strapped to his body and nothing to protect him besides a few layers of soaking wet fabric.

The chestpiece comes off and you throw it blindly over your shoulder into the hull with a clang—admittedly, without thinking about where the baby is at all anymore. The pauldrons come off next, but not before you reach up and turn the heat up just the slightest bit. Your jerky limbs just want to blast it and remove the rest of his clothes in steamy hot water, but you can’t. Even though your mind is hurtling at a thousand lightyears an hour, whatever reason you have left reminds you that you have to be patient or risk losing him entirely.

Eventually you’re able to get all the armor off but you hate the way he’s breathing right now. Slow and shallow, like he just doesn’t really need the air at all but his body is still fighting for it on instinct. His chest barely moves with it even when it’s got nothing weighing it down.

“You’ll b-be okay,” you say aloud, talking to the both of you even though only one is capable of responding. “Y-Y-You’ll be o-okay—”

You reach up to inch the temperature a little higher, shivering terribly now. His body feels slightly warmer under the shower than it did with the beskar, but you know you need to keep going and take the fabric off now. Maker, it’s nearly impossible—the black clothing clings to his skin and its such a small space to maneuver, but it gives your mind and hands a clear goal to focus on while the water incrementally heats up.

Strangely, your adrenaline has been rocketing for so long that you almost lose track of time. You just keep deadly focused on your task of undressing him and slowly heating the shower, trying not to think, trying not to get in your head and bring about disaster in such a crucial set of moments.

At some point, the water is warm. Comfortably warm, and Din’s body isn’t ice cold anymore. It’s warm, too, laying back into your chest and naked besides the helmet, but he’s still not moving. No response, no matter how much mindless drabble you supply, no matter how steamy and hot the shower has become, no matter how much your own body has heated up. Your fingers have found their home under his jaw, pressed right to his pulse point and feeling it continue to beat slow and faint, but you’re starting to feel the terror set in. Real terror, the kind that makes you stupid and emotional, the kind that turns you back into a child again.

“I don’t know if it’s working,” you suddenly choke out, close to tears. He’s warm, what else can you do for him? Why is he not waking up? “I-I don’t know what to do, Din, I…”

No—no, you cannot lose your shit, not yet. You will exhaust every fucking option before you let that fear set in. He’s not waking up because he needs to recover, his body needs time to work things out in a warm, comfortable environment. He’s breathing, his heart is beating, he’s warm, and he’s still with you, so… you need to still be with him.

You turn the water off and clumsily get up, grabbing him under the arms and hauling him back into the hull. He’s still heavy but it’s so much easier than before to move him; there’s no armor weighing him down anymore besides the helmet, no cape or snow or friction to catch him, no cold to lock your muscles up. It’s slow going but you’re finally able to settle him in the warmth of your shared bed and then cover his body in the collection of blankets you’ve amassed. You stand up and peel off all your wet layers of clothing, letting them plop to the metal floor while glancing around for the kid—

—who is currently swinging from the ladder to the cockpit with one hand.

It startles you for just a moment, just long enough for you to wonder what the fuck he thinks he’s doing up there, but then you figure that if he found some way to get up there then he can surely find his way back down again.

As you quickly drop to the bed and scoot up next to Din’s limp body under the blankets, the Crest’s engine suddenly gives a low rumble below the floor and heat starts blowing through the hull vents. Again, you’re too preoccupied to even notice the gift much. You’re tugging and tucking blankets around him and up under the metallic edge of his helmet when...

Maker, you need to take this off. If the inside is wet, it’s probably keeping his head cold while the rest of him is warm from the shower. You know it’s not a light thing—you know… you know at least a fraction of what this means. You won’t look, you won’t look unless something absolutely drastic happens and it’s completely unavoidable, but you need to take his helmet off.

You catch the shoulder furthest from you and tug at his heavy body until he’s on his side, facing you on the bed.

“Din, I have to take your helmet off,” you warn him, saying it slowly and clearly. Again, just in case. “I’m not gonna look. Nobody is gonna look—” your gaze flicks behind him to eye the baby, who is now somehow on the metal ground and waddling up to you both. He blinks enormous black eyes at you, looking between you and his father huddled together under the blankets.

“Close your eyes,” you tell him very seriously, no room for negotiating. “I know you understand me.”

It takes just a few seconds before he lifts his hands up and does exactly what you say, placing his fingers over his closed eyelids and then even so much as toddling around to face the wall. You gasp in relief, clenching your eyes firmly shut and then pulling the helmet up, making sure you catch his head before it falls with one hand while tossing the beskar somewhere in the hull with the other.

Cold. His hair is soaking wet and so cold, and his head rolls slightly as you guide it to rest in the warmest part of your neck. Your hand stays attached to the back of it, wanting to transfer every single bit of warmth from your palm to him, and your eyes open to the kid’s back as your other arm wraps around Din’s bare spine.

And then all at once, you just feel… helpless. He’s in your arms but Maker, you don’t know what else you can do. The heat is blasting, you’re warm and pressed against him under multiple blankets, the engine is slowly heating the metal floor, but his breathing. Slow. Shallow. Barely able to be felt against your neck. He’s here but he’s not. And you have no way of knowing if he’s getting closer or further away from you.

Tears start coming before you even realize. But you have nothing to say. After spending the entire time talking out loud, providing reassurances, narrating, distracting yourself—you don’t have anything anymore. The silence twists you tighter, the nothing becomes inescapable, and the sudden sob that leaves you echoes hauntingly throughout the hull. You pull his limp body as close to you as possible for comfort. Wake up. Wake up.

Your vision is watery—you don’t see it. You don’t see the kid slowly turn around and take a few steps forward. You only notice he’s there when green catches in the abstract blur, but you sniff and blink quickly to clear it. It only takes a second to see the baby’s hand, extending and pressing against the blanket covering Din’s back, and you watch with wide eyes as he closes his.

And then there’s a second. A second where you dare to hope. Where you wonder if it’s even something that can be done.

The kid lowers his hand just a moment later and stumbles back a few steps, before plopping down on the ground and slowly falling backwards. You have just enough time to see his little body inhale and exhale a few times as he sleeps, and then—

—and then Din suddenly jolts in your arms, bursting with too much life after spending too many heart wrenching moments without it.

“Shhh,” you breathe, instantly tightening your grip on the back of his head so he doesn’t pull away from you in a panic and keeping it tucked into the warmest part of your neck, right where your pulse thrums fast and present. Your eyes clench tightly shut just in case and your heart bursts with pure, blinding, heavenly relief. “Shhh sh sh, stay right here, just stay right here…”

As soon as he seems to recognize your voice and figure out that he’s not dead, his body immediately starts wreaking with shivers. You squeeze him tight to you, feeling his large, quaking frame curl inwards into you for warmth, burying his own face into your neck even further and breathing shallow but quickly now, like his body actually wants the air again. You do your best to will your blood to pump faster and provide him that relief, stretching and opening your body as much as possible to give him warmth.

And then you spend the next few hours like that. Holding him, murmuring gently to him, providing him with your body heat and stars, he fucking clings to you. He presses tight to you and trembles, and you don’t even know if he’s listening, but you keep talking. Finding words for hours, and while some of them are just different ways of saying the same thing, you say them anyway.

He’s okay. The kid is okay. Everyone is okay.

Eventually, the shivering dies down until it stops altogether. Din stays in one place and goes completely limp again, but this time he continues to breathe you in, slow and deep into the crook of your neck. Fast asleep in your arms, and you thank the good fucking Maker above for the little angel passed out on the floor behind him.

***

He has to meet with Karga in two days.

After a few more hours of holding him and making absolutely sure he’s going to be alright, that’s all you can stupidly think about.

A deadline. A very quickly approaching one.

You don’t know why. But it might have something to do with the fact that you want nothing more than to climb up into the cockpit and navigate the ship off this horrid planet, and you can’t. You’re confident that the hull and blankets are warm enough by themselves to keep Din comfortable as he recovers, and you’ve also had quite a while to regroup and get your mind thinking logically again, so you’re not worried about getting up and leaving him right now, no. That’s not the problem.

The problem is that there’s a corpse outside. You know this. You know it’s there, and you know he needs it. Nobody’s gonna take his word for just saying they’re dead, much less pay him for his services; no body, no bounty. You also know it’s probably being covered with fresh snow right now, or maybe some sort of wild animal has already gotten their teeth into it, if anything can even survive out there. And you’re the only one awake. The only one capable of going to get it.

You’ve been arguing with yourself. For about an hour, you’ve been struggling with the thought. Din is soft and warm and every breath makes you focus less on the terrifying moments that occurred and more on the need to step up once again.

In the end, it’s the kid who gives you the final push. You’re not going to leave him laying on the floor like that for any longer. Not after what he did.

You take a second, grabbing the blanket and pulling it up all the way over Din’s head as it rests warm and comfortable in your neck. You’re incredibly careful to cover his face, and even while climbing out of the warm cocoon of the bed, you keep your eyes firmly shut and continue to pull the fabric even higher, making absolutely sure you’re not going to see his face on accident. You shouldn’t, you don’t think, as long as he doesn’t jerk awake and pull it down himself, but you want to take extra precaution regardless.

After quickly yanking on some clothes, you immediately make your way over to the kid and pick him up, seeing his little mouth open as he snores—and oh, you just have to. You pull him to your chest and give him the most heartfelt, thankful embrace you can while not squishing him, before setting him down in his much more comfortable hovering blanket palace and closing the lid on it.

You know you have a very clear task now, but for just a few moments longer, you do your best to stall despite the ticking clock. You start to pick up the mess in the hull—you close the fresher door, pick up Din’s discarded armor and set it in a neat pile close to the bed, place the helmet under the vent to encourage the padding inside to dry faster, and then you collect his old armor and stuff it back into one of the storage cubbies with your toolbox.

Only, an idea suddenly occurs to you as you’re putting away the chestpiece. When you open the door to the hull, you know that a blast of cold air is going to flood the ship. The engine is still heating everything inside and making sure you don’t get trapped in the snow by continuously melting it on the outside, but you don’t want Din to start shivering again.

So you grab the dented piece of electronics you were working on and flip the power switch, feeling the capacitors slowly start to heat up inside the housing. You go back over and lift the blanket near his feet just enough to tuck the metal under it, close enough to Din that he’ll feel the same amount of warmth your body was providing him but not enough to overheat.

And then you make your way over to your bag and pull on the rest of your clothes, now exhausting almost every single clean thing you own just to make another trek through the snow. You’re in the middle of pulling on your fifth pair of pants when the thought truly sinks in.

A corpse. A dead body. That you’re actually considering going out into the worst fucking weather in the galaxy to search for, haul back to the ship, and put into carbonite. Because of a fucking deadline for an occupation very much not your own, very much not chosen by you.

You quickly walk over and leave through the door on the side of the hull before you can change your mind, slamming it shut behind you.

***

Well, it’s… It’s not too terrible, you guess.

It’s been frozen out here for hours, that’s why. It’s not bloody, not gory, not demented or malformed in any way. Tranquil almost, like the creature died in its sleep in this nightmarish landscape, perfectly at peace.

You still don’t want to get anywhere close to it, but you have to. You pull a face and slowly reach out, absolutely not thinking about the literal impossibility of it playing dead and just waiting for the moment to strike, but even still… Even if there was nothing more sinister hiding underneath the surface of this scene, it’s still… existentially fucked up. The last time you were confronted with a dead body, Din had to be the one to dispose of it—you couldn’t even think about it without threatening another wave of shock to your system.

