#but instead somehow we're at the point where the more followers you have the more you are expected to just post something anything

[jakeperalta]

letting celebrities think they can and should "use their platform" to speak on all current events and political issues regardless of how educated they are on them was a grave mistake

[libraryofgage]

Decided to combine 4 and 12 of the prompt list! Something about these two prompts was giving me major Addams Family vibes, so I rolled with it lol

If there are any other prompts you want to see written, lemme know!

4. “You know I’d do anything to have you stay by my side, right? Anything.”  

12. “I’m going to have so much fun with you.”

Wherein the Munsons are branches on the Addams Family tree, and Steve finds himself the object of Eddie Munson's flirtations and devotion.

---

When the Munsons move in next door, Steve sits his brother down in the living room and says, "Don't bother them, Dustin. Wait, like, three days before asking for their life stories."

Dustin looks offended, to say the least. "I wasn't gonna ask for their life stories, Steve. I was gonna ask where they got all the bats and birds that hang out on their roof."

Honestly, Steve would love the answer to that, too, but that seems to be encroaching on the "life story" territory, considering the sheer number of flying creatures the Munsons brought with them. He'd been outside getting the mail when the Munson kids, a boy his own age and a girl Dustin's age, had opened a tiny cat carrier, and a veritable storm of black wings and feathers and screeching had somehow come streaming out of it.

The girl was watching them with a smile, and the boy turned around like he'd felt Steve staring. Their gazes met, and Steve's awkward wave was returned with the boy's eyes raking over him before winking with a grin.

"Look, ju-"

Steve's words are cut off by a banging on the door, the person knocking out a beat that he can't follow. He shoots Dustin a look to stay put before he opens the door to find the Munson boy on the other side. He's got that same playful grin and a plate of pitch-black...something in his hands.

"Uh, hi?"

Somehow, the boy's grin gets wider, and he shoves the plate into Steve's hands. "Heeeellooo, big boy," he says, his voice almost lowering into a purr that makes heat flood Steve's cheeks. "Wayne wanted me to drop off some of his famous arsenic and chocolate chip cookies. You know, since we're neighbors and all."

"Wayne? Arsenic?" Steve mumbles, looking down at the cookies warily.

"Our uncle," the boy says, leaning on the doorway and crossing his arms as he looks Steve up and down again. "Don't worry, it won't kill you. Yet. That's a friend of the family privilege, at least, and you just ain't there yet."

It must be a joke, and Steve lets out a strained laugh. He balances the plate in one hand and holds his other one out. "Right, well, uh, nice to meet you. I'm Steve. You'll probably meet my brother, Dustin, later."

The boy takes his hand, but instead of shaking it, he brings it up to his lips. Then he turns Steve's hand over, brushing his lips across the meat of his palm before nipping. Steve jerks, yanking his hand back and holding it close to his chest, his heart beating erratically as the boy says, "I'm Eddie, my sister's name is El, and I'm going to have so much fun with you, Stevie."

And with that, Eddie turns on his heel and saunters back to the Munson home, which had been painted pitch-black (just like the cookies) at some point. Steve doesn't move from the open door, feeling a faint tingling in his palm, until he hears Dustin shout that he's going to let all the cold air out.

The arsenic and chocolate chip cookies had not, in fact, killed either of them. And, despite their burnt-to-coal appearance, they were soft and chewy. It had immediately put the Munsons in Dustin's good graces, which he happily proclaimed while Steve's head and heart were still reeling from Eddie's introduction.

In the following weeks, Eddie kept popping up whenever Steve left the house. He never overstepped, though. He'd appear at a distance, wait for Steve to wave or say hi, and then approach with that big grin with canine teeth that looked a little sharper than they should. Sometimes he'd offer more baked goods from Wayne (always with some schtick to them: eye of newt brownies, hag's breath toffee, cyanide and cherry pie). On one notable occasion, he'd offered a baseball bat with nails stuck through the end.

