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imaginespazzi · 3 months ago

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Part 10: The Bridges Burned Around Us

Masterlist - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 11 - Part 12

Be good to me, and I'll be good to you (but please don't be too good to be true)

(In which an apologetic writer finally finishes a chapter that took much longer than necessary)

Pairing: Paige Bueckers X Azzi Fudd

Themes: Fluff and Angst

Words: 10.2K (seems fitting for chapter 10 lol)

TW: Swearing

A/N: Hello my lovelies :) I am so incredibly late with this I know but considering it's really the length of two chapters, I think I should be forgiven. Despite how long this took me, I don't really know how I feel about this chapter because it's both filler but also pretty important so honestly it does feel a little all over the place. But I hope y'all like it anyways. I do suggest quickly skimming over Part 2 before you read this just to jog your memory a little bit. I did edit as I always do but there's probably typos/mistakes, so feel free to point those out. As always, let me know what you liked, what you disliked and what you'd like to see in the future. Have a wonderful weekend my loves <3

May 2033

“What the hell Bueckers?” Coach yells, glaring daggers at Paige who has the audacity to at least look a little embarrassed as she reaches a hand to help the rookie she’d just knocked over with far too much unnecessary force. Azzi narrows her eyes at the scene, confused at Paige’s atypical behavior. It wasn’t uncommon for the vets to rib the rookies a little bit, hell they had a whole ragging initiation ceremony planned for this weekend to welcome the newest members of their team, but Paige seemed to have a personal vendetta against Angie Davis.

When they’d watched the draft together, Azzi could’ve seen sworn she’d seen a flash of uncomfortableness flicker in Paige’s eyes as the commissioner announced that the Valkyries, with their third pick acquired via Atlanta, were picking Angie Davis from Stanford University. The blonde had stiffened but only for a split second and Azzi had chalked it up to nothing because really, what beef could Paige possibly have with a 22 year old? Except clearly something was bothering the Minnesota native because this is the fifth time today itself that Paige has fouled the girl so hard that her body had almost slightly bounced as it hit the floor.

The first time, everyone had found it amusing because who didn’t laugh at a rookie getting a taste of the league. The second time, Coach had rolled her eyes but the rest of the team had still found it pretty funny. And then as it continued, Azzi could tell her teammates were just as confused by Paige’s behavior as she was. They might not know the blonde as well as Azzi did, but in the last month or so they’d discover that the basketball superstar was really just a ball of golden retriever energy. Since they’d started training camp recently, they’d seen that Paige always practiced hard but she also had the time of her life doing it. They’d seen that she might practically bulldoze her teammates in her eagerness to be a good defender but she’d always be the first one to help pick them up with a teasing grin on her face right after. Except apparently not with Angie. With Angie, there was nothing but brute force and the first couple of times, before Coach’s clear irritation had started to seep onto her face, Paige hadn’t even bothered helping the rookie up. And although Azzi would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that a part of her found this aggressive display of strength just a tad bit attractive, she also knew it was completely unlike her Paige to be acting like this.

“So,” she says softly, lowering her voice purposefully as she sidles up to Paige in the locker room after practice, “are we going to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” there’s a smirk on Paige’s face as she takes a step closer towards Azzi.

The brunette narrows her eyes, “you know what.”

“What I know,” Paige whispers as she ghosts her hands across Azzi’s hips, keeping her movement innocuous as to not alert their other teammates who are engrossed in conversation not too far away from them, “is that I’m pretty sure you’re just looking for a way to get close to me.”

“You’re so fucking full of yourself,” but she can’t stop the faint blush that’s creeping up her cheeks as Paige’s hot breath fans across her face and her gaze shifts to the blonde’s sweat sheened biceps that are on fully display under her flimsy tank top.

Paige notices it immediately as her smirk widens, “appreciating the view baby?”

“Shut up,” Azzi shoves her back lightly, “don’t try and distract me.”

“‘I’m not even trying. I just have that effect on you,” Paige shrugs coyly as she pushes herself back into Azzi’s space.

The brunette’s eyes dart over to her teammate for a brief second, making sure the rest of them are still occupied with their own conversations as she takes her own step towards the blue-eyed woman, the edges of her lips turning up into a smug grin when she hears Paige’s breath hitch, “and what about the effect I have on you?”

There’s something thrilling about hiding this from their team, something sexy about having to keep their hands to themselves when they’re constantly desperate to touch. It was torture in a way, having Paige so close and not being able to kiss her or hold her. But that only meant that when Azzi did finally get to do all of those things, it felt like finally coming up for air; like after being deprived of her oxygen for so long, she could finally breathe.

Last time around, they’d kept it a secret from the world but everyone who meant something to them had known. Their old teammates for one. This time, especially since they hadn’t quite defined what this was, they’d chosen to keep it even closer to their chests. It had been Paige’s idea this time and Azzi thinks maybe she’d proposed it just to beat the brunette to the punch-maybe she’d even been a little disappointed by it- but she thinks that they probably do need a little more time; a little more time to trust that this time they wouldn’t go up in flames, that they wouldn’t burn everyone else around them.

“You don’t- you don’t have any effect on me,” Paige stutters.

“Is that right?” Azzi asks coyly, taking her shirt off at a ridiculous slow pace, enjoying the way blonde’s eyes are immediately drawn towards her toned abs, “none at all?”

“N-no,” Paige gulps as she watches the brunette finally get rid of the offending t-shirt and she’s left in nothing but a sports bra that does little to hide the curves underneath.

“Appreciating the view baby?” Azzi smirks, repeating the older woman’s words from before she slyly runs her index finger across the purplish red hues of a hickey Paige had left on her collarbone from the night before.

“You’re so-”

“Bueckers,” a loud voice interrupts Paige’s groan as the two of them spring apart, everyone in the room turning to look at their Coach leaning against the doorframe, “in my office. Now.”

It feels a little bit like they’re college students being reprimanded again but there’s this nagging intuition in Azzi’s gut, as she watched Paige sheepishly follow Coach into her office, that she’s missing out on some important information. Something churns in her stomach at the thought of it. Things had been near perfect so far; they were climbing back up to what they had been, maybe climbing their way to something better but Azzi thinks that if another gust of circumstance tries to shove them down again, they might not be able to get back up this time. Because this time, they’re not climbing alone. This time, they have Stephie and at the end of the day, she’s all that matters.

“So is Paige’s car broken or something?” Tessa’s question catches Azzi off guard as she shakes herself out of head and looks at her teammate with confusion.

“Uh no why?”

“I mean it’s just every time she shows up somewhere, it seems she’s in your car, with you. So I just figured something must be up with her car, why else would y’all be carpooling literally every single day unless-” there’s a sparkle in Tessa’s eyes as she leans casually against her locks, “unless there’s another reason?”

“What other reason could there be?” Azzi’s voice is unusually high-pitched as she avoids Tessa’s perceptive eyes and instead glares daggers at a spluttering Jana, “her car’s in the shop. That’s it. That’s definitely it. That’s the only reason I’m driving her around.”

“Aw that sucks,” Laila says with an oblivious empathetic smile, “I mean we could help out if that’s the case? With carpooling.”

“I don’t think-”

“What a lovely idea Phelia,” Tessa smirks and Azzi knows just by how guileful it is, that the former Gamecock is absolutely onto them, “what do you think Azzi? Maybe we can make a little chart for who drives Paige to practice huh? Be welcoming to our teammate?”

Resisting the urge to flip off both Tessa and Jana whose shoulders are shaking with laughter, Azzi settles on a sugary sweet smile instead, “I don’t think that’s necessary-”

“Oh we’d be happy to help,” Tessa chirps happily and Azzi’s suddenly wistful for the moment back in her senior year when she’d dropped the South Carolina guard for an easy layup.

“And that’s very kind of y’all but,” she reaches over to squeeze the younger girl’s shoulder tightly, making her grunt in discomfort, “I think Paige is okay. It just works better if it’s one person. Less complications, you know?”

“Won’t somebody please think about the complications,” Jana snickers.

“I’m so confused,” Laila says, a frown on her face as she looks weirdly at her teammates.

“It’s nothing,” Azzi says shrilly as she slings both her and Paige’s bags on her shoulders, rolling her eyes when both Jana and Tessa giggle at the domesticity of the action, “don’t worry about it, Phelia.”

“Y’all are acting strange,” Laila shrugs as she starts to make her way out of the locker room and Azzi’s rounds on the other two women.

“Whatever you think you know Tess,” Azzi raises a finger in warning, “keep it to yourself.”

Tessa makes a point to make a zipping motion across her lips as her eyes glimmer with mischief.

“Thank god,” Jana gasps dramatically, “I was so tired of having to deal with these two all by myself. Do you know how hard it is Tess? I’ve been doing it for YEARS.”

“You poor soul,” Tessa coos, “I can’t imagine how hard it’s been for you. They’re kind of disgusting.”

“You peeped that already? Damn Azzi, do you realize how sickening y’all must be for Tessa to have already figured it out?”

“No forreal,” Tessa teases, “if you don’t want people catching onto your shit, I suggest y’all stop eyefucking every other second.”

“Fuck all the way off. Both of you,” Azzi grunts as Jana practically howls with laughter.

“You kiss your daughter with that mouth Fudd?”

“I dunno about Stephie,” Tessa drops her voice so only Jana and Azzi can hear her, “but I bet she kisses Paige with that mouth huh Az?”

Azzi groans, hiding her bright red face in her hands as her teammates' jovial laughter echoes through the locker room.

***

Paige is eerily quiet as she climbs into the passenger seat and Azzi knows immediately by the way she doesn’t try to coax her way into driving, that whatever conversation she’d had with Coach, likely hadn’t been a pleasant one. There are a thousand and one questions taking birth in her mind but Azzi doesn’t voice any of them, knowing Paige isn’t ready to answer them. Instead, she laces her fingers through Paige’s, resting them on the other girl's lap as she rubs a soothing circle against the back of her hand, a promise of whenever you’re ready to share, i’ll be ready to listen.

They’ve fallen into a routine of sorts, one driven by that fact Paige has practically moved into Azzi’s house at this point. Their day started with them dropping Stephie off at school before the two of them would go to training or practice or whatever basketball activities they had planned. Then, they’d go to pick up Stephie from school and Azzi would drop her and Paige off at Curry camp while she ran various errands before circling back to pick them up. It’s domestic as hell and there’s a part of Azzi that’s still a little fearful; perhaps they’re trying to fit the puzzle pieces of their separate lives into each other a little too quickly. But she thinks that maybe those puzzle pieces had never really been disconnected, because sometimes she thinks their existence might just be an extension of each other’s.

“You know,” Azzi begins softly when it becomes abundantly clear Paige isn’t going to speak first, “I’m okay with the fact that you’ve probably fucked other people. I mean other than the woman you married as well that is.”

“What the fuck?” Paige’s head whips towards her so quick, it must hurt just a little bit, “where the fuck did that come from?”

Azzi shrugs, “I’m just saying-”

“Why are you just saying?” Paige's eyes widen in panic as she possessively tightens her grip on the brunette’s hand, “are you about to tell me about someone you hooked up with? Because I’mma be honest Azzi I’d rather jump out of this moving car then hear about some whore who had the audacity-”

“Audacity? You do realize I was-”

“Say you were single and I actually will jump out of the car,” Paige warns, “but no actually dude what the fuck?”

“Well you see,” Azzi says carefully, “I’m trying to figure out why you’re being such a bitch to our new rookie and after careful deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s gotta be a hookup gone wrong because why the fuck else would Paige Bueckers, who has a hard time killing a spider, be so unnecessarily mean to this poor girl?”

There’s silence in the car for a second as Paige opens and closes her mouth, unable to get a word out, until she doubles over laughing, the sound of it echoing all around them. Azzi can’t help the soft grin that flitters across her face, relieved at seeing the way the tension begins to dissipate from the blonde’s shoulders. And Azzi swears that when Paige laughs, it feels a little bit like the sun has come out again; like the flowers are blooming and birds are chirping and everything is right in the world again and she thinks the sun should probably be jealous of the warmth Paige exudes because at least against the silhouette of Azzi’s sky, Paige burns brighter than the sun ever will.

“You-you think I fucked Angie?” Paige finally manages to splutter out between peals of laughs, “baby she’s barely 22.”

“Hey,” Azzi pouts, “you always did go for younger women. Like me for example.”

Paige narrows her eyes, “you’re literally one year younger than me.”

“One year and a couple of days,” Azzi corrects.

Rolling her eyes Paige uses both hands to hold Azzi’s non-driving one, “Azzi I swear to you that I have never in my life hooked up with Angie fucking Davis.”

“I know,” Azzi confesses, eyes still focused on the road ahead of her, “so what exactly is your problem with her then Paige?”

“You couldn’t have just asked me that?”

Azzi shrugs, “felt like I needed to make you laugh first. So tell me Bueckers-” before she can continue, she feels lips being pressed to her cheeks and can’t help the crimson tinge it elicits on her face, “what- what was that for?”

“Because you’re a little bit of a sap and I’m glad you’re my sap,” Paige grins, “all mine.”

“You’re trying to change the topic.”

“I am not.”

“Paige.”

The blonde sighs, leaning her head back against the headrest, “can we talk about it tonight? I wanna tell you I promise- I just- I think we need to sit down so that I- I can explain it to you properly.”

“That feels ominous,” Azzi’s stomach clenches at the seriousness in Paige’s voice as she turns onto the street for Stephie’s school, “should I be worried?”

“No,” Paige says firmly, bringing their enclosed hands to her mouth so she can brush a kiss across Azzi’s knuckles, “it’s nothing we can’t get through.”

Azzi nods as she pulls into the school parking lot, mustering up a reassuring smile of her own as she squeezes Paige’s hand. But there’s still a speck of fear dancing around in her gut; it’s this constant fear of losing Paige again that she doesn’t think she’ll ever truly be able to sweep out of her system. They’ve been doing so good these last few weeks -like they’re collecting together the scattered pages of everything we used to be and binding them back together with strings of all that we can become- but sometimes Azzi finds herself afraid that it might all just disappear, that a gust of wind might blow everything out of her hands all over again.

“HI MAMA. HI MISS BUECKS,” she’s shaken from her thoughts by the backdoor opening as Stephie barrels into the car, the happiness in her voice contagious as she leans over the console to kiss Azzi and then Paige, before hanging between them and tapping at her own cheeks. The two adults laugh as they simultaneously press their lips to the little girl's cheeks, causing her dimples to deepen as she giggles between them.

“How was school Stephie-bean?” Paige asks, peering over her own shoulder to make sure Stephie buckles herself in correctly as Azzi backs the car out.

Stephie scrunches up her nose is distaste, “it’s school Miss Buecks. It was so boring. Except for lunch. Lunch was great. I love lunch.”

“You’re so real Steph,” Paige nods seriously, “lunch is the best and school is so bor-”

“Paige!”

“C’mon Az, I’m not gonna lie to the kid.”

“Exactly Mama,” Stephie chimes in loyally from the backseat, “lying is bad.”

Azzi rolls her eyes as Paige twists her hand to hold it out for Stephie to high-five it from the backseat, “the two of you are insufferable.”

“What does that mean?” Stephie asks, tilting her head in confusion.

“It means we’re her most favorite people in the world,” Paige winks at the little girl as Azzi shakes her head fondly, choosing to keep the you’re more than that, you two are the reason my world keeps turning that tastes sugary sweet on the tip of her tongue to herself as she continues to drive.

“What do y’all want for dinner?” she asks instead, ready to make a mental note of ingredients she might need to pick up from the grocery store while Paige and Stephie are at Curry Camp.

“Actually,” there’s a slight nervous lilt to Paige’s voice and when Azzi looks over, she finds the older woman fidgeting anxiously with her thumbs, “I was thinking that maybe um- maybe y’all could come over to mine tonight? Maybe I can cook?”

They haven’t stayed at Paige’s since that first disastrous night. It hadn’t been on purpose per say; it was simply just easier to stay at Azzi’s, especially with Stephie to consider but perhaps a part of it had been subconscious self-preservation on the younger girl's part. Something about sleeping over at Paige’s feels more purposeful; like she’s fully letting herself step back into the other’s girl world and this time with the promise to not run away in the morning. It’s scary but when Azzi sees the hopeful look on Paige’s face as the blonde bites her lips, she thinks it’s worth it to take the leap; she’s ready for it.

“I think that would be nice,” she says with a soft smile, “I’ll pick up some clothes for Stephie while y’all are at camp.”

Paige beams and Azzi can tell she’s itching to lean over to grab her hand or kiss her touch her in any way but there’s still the little fact they still haven’t quite told Stephie anything about them yet that stops her from doing any of the above.

“What do you think of that Stephie bean? You wanna have a sleepover at my place tonight?” she redirects her attention to the little girl instead.

“YES PLEASE,” Stephie squeals, practically bouncing on her car seat before a frown crosses her forehead, “but um-” she hesitates, “you um- you can’t cook Miss Buecks.”

Azzi bursts into a laughter as an offended look clouds Paige’s face, “excuse me? I absolutely can cook.”

“Miss Buecks,” Stephie says, her condescension-filled tone as adult as she can make it be, “you burned my eggs three times this week and then Mama had to make them all over again and we were almost late for school,” the little girl smirks through her ramble, “but that’s okay because I don’t mind being late for school because like I said school is really boring.”

“Okay but what about the one time I didn’t burn the eggs?” Paige haughtily crosses her arms over chest, “have we all just forgotten about that?”

“Pretty sure they were a little undercooked and saltless that one time-OW,” Azzi’s snicker is cut off by a pinch to her stomach, “do you want me to crash the car woman?”

Paige ignores her, turning back to look at Stephie with a betrayed expression, “you said you liked them?”

“I didn’t want to hurt your feeling Miss Buecks,” the little girl wails and Azzi feels a mix of pride and love bloom in her heart at the kind soul she’s raised, “I’m sorry Miss Buecks but I just-” Stephie reaches as far as her seatbelt will allow to cup Paige’s hand in her tiny hands, “I really don’t think you should cook Miss Buecks.Please. I don’t wanna die yet. I’m too cute to die.”