And now you’re voluntarily grabbing the rope around one’s ankles and dragging it back down the pure white slope to the Razor Crest.

It doesn’t weigh that much and its icy exterior seems to work in your favor; it slides easily along the snow as soon as you get it moving. As the ship comes back into view, you hurry to the door and you’re just about to open it when you suddenly get the feeling that you’re forgetting something…

Oh—

It takes a few moments of searching around in the freshly fallen snow, but eventually your fingers brush metal underneath and you stand, reaching behind you to tuck the blaster into your waistband. When you’re positive you’re not going to accidentally shoot a chunk of your ass off on accident, you shove open the door and pull the body inside, before locking it tight behind you and keeping the frigid winter from touching this warm, quiet safe-haven.

There. Halfway done. You almost don’t want to look in case he wakes up unexpectedly, but then you find yourself peeking over your shoulder at the silhouette of Din’s body still passed out under the blankets and you’re thankful the squeaks and slams didn’t disturb him.

And then you take just a second to wonder if this is what it must be like for him. Minus your obvious discomfort and ickiness at beginning to haul the corpse over to the carbonite chamber, it seems like it’d be reminiscent of any other time he’s brought back a dead quarry while you and the baby slept soundly. Trying to be quiet, wanting it done and over with just to get back in bed that much faster, doing everything you can to prevent anything out there from so much as breathing on anything in here.

You do your best to hold on to the loveliness of the thought, because this part is the part you’re most anxious about.

The body needs to go into this slanted upright space so you can freeze it in carbonite. And in order to do that, you have to grab it and put it there. With your hands, you have to grab it. With your hands.

You look down at its face, calm and at peace, frozen and forever etched into that expression, and something twists in your heart. If it weren’t for the kid, that could’ve been Din. If it weren’t for the kid walking barefoot through snow, fighting an uphill battle to make sure you get to him, helping you drag him back here and then overexerting himself to make sure he’d be okay, that could’ve been Din. He drives you crazy on a consistent basis, but he came through today.

Know what? If that little squirt can save a grown man’s life twice in a few hours, then the least you can do is finish this job for all three of you and fly your asses out of here.

Weirdly enough, being frozen solid allows for way better handling than the alternative. It means you don’t actually have to touch it too much; you don’t have to deal with the limpness of death, it doesn’t seem as much like a person as it does a rigid board you’re simply moving from one place to another. You can just grab the shoulders and yank and the entire fucking thing goes with it, solid and upright, naturally wanting to lean back into the chamber so you don’t even have to hold it in place. The perfect quarry for you basically, day one stuff, as easy as it could get.

Almost done, almost done—you study the key panel on the upper-right frame before eventually pressing a few buttons, and then you step back as gas freezes and solidifies the corpse in its carbonite prison.

Yes. You’re done. You already want to take another shower just from touching it for a few seconds, but that can wait. Quickly making your way up the ladder and into the cockpit, you fire up the thrusters and then navigate the ship through and beyond the swirling white atmosphere of this dreadful fucking planet, before punching in familiar coordinates to Nevarro.

***

“Din,” you murmur, making sure you have your eyes completely covered with one hand before gently easing the blanket down from his face with the other. “Din, I want you to drink some wat—”

He jerks awake so suddenly that you hear the metal canteen fall over on the floor next to you, thank the Maker its lid is on tight. You automatically reach out to steady him, pressing your free hand to his bare chest and continuing to speak calmly and gently to reassure him, but he still scrambles to take in his surroundings after sleeping longer than he probably has in weeks.

You know what he’s seeing, even though you’re blind right now. You took time to make sure everything was settled before waking him. The hull is clean with only a single light to illuminate it, the baby is still snoozing in his closed crib, his armor is stacked in a neat pile, the blaster is put away, and you retired your makeshift blanket heater box so the only thing left is you. Freshly showered, hair dripping, offering him water, and dressed in just a thin shirt with nothing else (you ran out of things to wear).

“Wh-Where’s my h-h-helmet—” is the first thing he asks, voice broken and raspy. Stars, he needs water.

“The padding inside is wet,” you quickly supply, keeping your hand tight over the bridge of your eyes to make sure his freshly conscious mind immediately understands that you have no bad intentions. “I swear I didn’t look, and I made sure the kid didn’t either. He’s sleeping now, it’s just me—I swear nobody looked, I swear.”

You might just be saying the exact same thing over and over again and admittedly, that might be putting some weird kind of suspicion on you, but you just want to make sure he knows. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s important that he knows he’s safe and that everything is okay now, even if he collapsed and spent an unknown amount of time in a purgatory where nothing was.

His body trembles under your palm, waves of shudders attacking him even after hours of keeping him as warm as possible. “Are—Are we st-still on H-Ho—H-Hoth—”

“No,” you answer. “We’re in hyperspace. Everything’s okay now, I took care of it. We’ll get to Nevarro on time.”

It’s like he takes just a few extra moments, as if he’s trying extra hard to remember before responding. “But—I d-didn’t—”

“You have four bodies for Karga,” you tell him, not letting him get too lost trying to recall something that no longer poses an issue. “I took care of it. You need rest, I only woke you up to make sure you drink some water, so please—” you blindly reach your hand out for the canteen you know has to be around here somewhere, but all you feel is…

His. Catching yours.

“Y-You took c-c-care of…” His hands are trembling harder than his voice. “Sh-shit, I’m freezing, I—”

“Drink some water,” you tell him, squeezing his fingers. “I’ll go turn off the light so you can sleep more, but you need water.”

His hand feels like it doesn’t quite want to let go of yours yet, but eventually it does and you hear the sloshing of water as the metal flask is picked up with an unsteady grip. Purposefully turning your back to him and making sure he’s not in your line of sight whatsoever, you finally let your hand drop and blink your eyes open at the wall across the hull. You hear Din shakily unscrew the lid while you stand up and find the light switch, before turning around in the pitch blackness and using his loud gulps as your guide back.

Your hands and knees are barely on the blanket when you hear him toss the empty canteen to the side and grab you, pulling you down to him.

Fuck, you’re not expecting it. You fumble in the dark but he doesn’t really give your clumsiness much of a choice—Din pulls you under the blankets like he needs you, his body craving that warmth even though his skin doesn’t feel cold at all. He hooks a strong forearm around your tummy, keeping your back pressed tight to his chest while the rest of him curls to fit every part of you, and you have to adjust the blankets yourself.

It’s not even a few seconds after you settle into position when his trembling hands jerk down to grab your shirt and yank it up. You quickly scramble to help him get you as naked as he is, feeling his palms drag greedily across the heat of your tummy and breasts before you’ve even finished wiggling the fabric over your head. The shirt lands somewhere in the darkness and you’re squeezed back against him, your hands landing on his forearms as they wrap around your waist and he clings shamelessly to you.

“You…” Din’s body still shivers every once in a while but the heat and closeness allows his voice to even out just a bit. He clears his throat and swallows, tucking his head and burying his face in your hair before trying again. “You brought back the qu-quarry?”

“Yes,” you confirm, confident in your reassurance but gentle at the same time. “It’s in carbonite.”

All you can feel or hear in response is his breathing. His heart beating steady and strong against your back.

And then Din’s arms suddenly squeeze you tight—tight. He lets out a low shaky exhale against the back of your shoulder and presses his lips to your skin. “Sweet girl.”

And he says just… so much with those two words. Slow and purposeful, the steadiest thing you’ve heard from him in hours. But the two biggest competing emotions you hear tugging at his vocal cords are gratitude and apprehension. Like he already knows that it couldn’t have been easy for you. Like he’s not taking it lightly.

You don’t want to talk about it. You don’t want to talk about anything that happened in the past few hours, not right now. “It’s okay. Please.”

This time his silence seems to be on the brink, as if he wants to say more but the extra plea you put on the end makes him hold onto his words, at least for now.

“How d-did you find me?” He asks instead, scooting his legs up enough that yours actually go with him. Cradled in his naked body, radiating heat so he can recover, pressed so close to him that you feel like gravity itself would be pushing you into his lap if the world weren’t sideways.

“The kid,” you tell him. “We were goofing around outside and he dragged me ov—”

It’s like he’s still so cold that even just the surprise of hearing you say that makes his whole body lock down and convulse a few times against your back. “You were wh-what?”

“I was practicing,” you openly admit to him, feeling like the earlier events already occurred a lifetime ago and you have no reason for being shy about it anymore. In fact, you’re glad you were there, being terrible at shooting. The alternative is unthinkable. Though, something tells you also improbable, having a little supernatural sidekick who cares so deeply for him. “I raided your armory. We weren’t outside for more than five minutes before I wanted to go back in, but then he found you.”

And you think he’s going to get after you, for some reason. Seems about on par, you figure—going outside for even just a few minutes on a planet whose name you now remember is colloquial slang for hell, even if it’s the only reason he’s not an icicle right now.

But he’s just quiet. Breathing. So you just relax into him, thinking that’s the end of it. You take a few deep breaths in through your nose and just… rest. In the near perfect silence of hyperspace you used to find haunting, but now only find comfort in. It reminds you of him.

“Did you hit the target?” He asks you quietly, and at first you scoff, about to ask if he’s kidding. No, of course you didn’t hit the…

Only, after a remarkable delay, hearing him phrase it that way suddenly makes your stomach decide to drop and do a fucking somersault on the ground out of absolutely nowhere.

Everything comes flooding back. The conflict you used to think was the most pressing thing, the one that kept you awake and your thoughts scrambled for hours. It feels like it was ages ago. An entire lifetime has passed since that happened, you might’ve forgotten it altogether if he didn’t decide to ask that very simple question in a very specific way.

“I…” you mumble in response, your heart suddenly pounding. “Not… not yet.”

Okay, that’s a good answer. It’s the truth and you’re giving nothing away by saying that. So now what is he going to say? What is he going to say? You spoke your piece, it’s his turn now, that’s how conversations work. Well typically, that’s how conversations work—but with Din… you probably should’ve known.

He falls back into silence almost immediately, appearing to accept your answer just the way it is without anything else to add. You feel his heart continue to beat strong against your back, but there’s something too tense about his stillness that doesn’t imply he’s relaxing anymore. His body goes slightly taut, but not from the lingering chill in his bones.

He’s going to make you ask him, you realize. He’s waiting until you confront him about his choice in words at the shooting range. Which means he wasn’t just joking around. He wasn’t just messing with you.

“Din…” you whisper uncertainly, and his face suddenly finds its way into the crook of your neck as soon as the word leaves your mouth, arms tightening up around you. You spent forever trying to find the words to even bring this up, and here he is, already knowing exactly what you’re asking just by the tone of your voice. Still, you ask anyway, sounding small and so unsure of yourself in the darkness. “Why did you say that? On Tatooine, why did you…”

Din’s chest expands against your back with a long, slow breath, and then he lets it out against your neck, hot enough to raise goosebumps all over your body.

“I… don’t know,” he admits, voice muffled and quiet, but it’s not… casual. Not like he’s brushing you off or indicating he doesn’t want to talk about it, but like it’s actually a complete fucking mystery to him, just as much as it is to you. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know…” you repeat slowly.

“You had said something,” he mutters, shifting just a bit behind you. His palm slides up your bare tummy, stopping in the warm spot just under the swell of your breast. “Earlier that day. I thought about it, and then I just… s-said it.”