"El let out a demodog the other day, so you probably ought to be careful. I'd hate for you to get hurt by something that wasn't me," Eddie had said as Steve confusedly took the bat.

He blinked when he had processed the words and looked up. "You would hurt me?" Steve asked.

Eddie had leaned close, his ringed fingers ghosting over Steve's side and inching closer to his waist, and whispered, "It wouldn't just hurt, Stevie." His words had sent a shiver down Steve's spine, his mouth suddenly dry as Eddie pulled away.

And their interactions had escalated from there. With every meeting, Eddie strayed closer, lingered longer, spoke softer, and Steve couldn't escape the growing devotion and fascination in his eyes. At some point, Steve knew, things were bound to boil over.

So, he definitely wasn't surprised when they did at the neighborhood's annual Fourth of July cookout. Eddie had waited until El and Dustin were distracted by their other friends, checked to make sure Wayne was sufficiently busy with helping at the grill, and then kidnapped Steve to a hidden corner of the Byers's yard.

Which brings Steve to the present, the Byers's house casting a long shadow over him and Eddie so nobody notices them. The sound of other kids screeching with delight and parents discussing summer camps fades when Eddie leans in closer.

"You know I'd do anything to have you stay by my side, right? Anything?" Eddie asks, tilting Steve's chin up as he crowds him against the wall.

Steve presses back against the cool brick, silently holding Eddie's gaze. There's a stark seriousness to his words, and Steve can't help his curiosity about just what anything encompasses. "Would you kill for me?" he asks, his voice soft.

Eddie practically lights up, a feral grin pulling at his lips. "Gladly, sweetheart," he purrs.

"Would you die for me?"

"I'd tear out my heart and present it on a fucking silver platter for you. In fact, I can do it right now, if you'd like." A knife appears in his hand from seemingly nowhere, and Eddie brings it to his own chest only for Steve to stop him by grabbing his wrist.

"Then, what about living for me?" Steve asks, carefully taking the knife from Eddie and smoothly returning it to the holder tucked into his jeans.

Eddie leans in until their noses brush, his hand cupping Steve's jaw. "I wouldn't even dream of dying without your permission, Stevie," he whispers.

And Steve would fucking love to meet the person who could withstand Eddie Munson's attention and flirting and gifts and care and sheer devotion without falling head-over-heels for him. Steve would want to put that person in a jar, study them, see if their indifference is something he could mass produce. He's sure Eddie would be thrilled to help him do it, too.

"I have one request," Steve whispers back, reaching up and pushing his hand into Eddie's hair, warmth rushing through him when Eddie leans into the touch.

"Anything. Say the word, and I wouldn't hesitate to crawl through hot coals and broken glass." Steve has zero doubts Eddie would; in fact, he knows Eddie would be ecstatic to do it, if only for the chance to make Steve smile.

"I want one of the bats. And Dustin wants a demodog, but you better make sure it doesn't hurt him, or I'll make you listen to bubblegum pop and watch a Disney marathon."

Steve can feel the shudder that goes through Eddie, his eyes revealing a mix of horror, pride, and love at Steve's words. "You, Stevie, have perfected the art of making threats. Consider your two requests granted and me sufficiently...threatened," Eddie breathes, somehow managing to press even closer.

And Steve can't make either of them wait a second longer. With a grin that can easily rival Eddie's, Steve kisses him and begins to think of names for his bat.

[astonmartingf]

YOUR GENTLEMAN ; LH44

— a slice of domesticity as you experience living with lewis for the first time

amgf set during the pandemic, nico rosberg mention, yay!

masterlist

Living with Lewis in Monaco definitely had its perks, but it was also coupled with drawbacks.

When you moved in, you thought it was a short stint but the few weeks turned into months, and soon you found yourself spending the whole year with him.

In the beginning you definitely found more pros than cons, living in Monaco is like a dream, especially since it was with Lewis, it only made it more special.