“You know what Stephie bean,” Paige taps the little girl’s nose, “I think you might be even more of a drama queen than me-”

“Don’t sound so proud,” Azzi mutters under her breath.

“Shhh,” Paige chastises, never looking away from Stephie, “but alright sweetheart. I won’t cook. How about we order pizza?”

Stephie lets out a delighted cheer as Azzi grumbles, “more junk food? I swear to god Bueckers you’re completely ruining her diet.”

“On the contrary, I think I’m finally fixing it. You poor thing,” Paige coos at Stephie dramatically, “I bet your Mama was torturing you with nasty green things all day every day before me huh?”

“No no no Miss Buecks, veggies are good for you,” Stephie recites loyally and Azzi grins triumphantly at Paige.

“Oh dear Stephie you’ve been brainwashed-”

“Excuse me? Don’t try to corrupt my child out of her good habits.”

“I’m not corrupting her,” Paige defends as Azzi makes a left turn into the parking lot for Curry Camp, “I’m just teaching her the wonders of grease and oil and all the other fun things that adults lie are bad for you.”

“Paige you are an adult.”

“But a fun one,” Paige smirks, waggling her eyebrows at Stephie through the mirror as Azzi stops the car right outside the building, “right Stephie-bean?”

“The fun-est-est-est-est,” Stephie choruses back as she begins to unbuckle herself so she can latch onto her mother’s neck from behind. Paige takes the opportunity to climb out of the car so she can grab Stephie’s sports bag from where it’s kept in the trunk.

“You be good for Miss Buecks and Uncle Twin at camp today okay?” Azzi whispers to the little girl, “and I better hear that you made all your shots.”

Stephie scoffs, “you know I never miss Mama.”

“That’s my girl,” Azzi grins as she nuzzles her nose against the little girl’s before Paige opens the backdoor and Stephie unlatches herself from her mother, only so she can go barrelling into the older woman’s arms instead, “Stephie-bean you know you can walk.”

“But Mama,” Stephie whines, wrapping her hands tightly around Paige’s neck, “I’m too tired to walk-”

“Stephie,” Azzi sighs.

“You don’t mind carrying me, do you Miss Buecks?”

“Of course not,” Paige grins, “whatever you want sweetheart.”

Stephie looks pointedly at Azzi, “see Mama? Miss Buecks doesn’t mind.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Azzi shakes her head, “alright off you two go. I’ll see you guys in a bit.”

“Bye Mama,” Stephie waves, “hurry back okay? We’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you guys too,” Azzi says warmly, blowing a kiss at both of them.

It’s uncanny how similar the two of them are, when both Stephie and Paige make a show of catching the kiss and bringing it to their heart before looking at each other and giggling over their own silliness. It makes Azzi’s heartache in the best way possible. And as she watches the two of them start walking up the stairs, Stephie rambling and Paige hanging onto every word, she thinks that as long as life gives her the two of them, she’ll never ask for anything else.

***

The first thing Azzi notices when she walks into the gym, arriving a little before camp finishes so she can say hi to her mentor, is Stephie sulking as she glares at Paige from the other side of the court. Confused, because it’s rare to see her daughter looking at the other woman with anything but pure adulation, Azzi follows the little girl’s line of sight to see what could possibly have upset her. A fond smile crosses her face as she sees Paige crowded by a bunch of children, all of them watching the superstar with wonder as she demonstrates her shooting technique. Paige swishes the ball into the basket and one would think she’d just scored the game-winning shot in the finals, by the way the gaggle of kids around her let out enthused cheers.

The blonde has always had this aura that draws people to her -Azzi would know; she’d been one of the first people to succumb to it (not that she’d put up much of a fight)- but there’s something different about the charisma Paige has with kids. Perhaps it’s because of her own childlike innocence that’s still intact despite her age, but it’s clear that the little ones adore her. Azzi watches as one of the little girls animatedly tries to mimic what Paige had just demonstrated, looking upset when the basketball barely touches the rim.

“I’m never gonna make a basket,” she hears the girl pout.

Paige ruffles the kid’s hair before lifting her up onto her lap, “of course you are. You just needed a little bit more height. Here try again,” she says as she urges the girl to shoot again now that she’s higher off the ground. This time the ball falls magnificently through the hoop and the child whoops.

“OH MY GOD COACH P I DID IT,” she squeals, hiding her face in Paige’s neck and while Azzi finds the whole thing quite adorable, when she looks over, she realizes that clearly Stephie is not nearly amused as she watches her daughter’s face transform into a scowl.

“Riley and Ryan used to make the same face any time I gave another little girl too much of my time,” Azzi grins as Steph appears by her side, the former Warriors guard bumping her shoulder as a sign of greeting, “I split the kids into groups, half with Paige and half with me. Kept Stephie with me cause you know I thought I was her favorite but she’s been glaring at all the kids with Paige this whole time.”

“She’s uh- she’s a little possessive,” Azzi chuckles, eyes still on her daughter who finally looks away from Paige, before angrily shooting the ball at the lowered basket in front of her.

“NICE SHOT TWIN NIECE,” Steph cheers as Stephie makes the shot, the little girl’s face unmoving as she gathers the ball back and gets ready to shoot again. Sometimes Azzi thinks, as she claps with pride, her daughter’s laser-focus attitude might rival her own. Maybe it’s a mother’s bias -she’d call it intuition- but she’s certain Stephie’s going to be a basketball phenomenon one day.

“That was so pretty Stephie-bean,” Paige is beaming as she approaches Stephie, the little girl from before holding her hand, “you think you can show Claudia here how you get that arc on it?”

“No thank you Coach Bueckers,” Stephie’s voice is perfectly polite as she makes a point to not look at the two people who’ve just entered her space, but Azzi catches the split second when her gaze shifts irritatedly to the way Claudia’s hanging off of Paige, “I’m a little busy right now. Maybe another time.”

“Oh she’s good,” Steph whistles lowly as Paige’s mouth falls open at not being referred to as Miss Buecks, “she’s gonna have Paige groveling after camp I bet. She’s gonna get whatever treat she wants.”

Azzi groans, “that is not a good thing. Do you know how much junk food she manipulates Paige into getting her?”

Steph laughs, “she spoils her huh?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Azzi mutters but there’s a wistful grin on her face, “It’s part of why Stephie adores her so much cause she knows Paige would give her the world if she could.”

“I don’t think it’s just Stephie who adores her,” Steph bumps his shoulder against her and Azzi blanches at the knowing tone in his voice.

“That’s not- I mean- I don’t- I don’t know what you mean,” she stutters out.

Steph rolls his eyes goodnaturedly, “oh come off it Az. It was obvious when y’all were kids and it’s still obvious now.”

“When we were- you knew?”

“Of course I knew,” Steph scoffs, “I’ve been married for more than 20 years to the same girl I fell in love with at 15 years old Az, I know a thing or two about what love looks like. Of course I knew.”

“I’m just getting clocked left right and center today what the hell,” she grumbles but there’s a part of her that’s slightly relieved about the people around them slowly figuring it out. She thinks she should maybe be a little more embarrassed about how obvious they apparently are -have supposedly always been- but honestly she kind of loves that their love is so bright, that it’s impossible to not see it.

Love. The word sends a shiver through Azzi. It’s not a foreign feeling to her at all, especially not when it comes to Paige. If she’s honest with herself, it’s a feeling that has never left. She’d tried as hard as she could; shoving it underneath a rock of you’re not allowed to feel this way that weighed heavily against her chest. But it had always been there and as soon as Paige had waltzed her way back into Azzi’s life, the blonde seemed to have found a way to shovel it right back out. And that four-letter-word isn’t buried anymore; it’s right there on the tip of her tongue and every time Paige smiles at her -eyes crinkling with only for you-, Azzi’s this close to let it slip through her lips. She’s just waiting for the right time.

“Hey Stephie-bean can I fix your form a little bit,” her attention is drawn back to her surroundings as she watches Paige try to get Stephie to look at her again but her daughter is nothing if not stubborn.

“That’s okay. It’s almost time to go home and I’m sure Uncle Twin can help me with my form Coach Bueckers,” the little girl says contemptuously to a gobsmacked Paige before gesturing at Claudia, “how about you just keep helping her instead.”

“Sheesh that’s one petty kid you’ve got there Fudd,” Steph remarks before stepping to the front of the court and blowing his whistle, “alright y’all it’s 5 o’clock. Great job today! I hope you guys had a lot of fun and learned some good stuff and I’ll see y’all back here tomorrow!”

The former player diligently high-fives all the kids before they disperse towards their awaiting parents. Azzi can tell Stephie’s still irritated when the little girl barely hugs Steph, shaking herself out of her Uncle’s arms much quicker than she normally would as she all but stomps her way to her mother.

“Woah there Stephie-bean,” Azzi says gently, falling to her knees in front of her daughter, “what’s wrong?”

Stephie pouts miserably, “I’m mad at Miss Buecks. She’s been helping other kids this whole time.”

Azzi has to bite her lip to keep herself from smiling, amused by the child’s dramatics, “baby you know that’s Miss Buecks’s job right? She’s here to coach all the kids.”

If possible, Stephie’s frown deepens as she kicks her feet stubbornly, “she can coach them,” she says matter-of-factly, “but why does she have to carry them and give them hugs. She should only do that with me.”

“Stephie-”

“And camp is over now and she’s still with stupid Claudia,” Stephie whines as she uses her hand to turn Azzi’s face towards Paige, “see?”

The we don’t call people stupid lesson that she was just about to give her daughter dies on Azzi’s lips as her eyes fixate on where a stupid pretty young woman who she knows to be Claudia’s mother is staring up at Paige with a stupid flirty smile. Azzi has no idea what the blonde is saying, but she’s sure it can’t be that funny to make the woman tilt her head back in laughter, left hand reaching out to flick Paige’s bicep and lingering far longer than necessary.

“You know what Stephie-bean I think it’s time to home,” and really she feels just a little guilty with how she’s about to use her clearly upset daughter, “how about you go call Miss Buecks over.”

That’s all it takes to get Stephie running towards her and Azzi follows cautiously behind, only getting further irritated at how Claudia’s mother seems determined to step closer and closer to Paige and the clueless blonde does absolutely nothing to stop it, continuing to smile politely at the other woman.

“Miss Buecks,” Stephie comes to a halt in front of Paige, interrupting whatever conversation was going on as she practically forces herself in between the two women, “Mama says it’s time to go home.”

Despite the jealousy simmering her heart, Azzi can’t help that her heart skips a beat at the way Paige’s whole face brightens up at seeing Stephie; clearly relieved at the little girl using her nickname again.

“Give me one second sweetheart. I’m just a little busy talking to Claudia and her mother-”

“Mama,” Stephie says loudly, cutting Paige off as she turns to Azzi, “do you know if Aunty Chérie is in town?”

“Um- I- uh-” the brunette stutters, not having expected her little girl to bring that up as her gaze flickers towards a frozen Paige whose smile is completely gone, her body going rigid at the mention of Clémence.

“I was just thinking,” Stephie barrels on casually, “maybe we could go see her and she could give me cuddles and kisses since app-ently Miss Buecks is too busy to give them to me-”

The little girl cuts herself off with a squeal as she’s suddenly lifted off the ground and into Paige’s arms; the blonde peppering her lips against every inch of Stephie’s face.

“Never ever too busy for you and I’m especially never too busy to give you kisses Stephie-bean.”

“Promise,” Stephie holds out her pinky finger and Paige diligently intertwines her own through it, pressing a kiss to their now interlocked pinkies.

“Promise.”

Shaking her head fondly at her menace daughter’s antiques, Azzi fixes Claudia’s mother with a sweetly saccharine smile as she wraps a possessive hand around Paige’s bicep. She can feel the blonde’s eyes immediately drift towards her, clearly a little thrown off by her forwardness. It had been Azzi’s go-to-move in college whenever Paige’s fanclub would get a little too handsy. She’d sidle up into her girlfriend’s space, marking her territory as subtly as possible. Azzi knows this is a little different. It had been easier back then to play the action off as a protective best friend warding off boundary-less fans; really it was uncanny the things two girls could get away with under the guise of friendship. But it’s different now that they’re actual adults and she can see the clogs running Claudia’s mother’s head as she starts to piece everything together.

“Hi I don’t think we’ve properly met. I’m Stephie’s mom, Azzi, nice to meet you,” Azzi says finally, holding out her hand that isn’t still clasped firmly around Paige’s bicep, “I think it’s usually your husband who picks Claudia up from camp right?”

“I’m Stacie,” the woman says, primly returning the handshake, “yeah my husband’s usually the one who picks her up but I had a little time today-”

“Don’t lie Mommy. I heard you on the phone saying you wanted to come pick me up so you could meet Coach Bueckers-”

“Claudia,” Stacie hisses as Azzi narrows her eyes at the woman.

“You said it’s cause you think she’s really hot-” Claudia manages to get out before her mother furiously clamps her hand over her mouth.

“Azzi,” Paige whispers under her breath, wincing slightly as the shooting guard unconsciously tightens her grip, unable to keep the irritation of her face as she all but glares at Claudia’s mother.

“You know kids, they say anything,” Stacie tries to justify, cowering under the sintering heat of Azzi’s stare.

“Right,” the brunette nods with faux understanding, “well if you’ll excuse us, I think it’s time for us to go unless-” she turns her gaze onto Paige who looks innocently back at her as she hides a smile against Stephie’s stomach, “unless you’re still busy that is?”

Paige shakes her head affectionately as she tugs her arm out of Azzi’s grip, only so she can lock their pinkies together, the angle of it just out of Stephie’s line of sight, “never too busy for you,” she repeats, “let’s go.”

***

“Mama, will you tell Miss Buecks that I’m not speaking to her,” Stephie says as soon as the three of them get settled into the car.

“What,” Paige shrieks, twisting her head around to look at the little girl who decisively looks away, her tiny hands crossed over her chest.

“Stephie,” Azzi sighs exasperatedly, stretching her legs out in the passenger seat; Paige had insisted on driving this time and she hadn’t bothered fighting against it, “babes I thought you’d gotten over it? You were literally just talking to her.”

“That’s cause I forgot I was mad when Miss Buecks gave me my kisses but I rem-ber now,” Stephie explains.

“Remember what?” Paige asks frantically, “Stephie-bean what did I do?”

The little girl in question makes it a point to turn her nose up and look directly at Azzi as she answers, “Mama will you tell Miss Buecks that she knows what she did.”

“I really, really don’t. Stephie sweetheart please tell me so I can fix it,” Paige tries again, and Azzi lets herself marvel at how the normally jittery-woman seems to have endless patience for her little girl.

“YOU GAVE THE OTHER KIDS HIGH FIVES AND CUDDLES AND HUGS AND YOU EVEN LET CLAUDIA ONTO YOUR LAP,” Stephie bursts out emphatically, “you’re not supposed to do that with anyone but ME.”

“I-” Paige looks over helplessly at Azzi who holds her hands up in surrender, determined not to get in between the two of them and their dramatics.

“You didn’t even ask Uncle Twin to let me be on your team,” Stephie accuses and then like she’s suddenly remembered that she’d made a bold assertion a couple of minutes ago, “Mama could you please tell Miss Buecks that I said all of that.”

Azzi rolls her eyes, “I have a feeling she might have heard you.”

“Did you like the other kid’s hugs more than you like mine?” the little girl prods, her eyes suddenly glimmering with tears.

“Oh sweetheart of course not,” Paige consoles immediately, “I could never like anyone’s hugs more than yours, you know that. Your hugs are the best things in the whole wide world. And Stephie-bean, I thought you wanted to be with Uncle Twin, you said you missed him.”

“Wanted to be with you more,” Stephie pouts stubbornly, “I don’t wanna share my Miss Buecks with the other kids. I don’t want you to hug them or carry them and you definitely can’t give them kisses.”

“I didn’t even give any of them kisses,” Paige protests.

“Stephie, Miss Buecks is a person, not an object. She’s allowed to hug or carry or kiss-” Azzi tries to explain but is almost immediately interrupted by Stephie who gives her an unamused look.

“Well is she allowed to hug and carry and kiss Claudia’s Mama then?”

Azzi’s mouth falls open as Paige barely holds in her chuckle at the little girl’s cheeky question, “she absolutely is not allowed to do that.”

“Exactly,” there’s a satisfied grin on Stephie's face as she takes in the still dumbfounded expression on her mother’s face.

“I just- I meant the kids. She’s allowed to hug or carry or kiss the kids-”

“NO SHE’S NOT.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Paige moves her hands up and down in a calming gesture before she reaches for Stephie hands, “how about this? From now on, I won’t carry any of the other kids and I definitely won’t give them any kisses. But can I at least give them one hug? Just one tiny little hug?”

Stephie ponders over the request for a second, “okay,” she agrees finally, “but only one hug and it can’t be longer than three seconds okay? And then you come and give me three of them right after?”

“Done. I’ll come give you five hugs right after,” Paige grins happily as the two of them shake on it before she turns back around to start driving them towards her house.

“Mama you can tell Miss Buecks that I’m speaking to her again,” Stephie smiles toothily at Azzi through the rearview mirror.

“Really?” Azzi responds sarcastically, “I couldn't have guessed.”

“You know,” Paige drops her voice so Stephie can’t hear them, “you’re being pretty sassy for someone who was just as irrationally jealous as a five year old a couple of minutes ago.”

“I was not jealous,” Azzi says indignantly, repeating herself when Paige’s smirk deepens, “I have no idea what you’re talking about Paige, I was absolutely not jealous.”

“Whatever you say baby,” Paige hums quietly as she turns the music up in the car, grinning at Stephie through the mirror when one of their new favorites comes on.

Azzi preemptively covers her ears as her soft “oh please don’t start singing-” is immediately drowned out by the two other people in the car beginning to sing at the top of their voices. They barely know the lyrics and they’re definitely not on key and really Azzi’s poor ears are bleeding, but as she’s coerced into reluctantly joining in, she thinks this could still be her favorite sound in the whole wide world.