You? Said something that made him ask that?

“What?” You blurt out, genuinely startled and having no fucking clue. “What did I say?”

“Something about…” He gives the smallest shudder from behind you, and you don’t actually know if this one is from the cold. “Not wanting anyone else to know me the way you do.”

Your heart rapidly kicks up and you flush, hating how unbelievably possessive your own words sound coming out of his mouth. “Oh shit, I… I didn’t mean for that to be… that sounds so bad, Din, I swear I didn’t mean for it to—”

He cuts you off by clutching you tighter, burying his face deeper into your neck and breathing out shakily. “Tell me you meant every word.”

You blink a couple of times in the pitch black before sighing, letting go of any charade or front you think about putting up for him to save some dignity. “I meant it.”

Because it’s the truth. You said it when you were caught off guard, throwing it out to him along with other mindless drabble that came from a place that was very real. You don’t like the way you phrased it, but you meant it. You do mean it. Every word.

If there weren't so many things still left unsaid right now, you might actually worry he fell asleep on you. Din loosens up considerably after you admit it, letting go of more tightness you didn’t even know was inside him. His head slowly drops from the crook of your neck to the back of it and he breathes hot air on your nape, quiet for a long time.

And, you suppose you’d actually be okay with it if that was the end of the conversation. There are, of course, millions of things left to ask. But he doesn’t know the answers, just as much as you’re left clueless about the questions. You’re not expecting him to elaborate anymore, and if he’s waiting for you to ask, he’ll be waiting a long time. Soon your eyes close and you almost feel yourself beginning to drift. It’s been such a rough day today and to just be here in his arms, it’s more than enough for you.

But then his low baritone comes through the darkness.

“In Mando’a,” Din’s voice suddenly whispers against your skin, “the verb, kar’taylir… it means to know. Su kar’tayli, you know, kaysh kar’tayli, they know. Ni ke kar’tayl nu… I don’t know.”

Your eyes pop open and you immediately forget all about sleep, wide awake and suddenly hanging onto every word as it rolls so gently off his tongue. You’ve never heard the language spoken aloud, you’ve never heard anything about the Mandalorians directly from one before. All of the stories seem sensationalized, passed down by word of mouth and chipping away at the kernel of truth until it disappears completely.

“The language is dying,” Din continues, murmuring soft and gentle along your nape. “By the time I learned it, too many words had been lost. The ones left were the ones that were needed.”

“What do you mean?” You whisper, almost afraid of breaking the quiet. Not wanting him to feel distracted or pressed, but needing to express your curiosity lest you somehow overflow with it.

“There are only three pronouns,” he answers slowly, and you’re already fucking fascinated. “Ni, for I or we. Su is you or you all, and kaysh is third person. Subjective, objective, possessive, singular, plural—doesn’t matter. Three words, for every individual or collective in the entire galaxy.”

You blink in the darkness, your logic telling you that it sounds so simple it’d become confusing and then your logic also telling you that doesn’t actually make any fucking sense at all. If that’s true, it’s unbelievable. How do they differentiate? Just context?

“How do you distinguish?” You ask him. Admittedly, you don’t know much about linguistics—not anywhere near the extent he does, but it seems so counterintuitive. I can’t be the same word for we, the amount of misunderstandings would be a nightmare.

“We… don’t need to,” he explains to you, slowly, like nobody has ever asked him these things before and so he’s unsure how to phrase it. “Individuality isn’t valued, it’s not a concept.”

And… you almost can’t wrap your head around it. “What do you mean?” You ask again, knowing you’re sounding like a broken record without specifying more, but trying with your whole heart to understand.

“I mean… we swear oaths to never reveal our faces,” Din tells you, something you shouldn’t need to be reminded of. “We abandon our names. We become… whispers, of the same voice. There’s not many words in Mando’a with a unique meaning, almost all of them are homonyms. Interchangeable. Transient.”

Your eyebrows shoot up, suddenly blown away by the implication. Almost all of them are homonyms? How in Maker’s name are you even supposed to communicate at that point? That’s… unthinkable.

“Most words have two meanings?” You clarify, wanting to be absolutely sure you’re getting it right.

“Most have five or six,” he returns, and you’re downright shocked now. “Everything just depends.”

“Stars…” You breathe, moving a palm up the length of his forearm and holding the back of his hand with it. Fuck, you hope this is the direction he’s intending instead of veering him off course, but you’re incredibly invested. “What else does, uh… kay—er, kar… kar’taylir mean?”

Din lets out a slow breath from behind you, and you can… you can feel his own heart beating faster when it presses up against your spine at the apex of his inhale. “It’s… a rare word, it only has two meanings.”

You bite your lip and start to feel butterflies in your stomach for some reason. Slowly, his hand begins to travel up your breast and then to your sternum before heading just the slightest bit left, and your own hand moves with him.

“To know,” Din says quietly, “but also… to care very deeply for.” He doesn’t stop until his palm presses right above the rapidly pounding organ in your chest. “To hold in the heart.”

“To know,” you swallow thickly, curling your fingers around his hand and praying he’s saying what you think he is, “or… to love?”

“When Mandalorian’s take vows, there’s no ceremony,” he whispers into the back of your neck. “No witnesses, no celebrations. We just take our helmets off in front of the other and look. It doesn’t sound like much, but… our secrecy is our survival. Letting someone see our face and swearing lifelong devotion to them, it’s the same thing. To know is to love.”

Your eyes close tight and your lungs empty themselves, too full of emotion to even fit oxygen inside you anymore. Din’s lips press feather soft behind your neck, and now you’re the one shivering uncontrollably. The move up and trail along your neck in the darkness.

“Ni kar'tayl su,” he murmurs, shifting back just slightly and pulling at your shoulder. “I know you.”

You go with him, facing the ceiling as he fits his head under your throat and places slow, open mouth kisses down the curve of it.

“Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum,” he goes on quietly, his voice starting to sound raspy again, dragging his hand down your torso while his lips brush your collarbone. “For an eternity, I’ll know you.”

Water wets the corners of your lashes and you inhale three or four times before exhaling, shallow hiccups and desperate for air.

“Ni ke vaabi nu kaysh ke kar’taylir su te ni kar’tayl su.” Din says, slowly moving his mouth back up when your fingers tangle in his hair and beg him to come that way. The words dance along your skin as he whispers them, forever searing themselves into your memory. You can’t see them, you’ll never have a visual to reminisce upon, but you’ll know how they felt. Right under your ear, brimming with quiet devotion. “I don’t want anyone else to know you… the way I know you.”

Your face goes blazing hot at the sound of him translating your own rushed and half-assed sentence into something gorgeous and flowing, something that sounds so much more beautiful than when you blurted it out earlier. You told him you loved him in that hangar, right to his face. Unashamed and stupid about it, but meaning it with every part of your body.

“I knew you’d say no,” he finally admits, staying in this one spot. Unmoving. Telling you the truth, allowing you to know it. “I just wanted to… say it.”

That… that makes sense to you. The last part does, at least, it makes so much sense to you. The first time you said you loved him, you said it just to say it. You wanted to feel the words, sound them out even if neither one of you could hear them. It felt freeing, like coming to accept a universal truth.

The first part, though. You’re still behind. “You knew I’d say no?” You ask him, feeling him ease back just slightly. Staring down at you through the pitch black, even if he can’t see either. Keeping his palm over your heart as the ship hurdles through nowhere and everywhere at once.

“You wouldn’t take my first name without convincing,” he reasons quietly, and then moves back to lay in the blankets once more, leaving the rest unspoken.

But he’s… oh stars, he’s so right. If he’s going to take his helmet off and let you see his face—if he’s going to commit to you that way, it is not going to be because you shoot a blaster correctly. Not after today, not after what he’s told you.

So you move up to your elbow and turn to face him, trying to let him know why even if he’s already guessed the what correctly.

“I want it to mean something,” you say after a moment. “I want it to… have the meaning it’s supposed to have.”

Your palm finds its way to his chest in the silence following. Right over the beating of his heart, feeling it thrum hard and rhythmic while he considers his response.

“This is The Way,” Din finally murmurs, settling his hand over yours, and you repeat the words back to him. Respecting them. Feeling like, for the very first time, they now apply to you in some way instead of belonging to some mysterious creed you’ll never know anything about.

But when a shudder subtly rockets up and down his body, you realize the blankets have been pulled down with the changing positions and his whole torso is bare and exposed to the hull. So you pull them up until you’re both covered again, before you lean down and press a soft kiss to his shoulder.

Din shudders again when your mouth opens and the hot glide of your tongue catches his skin, but you know it’s not from the cold this time. His breathing deepens while you slowly move over him. You ease him further on his back and let him keep feeling the warmth of your mouth on his body, alleviate the lingering chill by sucking gentle hickeys into his skin and feeling the goosebumps raise under your tongue. He moves with you; he stretches his neck when you want to nibble his collarbone, arches when you mouth down his chest, shifts his elbow to let you drag your tongue along his ribcage.

And… and it’s as if all the stars and systems hold even more still for you than the relative physics of faster-than-light travel can explain away by themselves. You’ve always felt timeless in here, living from one fleeting eternity to the next, suspended in perpetuity while the rest of the galaxy ages without you. But when you’re with him and it’s pitch black and there’s no light to streak across your vision, no evidence that time and space have all but disconnected from each other just to let your insignificant little bodies through… it’s like you’re meant to be here. In some strange, unexplainable way, you feel like you could’ve died out there with him in the frozen wasteland today and this is exactly where you’d still end up, no matter what.

To know is to love.

“Do you have brown eyes?” You hear yourself whisper under his jaw, and you feel Din’s fingers thread in your hair and ease you up enough to brush his lips against your chin.

“Yes,” he whispers back, and then his mouth is on yours.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #fanfic #star wars fanfic #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din djarin #no-droids #reader insert

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tinylilvalery · 2 years

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Fuches is my fav character because he's so... just so much fun. Like he's so fucking funny but also almost entirely soulless but by no means emotionless. The dude is akin to a jester.

Honestly he reminds me a lot of Saul Goodman in how he talks to people. Characters seem put off by him AND YET with that he still has this strange charisma where he actually can talk himself out of life or death situations and land himself a profitable deal off it as well.

His moral compass is so weak but not entirely gone. He'll comment how it's fucked up or sad if he thinks Barry has killed a kid, or thinking Barry is dead - he'll genuinely feel sad and empathise for a moment, but the next second is like ANYWAYYYY time to move on. He'll literally tell Barry he needs to kill a child - behaviour of a psychopath and someone that you'd imagine as entirely cold and void of emotion, and yet Fuches is still allowed to have a vast emotional range.

There's also this interesting possessiveness to Barry, which yeah can be VERY fond, but other times his characterisation and relationship with Barry reminds me of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. Jesse can't walk away from Walter and live a healthy life or just leave Walter behind because he's toxic, Fuches can't allow Barry to leave him behind under any circumstance, and he definitely can't allow Barry to feel like he has the power in their relationship. Initially he'd talk himself back into Barry's life, but at this point, despite the fondness he has for Barry, he'd also have Barry killed than let him leave him behind and move on. He HAS to be the person that Barry is entirely reliant on. He HAS to be the only one that sees Barry for who he really is and be the only one who accepts him as that awful person. He wants to ruin his life and have Barry entirely dependent on him and him alone. I'd also say he's vengeful like Walter too and is smart about his ways of revenge - the thing is tho, I can enjoy Fuches in Barry cos the dude is comedy relief and leans into being a clown, whereas Walter is framed as being badass for his abusive fucked behaviour.