But as you spent more time, you found yourself growing anxious, and empty. Isolated from your family and friends, away into a foreign country, where you barely knew anyone.

"Are you sure you're okay with me going to Nico's?" You ask Lewis for the umpteenth time. Opening up last night how you felt yourself slowly going insane staying indoors. That's when Lewis suggested that you visit Nico and his family downstairs.

"I'm sure, look we've been friends since forever, and I know that you miss Nico and his family. I'm busy going to races, and you're stuck here. It's okay." Comforting your worries away, Lewis pulls you into a small hug assuring you that it's all good.

"I do miss Nico, I haven't seen him since he left you know, and you— you're both awkward together."

Lewis sends you a pointed look, "We're working on it okay, it's not like I avoid him every time I see him."

You scoff in reply, "As if you give the universe a chance for you to meet. You're always avoiding him, you literally live in the same building together."

Lewis shakes his head, clearly disagreeing with your sentiments, "You know what I'm going to walk you over to Nico's tomorrow and talk to him just to prove to you I'm not awkward with him."

"You're acting like I'm a kid handing me out on a play date! Also that's not counted since you're just going there to prove a point to yourself that you aren't affected."

Pushing a finger in front of your lips, Lewis shushed you pushing you towards your bedroom. "It's time for us to sleep, we both have a busy day ahead."

Rolling your eyes, you were met with a closed door. Following the sounds of Lewis' slippers shuffling back to his bed.

Despite being annoyed you can't find fault with him, you both had a busy day tomorrow with you spending time with the Rosberg's and Lewis with a flight to wherever the next race is.

Spending time with Nico and his family definitely boosted your mood, often forgetting about Lewis as he's constantly in and out of the country. But instead of moping in his apartment you find yourself looking forward to his arrival.

You avoid messaging Lewis during race weeks, keeping to yourself and leaving the F1 Channel playing in the background for any updates. It's nice to keep Lewis focused on the track but it also means that whatever you see on television, is all the information you have on him.

And during inadequate race conditions you're constantly stressing yourself, every yellow flag, weather update, red flag, pit stop, and other potential crashes have you on your toes.

Yet somehow, Lewis always finds a way to comfort you even if he is miles away from you. Immediately answering the radio about his updates (if he is a part of the crash) it's as if he's constantly assuring you that he is doing fine inside the car.

One time you were eating dinner after a long day with Nico's daughters, you find yourself looking forward to coming back to Lewis' apartment. Which at this point is no longer his only, it's a shared space for you two, mostly yours as you spend more time in it than him.

Cooking up something simple, you sit in solidarity finding peace in your little set up. Placing the ceramic bowl you designed with Lewis a few years back on the coffee table at the living room, instead of eating in the dining area, watching a replay of Lewis' dashboard from a previous race.

It feels like he's beside you, you find yourself listening to him as he talks with his engineers, watching his hands grip the steering wheel going lap over lap, doing what he does the best.

You end your days the same, until Lewis comes back. And it happened to be one of those days. The bell catches you off guard from taking a bite of your dinner, looking up, you find the door swing open revealing Lewis from behind.

"OH MY GOSH!" Standing up from the floor your legs stumble at the speed of your reaction. Throwing yourself at Lewis who dropped his bags at the entrance, forgotten as he wrapped his arms around yours.

"OH NO! I didn't cook dinner for you. Why didn't you tell me you were coming home?" Breaking from the hug, you smack his arm scrambling to the kitchen for a last minute meal.

You hear the sound of Lewis' laughter behind, your heart warming at the sound of his presence immediately filling the empty space in the apartment. "You don't have to cook me anything, I can make myself food."

You feel Lewis behind you as you shake your head in disappointment. "That's not it, you just came home you must be starving– how about you have my meal down there in the living room. It's fried rice, it's vegan I was about to eat so it's still warm and I can make something real quick so you can rest and-"

You were cut off with Lewis feeding you a spoon of what was supposedly your dinner. "Calm down sweetheart, we can share the bowl if you really want me to eat that bad."