They’re so enthralled in their cacophony -in each other- as they pull up to Paige’s house, that it takes them a far longer than it should to notice the figure on her porch. It isn’t until they’ve parked in the driveway, and Azzi’s gone around to grab her and Stephie’s overnight bag from the back while Paige lifts Stephie onto her shoulders, and they’re finally making their way up the three steps that lead to the deck, that they finally do.

All chatter comes to a halt as the boy -well that’s not quite right; not when he towers over Paige and Azzi as he stands up from where he’d been sitting on the lawn chair. It’s been almost four years since she’d last seen him in person and even then he’d been a fleeting face in the crowd. She’s seen plenty of his clips from the rookie year he’d just finished in the NBA but it isn’t the same as seeing him in the flesh now. So much has changed; the baby fat is gone from his face, he’s lankier and longer and there’s a discernible aura of confidence around him; as is expected from a 20 year old man. Yet, as Azzi lets her gaze wander over him, she sees what she’s always seen. She sees that same innocence, that same kindness, that same drive in his eyes that she’d always found reflected in his sister’s eyes too. She looks at him and she still sees a mini version of her Paige.

***

October 2022

“AZZI,” Drew screams as he runs across the arrival gate, his carry-on suitcase practically abandoned for the flight attendant with him to begrudgingly pick up.

“DREW,” Azzi’s smile widens as the little boy comes to a halt in front of her, his arms immediately wrapping around her waist, “oh my god you’ve gotten so much bigger little dude.”

Drew scrunches his nose up at her, “you literally saw me like a month ago.”

“And I think you might have doubled in size since,” she ruffles his hair before turning to the flight attendant who’s not so subtly checking her out, “thank you so much for getting him here safely.”

“Oh just doing my duty m’am, especially for a pretty lady like you,” the man says and Azzi winces at his dated flirting technique.

“This is Azzi,” Drew introduces, irritation seeping into his voice as he tightens his grip on Azzi’s waist, “you know how I told you I’m flying out for my sister’s birthday, this is my sister’s girlfriend and it was her idea to fly me out to surprise my sister. Because you know she’s her girlfriend.”

“Right,” the man grimaces and Azzi has to bite back the laugh threatening to escape as he hastily hands Drew’s suitcase over before barely managing a half-hearted grin, “I um- uh- well I should get back to the uh- plane or something. Tell your- tell your sister happy birthday.”

“Thanks again,” Azzi calls after the man as he all but runs away from them, shaking her head fondly down at Drew who’s giggling into her side.

“You think if I tell Paige he flirted with you, she’d get him fired?” he asks cheekily.

“There’s a nonzero chance that she’d at least try,” Azzi agrees as the two of them start making their way out of the airport and towards her car.

It’s a chilly fall morning and the sun has barely risen in the sky but Drew seems more awake than ever as he practically bounces into the passenger seat, clearly excited to see his sister who has no inkling that he’s coming. The idea had come to Azzi a week or so ago as she’d racked her head for ideas of what to do for Paige for her birthday. She’d done a good job putting up a front for the rest of their team -avidly cheering for them from the sidelines during practice- but Paige had been struggling these last couple of weeks. Azzi knows firsthand what it’s like to watch everyone else play the sport she loves while nursing her own injury and no matter how many i’m fine don’t worry about me spiels she got from her girlfriend, Azzi knew it was killing the point guard to not be out there with their team.

If she could, Azzi would have liked to have miraculously fixed Paige’s torn ACL as her birthday gift but that was wishful thinking. So instead she’d decided on cheering Paige up with the other thing she loved more than playing basketball: spending time with her baby brother. It didn't take that much convincing to get Bob Bueckers -who’d seen just how despondent his daughter had been those first couple of weeks in that gloomy hotel- to allow Drew to take the first half of this week off of school. From then on, the main difficulty had been keeping it a secret from Paige who seemed to have sixth sense for when something was going on behind her back. It didn’t help that Drew had come close to spilling the beans more than a handful of times. But they’d somehow managed it and this morning, Azzi had rolled out of her girlfriend’s arms much earlier than she would have liked to, ready to give Paige the day she deserved.

She glances at the clock. It’s almost 8 and Azzi knows that Paige is probably beginning to stir awake. She can almost picture the likely confusion on her girlfriend’s as she’d reach out for Azzi, only to find the spot next to her empty. As if on cue, the sound of a phone ringing vibrates around the car and Drew’s eyes light up at Paige’s name flashing on the media-board.

“Don’t say a word,” Azzi warns him as she picks up the call.

“WHAT THE HELL AZZI. WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?” Paige’s irritated voice echoes throughout the car, “DO YOU KNOW HOW RUDE IT IS TO MAKE YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAKE UP ALONE IN THE MORNING? ON HER GODDAMN BIRTHDAY?”

Despite Azzi’s warning, Drew snickers loud enough for the speakers to pick it up and the brunette fights the urge to hit her head against the steering wheel when Paige lets out a dramatic gasp.

“OH MY GOD ARE YOU WITH ANOTHER GIRL. ON MY BIRTHDAY?”

“No Paige I am not with another girl-”

“Well it sounds like there’s a girl with you.”

Drew opens his mouth to protest, clearly agitated with his voice potentially being mistaken for a girl’s but Azzi’s quicker, immediately clamping a hand over his mouth.

“I am not with-”

“Wait. Why did that voice sound so familiar?” Paige asks and Azzi can picture her scrunching her nose through the phone, “it can’t be any of the girls. I think I saw all of them in their apartments while I was looking for you but it sounds so-”

“It’s no one,” Azzi says hurriedly, “I’m just picking up something for your birthday.”

“I don’t want anything for my birthday,” Paige grumbles, “just wanted to wake up to my beautiful gorgeous girlfriend but no, you couldn’t just let me have that.”

A soft blush, tinted with hues of you make my imperfection feel perfect, creeps up Azzi’s cheeks as Drew teasingly waggles his eyebrows at her, “I promise I have something even better for you.”

“What could possibly be better than morning se-”

“Celebratory cuddles. Right yes what could be better than morning celebratory cuddles,” Azzi babbles, ignoring the weird look Drew gives her as she tries to prevent them from falling in the ditch her girlfriend is unknowingly about throw them into, “oh my won’t you look at that, that sign has all the reasons I shouldn’t try to talk and drive.”

“Baby what? Are you having a stroke. That’s not a thing-

“Oh it totally is and I really have to hang up. Love you baby, see you soon!’

“Azzi-” a loud beep rings through Paige’s protests as Azzi rushes to cut the call, slumping back in her seat with a sigh.

“Morning celebratory cuddles?” if she wasn’t so embarrassed she would laugh at the side-eye Drew shoots her, “y’all are so weird.”

“Watch it. I will send you back to Minnesota.”

“No you won't,” it’s uncanny how Drew has Paige’s exact smile as he goofily grins at her, “you love Paigey way too much to do that to me.”

Azzi rolls her eyes fondly, “yeah maybe just a little bit.”

There’s peaceful silence in the car for a while as Drew leans back in his seat, looking thoughtfully out the window. Azzi feels excitement bubble in her stomach in anticipation for Paige’s reaction to seeing her little brother. For as long as she’s known her girlfriend, she’s always known just how special Drew is to her; he’d been more a child to her than a brother and although it hasn’t been that long since Paige has seen him, Azzi could still hear the wistfulness in her voice every night she’d said good-bye to him on the phone. She feels giddy just knowing that seeing Drew again will put that earnest, loving smile she loves so much on Paige’s face. That smile, Azzi thinks, might just be the reason her world keeps turning.

“Hey Azzi?” Drew says slowly, “can I ask you something?”

“Course you can kid. You can ask me whatever you want,” Azzi reaches out to squeeze the little boy’s hand as he fidgets in his seat.

“Do you-” he hesitates, sucking in a deep breath, “do you think two people can stay together forever?”

Azzi’s taken aback by the gravity of the question, not having expected to deal with heavy-hitting ones like this so early in the morning. And really the truth is Azzi doesn’t know how to answer this question. It’s the kind of question her own brain conjures up sometimes and she has to distract herself from the way it makes her heart constrict because what if two people can’t stay together forever?

“That’s a heavy question,” she says finally, “where’s this coming from?”

Drew shrugs and his tone teeters on the edge of defensiveness when he answers, “just some things I think about sometimes.”

“I don’t know,” she says carefully, “I’d like to think some people can. I mean my parents have been together for a really long time and I’d like to think they’ll stay together forever.”

“How about you and Paigey?” Drew prods.

There’s an answer of yes that tastes like asphalt on the top of Azzi’s tongue and so much of her wants to spit it out and have that be the answer she gives Drew. But there are these uneasy shackles of uncertainty, of what if’s, of who knows what the future could do to us, that stops her. And she doesn’t know why she’s so scared of saying yes. Because if she’s honest with herself Azzi can’t really fathom a forever without her girlfriend; not when sometimes it feels like instead of a heart, it’s Paige that beats rhythmically against her ribcage.

“I really, really hope so,” she whispers.

“Azzi,” Drew’s voice is coated in sincerity and the brunette hums in response, “you won’t ever hurt my Paigey will you?”

And there it is again, the unpredictability of what could happen next that’s beginning to feel a little suffocating. She wants to give Drew a resounding no because Azzi would rather drive a dagger through her skin before letting Paige get so much as a paper cut but life is so fickle and she’s scared of making a promise she can’t keep. So she makes one that she swears she can.

“I promise that I will try my absolute best not to hurt your Paigey.”

***

May 2033

“Well,” Drew Bueckers sneers, his tone filled with contempt as he takes in the way Paige, Azzi and Stephie are practically wrapped into each other, don’t you guys just look so fucking cozy.”

There’s a sinister tension-filled quiet as the three adults -god it’s weird to include Drew as an adult but Azzi supposes that that’s what he is now- look between each other.

“Umm you owe me a kiss,” Stephie cuts into the silence.

“What?” Drew scrunches his face at the little girl.

“You said a bad word,” Stephie says matter-of-factly, “and Mama says whenever someone says a bad word around me, they have to give me a kiss. So Miss Buecks,” Drew's eyes narrow at the nickname as the little girl lightly taps Paige’s shoulder, “can you turn around and move closer so he can give me a kiss?”

“You don’t, you don’t have to do that-” Azzi tries to intervene.

“Yes he does Mama,” Stephie interupts her indignantly, “rules are rules right?’

“Stephie-”

“Rules are rules,” it’s Drew who cuts Azzi off this time, his previously stoic face morphing into something warmer as he takes a step closer to her daughter and presses his lips against her turned cheek, “there you go. Am I forgiven for saying a bad word now?”

Stephie grins up at him and Azzi feels a wave of this is how it always should have been pinching at her heart she watches the two of them.

“You’re forgiven but you have to promise not to do it again.”

“I don’t make promises like that kid,” there’s an unspoken accusation as Drew keeps up a smile towards Stephie but his eyes dart for the briefest second towards the two women around him, “but I promise I’ll try.”

“Okay,” Stephie accepts happily as she reaches over Paige’s shoulder to press her own lips against Drew’s cheek.

“What was that for?’ he asks a little dazedly.

Stephie shrugs, “because I think I’m gonna like you.”

“Drew,” Paige whispers finally, gently letting the little girl off of her shoulders, “what are you- what are you doing here?”

“What? A guy can’t just come visit his sister anymore?” there’s an unfamiliar hard edge to Drew’s voice -a stark contrast from how he’d been with Stephie- that makes Azzi flinch.

“Of course he can but I just- you didn’t- you didn’t tell me you were coming,” Paige presses.

“Well we've been talking about me coming down for a while but it just hasn’t happened and so I thought- I thought why not just come surprise you but-” Drew purses his lips as he gestures to the trio in front of him, “I think I might be the one who’s surprised.”

“Drew-”

“Actually you know what no,” he clenches his jaw, voice dripping with barely controlled anger, “I’m actually not surprised. Not surprised at all. Because really this- this is exactly what I should have expected from the two of you.”

“Maybe,” Azzi nibbles at her bottom, “maybe we should go-’

“NO,” both Stephie and Paige yell out in tandem as the little girl immediately clutches onto the blonde’s thighs.

“I don’t wanna go. Miss Buecks tell Mama I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re staying right here with me,” Paige reassures the little girl as she turns her gaze back to Azzi, “you’re not going anywhere okay?”

“Paige-”

“I asked you to stay tonight and you’re going to stay. End of discussion,” Paige says firmly and Azzi lets out a reluctant sight.

“You asked her to stay? As in stay the night? Oh my god,” Drew scoffs maliciously.

“Drew,” there’s a warning tone in Paige’s voice as she deattaches herself from Stephie, keeping her voice low, “not right now okay?”

Her brother rolls his eyes, grunting out a “whatever,” but listening to his older sister like he always had and suddenly Azzi feels nostalgic for the little boy she had once known.

“You’re so tall,” she blurts out, grimacing slightly when he turns to her with a frown.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean I knew that. I’ve seen some of your highlights and I knew I mean- I knew you were taller and that you’ve gotten bigger and that you’d look stronger and all of that but I just-” Azzi gulps between her babbling, “you just- you look different Drew.”

There’s a shine of warmth in Drew’s gaze for a second but it flickers away faster than it had appeared and his eyes are cold with flecks of betrayal as he looks at Azzi, “that’s what happens as people get older isn’t it? I wouldn’t look so different to you if you’d been around to see me grow up.”

There’s venom laced in every word and Paige immediately opens her mouth to argue with him, but Azzi wraps a hand around her wrist to stop her. Because even if the words seep into her skin and infect it with bruises of guilt and regret, Azzi thinks she probably deserves them. She’d been in Drew’s world for so long and then one day, she just hadn’t been. She thinks he probably could have spewed something even more poisonous and she just might have deserved that too.

“Are you sleeping over too, Uncle Drew?” Stephie asks softly, unaffected by the tenseness of the adults around her.

“Uncle Drew?” Drew asks slowly.

Stephie nods with a grin, “Miss Buecks called you Drew and that’s when I figured it out. Mama and Miss Buecks have told me stories about you and there’s some pictures of you from when you were littler at Nana and Pop's house,” she rambles and Drew’s eyes soften at the idea of Stephie knowing of his existence, “ and just in case you don’t know who I am even though you should,” she gives him a pointed look as if everyone should know who the little girl is, “I’m Stephie. And you’re my Miss Buecks’s brother so that means you’re my Uncle Drew.”

“Right that um-” Drew clears his throats, “that makes sense Stephie.”

“So Uncle Drew, are you sleeping over too?”

“Yeah, yeah I guess I am.”

“YAY!” Stephie squeals as she laces her fingers through Drew and begins to pull him towards the front door, “so Uncle Drew what’s your favorite pizza topping?”

Something wonderful flutters in Azzi’s chest as she watches the two of them interact -it’s a little bit like seeing the past and present harmonically blend into one- but despite that, despite the reassurance that Paige squeezes against her hand, there’s an uneasiness lingering in the back of her mind. That wretched but familiar fear of the future weaves itself through her heart. Between the frostiness from Drew and whatever secret Paige is keeping from her, Azzi can’t help but wonder if these last couple of weeks had simply been a mirage. She can’t help but wonder if this bubble of happiness that they’ve built is about to be burst by a needle of circumstance again.

#pazzi #paige bueckers #azzi fudd #wcbb

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theremustbeabear · 2 months ago

Text

a lot of monster media has a hard time with balancing making their monster incredibly dangerous but also keeping the most important characters alive without it seeming like obvious plot armour

but i think the terror does a really great job--not just because they do allow it to kill a number of important characters, but because of the composition of the two scenes where tuunbaq is beaten

the first, in ep 5, is when tuunbaq chases blanky up the foremast, which, on the surface, seems like a very obvious case of plot armour. tuunbaq kills several other crewmen with incredible ease in that very same scene, but then blanky is spared long enough to escape from it, simply because he's an important character.

but that's not what's going on there. all of the easy deaths, so far, prior to this, have occurred on tuunbaq's territory. on flat ground, on the ice, and now tuunbaq is staking its claim on terror. but terror is still occupied, and blanky, especially, is a man who is more at home on a ship than land. tuunbaq is beaten, here, because blanky is playing with a home turf advantage. blanky does have armour, but it's not because he's an important character--it's because tuunbaq has invaded the space where he's most comfortable, and so he goes up, to where he knows a bear can still follow him, but it'll be exposed, and too heavy to follow him all the way.

and this show has done a great job of setting the stakes, already, by this point--the first time i watched this scene, even though blanky was so far surviving the confrontation, i was incredibly sure that he wasn't going to make it out. i thought for certain that he was going to have to sacrifice himself in order for them to hit tuunbaq with the cannon, and so it was deeply satisfying when he actually survived. i was so fucking happy, because i was already starting to get sad about him being dead, even though he wasn't dead yet, lol. it feels earned, when he makes it out, and fair enough that he loses a leg in the process, too.

the second, in the final episode, is i think a bit more obvious, and considering how many other major characters get torn apart, it doesn't feel quite so much like crozier has plot armour. but tuunbaq is once again beaten by using the things that are not native to its land, that tuunbaq isn't designed to deal with. the sick and poisoned flesh of the seamen it's already consumed, for one, and then the boat chain.

and, for the second time, in order to beat tuunbaq, a limb must be sacrificed--crozier's hand, i think, counts, even though he loses it after the confrontation is long over, because blanky only loses his leg properly after the fact as well. and i think this can be brought around to how tuunbaq's shaman must remove their own tongue to communicate with it--if one wishes to have any sort of dominance over tuunbaq, a part of their body must be given in exchange. silna and her father give their tongues, blanky gives his leg, and crozier gives his hand.

and it is emphasized through hickey's failure that tuunbaq cannot be controlled by the expeditioners. the colonizers. it can be beaten back, and suppressed, and killed, through sacrifice, but it cannot be harnessed. it belongs to silna's people, to the inuit, and cannot truly be taken away. the only way to beat it is by invading its home with foreign powers and losing something of yourself in the process.

tl;dr thomas blanky doesn't need plot armour because he's just that good /silly and also this show is just. awesome.