Also I just adore cockroach characters. Ones that are almost finding themselves at close calls for their lives, and yet they always manage to live.

Fuches' intelligence is highly underrated as well and he is consistently underestimated by surrounding characters. Not only is he a skilled manipulator, but he is intelligent in he knows what needs to be done to succeed and he can scheme well. I just.... he's just such a fantastic character I love him.

#deeply deeply human #monroe fuches #the actor is so brilliant too #he can take Fuches to so many different places #i also love the metaphor that he's the devil #i don't know if i'd go that far #he's way too human #someone I'd call the devil would be Lorne Malvo from Fargo #Fuches to me at most would be a demon #but really i just think he's #I wanna know more about him pre show #Barry HBO

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thatonegaytheaterkid · 3 years

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Confession Under the Stars

Pairing- Zhongli x male reader

⚠️Warnings⚠️- none

Requests are: OPEN

Proofread: nope

A/n: ok, so just to make sure that ya’ll don’t think I’m dead I wrote this for ya’ll to know i’m still alive ✊😌 also this was written at 1am so it probably has some mistakes 😪

You were on your way to complete a commission from the Adventurers guild to take out a guard near Lingju Pass, while on your way there, you stopped for a minute just to take in the tranquility in the air surrounding you, not like you were any rush. It’s not like you were in Liyue every day, usually you’d be doing commissions for the guild in Mondstadt, so whenever you were in Liyue you’d make sure to take in most of the scenery that it had to offer.

While exhaling some of the fresh air, all of a sudden you see a meteorite falling from the sky at an alarmingly fast rate. It wasn’t just everyday you saw a whole meteor just casually falling from the sky, right? So what’s the harm in taking a closer look, you thought.

After following where you saw it fall to, you ended up into what looked like it used to be a hilichurl camp. However, instead of finding a meteorite like you had expected, you ended up seeing a tall man with long hair and crossed-arms standing in the middle of all the decay, no meteor in sight.

You were trying to figure out where the over-sized rock could have possibly gone, it’s not like it could be anywhere else, you knew for a fact that it had to be somewhere around the camp.

Your best chance of finding out where it could have fallen was by asking the man who most likely knew exactly where it would be since it basically fell directly where he was standing. So that’s exactly what you did, tapping lightly on one of his shoulders you asked him where it had fallen.

And that’s when he turned around.

Wow, just wow, he had looks of a god. His long black-to-gold fading hair flowing in the wind along with the black and gold suit that he seemed to be dressed head to toe in, and his facial features were just- damn, he looked as if he were chiseled from the finest stone in all of Teyvat. After seeing him for more than two seconds you ended up just spacing out while admiring his tantalizing facial features, and if that wasn’t enough, his voice, his voice, it was just so deep and soothing it was all you could think about, completely disregarding everything he said to you in that moment, all you ended up processing in that moment was something to do with geo and something else about his elemental burst but you couldn’t really make it out.

“So what might your name be?” he asked

“Huh, o-oh!, my name’s (Y/n)!” you sputtered out while breaking out of your little trance. “And, um, yours?” you tilted your head in a questioning manner.

“Zhongli, a pleasure to meet you, (Y/n) was it?”

“Y-yep, that’s it!” you answered.

“Well, it was a pleasure to meet your acquaintance (Y/n), however, I must be on my way now, I do hope we meet again in the future” Zhongli said in a polite tone while walking away with an elegant wave and a small smile plastered on his face.

All you could do was just wave back at him as you saw him walking away, nearly forgetting about completing your commission then heading on your way to the ruins.

It had only been a few days since your little encounter with Zhongli, he was all you could think about for the past few days afterwards meeting him, you could have sworn you’ve hear his name be thrown around here and there, it usually always involved the Wangshen Funeral Parlor. “Maybe that’s where he works?” you thought. You had a few friends in Liyue, maybe you could ask them about him?

“Mr Zhongli? I know him” Childe stated “What about him?”, “I met him a few days ago and I wanna know more about him. So, what’s he like?” you asked. “Curious as always I see, hmn, well, he works at Wangsheng Funeral Parlour, he’s really calm and patient with people, Ooo and he’s really smart too, you can ask him about literally anything and he could go on and on about it for hours until you stop him, but no matter how smart he may seem, he’s always forgetting to bring his Mora anywhere he goes, it’s always a hassle going anywhere with him” “And that’s pretty much all you need to know about him”

“Yeah that sounds like about enough, thanks Tartag!” “No problem comrade! I still owe you for when you paid for my lunch last week so guess now we’re even” Childe grinned as you both said your goodbyes and headed in opposite directions.

“Hm, so he’s level-headed and forgetful when it comes to Mora, noted” you mumbled to yourself while in deep thought. Walking around Liyue Harbour you accidentally bumped into someone while concentrating and forgetting to pay attention to your surroundings.

“Gah, I’m sorry! I wasn’t paying attention to where I was go...ing, it- it’s you again!”

“Ah, (Y/n), good bumping into you again, I do hope you’re alright?”

“You remembered my name, I’m kind of surprised” you chuckled. “Yeah I’m alright, no need to worry” you went on.

“That’s good to hear, say, I was just on my way to a nearby tea house, would you care to come along with me?”

“I- are you sure? Wouldn’t I just be disrupting you?”

“No, on the contrary, you would be doing quite the opposite, I’d like to chat with you over a cup of tea if you’re not already busy.”

“I-uh, sure, why not?”

“Wonderful, now follow me, we must be on our way” He said with a smile.

The walk the two of you had while heading to the tea house was silent but it was a comfortable silence, like the two of you were already quite fond of each other, which you were.

“It seems as though we have arrived at our destination, after you” He said as he opened the door for you. “Thank you” you said as you entered.

The smell of freshly brewed tea was now hitting your senses making you feel more at ease. “The scent in here is wonderful” you said while taking a seat facing Zhongli’s. “Indeed, now, how about we order some tea, I’ve been told that the ingredients that they use here are gathered fresh everyday.” He stated in a ‘matter-of-fact’ tone.

It didn’t take long for both of you to start up a conversation. Of course, Zhongli was the first to start talking and it didn’t take long for you to follow in suit. You both had ended up talking to one another for hours on end and had already become good friends in such a short time. It was only when you both realised that the sun was no longer up was when you both decided that it was now time to leave.

“Ah, it seems that the sun has set, I think it may be time we be on our way.” He said in a slightly disappointed tone. ”I didn’t even realise that the sun went down” you chuckled. “You’re right, it does seem like it’s time to leave” you said also trying to hide your slight disappointment.

“Now time to pay for th-” he paused reaching into his pocket. “Ahem” clearing his voice. “It seems as though I may have forgotten to bring my Mora.” He said trying to hide his embarrassment.

“It’s fine, I’ll pay” you said with a slight chuckle remembering that this is exactly what Childe had described. “Thank you (Y/n), I must apologise about forgetting to remember to bring my Mora with me, it always seems to slip past my memory” he said with a hand covering his face.

“No, no, don’t worry about it, it happens every once in a while” you brushed it off. “Yes, ‘every once in a while’” He said in an almost inaudible mumble to himself.

“Well, as it has already gotten late I suppose this is where we part ways, I hope to see you next time then” He indicated as he shook your hand as a farewell. “Yeah, until next time” you said with a smile then parted ways.

Wait.

Did he just say next time?

‘So, then that means that there’s gonna be a next time’ you thought, as a smile silently ushered its way onto your lips.

It had been a few months after both you and Zhongli had this small interaction. It didn’t take long after you both had started to meet up every once in a while.

It started off with just walking into each other more often in certain parts of Liyue and having small conversations with one another while walking to whatever place either of you were headed, then eventually you both started to meet up at the docks and would just spend the rest of both your evenings in each others presence while striking up conversations about Rex Lapis and the other archons. Safe to say you ended up staying in Liyue for longer than you had originally anticipated.

It didn’t take long before you both turned into close friends, you were both fascinated by each other and kept wanting to be around one another any chance you got.

You liked listening to him talk, and not just because of his soothing voice, you thoroughly enjoyed hearing him go on and on about every and anything, both his and your knowledge was quite vast so you never had a dull conversation.

Conversations would range from topics like where the name from a specific flower originated from, to both of your opinions on the Liyue Quixing. Talking with him never got boring, there was always something that either one of you would say that would strike up a whole new topic to uncover. The more you both spoke the more intrigued you would become in one another, it was always interesting hearing about what both your opinions were on certain things, even if you both would sometimes see things in an entirely different light, but that was the fun in it, uncovering more and more small hidden details about each other.

Being in his presence always made you feel more relaxed, he gave off this aura in which you felt safe and at peace in, it reminded you of a piece of silk flowing in the breeze. It was calming.

Now cut to the present time you’re both in.

Both you and Zhongli are watching over Liyue Harbour in the moonlight enjoying the sight of the lantern light illuminating the docks off the top of Mount Tienhung while dangling your feet off the edge of the mountain.

For once, neither of you were talking. You were both just sitting in a peaceful silence basking in the breathtaking view of the harbor. However, it wasn’t the harbor that Zhongli seemed to be looking at, no, he was far more interested in you.

All he could be focused on in that moment was how all your features seemed to light up under the moonlit sky, the luminescent lighting made you look almost as if you were glowing. You looked divine. All he could think about was how handsome it made you look. For the first time, Zhongli was at loss for words. Looking at you in this moment made it seem like time was no longer existent, as if everything just...stopped. All that was on his mind was just you. There was nothing else that wanted to enter his mind other than you. Your laugh, your smile, your thoughts, just everything.

This wasn’t the first time he’s caught himself thinking of you at such an extent. It had been happening for the past couple of weeks and he hadn’t a clue on why. All that happened was that he’d see you and suddenly everything around him just seemed to stop, like you were the only being in the universe. The only thing moving.

He started to question himself when he wasn’t with you. Why did he have such strong emotions when it came to you? Why didn’t he feel this way towards anyone else? Why did his stomach do backflips when he was with you? Why did he now feel the need to impress you more?

Just...why?

He had so many questions and yet he didn’t have a single answer. It was only when he was walking through the streets of Liyue when he accidentally overheard a couple telling each other “I love you” to one another when the answer had hit him like a dendro slime on the back of the head.

That. That was the answer he was looking for. Was he...in love?

At first he was in denial, “No, no, that couldn’t possibly be it” he thought. But the more he thought about it, the more and more it finally made sense. The backflips you would cause his stomach to make every time he was around you, the way the world would just stop, it was all because of this simple reason.

Zhongli was in love with you.

He knew he had to come clean about his feelings towards you eventually, so what was a better time than now?

Breaking out from his trance, he cleared his throat and began speaking.

“(Y/n), there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about lately” he said with a bit of nervousness creeping up on him.

“Of course, what is it? You know you can tell me anything, right?” you told him with a reassuring smile.

Just you giving him a small smile was enough to give him the confidence he greatly needed.

With a deep breath in and out he then began to speak once more, “As of late, I’ve been having these.. feelings towards you... feelings that I can’t really explain” “They are like an extremely strong, admiration? No, that’s not it, that’s not it at all” he gulped swallowing all of his pride.