A frown forms on your face, deep in thought, slowly chewing the spoonful of food, before staring into Lewis' brown eyes.

Dragging him towards the living room, you push him into the sofa before grabbing the bowl of fried rice off his hands. "Are you not hungry? You don't have to eat if you're not! You know what you should sit down and rest, or do you want to take a short bath? I can-"

"I can do those things myself. You're stressing over me when I'm at races, and when I'm here you're also stressing yourself over me. You're supposed to relax." Softly grabbing your hands, Lewis pushes you next to him on the sofa.

"I can't help it you know. It's instinct at this point. When I first started living here you basically took care of me when I was feeling down, and now I'm doing the same. We need to take care of each other Lewis, I'm basically responsible for you."

Nodding slowly in agreement, Lewis grabs your hands holding it into his, "And I'm also responsible for you, which I'd like to think is more important than me. I can't have you stressed over your time here, imagine what your parents will say- God forbid, what my parents say."

You gasp, laughing at his statement, "My well being is more important? I think not, you're literally out there racing and going out- imagine Toto Wolff calling me because you're not in perfect condition."

"Then let me handle it. I doubt Toto has anything bad to say about you." Lewis mumbles under his breath, but you catch his statement.

"What would Toto Wolff know about me? What have you been talking about Lewis? I swear if you're spreading that I'm not taking care of you, I'll actually reveal to the world that you're still awkward with Nico."

Your threat seems to leave little to no effect then you expect, but at least you got him laughing.

Happy drivers mean good results.

"And you don't have to tiptoe around me, I doubt anyone has the balls to say that to my face except you- maybe Seb, but it doesn't matter. You don't have to worry about me, my racing, or my relationship with Nico."

Your eyes squint at his statement, still not believing him. His eyes meet yours, not giving up.

"Fine." You lower your gaze first.

"Let me draw you a bath though." Before Lewis could complain, you march towards the bathroom. Behind you, you hear Lewis laughing, you can see him shaking his head in disbelief.

"After that you better finish your dinner, then tomorrow we can do something together."

You smile to yourself, nodding in agreement. Despite the circumstances, you'd rather spend your time with Lewis like this. At the end of the day, even if you're miles apart from each other you will always come back to each other.

[unreliablesnake]

Hold on tight (Vincent de Gramont x reader)

Summary: You keep your end of the deal and return to Paris to visit Vincent.

Note: I'm not happy with this. / previously on... / The title comes from this song. / If you want to know when I post new stuff, follow @unreliablesnakefics and hit the get notifications button. I don't have a taglist.

Warnings: smut(ish)

“It's been more than half a year,” Winston noted one night when you couldn't sleep and decided to join him in the bar. “The Marquis is already looking for you.”

“I know.”

He was right. Rumor had been flying around that he was paying some people to come to the Continental just to check on you in these past months. And all along, Winston did his best to shield you, keep you away from having to face the possibility of meeting him again. But lately things had gotten worse, you knew it.

“You know,” you began once you took a sip of your drink, “I thought time and distance would help me. That I would feel better. That I wouldn't feel the need to be near him. But it's not working, I still want him,” you explained sadly.

“Then go and meet him,” he offered the solution as if it was that easy.

Because it wasn't easy. You were fighting your emotions so hard for a long time, but that emptiness from being away from him just kept crawling back. “And if he somehow convinces me to stay with him?” you asked since it was a possibility. You might get weak and stay if he asked.

“Is that what you're afraid of?” Nodding, you leaned back in the chair and crossed your legs. “He's a bad man. We're not saints either, but at least we follow the rules.”

“How is this supposed to help me? I already knew he's a jerk.”

Winston let out a heartfelt laugh. “What if he can change for the better because of you? What if he would change if that was the price of being with you?”

“I'm not so sure about that.”