#jupiter.txt #remus.txt #the terror #thomas blanky #francis crozier #tuunbaq #terror meta

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physalian · 5 months ago

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How to Make your Writing Less Stiff 4

Let’s keep this train rollin’! This time less down to line edits and more overall scope of your narrative

Part 3

1. Foreshadowing

Nothing quite like the catharsis of accurately predicting where something’s going to go. It doesn’t have to be a huge plot twist or a character death, it can (and should) be little things that reward your audience for paying attention. Double points if it adds to rewatch/re-readability.

Example: In The Dark Knight, this exchange happens:

Harvey: “You’ve known Rachel all her life.”

Alfred: “Oh, not yet, Sir.”

You won’t think anything of it on your first watch. Alfred is just making a witty joke that throws Harvey off. Watch the movie again, when Rachel dies, and it becomes some incredibly dark foreshadowing. Turns out Alfred has, actually, known Rachel all her life.

2. Chekhov’s Gun

Chekhov’s Gun is a narrative concept where a seemingly inconsequential element introduced at some point in the narrative (a gun) must “fire” by the end of the narrative. Sometimes this element leaves audiences uneasy or anxious, because they know something bad must come of it. Sometimes they think nothing of it until it’s about to fire and you get a one-two punch of the realization that it’s about to hit, and then the impact of the hit. It helps create tension, and tension is incredibly important (if you want a whole post of my take on it, lmk).

It also helps your narrative look more cohesive, where nothing is left on the table. Your set-ups and payoffs leave no threads dangling.

3. Repetition

The Rule of threes can apply on a micro and macro scale. I like doing lists of adjectives in threes, (e.g. My cat is soft, fluffy, and adorable) because the cadence and the flow of three is something we’re familiar with in spoken language. We like three supporting examples for an argument. Any less doesn’t feel strong enough, any more feels like you’re trying too hard. This is not a rule it’s a suggestion.

On a grander scale, you can look at the script of Curse of the Black Pearl for a masterclass in macro rules of three, like three parlays. Doing this helps your narrative look more cohesive and like every detail is thoroughly interwoven and nothing is coincidence. Your audience will get to the third instance and mimic that DiCaprio pointing meme—they will absolutely notice.

4. Motifs

Motifs as well, beyond threes, help. Colors are a huge one. For example every time you mention the color purple, you could attach it to an emotion, or a character, or an important plot beat, like how leitmotifs work for character themes in movies and TV shows.

Obvious examples in film are like lightsaber colors or dressing up the good guys in white and the bad guys in black. I did this whole post about color in fiction.

It’s a lot of other things too. Weather elements and times of day, or specific inconsequential objects popping up over and over again, like birds, or litter, fallen leaves, clothing items. Whenever the narrative mentions them, the author is trying to clue you in on some subtext within that scene.

—

My new novel is here!!! Do you like supernatural fantasy? How about queer vampires? How about acespec characters? Then Eternal Night of the Northern Sky is for you!

#writing #writing advice #writing a book #writing resources #writing tips #writing tools #writeblr #foreshadowing #chekhov's gun #motifs

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artdolliewishes · 4 months ago

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Neytiri’s Fatal Flaw and Her Future Arc.

I was watching the deleted/original cut of the scene with Neytiri holding Spider hostage which — first off, incredible scene by the way like holy shit — but it made me think about how perfectly it served for Neytiri’s character.

Someone might’ve already talked about this already, but what I don’t think a lot of people realize is that this scene serves as the payoff for earlier Neytiri-related scenes as well as a starting point for her arc going forward.

If you haven’t watched the scene, here, it’s a far more impactful version of an already hard hitting scene and I’m going to treat it as what “really” happened in the story for the sake of analysis.

The first moment I’m focusing on is this one where Neytiri goes to pick up her bow after killing a few RDA grunts, only to find that the bow is now broken and unusable.

There’s a running theme in these two movies that I’ve seen people point out and that’s how Neytiri keeps losing things that are precious to her, whether they be people, places, or objects.

In the first movie, she loses a lot including but not limited to the Hometree, the Tree of Voices, her older sister, Tsu’tey, her Ikran, and her father. When her father dies, he grants her the Ceremonial Bow and that’s what she ends up using to fight in all subsequent battles.

In the second movie, she thankfully doesn’t lose as much, but she’s still forced to leave her home and her first born son is killed in the heat of battle, rough times all around.

You’ll note that I didn’t include losing her precious bow on the list of things she lost and that’s because she didn’t lose the bow, she broke it.

All the other losses I’ve described are caused by the RDA, but this one isn’t. Instead of her bow being broken by another grunt in the heat of the battle, she’s the one who breaks it by swinging it haphazardly at her enemies.

I may not know all that much about archery or making weapons, but I’m almost certain that bows aren’t designed to be used like that, which is why her bow broke the way that it did.

And it cannot be understated how important this bow must be to Neytiri. I mentioned before that it was given to her by her late father, making it an important connection to her family already, but it’s also made from the wood of Hometree. So not only is it a connection to her family, it’s a connection to her people and the home that was stolen from them.

All that and she still broke it, not because she didn’t cherish the bow, but because she just couldn’t control her anger enough to handle it properly.

And that’s what I feel Neytiri’s fatal flaw is, as well as what her arc will be primarily focusing on in the upcoming movies — Neytiri’s anger and hatred leads to blind rage, and she becomes liable to hurt those she cares about.

For the record, I am not making the claim that Neytiri’s flaw is that she gets angry. Being outraged by death and destruction, hating those who bring about injustice, these aren’t flaws and aren’t things she should be vilified for. What is a flaw is how she uses her anger, or rather how it uses her.

Jake spells it out pretty cleanly in a scene that happened a while ago. When Tonowari told Jake and Neytiri about the destruction the RDA was causing to the nearby villages, they immediately connect it back to Quaritch. Neytiri describes how they have to finish off Quaritch — “we have to hunt this demon, trap him, kill him” — and this is what Jake says in response to that idea:

“We gotta be smart…”

He’s not dismissing the idea of doing something, he’s just cautioning her on how they go about doing it. That’s the crux of Neytiri’s most prevalent flaw, it isn’t her becoming angered at the injustice she and her people face, it’s her not being smart about how she acts on it.

The last two moments I’d like to draw attention to are the one where one of Quartich’s lackey calls Neytiri a “wild animal” and the one where she actually acts like one.

For the record, Lyle and Quaritch are in the wrong for likening Neytiri to an animal and dehumanizing her in the process, especially when the reason they insulted her was because she was acting violent in the video where she was protecting her husband. However, it’s undeniable that during the fight on the Sea Dragon, Neytiri is the most violent and rage filled we’ve ever seen her.

It’s particularly noticeable right before she realizes she broke her bow, which is definitely not a coincidence I’ll tell you that much.

She screams in the guys face and stabs him over and over and over again, after which she gets up and starts growling, searching for anything else that moves. It’s not a stretch to say that, in this moment, she’s acting almost like a bloodthirsty animal hungry for vengeance, not too dissimilar from the wild animal the recoms painted her as.

And all of this, her accidentally breaking her father’s bow, being asked to be smart about it all, acting like a wild animal, it all comes to a head in the moment where she uses Spider’s life as leverage to save Kiri’s. It starts off good when she makes Quaritch let Kiri go, but when Kiri is freed from Quaritch’s grasp and she can turn her attention to the man himself…

…she puts the blade back against Spider’s neck and utters those infamous lines:

“A son for a son.”

I’ve seen a lot of people comment on how “powerful” of a scene this is, and while I agree that it’s a powerful storytelling moment and extremely important to Neytiri’s character, I think a lot of people miss the fact that this isn’t an admirable moment of a mother’s rage, but a scary and dark moment where Neytiri is about to fall to Quaritch’s lows.

Because if Neytiri had actually gone through with this decision, then she would’ve done the same thing to her family that she did with her bow — destroy it. What’s important to note about Neytiri’s hatred towards Spider is that; while it’s understandable considering all the trauma she went through at the hands of his father and the RDA, she’s the only one in her family that feels this way towards him.

For one thing, Spider is both Lo’ak and Kiri’s best friend and they know how much Spider hates being Quaritch’s son, there’s no way that they’d just accept Neytiri after she killed their best friend. We don’t get much development on Spider’s relationship with Tuk or Neteyam, but we see Spider protect Tuk, tease Neteyam, and cry during Neteyam’s death, so they must be friends on some level.

And finally Jake. Admittedly, Jake is pretty lukewarm towards Spider throughout the entire movie, but I’d argue that’s him keeping a respectful distance because of him wanting to side with his wife and not any malice Jake genuinely holds towards Spider himself. We even see him checking over Spider at the end of the movie like he does with Lo’ak and Neteyam.

As much as Jake unconditionally loves Neytiri, I cannot see a world where he’s able to look at her the same way if she killed an innocent child.

And I do mean innocent, because at this point in time Spider’s only “crimes” are being human(not his choice) and being Quaritch’s son(also not his choice). Even if Neytiri’s feelings towards him are understandable and valid, her actions at this point are not justifiable and Jake knows it.

That’s not even mentioning how she hisses at Kiri during this scene, she’s not acting with her family’s best interest in mind, she’s acting on pure rage.

If she had gone through with it and killed Spider, Kiri and Lo’ak would hate her, Tuk wouldn’t be able to look at her the same way again, and Jake probably would’ve left her. She truly did come a hair’s width away from destroying something precious to her once again.

Now let’s talk about Spider for a minute because he’s crucial to all of this, as Neytiri’s hatred for humans extends to her hatred of him.

We already know that, to the Na’vi, “I see you” is considered a respectful greeting, but it’s also a show of great understanding between two people; it’s why Jake’s two pivotal emotional moments at the end of the movies are him telling a loved one “I see you,” it’s because he’s come to understand them as a person beyond what he initially thought.

In contrast, Neytiri does not see Spider, her eyes are shut. Instead of seeing Spider as a person, all she sees is just another human who ought to be with his own kind, a demon. And this is honestly fine, Neytiri isn’t Spider’s mother or caretaker so she’s not obligated to try and understand him as anything deeper than her enemies child and her own children’s best friend.

However, because Neytiri refuses to see Spider as anything other than another human, she lets this hatred for him and his heritage fester until she feels comfortable to threaten his life and see him as a means to an end. And that, no matter how much one may argue it’s understandable from her perspective, leads to dire consequences.

Namely, Spider’s choice to save Quaritch.

Now, before anyone yells at me let me clarify — I am not saying that Neytiri is responsible for Spider’s choice, nor is she responsible for any harm Quaritch will cause in the upcoming movies. However, it’s undeniable that her actions influenced Spider’s decision, whether directly or indirectly.

When Neytiri threatened Spider’s life, Quaritch initially plays off the fact that he’s technically not his son, citing that they aren’t even the same species. But when Neytiri pushes even further, he breaks and shows that he does actually care about Spider, willing to let go of his hostage in order to protect him.

This is big for Spider as his only major desire is to have a family, specifically a parental figure who genuinely cared about him as he is. I’d even go as far as to say that this moment probably proved to Spider that Quaritch cares about him as more than just a mean’s to an end. He’d already helped Quaritch bond with an Ikran and find the Sully family(against his will), he had nothing else to offer but Quaritch still wanted him alive.

This, along with the months they spent together, are what pushed Spider to make his decision at the end of the movie, a decision he was explicitly conflicted about.

And this came about from Neytiri’s decision. I know a lot of people would argue that Neytiri had to do this because it was the only way to save her daughter, and I’ll agree that there weren’t many options for her. But this wasn’t a tactical move she was making, she wasn’t bluffing or putting on a show to force Quaritch’s hand, she was explicitly going to kill Spider just to make Quaritch hurt in the same way she was hurting.

Also, if we want to nitpick we could also say that the months Quaritch and Spider spent together also came about as a result of her actions. When they’re running away from the Recoms, Spider is the only one who falls to the ground and Neytiri doesn’t even think to try and go get him.

“B-But there’s no way Neytiri would’ve been able to save him and get away! She has her own children to worry about!” I hear you typing in the notes of this post, and to that I say you’ve got a point.

However, the fact that Neytiri doesn’t even consider going down to rescue him, doesn’t look over the branch and hesitate before making the difficult decision to prioritize Kiri and feel bad about it later shows that her reasoning is solidly NOT rooted in him being one of her kids or not.

She doesn’t even try, and because of that Quaritch and Spider end up forming the basis for a solid bond.

TLDR; Neytiri’s fatal flaw is that she allows her anger and hatred to cloud her better judgment and control her, leading to a destructive attitude that can ultimately hurt the people she loves and make things worse for her.

Now, what does this have to do with her arc going forward?

At this point, I’m pretty sure everyone has heard at least a little bit about the next movie, Avatar Fire and Ash. I’ve seen people theorizing that the fire tribe will be joining forces with the RDA, that they don’t believe in Eywa, and that Neytiri will have to infiltrate the tribe in order to rescue her children.

I’m not certain whether any of this is true, but what I am certain of is that — if these concept arts hold water by the time the movie is released — then the fire tribe we’ll be encountering in the third movie is going to be an extremely violent community, likely one that puts emphasis on anger and hatred.

And if the rumors are true and Neytiri really is going to be infiltrating them, then Neytiri’s flaws might be able to inform what narrative role the Ash People and Varaang in particular will have in the third movie.

I’ve already explained how in depth how her flaw is how she allows her anger to take control of her and close her vision; she’s volatile like lava and burns hot like fire, becoming liable to burn everything and everyone around her.

From that perspective, she seems more suited to be a fire Na’vi rather than a forest or reef one, no? The choice to take us to a volcanic, fire steeped region isn’t just James Cameron checking off the boxes like “oh we did forest and water, fire next!” its him taking us to a we might find uncomfortably befitting of our worst traits.

And that’s basically what I think Neytiri will have to face upon encountering the Ash People — they are the embodiment of all her flaws put on display.

Varaang specifically may work as her narrative foil, a literal funhouse version of her at her worst(from my perspective the concept art of Varaang actually looks a lot like Neytiri, so that’s interesting).

I also think it’s important to note that Neytiri is absolutely going to find out that Spider saved Quaritch in the third movie, or at least it’s incredibly likely if the Ash People really will be working with Quaritch. That means that her hatred for him and her need for revenge will come back into play, this isn’t over.

But this time things will be different, because in between Neytiri learning of Spider’s betrayal she will also get especially close to the Ash People and find that she is uncomfortably similar to them at her worst. Before she does something she might regret, Neytiri will be forced to ask herself some important questions:

Is revenge really worth it? Is this the kind of person she wants to be? If Jake wasn’t there that night, would she have the blood of a child on her hands? Will she hurt other people she loves because of her anger?

These questions are ones she likely never wanted to ask herself, but they’re necessary because she’s starting right in the face of people who didn’t.

Hopefully, she finds that the answer is no.

#avatar #avatar(james cameron)#avatar the way of water #atwaw #avatar (2009)#avatar analysis #neytiri #spider socorro #miles quaritch #analysis #avatar fire and ash #avatar 3 #gif

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lustfulslxt · 1 year ago

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Heyy hope your day going good I have a request for a Matt fic based on their recent pod they did with there parents basically when they were talking about how Matt was on the hockey team and he would get mad a lot maybe he has a game or something and loses it and he takes it out on his gf? Hope that makes sense

Take It Out - Matt Sturniolo

warnings : roughhhh sex

—

It’s around 6:30 and I’m already running late. Matt’s hockey game started ten minutes ago and I’m not even on my way to the rink yet. I know Matt’s probably upset about it, because I’m upset about it. However, I got stuck at work, and now I’m on my way home to pick up a gift bag I have for him.

We’ve been talking about this specific game for weeks now. They’re facing their rivals and Matt’s been practicing so incredibly hard. I know how important it is for me to be there for him, cheering for him.

I pull into my driveway and run inside, quickly gathering everything I need before running back out to my car. I toss it on the passenger seat, swiftly reversing and semi speeding to my destination. My nerves are on ten, I just want to get there to support my baby.

Upon pulling up to the rink, I hurriedly exit, leaving his gift bag in the seat and running inside. Once I give my ticket to the booth and they let me in, I swiftly make my way to the front, sitting in my reserved seat.

“I’m so sorry I’m late! Ugh, Matt is gonna kill me.” I exclaim, my face ridden with guilt.

“It’s okay, it was a late start anyways.” Marylou reassures me.

“Yeah, but he’s still upset. You can see it in the way he’s playing.” Nick says, making me frown.

He’s right, Matt’s game is off tonight. I can feel my stomach tighten at the thought of it being my fault. Sure, it’s just a game, but I know how much it means to Matt. I continue watching the game unfold in front of me, my leg anxiously bouncing with every passing minute.

The score’s 1-5, Matt’s team unfortunately down. I can visually see the frustration in him, he’s been extremely aggressive. He’s already been put in the penalty box several times this game, having been too rough.

Suddenly, Matt is checked by someone from the opposing team, crashing into him and resulting in a violent collision. I can practically see the steam coming from his ears. He jumps up and flings his gloves off, shoving the other guy into the wall, and throwing a punch at his face. A gasp leaves my mouth at the scene in front of me, my hands crossing at my chin.

“Jesus, Matt!” Nick shouts, tossing his arms up.

The two are quickly pulled apart and he’s once again sent to the penalty box. They’ve only got five minutes left on the clock, so it’s crucial that he’s on the ice to help his team. I watch as he anxiously paces back and forth, occasionally screaming through the glass as he watches the game play out in front of him. He then looks over in my direction, our eyes locking momentarily. I shoot him a smile, which he doesn’t return, and rolls his neck, something he does when he’s aggravated.

“God, he hates me.” I mumble, frowning once again.

“He doesn’t hate you. He just hates tonight.” Nick clarifies, reassuringly patting my knee.

I take a deep breath and nod, wishing the words to be true. I know he doesn’t actually hate me, but I would be surprised if he weren’t ridiculously upset with me right now. Though his feelings would be valid, it would still hurt. It’s not like I planned to be late, life just happens.