“(Y/n), I’m in love with you”

“I know that you may not feel the same towards me, howeve-” he said as he got cut off by you, as you used all the courage you could muster in that moment, and grabbed his chin and began to kiss him.

It had seemed like the world had stopped right then and there, All he could feel was just pure bliss, it felt amazing, his heart was beating so fast it felt as if it was going to pop out from his chest. He was a blushing mess. This was the first time you had ever seen him so vulnerable before.

As he eased in to the kiss he began to feel more at peace, Everything was perfect.

After a bit you both stopped to finally grasp some air. Breathing in and out you looked at him and said, “Y’know what’s funny? I’ve felt the same about you ever since we first met” giving out a small chuckle.

Eyes wide with surprise Zhongli felt like he had just been slapped in the face. How did he not know?! It was only that since you told him that it had now been obvious from the start.

The way your gaze would linger on him and all your expressions would just soften a bit or how you’d always blush when he would compliment you, it made so much sense now. How in Rex Lapis’ name could he not have realised sooner?

It made him wish he could get striked by his meteor because of his utter obliviousness, while groaning to himself he heard a laugh from you right next to him.

“Hahaha! Sorry, sorry, I think it’s funny how you’re just now realising” you said trying to control your laughter. “You look cute when your oblivious” saying while rubbing a small tear from your eye.

Seeing you laugh was was like euphoria to him, it made him feel so warm inside.

And then that was until he reminded himself why you were laughing and went back to his frowning, which made you laugh even more...great.

“Hey, hey, there’s no need to feel like that” you told him in a sing-song voice while still trying to keep your composure. “It doesn’t matter anymore so best not think about it right?” you said while resting your head on his shoulder to try and calm him down.

The rest of the night was absolutely perfect. The two of you ended up just snuggling up next to each other for the rest of the night, staying in each others arms until you fell asleep and he had to take you home bridal style.

Taglist- @aizawaslovebot @mizunetzu @anormalguyreader If you wanna be added just ask or dm me and I’ll be sure to add you!~

#genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #zhongli x reader #zhongli x male reader #zhongli #geo daddy #rex lapis #geo archon #genshin zhongli #genshin #gaming #genshin impact x male reader #x reader #x male reader

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stargazers-telescopes · 2 years

Text

The Pains of Anonymity

a/n: I wrote this story, awhile back too, for two of my friends who loved reading short stories like this one. I hope you like it too! its your classic high school shoujo-type confession story with a twist.

one of these friends is my ex and the whole ‘google’ angle was to uh call him out on something dumb he did during the span of our relationship... i hope you find it funny haha.

.......................................................................................................................

Summer of 2018- graduation. The time when we, baby-year-old children are expected to find our way in life. Jobs, university, college. All on the agenda. It is also the last year I will ever have the chance to ask out Emily. Oh yes, I had my priorities completely sorted.

I've had a massive crush on her since the 4th year. 6th year is my last chance, before she goes to study in oxford. She said that she got accepted. Emily has been my friend since the 1st year and she's very cool. She likes to skateboard in the park and drink iced coffee in winter. She has long dark hair and bright green eyes. And after she's done scowling at people and smiles it's like I'm blinded with light...even her scowling is beautiful- ok, you get the idea...

I really wanted to act on my feelings but I was worried she did not feel the same way. Also we are good friends and if she rejected me things would get awkward, not just for me, but the whole gang.

Sam convinced me to confess this year. As classes finished for the day we met outside the locker room. He said,

"Alex you've been moaning and groaning about her for way too long. JUST ASK HER OUT. I'm tired of listening to your whining… I'm quite sure I've suffered emotional trauma listening to you. I'm sensitive that way", he wiped away a fake tear.

"But seriously man, this is the last chance you can. And you don't have to do something huge like propose confront of a crowd. We've been friends with Em for so long she would likely accept you and then kill you"

We started walking towards the boys' dorms. "remind me again why I'm taking advice from you, my single friend", I grumbled.

"Hey!", he exclaimed, fake annoyance flashing across his nerdy face.

"I happen to have vast knowledge on romance. NEVER DOUBT THE MANGAS"

"Ok, mr romantic, what should I do according to the great wisdom of the mangas?"

"Well, first off, if you're going to ask her out, do it in person, with some chocolate, maybe a stuffed toy,'' he stated.

I stopped in my tracks.

"Oh hell no", I said

"But then she wont even-", I interrupted him.

"It's ok, I'll handle it on my own… besides… Em? And a teddy bear? I really doubt that", I laughed

"If you say so bro, then, handle it on your own", he replied, smirking.

"I'll be here when you come for help"

And that's how I got myself into my life's (so far) greatest mess.

I looked it up on google. Do not judge me, I am not original. And I could afford flowers. But they had to mean something. So I looked up flower symbolism too. After my planning, I was ready.

Before school started, I placed a bunch of white lilies and roses on Emily's desk. I read somewhere they represented devotion. 4 years of devotion pretty much symbolised those flowers. And a note. But I did not expect Em's reaction.

She dropped her bag at her chair and walked over to me and sam. Sam gave me that look. I stamped on his toe.

"Gosh, guys I'm soo tired", she yawned. Her nose was red.

"I had to attend. a funeral of some relative yesterday who I've never met and never known. There were lilies everywhere", she sniffled.

Wait

"I had such a bad allergic reaction, I was up the whole night sneezing my fuckin brains off. That and our algebra work", she said.

The bell rang. Crap.

Emily waved and walked towards her desk.

I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me alive.

"Who the fuck left their garden at my desk", she exclaimed. My heart dropped. I knew she cursed frequently, but she cursed my gift. My gift for her.

Then she made a funny noise… and started sneezing. She didn't even see the note I tucked into the petals!! On second thought I'm glad she didn't.

Layla, her friend, came and took the bouquet of flowers away. My gift. Agh.

"Aww Em these flowers are so pretty... I think they are a gift", she said.

At least one of the girls realised my intentions.

Emily sniffled," I cant keep these… and i don't plan on dying this year… I need to junk them", she sneezed again.

"No! Don't do that, I'll take them", Layla exclaimed. Great. Just great.

This was not how it was supposed to go. I watched with horror as Layla happily picked up Emily's bouquet. The note fell under their desk. I looked at Sam… who was laughing at me. God dammit.

Well, I wasn't going to give up just because of this tiny setback. I had a plan! Sure I won't do it face to face, but the thought is there and my name too.

Well after that flop I looked up on google again.

Jewelry. Girls liked jewelry. I remember Emily wears this golden locket around her neck. Everywhere. She said it used to be her grandma's. The google page was funny. It said girls like shiny things. They're not magpies, I was laughing while reading. Then I remembered that Emily has this box full of stones and metal pieces and some other junk. She said they have memories. A memory box. Maybe if I got something she liked she would put it in her memory box. Magpie box. I laughed a bit more.

Oh well. I hope this worked.

Next week before anyone came to class I placed a pendant on Emily's desk. Small and silvery. I managed to get it for £5 which was quite good. Also my kid sister helped me pick it out so it had to count for something. I eagerly waited for Emily to see it.

She didn't even notice it. I think it even fell off her and Layla's desk during class. Jesus Christ and all that's holy, why isn't this working?????!!!

And then it struck me. I left the note in my pencil case. Of course this would happen.

Finally I saw her pocket it. Only to find out later she didn't even think it was for her.

Sam and I were loitering in the halls after basketball when I heard Emily say something from inside the classroom.

"Someone lost their necklace", she showed it to Layla. Sam and I peered in.

"I don't know, Em, I don't think anyone would leave their jewelry lying around", Layla said

And then Emily dangled the pendant in front of herself

"If I sold it, how much would I get for it?", she asked.

No. why.

"Why don't you just keep it, Em?"

"Because if it belongs to someone else, it would be rude, Layla", Emily proclaimed

"And selling it isn't??!!"

My next attempt was as cliche as they come. But foolproof. The reason things are labelled cliche is because they never fail. Also I know Emily likes to read romantic stories. So I copied the cheesiest Shakespeare poetry off the net and signed it with my name. There's no way this could fail.

It failed.

I placed the letter in front of Emily's dorm door. And knocked on it. Then I bolted around the corner and watched as Em looked around. Then she spotted the letter. And saw the blank side. She didn’t even turn it around.

"Who the fu-", she looked around.

"Damn litterers", she crumpled my note

Jesus christ this girl is going to kill me. I really didn't understand. Em was intelligent. She solves those riddles at mad speeds and gets top scores in class. How can someone so smart be so goddamn stupid.

I didn't know what to do. I kept thinking about it on my way to the dorms after basketball practice.and I met Mr Brown, the boys' dorm chaperone.

"Hi mister brown", I waved dejectedly.

"Oh lad, what's wrong?"

He tried to pat my head. Which must have been difficult considering I was probably 3 feet taller than him.

"Oooh I know that look", he chuckled

"Lady friend problems, eh?"

I think my red face said it all.

"Don't worry! Be bold child, faint heart never won the fair maiden. Think outside the box. What does your flame like", he asked me

I was too busy cringing at 'flame' to respond immediately.

"It's ok mister brown", I think I know what to do…", I thanked him and entered. This is it. My last attempt before I resort to Sam.

The next day I walked into RED. Em's favourite clothes shop. Ripped Jeans and t-shirts with comments were displayed all over the place. A gift voucher. The shop was red lit. Which was a little odd, because how would you know the colours of the clothes?

I walked to the front. Unfortunately I was met with a rather brutal sight… women’s under clothes displayed out and for the first time entering that shop, I was thankful for the red light.

"I want a gift voucher", I mumbled to the cashier who was typing away at something.

She gave me a funny look.

"RED only has vouchers for-", but I interrupted

"Just give me the damn gift voucher", I pleaded to her. She scoffed and handed me one. I quickly ran out of RED. Well. That was something I never ever want to experience again.

Once again I placed it on her desk. Now I was sure this would work. Boy was I wrong.

Emily waved to us as she entered and sat at her desk. She saw the gift voucher and froze.

Just froze. She stood there for a good minute before she turned around.

If looks could kill, we would all be dead. Her face was red and her normal laidback expression was pulled into a vicious scowl.

She yelled, "HARRY YOU FUCKING PERVERT IM GOING TO MURDER YOU"

The sleazebag of our class immediately sat up in his seat looking confused. Harry had a… reputation. And every girl in class had at least one unfortunate encounter with him. Except Em, who has threatened to punch the living daylights out of Harry if he pulled any bullshit, which we didn't doubt because we have seen Em get into some street fights…

"Excuse me, Emily, I haven't done a thing", he raised his hands in front of him.

She snarled at the class, "If I find the creep who gave me a gift voucher for underwear...", she let her threat hang in the air. Very effective. I wanted to die.

I went to Sam. He was my last hope. My saviour. I knocked on his door. When he opened the door, he laughed at my face

He said, "well I see you've come to consult the mangas. Enter my abode of wisdom",

He gestured towards his room. I was in the abode of wisdom for a long time.

I was going to do it in person this evening.

We got a shark plushie whose sneer reminded me of Em's evil look. Very cute. I don't think I've ever been so nervous.

I knocked on her dorm room, holding the shark toy behind me. When she opened the door she grinned.

"Hey, Alex", she leaned against the door frame, her hair falling in front.

"What's up", she raised an eyebrow.

I felt like an old car. Big, slow and struggling to start.

"I uh… I like you", I said

"We're old friends Alex, I'm quite sure that has been established", she laughed.