“I am,” came his reply that took you off guard. You gave him a questioning look then waited for the explanation. “He's been sending you handwritten letters, and tries to call you almost daily… This man is in love, sweetheart. Who knows how far he would be willing to go to get you.”

You shrugged. “Maybe he will kidnap me again.”

“That didn't work out the first time,” Winston pointed out.

“True.”

“Also, he's not known for his patience, yet he's been waiting long months for you to keep your end of the deal.”

He was right again. Vincent was surprisingly patient with you, he didn't start harassing you through his men, instead he kept his distance and kept an eye on you without saying a word. And while you didn't even want to think about it, Winston pointed out this difference.

The man who was so used to getting whatever he wanted and whenever he wanted it was waiting patiently for a woman. He could have gone out to pick up someone else, but no, according to rumors he was waiting for you. It was hard to decide whether it was flattering or terrifying.

Your boss let out a sigh as he glanced down at the notebook on the table in front of him. “You should go to Paris. However long it takes,” he added before you could say you didn't want to be away from this place in case he needed your help.

He didn't even have to look up to know you were about to object. But you kept your mouth shut, and so you ended up buying a ticket and packing your suitcase in the following hours. “I'm an idiot for doing this,” you told yourself as you collected some items from the bathroom.

Thirteen hours later you once again landed in Paris, although this time you were on your own. Or so you thought. At the airport you were greeted by a man Vincent sent there to pick you up and take you to him. You followed him without asking questions, knowing full well it would be futile to resist and insist on traveling on your own to the hotel where you reserved a room for yourself.

Unlike the last time, the mansion didn't look cold and threatening. No, it was warm and welcoming, a place where you could feel safe right away. Safe. With him. You didn't think these two things would ever be connected by the same sentence. While you'd been here the last time, you were always on the edge, feeling like you didn't belong.

But now? Now you had a feeling you were exactly where you were supposed to be.

A staff member came to help you with your luggage, assuring you that they would take it straight to your room, while a woman came to accompany you to the room Vincent was in at the moment. Your eyes scanned the paintings on the walls as you passed by, the familiar sight making you feel at home.

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come,” you suddenly heard the familiar voice say. You looked up and noticed him standing in the hallway, hands folded behind his back as he watched you. He sounded unsure, a quite shocking experience compared to the authoritative Vincent you had met the last time.

You waited until the woman was told to leave and the two of you were left alone before you said anything. “Me too,” you replied quietly. “But someone convinced me to come here and keep my end of the deal.”

Vincent’s jaw tightened and you wondered what made him do it. Was it because you said you were only here because of that deal? It could be the reason.

“I’m glad I’m here,” you added, surprising yourself with this sentence.

Because if you wanted to be honest, you were glad to be in Paris again. To be with him. All those months of thinking about him while your brain tried to warn you forget him had its toll on you. You were tired and doubted your feelings all the time. But now that you were here with him, you began to see clearly.

This man had managed to get under your skin despite being a kidnapper, planting the seeds in your brain that then turned you into this mess eventually. But it worked. You were here, you were yearning for his touch, and you had to fight your instincts to keep your distance for now.

Let's see what he does. You shouldn't throw yourself at him as if he had done nothing wrong. Having a spine is a good thing.

“I got your room ready,” he spoke up again, sounding surprisingly awkward. “I thought you might want to get some rest first. I have a dinner reservation, but if you'd rather stay here, I can have something made for us.”

“We can go out, I guess,” you replied as you nervously swept a strand of hair behind your ear.

Vincent nodded. For a few moments you both stood there in silence, but then he cleared his throat, excused himself, and went back into the room he had previously emerged from. After letting out a long sigh of relief, you headed towards your room, ready to get some well-deserved sleep.

A few hours later you put on a nice dress and did your makeup properly, ready to head out with him for the evening. Because you were sure it wasn't just a dinner he was planning for the two of you. A play? An opera? Maybe a museum? Whatever it would be, you wouldn't object.