Once Matt’s two minutes were up, he quickly skated out, heading straight for the puck. Even if he were to make this shot, his team would still lose. They’re just too far behind to make it up in three minutes. As he chased after the puck, swiftly swiping it from his opponents, he began racing towards the opposite end of the rink, heading towards their goal. He swings his stick, hitting the puck and sending it flying into the goal. He turns around and throws his arms up, cheering. I can see the smile through his helmet. However, it quickly vanishes when he looks at the scoreboard and sees they’re still 6 points behind, just as the final buzzer goes off.

They lost.

I sigh, already knowing how the night’s going to go. As the teams exit the rink, I stand up, bidding goodbye to Nick and Marylou, and make my way towards the locker room, waiting for Matt to come out. Around ten minutes go by before he walks out the door. He looks at me, rolling his eyes, and continues walking towards the building’s exit.

“Seriously, Matt?” I toss my hands up, following after him.

He doesn’t say anything and just makes his way towards my car. Once we reach it, he tries to open the passenger door, but doesn’t succeed as it’s locked. He sighs loudly, rolling his eyes once again as he impatiently shuffles on his feet. I hit the unlock button and he opens the door, only to be met with his gift bag. He looks at it, then up at me, then back at it.

Without a word, he puts it in the backseat with his duffel bag, taking his place up front. I can’t help the deep frown that tugs on my lips. I knew he was going to be upset, but he doesn’t have to be a jerk. I silently start the car, waiting a minute for it to warm up, then pull out of the parking lot, heading for my house.

It’s tradition. After every game, he comes to my house and we spend the night together. Win or lose, it’s never been different. Though he’s never been this upset with me before, and I don’t even want to ask him if he’d rather go home. It could be selfish of me to want him to spend his time with me when he’s clearly mad at me, but I also want us to work through it.

It doesn’t take long to get to my house, and he’s getting out without a word, and grabbing his bag before making his way inside. Noticing he left the gift bag in the car, my frown deepens. I don’t understand why he’s being so mean. With a sigh, I retrieve the bag and follow him inside. Upon making my way into the living room, I notice him setting his bag against the wall.

“Matt, seriously! What the fuck is your problem?” I ask, finally giving in.

“My problem?” He asks, bewilderment taking over his face. “What’s your problem? You were supposed to be there.”

“I was there!” I exclaim.

He dryly chuckles, “Yeah, late.”

“But I still showed up! I’m sorry that I got held up at work, but I still showed up. Yes, I was late, but I still showed up. When have I ever not been there, Matthew?” I snap, already feeling frustrated with the audacity of him.

“You promised.” He mutters, his voice angry with a hint of sadness. “You were supposed to be there for the whole thing, and you weren’t.”

“I’m sorry, okay? But it wasn’t my fault! It’s not like I intentionally decided to come late.” I yell, before tossing the gift bag at him. “Here’s your gift, even though you’re far from deserving of it right now.”

I don’t spare him another glance, and I don’t wait for a response, I simply walk up the stairs, already ready for bed. I can’t believe him. He’s being ridiculous. Before I can even make it into my bedroom, I’m yanked back.

“I’m not done with you yet.” Matt says from behind me, his voice low.

With that, I’m spun around and his lips are slamming into mine, kissing me fast and hard. One of his hands holds onto the back of my head, the other one gripping my ass and pulling me closer to him. He shoves his tongue into my mouth, exploring every inch of it as I moan into his. I hate how easily he affects me, I’m always at my knees for him.

He pulls away from the kiss, quickly pulling my shirt off and attacking my neck with wet kisses. His teeth graze over my skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake. He backs away once again, frantically removing his shirt. He yanks me back into him, smashing his lips on mine once more.

Our lips are working together, teeth clashing, tongues battling for dominance, hands touching any and everywhere. His hands then reach my jeans, swiftly unbuckling them and tugging them down. To assist him, I kick them off of my feet. His hands then reach into the waistband of my underwear, pulling them down just as quickly. Once they’re discarded, he pulls his sweats off, leaving him in his boxers. I can see his hard on pressing against the fabric, constricted against it.

His lips are on mine again, his hand reaching in between my legs, feeling my bare heat. With a simple brush of his fingers, they’re now coated in my juices.

He pulls away and groans at the sight, “I knew you loved this shit. Such a whore.”

I can’t help but moan in response, him now rubbing my bundle of nerves, sending waves of pleasure through my body. His other hand massages my boobs, squeezing and tweaking my nipples. His fingers move from my clit, down to my entrance, pumping into me. The pace is slow and steady for only a split second, before his fingers are thrusting into me, fast and hard. My legs almost give out, so he wraps his arm around my waist, holding me up as he finger fucks me.

“Fuck, Matty.” I moan out, my face contorting in pleasure as the knot in my stomach grows tighter.

“Look at you, you’re eating this up.” He groans into my ear, “You love it when daddy’s rough with you, don’t you?”

I can only moan in return as he curls his fingers so perfectly. Unhappy with my response, he halts his movement inside of me, and his hand holding me up grips my jaw as he moves his face in front of mine.

His lips slightly ghosting over my own, he says, “I asked you a question.”

“Yes, yes. I love it so much.” I admit, lewd moans emitting from my mouth.

“That’s my girl.” He grins, continuing to pump in and out of me.

With a few more thrusts, I feel myself lose it, giving into the pressure in my stomach. A loud moan falls from my lips as I let go, squirting all over his hand as he fucks his fingers into me. My breath hitches in my throat, feeling utter euphoria coursing in my veins.

As soon as he removes his fingers, he has both of my legs wrapped around his waist, leaving me to hold onto the railing behind me, my elbows resting on it. Without a word, he’s shoving his cock into me. A loud yelp escapes my mouth, and a guttural moan from his. Off the rip, his pace is fast, fucking into me so deliciously and hard. My boobs are bouncing from the force and I can’t help my eyes rolling to the back of my head.

“F-feels so good, daddy.” I moan out, my breathing erratic.

“Mhm. Such a good little slut.” He groans out, his thrusts increasing in speed and strength.

The knot in my stomach returns, pleasure building up very quickly. I force myself to keep my eyes open just to take in Matt’s appearance. His brows are furrowed and his bottom lip is tucked in his mouth. His torso is glistening with sweat, whilst his hair slightly sways with every movement, aside from the pieces sticking to his forehead. His cheeks are flushed a rosy color, and his eyes are dark with lust.

Just the sight of him was enough to push me over the edge as I let go for the second time tonight. Pornographic moans leave my mouth as I tighten around him, feeling him pulsating inside of me. Me clenching around him caused him to shudder, immediately releasing his nut into me, fucking us both through our orgasms.

“Fuck, so good to me, baby.” He moans out, his thrusts coming to a stop.

Both of us are breathless, panting together as he pulls out of me, slowly letting me down, but still holding onto me, so that I don’t drop.

“That was-“

“I’m sorry.” He cuts me off, pulling me flush against him. “My team was shit tonight and I took it out on you when you did nothing wrong. Thank you for coming to support me, I love you so much.”

I smile, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll always be there for you, Matty. I love you so much.”

He gently kisses me on the lips, soft and slow, savoring the moment. He then picks me up and throws me over his shoulder, running in the direction of the bathroom.

“Come on. We need to shower.” He laughs, making me laugh in return as he’s not wrong.

—

a/n : so sorry this is so short!!! i hope it does the trick tho :( pls enjoy fr, send in more <3333

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shinjiikar1 · 2 months ago

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I've been trying to think about what I want to say about these first two episodes of Love in the Big City. I'm watching it slowly, it's a show that makes me want to sit rather than rush ahead, and it also hits a little too close to home to enjoy freely (I've only watched the first two episodes so far and my knowledge of the rest of the story is fairly vague so bear with me).

Go Young experiences two major losses. The parallels between these losses, what could have been vs. what can never be again was what particularly stood out to me.

Mi Ae represents a beautiful time that is forever lost. After she gets married, there's no one he can be fully himself with. He simply doesn't have another relationship on that level, platonic or otherwise, and that's truly such an isolating experience. Who do you call when you're in trouble? Who do you complain to? Who will always be your first port of call?

Often, youthful friendships are particularly intense, you're at a point where the world feels so enormous but you don't quite know what to do with it, or yourself yet. Everything still feels new and exciting. You meet people who understand you in ways you've never been understood and can't imagine it won't last forever.

And then you experience that loss for the first time.

Kim Nam Gyu experiences it too. It's clear early in their relationship that Go Young is overwhelmed and uncomfortable with the intensity of Nam Gyu's feelings (his expressions during the padlock and ring scenes in particular). He feels suffocated and anxious, he's not ready for it. So, rather harshly (at least the first time) he ends things. I've been on both ends, which makes it a lot easier to empathize with both of them. While I feel for Nam Gyu incredibly (especially as I read him as very neurodivergent), that discomfort is not something easily resolved, and it's only made worse by his inability to move on. But how can he when he also has no one else?

In the end, Go Young mentions that he missed out on what could have been a long and lasting love with Nam Gyu but I wonder if that's true. Would he have eventually opened up and reciprocated that intensity? Or would he have continued to wallow in his discomfort and let that resentment pile up even further? It's hard to say, but based on the way he behaves, I think the latter. He just wasn't in a stage of life to accept it yet, without the experiences he has with Mi Ae, and without Nam Gyu's death, would he have made it to that point before it became too much? He says he didn't really believe love was possible for someone like him, it took him a lot to get to the point where he even starts to believe it; I find it hard to imagine that he could've gotten there purely through a relationship with Nam Gyu at that stage, as sad as that might be.

Mi Ae offers a bit of an interesting foil here. She chooses loss, but the loss of her authentic self. She chooses the safe option, a stable relationship and job, pleasing her parents, following societal expectations. Maybe the guy isn't quite right, but in the end what seems most important to her is that security, and she's willing to take a loss to get it. As others in the tags have pointed out, Go Young doesn't have that option. There is no option that will (mostly) guarantee him security and safety that would even be remotely tolerable and grant him any degree of happiness. Perhaps he could have chosen to lose parts of himself to be with Nam Gyu, but that wouldn't have provided him the type of security Mi Ae enjoys. If something went wrong and it didn't work out, he could stand to lose even more.

I think that's something that a lot of cishet people fail to understand, and part of what these episodes have done so well for me. Really underlining how the queer experience differs and how isolating it can be (which I think is reflected in Nam Gyu as well).

#litbc book club #love in the big city #also sidenote i really love the idea of a book club discussing each ep #its been so fun to read everyone's meta and it really made me think about a lot of different aspects of the show that i probably wouldn't #have considered as deeply #also its nice to use my brain for media analysis now that im done my thesis lol #anyways i cried like 3 times watching episode two if you couldn't tell #words

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sharpth1ng · 1 month ago

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Can we have a sneak of chapter 6? Don’t push urself btw, breaks are incredibly important

Thank youu🖤 ngl I hate taking breaks but unfortunately im only human.

Anyway, here's a snack, enjoy:

“What, so you’re fucking her again?” Billy spits, ripping his jacket off and shoving it at Stu’s chest.

He’s so jealous.

There’s a muscle jumping in his jaw and he’s clenching his fists hard enough to pop the veins on the backs of his hands, so basically he looks like pure sex. Stu's biting his lip now, it's not voluntary but it's also not defusing the situation at all because Billy’s lip is somehow curling further into his scowl.

“Tammy? Nah. Why’re you mad though?” Stu’s trying not to laugh openly as he hangs Billy’s jacket. He hasn’t seen him so bad since Casey and this is definitely worse. "You don’t want me, remember?”

“I’m. Not. Mad!” Billy’s yelling until he seems to catch himself, but even then he only brings it down to a snarl. “I don’t give a shit, I just thought you had higher standards but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’d give it up to whatever desperate whore is willing to fuck you in the ass!" That's the sentence that cracks Stu, so now the laughter is bursting up through his chest and pouring out of him. “-The hell are you laughing about??”

“I- Ha, shit-” He’s trying to say something, he really is but he can’t quite get it out and Billy responds by slamming one of his boots down on Stu’s socked foot. “FUCK!” It’s almost more startling than it is painful but it also does fucking hurt, enough to have his toes curling and his eyes scrunching shut when it hits.

“Tammy fucking Beckett??” Billy roars, cartoonishly red in the face. There might as well be steam coming of his ears.

“Yeah you really don’t sound mad screaming about her like that-” Billy stomps on his foot again, and fuck he should have seen that coming, right? He dropping down this time, clutching at his foot as the pain radiates up through his leg, so mind-numbing that he knows it’s only a matter of seconds before the warm-horny-fuzzies set in. Billy should know better by now. “Fuck, man I’m telling the truth, I’m not banging Tammy.”

“Then why was she here?” Billy sounds like he's auditioning for an interrogation scene.

“I mean, she’s kinda my best friend right now.” Its honest, but Billy visibly flinches when he says it.

“Best friend.” There’s something fragile about his voice as he says this and Stu feels bad for him almost as much as he thinks Billy might actually deserve a little hurt right now. “She’s your best friend?”

#chapter 6 sneak peek #wave of mutilation chapter 6 #wave of mutilation fanfic #wave of mutilation spoilers #stuilly #ask

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nnnn99999 · 12 days ago

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It's literally 2:45 am right now and here I am writing this because who needs sleep when you have thk. I feel like I need to write this right now because of how overwhelmed I am by this one scene.

You see, from the moment Fadel grabs Style and starts speaking in the abandoned warehouse(?) in the woods, there is only honesty between Fadel and Style. No mask, no lies, no deception, nothing. Just pure honesty. This is the first time Fadel dropped his mask completely and showed Style his true emotions. Style, recognizing that, also immediately drops his own mask and listens. Style, who shamelessly yaps all the time regardless of the situation, listens. Style, who has never hesitated to fire back at Fadel, just shuts up and listens.

This is the most serious I have seen Style be in this show. He is so incredibly focused on Fadel and what Fadel wants to express. Because this is what he has been waiting for. An opening to form a genuine connection with Fadel. This is so important to him, maybe more than he himself realizes. Because somewhere along the line, Style went beyond just having fun messing with Fadel. At this point, Style genuinely cares about Fadel and wants to understand him.

Coming to Fadel, I don't think he brought Style to this remote place to pour his heart out to Style. Nor do I think he had any intention of killing Style. I think be brought Style here to give him a scare, to show him how dangerous he really is. However, seeing Style following him without fear, calling out his name again and again, Fadel realized how much he likes having Style around. And that terrifies him. He is so scared of his own desires that it makes him really angry at the one who evokes this desire. Fadel enjoys having Style around, and the realization of this fact brings out Fadel's deepest fear, the fear of falling in love.

As Fadel talks about how much he doesn't like getting used to having Style around, Style, I think for the first time, sees how much Fadel is struggling within. Fadel is so frustrated at himself for feeling everything he is feeling, and he is so incredibly scared of getting attached to Style. It's so hard for him to accept that he doesn't want to be lonely anymore, because Style with his ridiculous antics brings so much color to his life. Fadel, for the first time, lets Style see how much he wants him, and how much he hates himself for wanting him.

Then comes the moment that killed me. It's when Fadel says "I don't like that I miss you". He is so vulnerable in this moment, his desire and fear clearly visible in his eyes as he stares directly at Style, and admits that he has already grown attached to Style. (Oh, the way Joong delivered this hit me like a gut punch, truly.)

Style, as he feels the honesty and sincerity coming from Fadel, expresses himself in the most sincere way he himself is capable of. Instead of saying anything, he shows Fadel that he, too, cares. The first kiss, initiated by Style, is his attempt at conveying to Fadel his own feeling. It is somewhat tentative, but full of sincerity. And then Style says, "it's okay to love". And it is at this moment that an emotional connection is finally formed between the two.

Fadel, not once, said anything about being afraid to love. But that's what he was tryimg to express all along, trying to tell Style why he has been trying so hard to push him away. And Style understood. He recognized Fadel's fear and gave him the reassurance he so desperately needed. That Fadel doesn't need to be alone. That Fadel is allowed to form bonds with others. That Fadel is allowed to love and be loved.

This communication is so honest because neither is trying to tell the other that they love the other. Because neither of them are in love yet. However, they do care about each other and that is very well communicated between the two.

This leads to the both of them giving in to their desire for each other. If you compare it to their first time, the difference is so clear. This time is so much more intense, because this time both of them are so much more into it as they relish in their newfound connection. They maintain constant eyecontact the entire time, which was pretty much nonexistent during their first time. They were not restraining themselves like they did before. This is why this time felt so much more intimate than their first time, even though they were wearing way less clothes during their first time. It's so emotionally charged this time. Even the lighting this time is dimmer, but warmer. Making this moment feel even more intimate.

There is also such a huge difference in their interactions right after their first time and second time. After the first time, Fadel was irritable, Style was annoying, neither seemed content and there was so much distance between them, physically and emotionally. After the second time however, they seem very relaxed and content. They are resting pretty close to each other, with their elbows touching/almost touching. There is a sense of ease and comfort between them. Fadel is in a good enough mood to smile, Style is in a good enough mood to tone down his attitude. This is the most pleasant conversation they have had so far, and while this moment isn't as honest as the one inside the building, it's still pretty chill and sincere.

I like that the intensity between FadelStyle is increasing gradually as their feelings for each grow more and more. I will definitely not survive their actual confession. After all, I already died at "i don't like that i miss you".