This girl was not making it easy.

"No I like- like you, like as in that like, not the friend like", I forced out.

She smiled sinisterly.

"Took you long enough dumbass", she pulled me towards her and quickly pecked me on my lips.

Alex.exe. stopped working

She grinned again, "Sam told me that the flowers and the other stuff was you and you had no idea what you were doing. Honestly after the flowers I figured it was you because you looked like you wanted to die after I told you about my flower allergy and when I saw the lilies. But Sam confirmed it after the uh… the gift voucher",

She turned slightly red.

"I probably should have said something but it was really really funny watching you go about confessing"

She turned around and scrambled about her room. And brought out a book. She opened it. On one page was a dried white rose neatly pressed into the book. On the other she taped my letter. She turned it around and the RED gift voucher was taped too.

She cleared her throat to get my attention and then brought out the pendant from under her shirt where she kept it tucked. She was wearing it.

"I never threw them away", she was red too.

Yeah… I'm quite sure Emily was going to kill me someday.

Needless to say, I graduated a few weeks later after a week of mind breaking exams. And I have Emily beside me. Let's see how it goes in University.

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eyrieofsynapses · 3 years

Text

Alright, YJ peeps, listen up, because I’m sick and tired of seeing constant criticism lobbed at YJ for making Wally slower than his comic canon version, Barry and Bart. There’s a very good reason to do this—and it’s completely in Wally’s favor.

Let me preface this by saying that I sincerely love Wally’s comics. I am one hundred percent on board that Wally deserves to be recognized for the badass he is. His 90s comics established the most important elements of the Flash today. We wouldn’t have the Speedforce if it weren’t for him! It’s been defining the Flash for decades! He gets the short stick over and over. It only rubs salt in the wound that people believe Barry’s faster when it’s been stated repeatedly that Wally’s the fastest person in the DC universe. (There are few faster ways to piss me off than to say Barry’s a better Flash than Wally.)

But. But. YJ was incredibly clever when they made him slower. Why? Wally has to be more creative than Barry because he’s slower, showing his intelligence and building him up to be a better Flash. Don’t believe me? Take a close look at Bloodlines.

Barry and Impulse figure out how to foil Neutron’s first blast of energy on their own. But it’s Wally who figures out that Neutron’s about to release an even more deadly wave with the help of his goggles, which Barry immediately borrows. Wally hand-made his goggles to compensate for his lack of speed. He wouldn’t have had them if he were as fast as the other two. Nobody would’ve realized how much danger they were in, and everyone would have died.

While comic!Wally is definitely smart, he’s so powerful that as the Flash, he can often solve problems just with sheer power. He doesn’t have to be super clever about it most of the time. In YJ, this is true of both Barry and Bart. They can be clever, but they’re heavily reliant on their powers. YJ!Wally has to compensate for lack of power with intelligence. He diversifies his skillset, using a mixture of science, strategy, and superpowers to solve problems instead of relying on sheer force.

Wally isn’t just slower; he also can’t control his momentum. Barry and Bart can dissipate kinetic energy at will, while he has to find ways to get rid of it. But he turns it to his advantage.

Pay attention to how he fights. You’ll notice he often cannonballs into people and uses acrobatics instead of flat-out running. He can’t bombard someone with a rain of blows the same way, so he dodges and avoids close combat.

There’s a lot more to that, but in a nutshell: Wally’s fighting style is significantly more complex than Barry’s. I’m not saying Barry never uses those skills, but I can’t remember any time we saw him do it. Wally learned to do that on his own, and he figured out how to incorporate other people’s fighting styles into his repertoire. Remember the acrobatics? Who wants to bet he picked that up from Dick?

Which brings me to my next point: Wally works better with the Team not just because he grew up with them, but because he has to cooperate with others to make the best of his skills. Wally can’t just blaze through things. He has to conserve his energy and make the best of his speed. In the Team, they have to piece together where he’ll be the most effective. It forces him to stop and consider what he’s doing and how it’ll impact the overall picture, taming his impulsive behavior.

Think about his attitude in the pilot. He races on ahead, alerting the enemy to their presence and nearly getting himself killed. Over the course of the season, he learns stealth and patience, which we see repeatedly demonstrated in the last few episodes.

Back to Bloodlines for a moment. When Wally, Barry, and Bart initially show up to the disaster scene, Barry runs headlong into the danger. Bart follows him. Wally, however, stops to talk to the police captain and gather information about the situation. Barry and Bart join them afterward. They proceed to speed-talk at each other, coming up with a plan… and then instead of explaining it to Wally, they just tell him to follow their lead.

Barry and Bart were impulsive while he stopped to think. Wally was a better team player: the other two didn’t include him in their planning, thus missing crucial details and potentially putting him in danger.

Their plan works in the short-term. But when they think they’ve solved it, Wally takes a second look, analyzing the situation and double-checking that they’re finished. If they stopped ahead of time and took a moment to consider what was happening, they might’ve noticed the energy problem sooner and come up with a better solution.

Worst of all, Barry rushes in again to pull Neutron out the second time. He only survives because of Bart. Yes, it’s because they’re short on time, but again: this might’ve been prevented sooner if they thought things through.

What does it say that Wally patiently paid attention to detail and was more thoughtful than his experienced mentor?

Yes, some of this is stuff he might have learned with advanced speed. But would he really have to be so thoughtful about how he uses his abilities? Not likely.

Nor would he have incorporated science and gear into his skillset. Among other things, he knows how to make an EMP and recognizes where to apply it in Homefront. Dick’s their tech whiz, but Wally comes up with technological and scientific solutions that he can’t.

But Wally doesn’t only use science and technology in ways his uncle and cousin can’t or won’t. He thinks differently about problems.

In Bloodlines, Barry and Bart assume the coast is clear after they take down Neutron the first time. They only consider things within the vast range of their powers, assuming that covers everything. Wally thinks about what they can’t see. He’s more limited, so he’s learned to take every piece of a situation into account.

Basically: Wally is much more flexible than his faster counterparts. He adapts far better to adverse situations because he’s forced to make small-scale accommodations on a daily basis. Because of that, he’s able to come up with better solutions, work better in a team, and solve problems without his powers.

And may I remind all of you: YJ Wally GAVE HIMSELF HIS POWERS, but his comic version got them without effort! The Speedforce bestowed them on him without his involvement!

People, YJ!Wally is a goddamn genius prodigy. We forget it sometimes because of his early-on immaturity and his jokes, but seriously, Wally’s far and away one of the smartest people in the YJ universe. YJ Wally is a distinctively unique Flash character because of his wit and intelligence!

But guess what? Guess what the real cherry on top is? If they bring Wally back in the fourth season at a full speed, he’ll be the fastest and the wisest Flash. He’ll know how to apply his new powers in ways that the others would never think of. Because he’s spent so much time applying science to his abilities, he’ll know how to use his new powers in sync with it, whereas Bart and Barry won’t think on those levels.

Best of all, Wally’s the best team player. He’ll be incredible with both the original Team and anyone else he has to work with.

Think about it. A full-speed Flash with Wally’s technological brilliance, intelligence, observance, and teamwork skills? He’ll be unstoppable.

So please shut up about how YJ did Wally dirty. It’s a thousand times more interesting to watch him work out how to solve a problem rather than just solve it in a snap with his powers. If anything, YJ improved his character and made him better.

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rrasado · 2 years

Note

Your requests have opened and i'm a starving animal-

Can the great god tier writer bless me with a meal of Pee Paw Zhongli and eye patch bastard Kaeya, I'm fine with anything you choose for the request! Angst, comfort, hcs, anything

If i cry i cry 🤙

• Barista's Choice (I)•

This is like, the writer's equivalent of "make your favorite drink" and unfortunately for you I drink my coffee without milk-/lh. You know what maybe I'll add a dash of sugar here just a small pinch :D

⚠️ Mentions of Alcohol ⚠️

When you stop coming for drinks:

The elusive gentleman of Liyue opened a teashop out of his own accord, Zhongli finds great comfort in brewing the many beverages he learned over the course of his lifetime, and at one point you also shared his enthusiasm for the sorts of tea he served.

Your first meeting was memorable in a way, it's been a few weeks since he's opened his quaint shop and the flow of customers were not too much nor too light in workload. That was when you came by.

An adventurer stopping by in the capital of commerce? Nothing out of the ordinary, judging by your attire Zhongli concluded that you hailed from somewhere else, save for the tasseled Keychain you have hooked on your bag likely a souvenir from the harbor.

He found amusement in your joy, the way you happily drank up the cup of tea gushing about the flavor it left on your tongue. It was just the right amount of warmth to! The type that even forges the greatest of blades over molten fire.

This first meeting only became special the more you frequented his shop, most of the time you had a tea flavor in mind but there were some days where you allow him to concuct something to surprise you, a chef's recommendation in a way.

And even then you came to love this forgotten flavor he gladly serves, often times when you'd ask what was the name he'd simply raise a gloved finger over his parted lips to signify their covered history, there was a certain narrative behind the brews you so eagerly down and to Zhongli serving them is enough recognition for the stories they herald.

But one day you didn't come by your usual time, the next day was the same and so one until days became weeks, and weeks became months. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't worried, you may not be personally close but he did indeed fester fondness over your presence.

"I'll be here regardless, until they do come by for a drink once more.."

It was a fleeting moment within his vast history, one he got lost in to the point that he shamefully forgot that things come and go differently. In a way that maybe you just cease to exist in his day to day routine.

Whatever happened to you? Did you perhaps went on with your journey? Migrated to another place? Forgive him for his curiosity for its the only thing he can do in his position. He isn't unratoonal enough to actively search for you, he's learned through experience that chasing something that was not within your reach is like complaining what fate serves. And he of all people should know what happens when you question fate.

When the weeks became a year, on the same date you first came by, he left a fresh cup of tea on the counter where he subconsciously hopes you'd come back. The same brew of tea he made for the person that reminded him of humanity's ability to appreciate the smaller things in life.

It's a miracle Diluc even let him be the man behind the bar but here he was. The second adopted son himself shaking drinks for alcohol enthusiasts of every kind ranging from bards to mondstat natives to passing travelers. One of which included you in particular.

It was a bustling hour at the tavern, it was simply by coincidence that you two locked gazes amidst the incoming drunkards. Most would've been turned off by the semi unruly ambience but the liveliness only made you feel more at ease, appreciating Mondstat's freedom in every way you could.

As most tourist would, you asked for a glass of dandelion wine since its the city's staple drink of choice. Kaeya gladly entertains your request even putting on a bit of a show for your amusement, someone as charming as yourself don't come by everyday at the tavern noh?

A throw and shake here a pour and swish there, your liquor was served accompanied by his usual grin, waiting for your reaction to Mondstat's wine. He could faintly remember when he first had a sip of the beverage and he hoped it was the same positive light like yours.

Sure enough you did indeed like the sweet aftertaste it left, it wasn't too sweet but it was the type you chase after once you've feasted on a Savory meal. Your expression of approval earned a satisfied chuckle from the bartender, leaning on the countertop to ask of your story and why you decided to drop by this city (besides for the wine of course.)

Everytime he passes by your figure in the streets he always offers a drink back at the tavern, he may not know where you were staying for time being but he does enjoy your talks after the sun settles leaving the night winds to gently pass by you two whenever he'd escort you to the vicinity for his shift. He's learned to distract himself from the sporadic lifestyle of the city of freedom with your grounded tales over a drink.