As it turned out, you knew him perfectly well, because you were right about his plans. He was hesitant the whole time, as if he wasn't sure how to approach you anymore, but he managed to stay in charge, and that was a good thing.

Because you were too focused on your own needs, on his beautiful green eyes, on his lips, and on his suit. It was just too much to handle, and when you were in the back of the car on the way back to his home, you slowly reached out to take his hand.

He looked surprised, but he wrapped his fingers around your hand, then raised it to his lips to place a soft kiss on it. “I really missed you, my love,” he said.

“Don't think that kidnapping me all those months ago is completely forgiven. But in all honesty, I missed you too. I really did,” you added with a smile before resting your head on his shoulder.

In the next two days, Vincent made sure you felt comfortable in his company. He was nice, and sweet, and things eventually got as intimate as they used to be. You found yourself in his bedroom after a wonderful afternoon in the Louvre, your body pressed to the wall as his lips traced your skin.

He explored your body like this was the first time he had seen it without clothes, and he kept you from moving around, pinning you down to make sure you didn't start removing his clothes. No, he wanted to take his time with you, driving you crazy by not giving you exactly what you wanted.

But a sick part of you loved every second of it, it craved the physical pain not being able to touch him caused. Because you wanted to lay your hands on his body, feeling the smooth skin under your fingertips before moving down to tease his cock.

Vincent could tell you were silently suffering by now, so he kept praising you, even as he got on top of you in bed and leaned down to kiss your collarbone before slowly moving up to your neck. This is when you began to beg him to fuck you, to skip this stupid teasing and finally give you what you needed so badly.

“Would it be weird if I told you I loved you?” you asked him while you were lying in bed together, both of you on the brink of falling asleep.

He let out a quiet, uncharacteristic laugh, then kissed your forehead. “I feel the same way, mon amour,” he told you. “What do you think about staying here for a while? For a few months, maybe.”

You let out a sigh as you thought about his suggestion. Winston had told you to stay as long as you had to, but did you really want to leave him alone for that long? “That's a lot of time, Vincent, I'm not sure. I have responsibilities back home,” you said, more to convince yourself than him.

“Don't you want to be with me?”

“Why don't you come to New York for a week or two? I could show you around,” you offered with a laugh.

He watched you silently for a while, carefully thinking about this idea. Sure, after what had happened the last time he was there, it was understandable if he was a little hesitant.

Maybe it wouldn't be weird to stay in France after all. After leaning over to give him a soft kiss, you rested your forehead against his. “Okay, fine, I'll stay here.”

Little did you know at the time that you wouldn't stay for just a couple of months. You stayed here for good, eventually marrying the man who had almost destroyed your life at one point.

[tinylongwing]

Vide Noir's dual narrative structure

All right, here it is, me making good on at least one of my meta threats. Lord Huron's album Vide Noir can be interpreted as an album with two parallel, contrasting narratives - that of the lead protagonist Buck Vernon, as well as that of Johnnie Redmayne.

Disclaimer: this is an interpretation I think is pretty sound and well-reasoned, but I make no claim to any of this being proven canon information.

---

For those unfamiliar or who need a reminder, the primary narrative is this: the year is 1967, and we start near the end of Buck's journey, as he awakens from being black-brained (Lost in Time and Space). Having just suffered an overdose on the drug vide noir, his memories are slow to return to him, but return they do - his fiancee, Leigh/Lee Green (from here on Leigh but both spellings have been used), left him without a word one night, and he decided to follow, heading west to Los Angeles from their home town of Detroit, Michigan. He's been struggling to find her, checking every bar in the city in case she was booked to sing at one as her move was the result of her chasing her dream of becoming a singer. He doesn't remember a lot about himself, really, after that overdose, but he remembers her, and his love for her makes him desperate to find her.