#thk #fadelstyle meta #it's 4:30 am now as i finished writing #was it necessary to write such a long essay in the middle of the night? probably not #did i enjoy doing it anyway? absolutely yes #fadelstyle will be the end of me for sure

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power-handmaiden · 10 months ago

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Day 69: Fahrenheit 69

This somehow won by just a single vote and I voted in my own poll, so... I guess my choice was more important than I thought it would be!This was both my first lesbian tingler and my first classic literature tingler, both categories I've been really looking forward to getting into. It sure lived up to my hopes! This is now one of my favorite tinglers. Maybe my favorite? (It's hard for me to say while I'm still so fresh off of reading it)

As one might expect from the title and Dr. Tingle's general presence in the world, this one makes a statement about the censorship and forced repression of sexual art and expression in society. I think it's perfect to have a woman as the protagonist of this story, reflecting on the way that in our society, women are expected not to show sexual desire and take an active role in admonishing sexual expression. Gal Monty, the main character of this tingler, is noted right at the beginning to have an incredible level of skill at her job eliminating obscenity, that is passed down from her mother and her grandmother, a clear statement on the cyclical nature of passing down these types of attitudes.

Cycles are a major theme of this story; 69 is not just relegated to a body position in the climactic scene of the story. While repression can replicate itself, the freedom and positivity needed to combat it can do so as well when they are not stifled. Gal Monty discovers the possibility of fulfilling sexuality in a very Tingleverse kind of recursive way that speaks on the power of seeing art that reflects one's desires.

Also.... OK this is going to sound really weird from the person willingly posting publicly about erotica every day but: it is really hard for me to type right now that this story really turned me on! It was so hot (no pun intended) to read about a professional arsonist getting fucked so good by a sentient flame that her worldview changes! And I think it's incredible to read a story that both makes me feel that way, and also makes me question why I feel like I'm out of line or oversharing to mention that a work of erotica made me feel the way that erotica is intended to, in a space where people are EXPECTING me to talk about erotica and my feelings on it!!! This one really hit me somewhere personal. Thank you Dr. Tingle!

#2024 tingles my butt #chuck tingle

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felassan · 4 months ago

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Notes and thoughts on the August 30th dev Discord Q&A. (this post contains DA:TV spoilers from the recent Q&A).

Mother Ghil is a herbalist 😌

"there are opportunities in conversations, in dialogue, in scenes where you will, you know - a companion may ask you for a hug because they’re having a rough time and you are able to give it to them"

🥺😭 I'm worried (but in a good way, pls hurt me storylines) because this reminds me of DA:I when the Inquisitor can hug Varric after something incredibly sad happens as a result of our choices (Hawke's death in the Fade) oughh.

Influence on the fate of nations? 👁️

"Rook does become a fairly important figure" - this reminds me of Solas' line in a past trailer: "They call me the Dread Wolf. What will they call you when this is over?"

UNDERWEAR CHOICES

Taash is babey 🥺 it makes sense why in this screenshot she looks young. if Taash is in her early 20s, say 23, that means she probably can't have been one of the Five Belles of Hunter Fell as that was in 9:42 and she would have been like 13

Here is some further info about companion ages that came out since the time of the Q&A

Harding had to have been at least 18 ten years ago in 9:42 when she joined the Inquisition and became Lead Scout, so must be at least 28. but I think older, as I think she was older than 18 in DA:I by a fair few years. like around early to mid 20s at that point in time.

"they’re all people who have been through a lot [...] they’ve been through a tremendous amount by this point by the time you meet them" 🥺😭

"They’re more linear than some of the other parts of the game, because we feel that’s how we can tell the best stories, give you a very intentionally-paced experience, y'know, with lulls and climaxes, so it really hits you."

This was how Trespasser was and it was the best part of DA:I, the storytelling and narrative beats in that DLC were soo good.

Hossberg Wetlands! - new location confirmed, and also described as being one of the biggest like Arlathan Forest. also new location just dropped, Hossberg existed before in the lore but I don't remember hearing about the Wetlands! Hossberg is the capital of the Anderfels. it'll be awesome to see more of the Anderfels than only Weisshaupt. by the name these wetlands must be nearby Hossberg. I wonder whether they're around the Lattenfluss or more around this body of water to the south of Hossberg? the area around Kassel looks wet with multiple bodies of water, but there the nearest settlement is Kassel. we also learned that there's a Davrin-oriented quest there that he can show up in with Assan and help you clear the way forward

also, I remember reading before that "Thedas’s separate regions are connected by The Crossroads, which will allow players to venture out into", but from how The Crossroads was described in the Q&A, they sound kind've like an explorable area in and of themselves in the game like they were in Trespasser, and that's exciting. :D I'm so excited to explore in there some more and see how it has changed from DA:I/Trespasser:

"but this, isn’t necessarily the Crossroads as you remember it. So you’ll be able to explore this, this part of the Crossroads, and as you’re there, you’re absolutely gonna be discovering new areas, new quests, mysteries and new challenges"

like this sounds very 👁️. The Veil has been having a rough time lately and magic has been flowing into the world. reality is warping in places like Arlathan. we've seen the effects this sort of thing is having on the waking world. but what about the effects this is happening on the Fade and Fadey dimensions? I wonder if this game will still reflect that the Crossroads looks different for elves compared to other lineages?

"I wanna see that big 100% completed on my map. That’s gonna take you quite a bit of time."

I love that. :D

I totally agree that the cloth sim and hair sim in the game is beautiful and looks beautiful. you can see this when characters move their heads or when their capes and things move around as they move. its so cool!

"there is a unique Venatori-themed helmet. I, I don’t want to spoil what that is exactly, but, so, you can get a helmet, it is unique, it’s pretty interesting and ties into some of the events that can happen in the game but I’m just gonna leave it there."

inchresting... this helmet sounds like it has special powers or attributes and has some sort of presence in a possible plot somewhere.

I will still romance Strife Dragonage in my dreams

while Rook's romance is within the companions, iirc was mentioned elsewhere that sometimes companions may find romance both inside and outside of the party

Cat Vibing To Ievan Polkka

KFM: "So Taash breathes fire, Lucanis has wings, Harding is a dwarf who has magic. A lot of our companions have some strange abilities - is this because the Veil is compromised?" JE: "Oh, I’d say it’s, I mean partially yeah. I mean, we’ve talked before about how over the course of the time since Dragon Age: Inquisition, I mean, it started at the end of Trespasser. The Veil’s not in great shape. Corypheus already did a number on it, and Solas has very clearly, as you saw, in the [inaudible] preview, not been making things better in the intervening times. [...] because there’s all this magic that’s coming back to the world through the torn Veil"

This is inchresting and ties to what was said in these two previous quotes:

Lore/art direction: “Magic has started seeping into the world through Solas’ ritual”, “and so you’re seeing the effects of that on the space, and on the visuals as well” [post this is from, original source. original source is a John Epler interview video]

“Epler, who writes Bellara, tells me about her place in Thedas as an elf and the connection elves have to the magic of the world. He says if you’ve paid attention to the franchise, you likely already know that elves are historically an oppressed people in the games. Now, with two of their gods on the loose in Veilguard, magic has poured back into the world in a big way. […] A Quick Detour: Magic During my discussion, Epler spoke about magic’s place in the world and how it differs in Veilguard from previous Dragon Age games. Here’s what he said: "Historically, as you’ve mentioned, we’ve been in the south of Thedas and south Thedas is Ferelden, Orlais. Both are fairly still oppressed, they still have circles. Mages are viewed with suspicion, but Tevinter has always been this land where mages rule, mages are in charge, mages make the rules, mages run the show. So what does that look like? And as we’ve gone through [Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition], magic has become more and more present. And part of that is because Solas has been slowly preparing this ritual for longer than anyone in the Dragon Age universe is really aware of, but also, just going into the spaces where magic is, by definition and by the lore, much, much more present. And it’s been fun because, again, we do have rules; we want to make sure we’re not violating the lore or violating things we’ve said before. But it’s also, again, that permissiveness of, ‘Okay, what is the most interesting way to do this? What’s the most interesting way to tell the story? [In] Origins, II, on the Eclipse engine, we could talk about this fantastical magic, but the engine didn’t really allow us to show it. For the first time, we’re really able to let the visuals speak for themselves and not have to tell the player, ‘Trust us, it’s spectacular; this magic is really cool.’ We can actually show you and let you drink it in.” [post this is from, archive post of the original article as that went down when GI did]

The effects of this on space, reality, visuals, people and their abilities, ancient elven artifacts turning back on, and Solas' activities being part of what affected things in the time since DA:I. I wanna speculate that these ancient elven artifacts turning back on or becoming active again is part of why reality has been warping and "something [going] wrong" in Arlathan Forest. I wonder if the Morlyn clan journal relic began rewriting itself as a consequence of the magic returning.

Bellara was an interesting example though, she's a mage not a non-mage like Taash, Lucanis, Harding. was I parsing this right - is the implication that she wouldn't be able to interface with the artifacts that have turned back on if the Veil was in better shape and magic hadn't been pouring back in?

^ Bellara interfacing with an artifact

All the talk of magic coming back into the world are like Sandal's prophecy:

One day the magic will come back - all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see.

and reminds of a few other bits too:

Ardent Blossom Faerie: "Pulling back the curtain. Let the light in. Let it burn. Bring faith. Bring hope. Bring dreams of life. - Morrigan: "Change is coming to the world. Many fear change, and will fight it with every fibre of their being. But sometimes change is what they need most. Sometimes, change is what sets them free." - Flemeth: "We stand upon the precipice of change."

I loved hearing about Bellara's friendships with Lucanis and Neve. it sounds so well thought-out, and I'm looking forwards to learning the relationships between each companion!!

Bellara believing that family is deeply important combined with a previous quote about her backstory,

"Whereas Bellara is somebody who has seen tragedy, and as you get into her character arc and get into her backstory, you realize this is a character who has seen a lot of tragedy"

makes me wonder if this tragedy has involved her family and if her family are okay. 🥺

Lucanis' belief in the deep importance of family makes me worried in case any of his personal arc/story involves the family tensions he has with Illario and Caterina

I love that Bellara collects newspaper clippings and was basically Neve fan before meeting her!

Neve must be a fairly prominent, well-known/successful private detective/investigator to have formed a large profile in print media

Taash and Emmrich [...] When you’re out in the field like exploring, or on missions with them, their banter is so good, because they do not see eye-to-eye on necromancy, like, at all, and, it’s really funny, it’s really delightful, I love seeing how it evolves

as a necromancer Emmrich doesn’t have a problem with necromancer (makes sense). I wonder what Taash dislikes about it? is it its bad reputation (per Josie in DA:I)? Solas freed the weak spirit the Mortalitasi in Tevinter Nights had bound to stir her drink. maybe Taash doesn’t like the binding part, or the undead helpers or servants part? maybe she just doesn't like the dead the way Bull doesn't like demons?

Having to figure out how Harding's new powers layer into her combat kit - Harding's new magical powers are part of her gameplay abilities confirmed!

Harding can also do Heavy Draw

Interesting - the more you help a faction the more gear you get from them. between that and transmog it means everyone can access the Antivan Crows awesome threads if they wanna :D

Both the specs and gear are themed around particular factions like aesthetically but aren't exclusive-to-them when it comes to use/gameplay

It sounds like each faction will have a quartermaster

Veil Jumper lore! they tend towards electricity/lightning damage and archery in their fighting style. and in general they're practically minded and dress as such because where they go and what they do requires care and protection and is dangerous, they wear boots/shoes etc for this reason

Veil Ranger info! it tends towards electricity, use of the Veil and use of that kind of magic. it also uses archery

The answer to the question about the Evoker spec made me reassured about the answer I wrote here ^^;

Great news that any piece of gear we find will unlock the appearance of that gear and how it can be applied to anything we want <3

Training dummy cosmetic - joke gear pieces like the Wedge of Destiny live on :D

I'm so psyched that we can even transmog our casual wear!! that's so cool and allows for so much agency. I find when I play mages in the past I'm always looking for the.. least magiest-looking mage gear to wear, and previously there wasn't crazy amounts of choice in casual wear, so this is amazing dbgfjdbd

very personal GIFTS for the blorbos 🥺 the gift system sounds so lovely and thoughtful. I think maybe some of the empty shelves that can be seen in the new screenshots of the companion rooms in the Lighthouse just miiight be where the companions will display the gifts

"A really big thing for us on this project is making sure that the gameplay reflects the characters, their arc and their personality as much as possible, so."

looking real hard at Lucanis' wings rn, especially given the context of what else we know about him 👁️

"you’re not even going to see everything necessarily in a couple of playthroughs"

Aaaaaa :D

as a warrior fan the love for the warrior class was really heartening. (love you Inky)

The Missing setting up some of the characters we'll see in the game makes me even more sure that alongside Strife&Irelin and Evka&Antoine we'll see Teia&Viago in the game (plus the characters in the release date reveal trailer that totally look like them ofc)

Emphasis that themes and events/things present and explored in Tevinter Nights are present in the game

It sounds like Vows & Vengeance is set in the weeks before the prologue of DA:TV kicks off

There is a buff called Rally Party where Rook triggers a surge in their companion's ability

MAAEEEEEEEEEE 😭😭😭 this was so good I was like yelling OMG. I'm sooo happy about this, this is so great. she's been on my 'DA4 wishlist of stuff' for so long and we waited to meet her since 2012 (12 years ago!!!). I'm soo excited to meet her oh my god. this reveal was honestly the highlight of the whole Q&A. pack it up, we can go home now. Mae.. 😭 I hope we get to see her interact with Varric. and I wonder if she has some involvement with the Shadow Dragons (Varric said something about "some old friends in Tevinter said the Shadow Dragons were pog to work with" in the gameplay reveal..), and how things are going with her and Dorian's faction the Lucerni

It sounds like Lucanis' parents were killed at some point in some Crow-Crow politics. probably when he was quite young, since when Lucanis thinks back on being raised by Caterina she did things like making him spend days without food or water, which makes it sound like he was quite young when he entered her care

No jealousy dialogue is interesting

I hope for a poly romance option in a future game

ABILITY TO SAVE CHARACTER APPEARANCES for use later in CC aaaa. Amazinggg. thankyouuu. a lot of thought has been put into the quality of life features of this game :') pausing cutscenes is another great one.

KFM: "The question is, is Lucanis possessed?" JE: "So, again, spoilers, everyone has been warned, fairly warned. So Lucanis Dellamorte is also known as The Demon of Vyrantium. And, he has spent a lot of time killing Venatori, who are mages, and who do know a lot about demons, so. Yeah, somebody decided that it might be a good idea to make that nickname stick."

👁️👁️👁️ Aaaaa. Inchrestinggg. From this and The Wigmaker Job I would guess that this "somebody" who decided that and did that to him is Zara Renata. she ended that short story like [evil anime villain laugh] "huehuehue":

"From flying vermin to malicious spirit. That's quite the promotion." [...] "A true maleficar knows demons cannot be killed, only controlled. If this Crow fancies himself a demon, then I look forward to using him to his full potential. He'll be duly punished"

Who else could the "someone" be? Zara, when I catch you.. 😠

I'm sure it will be different this time around as it always is! - both Wynne's situation (the specifics of it, how it came around, the effect it had on her) and how it was explored in the story was different to Anders' which was again different to Justice's in DA:O's to Cole's etc. (speaking veeery broadly in terms of the 'spirit companion' archtype, I know for example that Cole isn't possessed, simply a spirit. yk what I mean). I'm super curious about the take on this theme this time around ^^

(Lucanis possession-y-type-situation evidence [plus his demon-y looking tarot art, plus the wings and purple magic abilities of course])

I love the agency companions are given by them showing up in the field to help you, waiting for you somewhere on a quest they want to go on, or you encountering them out randomly somewhere doing there own thing (like the tidbit from a magazine about encountering Neve). it makes them feel like real people

I wonder if Taash's keen interest in the main story mission & the challenges of its arc in the far reaches of Arlathan Forest (it's strong enough that she shows up there impatiently if you don't take her) has something to do with the eluvian that's in her room?

"Far reaches of Arlathan Forest" is music to my ears btw as someone who has wanted to explore in there for the longest time

"You’ve just been around them, you’re aware of their techniques, and you wanna take that on yourself." - sensical explanation of what 'specs are aligned with/tied to factions' means ^^

KFM: "This next question is, where is the equator in Thedas, or the planet Thedas is on, relative to places we’ve explored?" JE: "That is a great question. So, I will say that, you know, it’s funny until I saw this question, it’s not something I’d ever thought a lot about, but as I started thinking about it a little bit more deeply, based on how the climate changes across Thedas, you know, obviously, to the south are the Avvar and things get a little bit more wintry, and then up north is a lot more tropical, I’d say that Thedas is a southern continent on this world, so."

I feel like the answer that was given here matches what a lot of fans have speculated or headcanoned on this topic. ^^

"There are these times where a companion, either their faction or their story arc is so closely tied or intersects with the events of a main story mission that they do become required, but it’s not the standard"

This makes sense. It sounds like Liara on Thessia in ME3.

When someone asked "Can a companion leave due to your world decisions, and if so, will their partners leave with them?" and John Epler mentioned that he would only answer half of this question as the other half is a spoiler, it made me wonder if companions will leave at certain times due to our world decisions

No mechanic behind companion-companion romances is so nice, it's more organic and real that way. I'm really looking forward to seeing the friendships and relationships between the companions develop

DAVRIN INFOOO 😭🙏 He sounds amazing. I wonder which companions in particular bring out his kindness

"He’s not just a Warden who sees fighting monsters as, you know, just part of the job. He believes in turning this into a skill-set that he alone, you know like, he has more than anyone else. Learning how to defeat monsters, learning their weaknesses, and that does show up a lot in his character arc, so."

this ties back to a related quote from a lil while ago.

I know it can be inferred from her vallaslin, but this Q&A is the first place I remember (atm) Bellara specifically being stated to be Dalish

We already saw each companion's Lighthouse casual wear here

Emmrich?? what are his casual threads like? :D

I wonder if Lucanis being one of the team cooks is part of why he appears to sleep in the kitchen storage/pantry

"It’s funny, I’d say that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is probably the most we’ve talked about food in a context of Dragon Age, ever" - it makes sense that it was only recently that the DA cookbook came out hh :D

Some of the companions being so bad at cooking that they'd burn water and die took me out. who do you think are the ones that aren't even 'passable' cooks but terrible ones hh? :D

So do the Crows in general quite enjoy the finer things in life and in food?