He always respected your privacy, but on the day you stopped showing up he started asking around whether anyone saw you recently. The first few people didn't have a beneficial answer but once he asked the personnel at the gate he didn't know why he felt disappointed when they told him that you left that morning.

"Did they now...hah, they could've at least gotten a drink for the road."

Kaeya sets aside one glass in the tavern, one specific glass he never uses when serving anyone else. That glass was a quaint reminder of the person he found amusement in, someone who he wouldn't mind seeing again should the gods allow it.

He's not one to dwell, not after everything that already left him in the past. But whenever he looks to your former seat he can still remember the first expression you made towards the dandelion wine he served to you. As time passes he began to subconsciously associate the wine with fond memories, back to times where a drink was shared among the people he held close.

Wherever you were now, he hoped that you could still have the leisure of having a good drink, hoping that he at least helped in influencing what a good drink was to you. It was just like the wine he's swaying in his hand, a relishing flavor leaving its aftertaste for the drinker to revel in.

#Moon Caffein #Eclipse With No Milk #Tastes from Teyvat #genshin impact #genshin impact headcanons #genshin kaeya #zhongli #kaeya #genshin zhongli

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tenebrius-excellium · 3 years

Text

How To Speak Dragonese was a wild ride from start to finish (why do I get the feeling that all of the books are going to be this way?;)) but it was soooooooo GOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

Incoherent screaming as follows:

- EASY PEASY, OH PLANKTON BRAIN!? YES BESTIE; START OFF STRONG

Hiccup: “I would suggest, Sir, that if there was even a chance we could run into Sharkworms, we should leave the area immediately.” - “For Thor’s sake, boy”, grinned Gobber the Belch. “With that kind of attitude, you might never leave the house!” .....................................actual good point. Hiccup is a wuss sometimes. He’s not always right. Love it. A personal challenge.

- tHe HoPEful PuFFin - my heart, awwwwwwwwww. Hiccup, you precious, purest of all souls in the vast, stormy, unforgivable sea of the Inner Isles

- FLOATING ACCIDENT I CANT

- You don’t get it. this boat is legit my new favorite thing now

- *calmly informative* SHE ALSO HAD A LEAK. FISHLEGS’ HELMET ALSO HAD A LEAK. THIS IS JUST THE BEST

- Also why do the PotC references keep coming (the boat has a leak and so does the bucket/helmet - don’t worry, it’s peak humor, I’ll gladly take it)

- n-n-nANO DRAGONS ARE CANON IN THE BOOKS!?!?!?!?????????? I WAS GONNA MAKE UP A WHOLE UNIVERSE ABOUT THEM; NOW CRESSIDA HAS GIVEN ME ONE!!! I. NEED. MORE. OF THEM. ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- not sure if I would have recognized Alvin if not by the voice David Tennant gave him...but the way it happened, my ears perked up and I was like O_O AW NO

- NANO DRAGONS

- David Tennant’s range of making up voices for each new character is frickin’ IMPRESSIVE - love the fat Consul’s voice

- oh, so some dragons are there to be a snack, huh. Drunken Shrimps all the way. Ow. Not a fan.

- I honestly wasn’t sure how Cressida was going to believably fit the Romans into this narrative. Now I know. Props to her, I guess.

- Fort Sinister reminds me a lot of Eret’s fort. Now I know where Dean got the idea of an ‘outside culture invading the Viking world’ for the second movie. The vibe of Drago’s army certainly felt similar: Dark, heavily armored, cruel, incredibly well organized, scary and absolutely merciless. Drago lacked one thing though that the Romans possessed, and that was purpose.

- How To Speak Dragonese be like “perfect anti-bullying book”

- and also yo. Breaking the greatest philosophical discussion of the world - Why You Should Respond To Suffering With Hope And Not Cruelty - down for kids, I’m here for it. It’s like C.S. Lewis explaining Plato’s Cave allegory in The Silver Chair. Wow. Teaching kids big moral concepts is among the wisest things you can do, in my humble opinion. I’m talking about the Eat-Or-Be-Eaten scene.

- Alvin is so freakishly scary. He’s among the best, scariest villains I’ve ever met, I think. He managed to fool the ROMANS into giving him his revenge. He’d have had no problem killing Hiccup, a 12yo boy, on the spot just because he hated him and because he feared his intelligence. I don’t know whether to compare Alvin to Mildew, Johann, Drago, Viggo or Grimmel from the movies. He’s like his own category, a combination of all of them. Can’t wait to see more of him.

- I finally know how to pronounce Camicazi in the English language. Also, SHE’S GREAT :D

- I found out that aesthetic beauty in Cressida’s world happens at night ♥

#reddie's liveblog #how to speak dragonese

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rare-blog-enteries · 2 years

Text

Beauty and Hatred sitting in a tree / K I S S I N G

Date: 4 September 2022

My partner in literature @pagesandproses

Sometimes I wonder if I drink moonlight. True love is often described as intoxicating. And I often find myself inebriated afterwards...as I am right now, perhaps that is why I find myself overwhelmed and yet somewhere deep down….very very very deep down, a little happy.

Thanks for all the encouragement in your previous email. I can’t begin to tell you how comforting it was.

I find myself being full of hate today. I doubt the reasons for it will be comfortable for you to read. I’d rather not burden anyone with it. However, I do not wish for that to be reflected in this email. So, here are random things I find beautiful. I will express the strength of my anger and hate through beauty. So here’s me channelling my inner Van Gogh.

As Ali Smith wrote once,’It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four.’ A simple line but it made me emotional. Perhaps it is just the emotions and hormones in me. Perhaps it is the moonlight. Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps it is just a beautiful line.

I was walking today to a really beautiful and somewhat wild park. It is very close to our hostel so we often walk there before dinner to either idle around (as we did today) or walk as fast as we can and call it ‘exercise’. While walking towards the park, I saw the sky and the brightness. I love when the street lights are not the usual white kind. When they shine that deep cadmium yellow glow into the concrete streets…oof. It just overwhelms me. It is one of those subtle moments of admiration; admiration of the world, of the concept of beauty, of the realisation that maybe humanity has not fucked everything up. So insignificant, but honestly these were the exact thoughts swirling in my brain as I walked to the playground.

Van gogh. People say that his work reflects the beauty in pain. He was hurt and yet he beautified life. He reflected the world he saw in his depressed state. I would beg to differ. I read that he was not allowed to enter his studio when he had his depressive/self-harm episodes because he’d try to consume the paint, which in those times contained toxic metals. So, he could only create art when he was trying to recover. He does not reflect pain, he reflects the desperation to get better; to regain the right to find peace in art, which was stolen everytime he got worse and to recover enough to fight the world that stood against him in every step. I find that beautiful.

And the horizon. I also love when the sky is deep blue and the horizon is just like nah man, I feel pink today. It reminds me of when I first read about Persephone on Tumblr, badass queen of the underworld and the pretty goddess of flowers. The range! This is how I calm myself down when I find myself contradicting my thoughts. If the sky, vast, immaculate and powerful can choose to be so unique and express so much at once then perhaps I will be okay too. I'm only me. Nothing more. So if the sky gets away with it then so can I. Now I just have to wait for someone to find my shades as pretty as I find the sky to be.

Sometimes I am materialistic, sometimes I wish to run away with nothing but strength to survive. And that’s okay.

I’ll be okay.

Perhaps.

Your messed up weirdo

Misty

#penpal #penpals #writers #writers trying their best

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wastelandcth · 3 years

Text

We’re Going Home - cth

part of nation of two

summary: Petra reminisces on Calum’s first date mistake and how the safety of a car changed her world. Calum thinks of a place to runaway to.

author’s notes: This was a lot of fluff and me looking out the window while it rained. Enjoy!

warnings: Not much, just two lovestruck fools missing one another.

masterlist || request || previous part || next part

Calum had never been a fan of the rain. It reminded him of early mornings when he'd wake up to the rainstorms outside his window and how the ache in his bones practically begged him to stay in bed and drift off to sleep for a little while longer. The rain was just another disturbance in his life. If it rained, his soccer practice would get canceled and he'd have to walk back home, the rain soaking his clothes and weighing down his backpack. Once the band had taken off, the occasional rainstorm put another sour mood on Calum. Outdoor shows would get canceled or delayed, leaving Calum to stare out of the tour bus window as rain droplets raced to the bottom of the windows. If the rainstorm was severe enough, planes he needed to take would get grounded until the storm passed and he wouldn't catch his connecting flight. The rain also meant that sometimes plans he had that included Calum being outside would end with him soaked and left shivering, his bones aching for warmth and dryness the rain usually scared away. The rain outside of Calum's hotel window filled him with a sadness he couldn't quite explain. Maybe it was the fact that the tour had been taking a toll on his body and that he missed his bed and his mug he always used in the mornings while at home.

Or maybe it was the fact that Petra was showing him the view from whatever restaurant she'd been eating at.

"I'm telling you, the second you've settled back in here at home, I'm taking you here and you're going to eat the best french toast you've ever had," Petra said, her camera showing the Pacific Ocean in all it's vastness.

Calum had never been one for jealousy. But as he watched the blue sky and blue ocean on his screen, his body ached with a want to be there next to the woman he loved. He'd do anything to be sitting next to Petra at a cafe, eating amazing french toast and watching the ocean waves. He would do anything to be next to her, holding her hand and listening to her laugh about the way the birds seem to hover above their table in order to steal a french fry or two. So yes, Calum was jealous.

As Petra looked out at the ocean, from where she'd been sat enjoying a glass of ice tea, she couldn't help but chuckle at herself. She'd been trying to get out more and more these days. With Calum gone, she wouldn't have to worry much about having to stop whenever Calum was spotted by fans and waiting for them to chat for a bit before continuing their errands. She'd gotten used to the dates she'd go on with herself, eventually timing them out so that she'd be able to talk to Calum for at least a few minutes before he'd be whisked off to his next engagement with the band. Their first date had also been close to disastrous, according to Calum who told Petra later on, because of his band's engagements. But Petra had just laughed and assured Calum second chances were worth giving.

Petra had arrived at the coffee shop a few minutes early, wanting to save a secluded table for both her and Calum. She knew who he was, of course, she knew who Calum Hood was, and she assumed he'd want privacy when it came to things like first dates. so arriving a few minutes early to get the table near the back of the coffee shop was just something she'd wanted to do for him. The coffee shop had been one that Petra had only been to once when she'd gotten lost after a wrong turn and had ended up in the neighborhood. The outside of the building was a white brick, reminding Petra a lot of those old western stores in the movies.

The inside of the coffee shop, which had smelled of fresh coffee and pastries, had large lamps overhead, giving the already bright building an even brighter indoors. The dark green tiles and dark wood accents around the inside were calming, feeling like a place where Petra could sit down for hours and read a book. Usually, she'd bring a book with her wherever she went, but she had left her most recent read in the backseat of her car, not expecting to have much time to read while out on a date. She'd be too busy getting to know the man with pretty brown eyes who she knew was talented enough to get anyone he wanted, and yet he still chose to invite her out to coffee.

"So, Petra, what do you think about coffee?" he'd asked over the phone one day.