We're then taken back to the night he left to find her (Never Ever) and his journey is mostly linear from there - he meets a fortune teller, Lady Moonbeam, who tells him that pursuing Leigh will end in his ruin, but he refuses to accept her advice and pushes on (Ancient Names I & II). He laments that he's been some kind of fuckup, that maybe he chased Leigh away through his own behavior, but that he still loves her and begs for her to return (Wait By the River). At some point around here he also learns of the drug vide noir and contemplates using it himself for clues.

(Note that unlike in the movie, in the album, nothing suggests that Buck suffered from a murder attempt by Z'Oiseau's henchmen but that instead he may have overdosed himself in an attempt to find Lee. However, there's plenty of reason to suspect that the film is the canon interpretation here anyway and the henchmen kidnapping Buck just doesn't make for a song I guess.)

One way or another, he winds up black-brained, where some deep existential truths of the universe are revealed to him (Secret of Life - namely that everyone and everything dies in the end, and that a human life is brief, fleeting, and ultimately meaningless within the context of the universe as a whole). He somehow reawakens rather than dying (Back from the Edge) and, again, understands that nothing he does will ever matter, has never mattered*, but that *even though* he's suffered greatly already on this quest, he's still committed to trying to find Leigh, pitting himself against that careless universe (The Balancer's Eye).

So he keeps searching (When the Night is Over) until he finds a clue, or a helping hand of some sort, that leads him on the right path to his beloved Leigh (Moonbeam). We get one more reminder of the forces at work here - vide noir is some awful stuff, it nearly killed him, Leigh herself is hooked on it now, it shows you terrible truths and nightmares beyond human comprehension (Vide Noir) - and when all is said and done, as Buck thinks he's about to "rescue" Leigh from her fate and bring her back to his fantasy of a perfect happy life together, she rejects him. He came all this way through time and space, and she doesn't love him at all in the end (Emerald Star).

---

I consider this the primary narrative here because it makes use of all the songs on the album, it has a clear start and ending and a mostly linear structure, and the album basically serves as a soundtrack to Buck's fool's errand. The film agrees - every scene is centered around his journey, after all. But we have context from Lord Huron's other albums, as well as the lyrics and musical stylings of multiple songs on Vide Noir, that show us that Buck isn't necessarily the only narrator on this album. Strange Trails, of course, came out three years prior, and features songs by multiple fictional bands performing songs which serve as narration for a diverse cast of characters. Unlike on Strange Trails, where each track has a writer or band specifically named and assigned to it as well as a character narrative, Vide Noir does not give us such conclusive information, but we can still put clues together to understand at least some of who the in-universe performers might be on Vide Noir.

Most likely, multiple of these songs are by the Buck Vernon Band - this is pretty obvious. Buck's semi-autobiographical music is all over Strange Trails, usually referencing a girl he loves, sometimes referencing that the girl left him, often giving her different names, all starting with L (Fool For Love's "Lily", and "Louisa").

But the other band that we can easily identify as performers on Vide Noir are the Phantom Riders. For those who need an introduction, this is the band composed of four members of the World Enders gang, with Dale Redmayne at the helm as lead writer. They were seen previously on Strange Trails as well, with banger surf/rockabilly hits like Hurricane, Until the Night Turns, and The World Ender. As a storytelling tool, they are primarily brought in to tell us about the man-turned-undead horror entity known as The World Ender himself, and then otherwise mostly we get their songs about Dale's brother Johnnie Redmayne, who is introduced to us in Strange Trails as a fun-loving and presumably fairly young guy, a thrillseeker and hedonist, who lives for the moment as if the world could end any day. The Buck Vernon Band jumps in between some of these songs with an interjection to tell us that wait, Johnnie is dead, or was, but he got back up. In Dead Man's Hand, Buck speculates that Johnnie could have been murdered or may have killed himself, accidentally or intentionally, upon first seeing him. It's in Vide Noir that we actually learn more about the circumstances of Johnnie's death.