I wonder if part of Lucanis' interest in food and cooking stems from when he was young and Caterina made him go for days without food and water? :(

"So one of the things I really love is, you know, Bellara and Lucanis actually end up being, essentially, the team cooks. Bellara, you know, spending a lot of time out in nature, learning a lot about, you know, different types of cooking, is really big on experimentation, she likes to, you know, try different things. Lucanis comes from the Crows, Lucanis is very big on the finer things, so between the two of them, there’s a point in the story where they basically decide, if we don’t do this, the entire team is going to starve, so let’s just call ourselves the cook, cooks, and make sure that nobody dies of food poisoning, so."

I love this so much 🥺💜 ooh my heart. (its so wholesome and so funny at the same time). also Bellara's creativity and love of learning and exploring expresses itself in her cooking too!

It's great that fine, fancy dwarven-style beards are returning :D I wonder if there are also hairs with beads woven in? Strand hair in the beards 👌 beard physics working with different armors 👌 (amazing work!!). Dwarf Rooks shown before launch 👌 as many options in CC being universal as possible 👌 I love what I'm hearing!! I would guess from this that it means hair isn't gender-locked and mostly isn't lineage-locked (I can understand qunari hair may have to be) and things like that.

It wasn't in doubt ofc but this Q&A is the first time I remember hearing a clear mention that Solas was written by Trick Weekes in DA:TV

I'm really curious about the Rook faction background-dialogue with that same companion. it sounds like some have only heard of them and some may have known them a bit more directly. Like for example, is Antivan Crow Rook also from House Dellamorte, or another Antivan Crow house? Has Grey Warden Rook ever been to Weisshaupt (some Wardens don't seem to have)? Did Veil Jumper Rook ever go on adventures with Bellara? Did Emmrich and Mourn Watcher Rook ever be direct colleagues in the Necropolis? etc.

"maybe even heard of you leaving the faction to go help Varric to track down Solas" - this snippet makes it sound like part of Rook's backstory may involve having left their background faction when getting picked up/tapped by Varric for the work. inchresting

This screenshot shows an example of the Veilguard team hanging out together

"Rook and Solas have a connection, they have a bond'' - my guess is this is to do with Rook interfering with Solas' ritual, and the Lyrium dagger passing from Solas to Rook

I'm curious about the differences in Solas' connection/relationship with Rook to the one he had with the Inquisitor

"there are followers who, you know, are going to have a more complicated connection and complicated relationship with just, Solas as an entity, you know, Bellara, for example, is an elf, she’s Dalish, and this a person from her pantheon, so. There’s going to be a lot more of a, I guess, like I said, complex relationship between the two of them. Davrin is another example, someone else who is Dalish, so, you know, their views on the gods in general are going to be a little bit different"

I was happy to hear this. ^^ it would be odd if this sort of thing wasn't explored or at least acknowledged in the game. you can hear a bit of this in Bellara's release date trailer line, "Our gods are back. Our gods." it was also hinted at a bit in this Game Informer article I feel.

It sounds like Bellara and Davrin have slightly differing views on the elven gods.

It's so cool that we have 2 Dalish elf companions in the team this time! I missed a Dalish perspective in the roster in DA:I.

Turning off some of the UI components is great for taking screenshots and stuff

I think that Bellara's unique exploration ability is Tinker

Party swap-points confirmed?

Rook's ability to channel the companions' exploration abilities through the Lyrium dagger is super interesting 👀 I wonder how that works and how that comes about? Is it to do with lyrium? the Veil? the runes that can be put on the dagger? the mysterious entity in the Lighthouse that assists with crafting? do the companions each have some kind of connection to Rook sort've how Rook does to Solas? back in the day, when Solas led his own band of followers during his rebellion, when Solas' Lighthouse was filled with his own group of companions (Solas sees himself in Rook etc), did he channel his own companions' abilities the same way using the dagger? Was Felassan once essentially a party member of Solas'?

Great news on the helmet situation :). I wonder if the vitaar variants of helmets thing also applies to Taash?

Here's an example of qunari vitaar, two

Themed color-variant cosmetics 👀

Flowing faction-themed capes 👀

ASSAN SIBLINGS... after the Mae reveal, this was the highlight of this Q&A for real :D and it makes sense, griffons seem to lay clutches, so unless Assan was created or something wild or all the rest of his clutch died somehow, there would be others around in the world. I wonder what role the others will play in the game, and what the plotbeat around griffons is more generally

Confirmation that if companions showed up previously in TN they were at that point intended to be companions. It gives you an idea of how long some of these characters were worked on and developed for

Rook's surname being referenced in dialogue quite a bit 👀 interesting, I wonder when. Neve and Varric have called Rook "Rook" in videos from the game

Confirmation that the shape of Morrigan's crown is meaningful and tied to Flemythal stuff/themes

"In the case of Morrigan, she’s coming to terms with a lot of truths about both herself but also her mother, you know, you see her with Flemeth’s crown, or a variation of it, and that’s speaking to her personal journey of, what I would call, kind’ve acceptance of who she is and how she connects to Flemeth, because ultimately we want this to feel like a real world"

It sounds like all of these hints are coming to fruition now:

"A soul is not forced upon the unwilling, Morrigan. You were never in danger from me." - "Mother is the inheritor, she who awaits the next age." - "Designer’s Notes: This is Flemeth from the previous two games. In this game, Flemeth’s story comes to a head – she knew that Solas would summon her, and that he would need to steal her power to further his plans. She knew that because they are both elven gods…yet Solas has slept for a thousand years and his power dwindled, while she was killed long ago and a spark escaped from her into the body she now holds. She has nurtured that spark, and knew that Solas would need it. He was once her oldest friend, but she knows in his drive to save the elven people he will kill anyone – even her. She intends to let him have the power, so long as she can pass the essence of her god-hood onto Morrigan, a gift Flemeth had always planned for her daughter yet one Morrigan misunderstood as hostile possession."

Even mundane Kieran's dialogue line about who his mother is ("She's the Witch of the Wilds") touches on this. The old Witch of the Wilds, Flemeth, is no more. Morrigan has taken on the mantle, in a manner of speaking. These things seem especially impactful in worldstates where Morrigan drank from the Well. I am curious about how Well-drinking Morrigan vs non-drinking Morrigan will play out.

In a way, Morrigan has already stepped into her mother's role in the world of Dragon Age. Flemythal used to show up dramatically and mysteriously in every game to interact with the main character of that story. Morrigan has also been doing that, also now for 3 games. I'm reminded of Varric's tombstone in the Fade, Became His Parents. especially if she continues to do this while she gets older, the similarity is apparent.

It's cool that you don't have to be Spellblade spec to use orb and dagger

"while City Elf versus Dalish Elf is a lot more of a useful distinction in, you know, Ferelden, Orlais, we’re in northern Thedas, things are different up here. And a great example is Rivain. Dalish settlements, you know, they have Dalish settlements within cities, integrated into the cities, because, again, they don’t have that same bias, that same distinction."

New lore, or maybe a return to older lore? in DAII Isabela tells Merrill the Dalish haven't reached Llomerryn. but prior to that around 2009, David Gaider mentioned that the Dalish elves in Rivain have a semi-permanent settlement in Llomerryn. this sounds like that, and it sounds like it's not only Llomerryn. of course, Bela could just have been mistaken or this could be a recent development that began in the last decade or so in the world. I think it makes sense for what we know about Rivain.

"It’s a lot more about, how you play into the faction, you know, and, in some cases it matters more that you’re an elf, in other cases it doesn’t actually matter to the people of that faction, they’re just looking for someone who could do the work. A great example, and I’ll just, very, very light spoilers, Mourn Watch is a great example where, they just care that you are capable of, you know, executing the duties that you’re given, so."

I'm curious about which do and which don't for this, and not only for the elf lineage. an elven Veil Jumper may have more to say on or different investment in the artifacts they find and places they explore. an Antivan Crow who was employed because humans often find them attractive, or an Antivan Crow who was an enslaved elf or enslaved human and then bought by the Crows may have different thoughts on/experiences being a Crow than say a human who was born into it. (this is previous lore stuff, the Crows favoring recruiting elves, Zevran was bought etc). etc.

Lastly a quick recap on the things that came up in the Q&A that the devs said they would be talking about more soon:

They will be going deeper into settings, accessibility settings/features and similar things closer to launch

(On accessibility features, Corinne Busche mentioned that she thinks they are doing a feature, some kind of blogpost on that subject)

They will be talking more about exploration next month

They will be talking more about the Lighthouse next month

They will be showing some dwarf Rooks before launch

[transcript link]

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annabelle--cane · 1 year ago

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im listening to mag again and damn do the archival crew HATE jon. listen i get it supposedly your lives would be normal if he hadn't brought you here... but he didn't? (minus og archive crew, jon requesting them and all) if anything he was just kinda there when you made decisions, bro wasn't EVEN THERE when melanie got hired like??? like how r u gonna wish him pain rn, he's ltrly sopping wet and on the verge of dying💀

like another anon I got a month or so ago, this is one of my sleeper agent trigger phrases, so this might be another marina monologue moment.

as I'm also in the middle of a (for my standards) incredibly slow relisten, I've been thinking about this topic, too, but I've been coming at it from a slightly different angle than I normally do. in tim's case, we don't get an actual look at the circumstances under which he transferred to the archives, it is theoretically possible that jon laid it on a bit thick in asking him to come with him to the department and tim wouldn't have even thought of it otherwise, but with melanie we have several scenes of her hiring and onboarding where jon is not present and she continually rebuffs people who tell her she's making a mistake, so the text very clearly sets up that her blaming jon for being trapped there doesn't make sense. and, even with tim having been requested by jon, he still had to make the ultimate decision to switch departments himself, so, yknow, what gives?

most people, I think, and myself in the past, have come at this question from a very jon-centric pov because he's the main character and it's a jon-centric show, but I think putting it down to "they lash out at him because he happens to be there and stops defending himself after a while" misses something, as does "they lash out at him because elias sets everyone up to think they have an adversarial relationship to jon." more than that, I think it's about the rejection of agency.

tma is a show that's very much About agency and choices, so it's important to keep track of where characters suddenly balk and try to offload their choices onto other agents. martin, despite being very proactive and efficient when he sets his mind to it, has a consistent habit of thinking of himself as fundamentally unimportant and unable to affect real change. jon, someone who is usually culpability_acceptor_4000, really tries to convince himself that the web made him pull statements out of strangers. and melanie and tim, on realizing that they've gotten themselves stuck in the archives, have similar reactions of trying to retroactively make those decisions jon's.

they hate being stuck there and they can't bear the idea that it might be their fault, and they don't know how to reconcile the choices they did make with the greater forces outside of their control that shape their lives. tim swings right from seeing jon as fully responsible to seeing everything as the result of cosmically inevitable bad luck, and this hits him so hard that it leads directly to his suicide. post-bullet melanie gets a better handle on it; accepting that she chose to fall further into the slaughter opens her up to accepting that she made other choices, like joining the archives, as well as accepting future choices, like quitting the archives.

and yes, in the moments where tim and melanie are most vulnerable and just starting to realize how deeply screwed they are, jon (at least from their pov) does something to make it worse. when jon tells tim that jane presntiss wasn't his fault, tim says "well you sure made me feel worse afterwards! and then everyone had to pay attention to how you were feeling to get you to stop stalking us!" when melanie goes in for a second assassination attempt on elias, elias makes jon talk her down instead of doing it himself, presumably to try and get the slaughter mark done with. neither of these are the inciting incidents for tim and melanie's situations, but they stand out. and because jon is culpability_acceptor_4000, a man who feels like the weight of the whole world is on his shoulders and is even right some of the time, the accusations stick. tim and melanie don't want anything to be their fault, jon thinks everything is his fault, and it's a bit of a vicious self-fulfilling cycle.

#tma #answered #anons #suicide ment

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actual-changeling · 1 year ago

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And once more with feeling: Why there is no magic trick or gun to either of their heads in the final fifteen.

Before you immediately run to my comments or hit reblog, please read the entire thing. If you're still mad, either read it again or sit with it, do not make it my problem. Genuine questions and discussions are always welcome, comments that make it clear you did not understand a word I said aren't.

Okay? Okay.

With that, welcome back to Alex's unhinged meta corner, and today we are going to compare their first and last argument in the bookshop—they are, fundamentally, the same. It both sets the scene for their relationship this season and works as immaculate foreshadowing of how they part.

I compared the scripts, which you can find here. It's incredible that OP put all that work into creating these because otherwise I would have gone insane doing it myself.

Now, the setting: they have a problem.

In ep1 it is Gabriel, in ep6 it is technically still Gabriel, or rather his now empty position in heaven. They solved one problem and now they're forced to deal with another one he also caused; meanwhile he's drinking space margaritas.

Crowley, stuck in his trauma-induced hypervigilance and paranoia, suggest putting as much distance between them and the problem as possible. I think it is interesting that in ep1 he wants to get Gabriel away from them, while at the end of the season he is ready to get them away from the problem.

So far, I have never seen anyone mention that change! And it's important! The entire season, it is hammered into our heads how much they love being on earth. It is THEIR bookshop and THEIR car and THEIR life.

Crowley wants to protect that home, and Gabriel is a threat to it, a threat to both of them, their life, the bookshop—everything. He does not want to leave, he wants his peace and angel in one place.

Yet by allowing Gabriel to stay, Aziraphale destroyed the sense of comfort and safety Crowley slowly developed over the last few decades. Heaven nipping down every now and then to check in with Aziraphale is very different from him sheltering the Supreme Archangel who is running from 'something terrible' without even asking if he's alright with that.

Aziraphale calls it their bookshop, but he fundamentally still sees it as his space to govern and Crowley as a guest.

After another horrible week and having his previously safe space violated several different times and beings, Crowley is back to where he was before—without a home. That fragile existence broke apart, so he is standing in the heap of shards and telling Aziraphale 'I don't feel safe here anymore, let's leave'.

He lost his safe space, but he still has his safe person, his best and only friend, the person he loves. I doubt he cares where exactly they go as long as they're together and it's safe.

Returning to heaven—it is the one place Crowley cannot follow him to. It's literally the worst option, he can't go back, he won't go back. So he invokes the bookshop again, if you don't want to stay for me, stay for the bookshop, your books, your corner of existence that I thought we had carved out for ourselves.

'Nothing lasts forever' and 'you're at liberty to go' have the same underlying meaning—you're not welcome in this house anymore, it was your safe place, not anymore. Both times, he's essentially kicking him out.

Aziraphale then switches it up again!

Same manipulation tactic, first making Crowley feel rejected and unwelcome, then trying to pull him back in by promising and showing affection. He's desperate, he's attempting to get Crowley into his "saviour" role because he knows he has a hard time not saving him from whatever trouble he gets him into. Aziraphale knows him so damn well, and he uses that knowledge to get what he wants.

'If you won't, you won't' has the same implication as 'then there's nothing more to say'—I am ending that conversation, you can leave now, he even makes the same face both times.

In ep1, that's that, Crowley takes his emotions and leaves.

The lightning bolt is the kiss. A sudden, heavy discharge of pent-up feelings that has been a long time coming, but in the end he is more desperate, less controlled, at his emotional rock bottom. Everything he thought to be true about their relationship came crashing down around him.

In his mind, Aziraphale chose heaven over him—TWICE! First Gabriel, now Gabriel's position.

'You're on your own with this one' applies to both scenes, I think the reasoning behind that is pretty clear.

Now, some more verbal components and word meanings that I think are worth mentioning.

One of them is Crowley directly pointing out heaven's cruelties when Aziraphale is seemingly unaware of them, thinking of Gabriel/heaven as in in need of his 'help'.

I can take help him -> I can make a difference.

It is, fundamentally, the same argument.

Aziraphale feels like he is the one who needs to play saviour (that Crowley actually hates it but Aziraphale loves it is a post for another time), the one being who can help Gabriel/heaven and fix all the problems.

Crowley correctly points out that they do not care about him and are just as cruel—if not more—as hell, that Gabriel tried to destroy him, that heaven will destroy all of them.

Their responses to that just shoot past each other and it is what Crowley himself tells us. Two different exactlys

Aziraphale's -> I am the only one who can fix this, I feel responsible for this, help me fix this.

Crowley's -> This is dangerous, it can get us killed, we cannot fix this. Come and be safe with me.

'He needs us' becomes 'I need you'.

'I would love you to help me' becomes 'we can be together'.

In episode 1, the argument isn't 'final', as such. Crowley is exhausted, sad, feels rejected, but when he finds out just how much trouble Aziraphale is in, he needs to go back and help him. It's instinct, he couldn't live with himself if he knowingly let him walk into the knife—and yet in episode 6 that is exactly what Aziraphale forces him to do.

It is why Crowley brings up the nightingales, why he kisses him: that primal, love-based desperation. This argument is final, he won't be able to follow him to heaven no matter what, he won't be able to protect him.

He is on his own with this one.

In conclusion, THIS is why the argument that happened in the final fifteen is real, there's no trick, no nothing.

They have had the same argument before, probably over and over again. Same structure but with lower stakes, and eventually they reconciled.

This time the stakes are as high as they possibly can be, which lures their most primal, honest arguments out of them.

Aziraphale wants to fix heaven, wants to help, still believes that they are fundamentally good, that he can make a difference.

Crowley has lived the truth, has been trying to tell him for centuries, and he is exhausted. He wants safety. He wants peace. He wants the two of them in a peaceful, not-fragile corner of existence that no one else gets to break ever again.

Not a single line was 'out of character', this is exactly who they are, with all their layers stripped away and their fears exposed. It's not pretty to watch, it hurts, it makes you ache, and yet they and we know that this is how it has the end—the only way it was ever going to end.

That is what makes it tragic.

However, even after all of that, there is one step left: reconciliation.

Season 3 is going to give it to us, in whatever shape or form. Neil knows what he is doing, and we can trust him to give them the ending they deserve.