They'd been doing this for a while now, talking over the phone during the slow moments of the day where each other's company was comfortable. Petra had learned a lot about Calum during the soft voices exchanged over phone calls. She'd learned that his favorite snack at the moment was fruit gummies even if it made him sound childish, which it didn't. She'd learned that he'd been busy writing a new album with his band and that usually meant he'd disappear off the face of the earth for a couple of days when inspiration hit, but he'd always try and send her a picture or funny meme to let her know he was still very much alive. Petra had learned that Calum, although usually quiet and reserved according to himself, could talk for hours about anything that crossed his mind during those moments in their calls.

"I don't think I'm well versed in coffee if I'm honest," Petra had admitted, "I never know what to order whenever I do end up at a coffee shop."

"Well, how about we go out and find your drink? I know a great spot where we can start," Calum said happily, "You up for it?"

"Yeah, that sounds fun, as long as I don't develop a caffeine addiction," she teased and looked over at her calendar, "How about Wednesday?"

"It's a date."

And it was almost a date, except for the fact that Petra had sat at the coffee shop for almost an hour and had yet to see Calum. Sure, LA was known for having horrible traffic and Petra herself had gotten stuck in it while on her way to the shop, but an hour with no text or calls from Calum had just made her cranky and annoyed. She'd ordered a coffee by herself, regretting her choice as soon as the bitter liquid hit her tongue, and had forced herself to finish it before she eventually decided to call the date done and over with. The walk back to her car had been quick, her head throbbing with annoyance and a hint of embarrassment. She'd been halfway home when her phone rang, Calum's name played across the screen.

"Petra, I'm so sorry!" Calum breathed out, "I know I said I'd been there almost two hours ago but things got crazy at the studio and I know that sounds shitty but I hope you can forgive me and maybe I can make it up to you!"

If Petra had known Calum at least a little less than she did, she would've never picked up the call, she would've let him go to voicemail and maybe not even call him back ever. But she knew Calum wouldn't have stood her up on purpose and she knew that if they really were going to make something more of their phone calls and occasional flirting over text, she'd have to understand what his job entailed sometimes. She was an adult, she knew dating meant sometimes people make mistakes and that working around them was what would make it worth it in the end.

"Calum, it's...I'm not going to say it's fine because I would've appreciated even just a text saying what was happening,' she sighed, "But maybe we can try again soon, yeah? I had a pretty shitty coffee again, which I am blaming on you," she said with a teasing tone, hoping that Calum caught on to it.

"How about tonight?" Calum asked, his voice hesitant as if he was expecting rejection, "I could pick you up and we can just drive around, maybe pick up some of those burgers you were telling me about? I promise to be on time."

Petra had ended up agreeing to his second first date proposal because he sounded genuine and she couldn't help the flutter in her heart at the mention of the burgers. She'd told Calum about them almost a month ago and knowing he'd remember such a small detail made her a little more hopeful about this working out after all.

"I'll text you my address," Petra chuckled out, "Drive safe, okay?"

Calum's car, which would become a haven for them both at different times in the future, was quiet as they both looked out at the city lights. Their stomachs were full, the burgers and french fries they'd shared making their silence a comfortable one. Calum had profusely apologized the second that Petra's door had opened, the bouquet of flowers in his arms a peace treaty as both of them rode off into the evening.

"The flowers, they're from the same flower shop?" Petra asked as she glanced over at Calum. who'd been focusing on the road.

"Oh, um, yeah," Calum chuckled, "Apparently the cashier and manager were taking bets to see if we'd gather the nerves to go on a date or not," he mumbled, his cheeks flushing as he turned his head to look at her, "Had to tell them about tonight."

"Bets?" Petra laughed and shook her head, "Cherly and Carly, right? The one with the curly hair? She practically bullied me into telling her what had happened when we met," she teased.

The date, which had gone off without another problem or disastrous time issue, had been the most fun Petra had ever had since she'd joined the dating scene in LA. She hadn't expected such a relaxing way to spend her evening to be with an international rock star like Calum. She'd laughed so hard her ribs hurt and had sung out loud in the car with him until her throat was sore. By the end of the night, when the safety of Calum's car had come to an end and the driveway to Petra's house was in view, they both sat in comfortable silence. The engine of the car, which hummed quietly between them, the only noise around as they both glanced at each other.

"I had a lot of fun tonight, I'm glad we did this," Petra said softly, breaking the silence and smiling as she saw the relieved look that washed over Calum's face.

"I'm glad we did too. Again, sorry about earlier today," Calum mumbled and sighed, shaking his head.

"Oh, it's fine, really. Just make sure I get to hear whatever masterpiece you came up with first, yeah?" she teased, leaning over the center console to press a kiss onto his cheek, "Text me when you get home, okay? Drive safe!"

Calum listened to the familiar ring playing from the speaker of his phone, waiting for Petra to pick up. His eyes were busy, focused on the mirror in front of him as he tried to deal with the unruly curls he’d let grow out after Petra insisted on seeing how long they could get. He was halfway across the world, in a hotel he couldn’t pronounce the name of, but it was his last morning there and Petra had no idea that by this time tomorrow he’d be back in her arms. After weeks and weeks of being away, promoting an album that would change the band’s sound and image, Calum was going home to be with his girlfriend. He’d be leaving gloomy Europe, with rainstorms that never seemed to end and accents that he had trouble understanding at times, for the endless sunshine and love that LA had recently shown him.

“Hi gorgeous,” Petra chuckled as she picked up the phone, “You’re calling quite early for someone who went to bed four hours ago,” she teased.

“Hi Pebble,” Calum teased, the nickname earning him a groan from across an ocean, “I missed my girlfriend, couldn’t sleep without your snores.”

“I’ll hang up if you’re just going to tease me,” she threatened with a light laugh, “I miss you too, bub, only a few more days though!”

“Yeah, you better be ready for me to be stuck to your side for weeks,” he mumbled and chuckled, zipping up his toiletries bag and picking his phone up off the counter, “I’m expecting an amazing brunch spot reservation.”

“Oh you know me, I’ve got all the connections,” she laughed quietly, “Do you have a busy day today?”

“Mhm, a lot of interviews,” Calum mumbled, his shoulder holding his phone up against his ear as he finished packing the rest of his thumb up, “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to call you again until tomorrow.”

“That’s fine,” Petra said, the smile evident in the way her voice rose, “You know I’ll still send you an endless amount of pictures and memes.”

“And I love you for it,” Calum chuckled, “I’ve got to go now, but I’ll talk to you soon?”

“Of course, have a nice day! Blow them away, bub!” she said happily, her voice warming Calum’s body at the thought that he’d be with her so soon.

“Will do, Pebbles,” he smirked, laughing quietly as Petra kept her word and hung up the call.

The ride from the airport back home had been a blur to Calum. All he recalled was stuffing his bags into the back and buckling up, the bright skies and warm weather making him regret the hoodie and thick beanie he’d worn to try and hide from the prying eyes. If he wanted his surprise to truly work, he would need to remain unseen in public. But by the time the car had turned onto the familiar street of his neighborhood, Calum began to squirm in his seat, the excitement of being so close to Petra overcoming him. The car had barely stopped before Calum was unbuckled and out, his bags dragging behind him as he threw out a thank you to his driver as he ran to the front door. The light, which was usually off by the time morning came, was still on; acting as a guiding light for Calum to know that he was truly home.

His key unlocked the front door, leading him into the house he’d begun to call home soon after Petra had come into it, and he was met by the familiar bark of his old dog. Setting his bags down by the entrance, Calum toed off his shoes and pulled off the hoodie that had kept his warmth contained within him. His back ached from the long flight and he was starving, his tummy rumbling at the thought of food, but that wouldn’t stop him from crouching down and petting his dog as he waddled over to him. Duke’s tail wagged from side to side so quickly it was a blur of black and white, his paws landing on Calum’s thighs as he sniffed Calum making sure it was really him. Calum had been so busy greeting his best friend and kissing his stinky head that he hadn’t heard the footsteps coming from the hallways.

“Duke, I’m sure it was just the mail person again, or the neighbor walking their pup,” Petra mumbled, her eyes widening as she was met with the sight of her boyfriend standing in front of her, “C-Calum?”

“Hi baby,” Calum grinned, straightening his back out and looking at her with wide eyes, “Surprise!”

Calum hadn’t had the chance to say much else, the force of Petra running into his arms and hugging him had knocked the breath out of him. His arms wrapped themselves around her waist and pulled her even closer, if that was possible, and Calum’s nose nuzzled against the top of her head. They stayed like that for a few minutes, breathing one another in, making sure that they were both truly in the same room again and this wasn’t some cruel dream they’d both wake up from alone in a bed oceans apart. Petra had been the first one to pull away, her eyes meeting Calum’s before she’d cupped his face in her hands and pulled him in for a kiss.

“I missed you so much,” she mumbled, leaving kisses in between her words, “What’re you doing here? I thought you still had a few days?”

“I missed you too,” Calum chuckled and smiled, “A few interviews were canceled and they sent us home early. I just got in about an hour ago.”

“Oh my gosh, I’m so glad to have you back,” she whispered and nodded, pulling him into another kiss that left Calum giggling against her.

“I am too.”

Something Calum loved about the ocean was the vastness of it. Sure, he was absolutely terrified of the secrets it held and the fact that much of it was unexplored, but sitting on the hood of his car with Petra by his side as they both stared out at the waves made of all worth it. After a shower and a much needed snack, Petra and Calum had made their way over to the brunch spot that overlooked the ocean. After a lot of french fries and kisses shared between the two of them, the drive to the ocean was peaceful, both of them taking each other in. By the time they had made it onto the beach, the sunny skies were covered in a fog of clouds. It would be Calum’s luck, after all, to have the rain follow him wherever he went.

“Do you think it’ll rain?” Petra asked, her eyes meeting Calum’s even through the dark sunglasses they both wore.

“I hope not, I thought I had escaped the rain,” Calum teased and pulled her close, “Come on, let’s walk in the sand a bit.”

With hands held tightly, their arms swaying as they strolled down the dandy beach, Calum found himself at peace. The past couple of weeks away had left him wanting more from his relationship and wanting to do more for Petra. In the past, the mere thought of a future with someone would’ve had Calum running for the hills. But with Petra it all made sense, he wanted to be by her side every day, to see her go through her day and be there to make her smile. As the first few droplets of rain fell from the sky, he realized that this future, the one with Petra, was all he’d been missing. Their stroll was cut short, much to Calum’s displeasure when the curtains of rain got closer and closer. The waves roared next to them, the ocean alive and ever more powerful as the rainstorm above them finally let go.

Calum looked over at Petra, who had tugged on his hand and before Calum knew it, they were both racing back to the car. The sand hadn’t made it easier for them to run, both of them stumbling as they raced through the beach in fits of laughter. By the time they’d both shut their doors and panted out breaths, they were completely drenched and looked as if they had jumped onto the ocean itself. They sat in silence watching the view outside of the safety of the car. Watching the waves crash onto the ocean and battle with the clouds above them that were spewing out rain. It was all so violent and sudden, but Calum’s eyes shifted to watch Petra.

He watched as her eyes widened, watching the storm in awe as his chest rose and fell with each breath she took. He watched as her hand ran through the curls, that not even the rain could mess with, trying to shake the water out of them. She was beautiful without even having to try and Calum was out of breath. But Calum didn’t mind, not at all, because Petra could make even the thing he hated the most a beautiful sight.

“We should run away to Sydney for a bit,” he mumbled quietly, his bottom lip trapped between his teeth as Petra’s eyes met his, “I want you to meet my family.”

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