#alex talks good omens #good omens #ineffable husbands #good omens meta #crowley #aziraphale #good omens season 2 #go2 #aziracrow #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable divorce #the final fifteen #crowley meta #aziraphale meta #every single time someone tries to argue with me about this again i will just link this post

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fortheloveofwonderland · 6 months ago

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Midnight | Chapter 24 FINAL | S.R

Previous Chapter

Summary - eighteen months after narrowly escaping the motel explosion, finally you and Spencer seem to have found your happy ending. But old habits die hard and you can’t help but keep one last secret from him.

Pairing - unsub! Spencer Reid / Fem! Reader

Category - dark angst | smut | very eventual happy ending

Warnings - explosions, fires, burns, scars, swearing, secrets, injuries.

WC - 4k

Chapter 24 - Partners in Crime

Eighteen Months Later

Luke Alvez squeezed his eyes shut tightly against the assault of a headache pressing against his temples. They happened less frequently now, maybe only about once every few weeks but it didn’t make them any less of a pain.

When he closed his eyes he was met by the same scene he’d pictured every time he closed his eyes for the last year and a half. Spencer’s face contorted into a malicious smile as he’d pulled that trigger and disappeared inside that vent as the little Cave Creek motel room exploded into flames.

The sound of the gun going off and the gasoline igniting, Emily’s screams from somewhere behind him to get down echoed in his mind along with the ringing in his ears that hadn’t been silenced for days following.

Luke was, as the doctors and nurses and all his team kept telling him, lucky. Lucky, what an incredibly frivolous summation. Lucky. He was lucky he hadn’t been more seriously injured, lucky to have gotten out of there alive.

Lucky.

Lucky that his old teammate, his old friend, hadn't killed him. He knew they were only trying to help but Luke didn’t feel lucky. Not in the slightest.

He opened his eyes as the dull throb continued at his temples, one of the side effects from the blast that had thrown him halfway across the motel room. His eyes landed on the backs of his hands still poised over the keyboard and the scarred skin he had to look at every day.

Again he’d been lucky that in trying to drag himself from the fire that he’d only sustained second degree burns on his hands. He’d had to wear bandages for nearly three weeks after the event and have his wounds treated regularly before the blisters started to scar.

It didn’t hurt anymore, but they were a constant reminder of that day. They were a twisted memento of the day he failed to save you, and unfortunately for him it wasn’t the only one.

After eighteen months sightings of you and Spencer were few and far between. At first the tips had come in thick and fast, people claiming to have seen the two of you anywhere from Florida to the Outer Hebrides. For a long time Luke had lost his belief that they would ever find you.

And some days he thought maybe that was for the best. You’d made your choice and him and the BAU weren’t it. Maybe one day he’d be able to accept that and move on with his life.

He heard a door open across the room and braced himself for what was to come without looking up from his hands.

“We’ve got a case.” Emily’s voice carried across the bullpen followed by the shuffling of chairs and footsteps.

Luke exhaled and forced his eyes onto his computer screen, hand moving to his mouse and shuffling the cursor over to the little X on the corner of the window. Before he closed it, he took one last look at the message on his screen, a rare smile pulling at the corner at his lips.

If anyone was to find out about this he could lose his job and honestly the FBI was the only thing he had left these days. But admittedly, he wasn’t sure he cared anymore. He’d taken a vow to uphold the laws of this country but some things were more important than that.

He read the brief message over again in his head. Maybe he was going soft, but maybe he also knew that even Penelope Garcia herself wouldn’t be able to trace this and therefore it would be fruitless letting the rest of the team in on this.

He glanced over his shoulder and removed his hand from the mouse. Once he was sure no one was nearby he typed a quick reply before hitting send and pushed his chair back. When he looked up, JJ was standing over him like he knew she would be, the same melancholy smile on her face she gave him every damn day.

He allowed her to take him by his scarred hands and help him to his feet. He’d stopped fighting it by now. At first he’d found it humiliating, but after a year and a half he’d stopped opposing his friend's help. It did make his life easier after all.

Once he was on his feet she handed him the cane that was resting against his desk and he nodded his thanks to her. She motioned for him to go ahead, always letting him go first so she could be behind him just in case he stumbled.

He closed his eyes again as he leant his weight on his good leg, the ringing in his ears almost immediately returning as he did so, accompanied by the bright orange flash from the blast. And then another sound entered his field of consciousness.

“Alvez? Alvez? Luke!” Emily screamed to be heard over the chaos, trying to duck under the fire to see him.

“I’m ok.” He coughed, smoke instantly starting to fill his lungs. “He went out the vent, send the team round the back!”

“I’m not leaving you here!” She called back from just inside the motel door.

“I’m fine, Prentiss!” But he wasn’t fine and he knew it.

When he tried to move an agonising pain shot up his left leg. He managed to internalise his yelp so as not to worry Emily but the pain made him dizzy.

“I am not leaving you here!” She yelled back, coughing a little herself as she tried to waft the smoke out of her face.

“Prentiss I said-“

“Never leave a man behind.” She cut him off, knowing she was speaking his language.

He tried to move again but his leg wouldn’t allow him to stand. The fire was spreading, getting closer to him with every passing second. He turned towards the door where he could just about make out the faint outline of Emily through the thick plumes of smoke.

If he didn’t do something soon he would die here.

“I think I can get to you.” He tried to sound more determined than he felt.

He covered his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his shirt to try and limit the intake of fumes into his lungs. He rolled onto his stomach to keep himself low to the ground and using his free hand he started pulling himself towards the door.

He felt like he was dragging a dead weight. The heat in the room was stifling and every part of him thought it would be easier to just give up. But he knew he couldn’t.

Behind him the sound of ripping plaster filled his ears seconds before he heard the crash of another explosion and the floor beneath him shook.

He whimpered a little, tears filling his eyes and hindering his vision even more so than the smoke was already doing as he clawed his way forward.

“Follow my voice, Alvez. I’m right here!” Emily shouted, getting down on the floor herself and reaching blindly through the grey blanket of smog.

Luke saw her fingers brushing against the carpet and desperately tried to reach for her but the pain coursing through his leg was nearly debilitating. But he had to press on, he had to get out of here.

He coughed against his sleeve trying to focus on the smell of his laundry detergent as he used the thick, old shag carpet to pull himself forward. Eventually he felt Emily’s hand gripping his wrist and she helped tug him through the wall of smoke just as the fire rumbled and spread to the soles of his shoes.

She yanked him across the threshold of the motel and into the fresh air outside. Another set of strong arms suddenly wrapped around his upper torso and carried him across the parking lot until he was far enough away from the blaze ripping apart the little motel room.

Once he was released, Luke collapsed onto the tarmac, spluttering and coughing, trying to gasp for the clean air to refill his aching lungs. He rolled onto his back and looked upwards. Emily and Matt were crouched over him, Emily’s hand coming to rest on his cheek.

“You scared me there, Alvez.” She smiled but he noticed the tears behind her eyes.

“Told you I was fine.” He coughed again. “Did you get them?”

“Don’t worry about that right now. For now you need to-”

“Did you get them?” He cut her off and her expression told him exactly what she was going to say before she said it.

“No, they got away.”

“Prentiss?” Matt’s voice spoke up. Emily let go of Luke’s face and turned to the other man who was kneeling by Luke’s side. “We need a medic, asap.”

Matt’s voice was so quiet Luke barely heard him over the sound of the commotion going on around him. But he knew by the pain rapidly worsening in his left leg that Matt was right.

But before Luke had a chance to hear anymore, the pain consumed him and his eyes fluttered closed despite his attempts to keep them open. And he must have blacked out, because the next he would be conscious of would be waking up in a hospital bed.

He was lucky to ever have been able to walk again. The doctors had told him when he’d woken up in hospital that he may be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But Luke had beaten the odds because he was lucky.

He would probably never walk unaided, without the use of his cane and he would always have a limp. He could no longer go out into the field with the rest of the team. But he was lucky because he could walk, the damages sustained to his leg when he’d been tossed across the room in the blast hadn’t completely ruined his life.

Because he was lucky.

Some fucking luck.

***

The soft breeze came in through the open balcony door, causing the net curtains to flutter. From the bed came a grumble as he raked his hair back from his sweaty forehead. Even the wind was hot.

Sometimes he wondered why, of all the places in the world, they’d chosen to live somewhere so freaking hot. Growing up in Vegas he’d gotten used to hot climates but this was something else entirely.

Spencer Reid was not built for the heat.

Sound from downstairs wafted through the open bedroom door and he knew if he didn’t get himself up soon then it would only be a matter of time before he was forcibly removed from this bed.

He rolled onto his side, the thin bed sheet clinging to his sweat slicked naked body as he did so and having to physically peel it off of himself so he could get up.

He passed through to the en-suite and jumped straight in the shower, running the water particularly cold to the point it was enough to cause goosebumps to flare on his skin. God how he missed being cold sometimes.

After his shower he grabbed a towel off of the rail and slung it around his waist. He looked at himself in the mirror over the sink, a hand instinctively raising to run through his ever growing facial hair. It didn’t help with the heat but he really liked the way it looked on him, and he knew he wasn’t the only one who appreciated it. It also helped to disguise his appearance because he never knew when someone might recognise him.

He dried himself off before dressing in a pair of shorts, possibly the first pair he’d ever owned in his life, and a polo shirt. He swept his damp hair back off of his face before leaving the room.

The house was large and airy, neutral coloured walls and carpet and minimal furniture. It was a world away from his pokey, dark apartment in DC, but it suited this new era of his life.

As he made his way down the stairs the sounds grew louder. The French doors were propped open, if he listened close enough he could hear the distant cadence of the sea lapping at the shoreline.

You had your back to him, standing on a chair whilst trying to tack something to the wall. He smiled to himself and approached with caution.

You wore a long, flowy pale yellow sundress covered in flowers. Your hair, which you’d dyed for the same reason he grew out his beard, shone in the sunlight beaming through the windows.

“You know,” he spoke as he closed in on you, placing his hands on your hips and gently tugging you off of the chair and onto the floor. “I’m tall enough to hang that without being a hazard. You could have waited.”

You turned to face him, pouting your bottom lip at him in a way that always made him chuckle.

“If you didn’t sleep so damn late maybe I could have.” You huffed which caused him to laugh harder.

“Maybe if someone hadn’t kept me up all night, I might not have slept so damn late.” He gently kissed your forehead and moved past you to grab the end of the sign you’d been trying to tack up.

You huffed again at the ease in which he was able to do a job you’d struggled with. He stepped back and looked up at the banner as he wrapped an arm around your shoulders and pulled you close.

“See how easy that was?” He chuckled lightly.

“You don’t need to be smug.” You grumbled.

“No one’s being smug, it’s called teamwork.”

“Hmm.” You rolled your eyes but got up on your tiptoes to kiss him all the same. “Did I thank you for your willingness to be kept up all night?”

“I’m not sure I was willing but it was only fair.” He smiled softly at you. “You do owe me a night of being kept up for other reasons though.”

“Maybe one day. When she’s in college.” You teased him.

“Only seventeen years to go until I can have crazy all night sex with my wife. Super.” He laughed, kissing you once more before sidestepping you. “And speaking of, where is the beautiful birthday girl who kept me awake all night?”

The little girl squealed from her highchair as soon as her father turned to face her, her chubby little legs swinging back and forth in excitement. Spencer beamed at his daughter as he picked her up and spun her around, causing her to giggle, before he held her closely to his chest.

“Happy birthday my sweet princess.” He placed a kiss on her mop of curly hair which she most certainly got from him.

He turned around and used his free arm to wrap around you, holding both of his girls close whilst looking back up at the banner proclaiming “Happy 1st Birthday Lilith.”

It wasn’t an easy life, that was for sure. Being on the run with a child was never going to be ideal. But Spencer relished in these moments with his two favourite people in the entire world snuggled against him. For this moment at least he could forget the fact it could come crumbling down any second.

The two of you had fled the country in a blaze of glory after Spencer had narrowly avoided going up in flames with the motel room. You managed to get a flight using the fake passports you’d gotten back in Virginia when you’d first embarked on this journey before the BAU had locked down all airports in a hundred mile radius.

You leased this house under the names on the passports; Troy and Daisy Malone. Your daughter was born in the local hospital and although she was legally Lilith Diana Malone, she would always be a Reid in Spencer’s mind.

Daisy Malone volunteered three days a week at Lilith’s nursery while Troy worked full time at a research facility. The adjustment was made a lot easier for him given he already spoke the language. But the irony was not lost on you at how many years Luke had tried to teach you Spanish and it had taken fleeing the US for you to finally learn it.

Spencer had gone on the straight and narrow, he hadn’t had any of his murderous inclinations since the two of you left Arizona. He was calmer, his previous anger at the world seemingly left behind in the states. He was finally the man you knew in your days at the BAU, the old Spencer Reid. And even though it wasn’t the dream scenario, you were happier than you’d ever been.

There would never be a day that the two of you wouldn’t constantly be looking over your shoulders, living in fear that the front door could come crashing down at any minute and the three of you would be ripped apart. But you just had to take every day as it came and make the most of the time you had together.

“So, what does the birthday girl want to do today?” Spencer tickled Lilith under her chin making the girl giggle again.

“Well mommy is going to be making a birthday cake and I could really do with focusing on this, because as you know I am not much of a baker.” You gave him a look.

“Understood.” Spencer smiled at you. “Maybe Lil would like to go to the beach while mommy bakes?”

“I think she would love that.” You nodded, rounding the counter and pulling the recipe up on your laptop.

“She would, or you would love the alone time?” He smirked at you, jiggling Lilith in his arms.

“Both.” You shrugged.

Spencer chuckled and came around the counter, placing a soft kiss on your forehead. You cupped his jaw in one hand, running your fingernails through his facial hair.

“Have I told you recently how much I like this beard?” You hummed against his lips as he kissed you again.

“Only every day for the last eighteen months.” He laughed, stroking your hair back from your face. “Have I told you recently how much I like this hair colour?”

“Only every day for the last eighteen months.” You laughed too.

You placed a kiss on your daughter's cheek before Spencer went about finding shoes for both him and Lilith while you read through your recipe again, only partially understanding what was being asked of you.

“You owe me for this by the way, it's hot as hell out there.” Spencer called from where he was hovering by the back door, sitting Lilith in her stroller and pulling the cover over the top to shield her from the sun's rays.

“Hey, Puerto Rico was not my first choice of hideaway destination.” You shrugged at him.

“So that’s a no to a birthday blowjob?” He teased.

“Ask me again on your birthday.” You rolled your eyes.

“See you soon, my partner in crime.” He winked at you as he took the handles of the stroller and wheeled your daughter out the backdoor.

You smiled to yourself, your hand instinctively coming up to toy with the rose gold heart around your neck which you had never taken off to this day. It wasn’t an easy life, but Spencer made it seem so simple.

Yours was a tale of reckless love from the start. It was funny to think back, to waiting for Spencer on the other side of that motel vent and thinking there was no way you would all make it out of there alive. You still remembered the way you’d screamed when you heard the explosion and then the relief that had washed over you when he dropped out of the vent and onto the concrete.

As he’d smiled at you and gripped you by the hand and the two of you started to run, the words he’d said that day still echoed through you.

“Until death do us part, princess. I’ll never leave you so easily.”

Lovers and partners. Partners in life and in crime. Until death do you part.

You let go of the necklace and turned your attention back to the laptop screen just as an incoming message popped up. Your eyes flitted back up to make sure Spencer was gone before you clicked into it. You tried not to make a habit of lying to him anymore but some things were better kept a secret.

A clock started to chime from upstairs and you focused on each one and counted them up to twelve as the morning ticked by into the afternoon. Twelve o clock. It happened twice a day but for so long you’d let yourself be ruled by the shadowy midday counterpart. Because sometimes there was no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind.

But you were starting to see that midnight also offered its own kind of solace, the dawn of each new day bringing with it the dawn of hope. Even if you’d always be bound by your past mistakes, always doomed to have to watch your back.

However that didn’t seem all that bad when you had Spencer and Lilith in your corner, your dawns; your hopes.

You had a smile on your face as you clicked into the message and read the brief text on your screen. Having Spencer and Lilith on your side was one thing, but having an extra ally never hurt either.

Reaching out to him several months ago could have been your biggest downfall but deep down you’d always known you could trust him with your life. And as always, he didn’t disappoint you.

As you read over the single line of the message, you were sure you could even still hear his voice in your head as he wished you and Spencer’s little conejito a happy first birthday.

You'll never take us alive.

We swore that death will do us part,

They'll call our crimes a work of art.

You'll never take us alive.

We'll live like spoiled royalty, lovers and partners,

Partners in crime.

This, the tale of, reckless love,

Living a life of crime on the run.

I brush to a gun to paint these states?

Green and red.

Everybody freeze,

Nobody move.

Put the money in the bag,

Or we will shoot.

Empty out the vault,

And me and my doll will be on our way.

Our paper faces flood the streets,

And if the heat comes close enough to burn ,

Then we'll play with fire 'cause,

You'll never take us alive.

We swore that death will do us part,

They'll call our crimes a work of art.

You'll never take us alive.

We'll live like spoiled royalty, lovers and partners,

Partners in crime,

Partners in crime.

Here we find our omnipotent outlaws,

Fall behind the grind tonight.

Left unaware that the lone store owner,

Won't go down without a fight.

Where we gonna go,

He's got us pinned.

Baby I'm a little scared,

Now, don't you quit.

He's sounded the alarm?

I hear the sirens closing in,

Our paper faces flood the streets,

And if the heat comes close enough to burn,

Then we're burning this place to the ground 'cause,

You'll never take us alive.

We swore that death will do us part,

They'll call our crimes a work of art.

You'll never take us alive,

We'll live like spoiled royalty, lovers and partners,

Partners in crime.

The skies are black with lead-filled rain,

A morbid painting on display.

This is the night the young love died,

Buried at each other's side.

You never took us alive.

We swore that death would do us part,

So now we haunt you in the dark.

You never took us alive,

We live as ghosts among these streets,

Lovers and partners.

Partners in crime.

@bubblebuttwade @jay-2s-world @daddy-dotcom @nomajdetective @rebelliousstories

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