Before we get to that, let's first identify which Vide Noir songs are by the Phantom Riders. This isn't all that hard to do. Any song that references The World Ender is presumably theirs - that gives us Secret of Life right away ("I sit alone in the dark, and I try to remember the words you spoke when you summoned the Ender"). This is reinforced in the Alive From Whispering Pines webseries, episode 423 - Secret of Life, when played, shows a skeleton prop the band has jokingly referred to as Cobb Avery on their social media posts in the past, and after the song ends in this episode, the tune continues in a slowed and distorted fashion through a clip of a WBUB movie version of Dead Man's Hand showing Johnnie rising from the pavement when Buck is about to bury him.

Ancient Names Parts I and II are presumably written by the same band as a two-part song. In the Vide Noir film, the Phantom Riders are performing Part II in the underground club. Additionally, in Alive From Whispering Pines episode 426, after Tubbs Tarbell is done reminiscing about the band and their nihilism, Ancient Names Part II is the next song covered - and often in this series, the structure of the segments between songs are intentional and related to either the song they precede or the song they follow, so it's likely that the placement of the Phantom Riders' appearance followed by a track they're associated with is meant to help confirm them as the performers. In addition, Ancient Names Part I references a fortune teller, and we know from the film that the fortune teller in question, Lady Moonbeam, is associated with the World Enders and knows the Redmaynes.

The last track on Vide Noir that is most likely theirs is the title track, Vide Noir. We have two points of evidence for this - one lyrical ("Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys" which feels like a pretty direct reference to the World Enders' nighttime violence) and one musical - the main melody of Vide Noir is identical to that of Ancient Names (and Fortune Teller's Theme, actually). In Strange Trails, using the same melody for multiple songs was an easy way to tie Frankie Lou's songs together, and here we can see that it ties two Phantom Riders tracks together directly, indicating that not only are they both by the same band, but that Vide Noir is a followup to Ancient Names part I, in which our fortune teller did warn us things would go very, very wrong.

(And besides all of that, the Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir all tend to be similar in musical style - psychedelia-flavored garage rock with a heavy bass line, in contrast to other songs on the album.)

With those songs identified, we should also be aware of just how much Lord Huron seem to love their dual narratives. In Strange Trails, we have a really concrete example of this with The Night We Met. This song was in-universe written by Frankie Lou, presumably about her doomed relationship with Z'Oiseau and how much she wishes she had never met him to begin with (as she echoes in her dialogue in the Vide Noir film when speaking to Buck in her dressing room). However, the music video for this song shows not Frankie and Z'Oiseau, but instead Buck, driving west, while reflecting on his own failure to keep Leigh, wishing he could go back in time and fix things, and meanwhile kind of hallucinating her as he goes. In the album Long Lost, we get another dual narrative in I Lied, which is performed by Donny and Midge but is also sung by Leigh in Vide Noir, foreshadowing her breakup with and lack of love for Buck. There are certainly other dual narratives in both of those albums to be found as well - so what we should keep in mind here is that often, songs can be written and performed by a character or band in order to narrate for themselves or someone close to them, but that just as in our real-world movie soundtracks or our favorite character playlists on spotify, those songs can be applied to other characters in different (but somewhat similar) situations than the ones they were written for.

So! We have four Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir, all of which were presumably not written originally in-universe about Buck Vernon, because why would they be, Buck and the World Enders only briefly cross paths and at the very least we know that Ancient Names Part II was written well before he ever met them. Instead, it makes the most sense if like the bulk of the Phantom Riders songs, these tracks serve Johnnie's narration instead.

---

If that's the case, what does that give us? Winding around and through Buck's journey is this second storyline. Johnnie Redmayne, having used and enjoyed vide noir himself abundantly ("I had a vision tonight that the world was ending" as one probable example), decides it's time to get his hands on bulk quantities so as to get the Enders in on controlling the flow of the drug in LA rather than letting Z'Oiseau maintain a monopoly, thereby also increasing revenue for the members of the gang.

It's Moonbeam who warns him to knock it off first. We know, thanks to the film, that he'd spoken to her at some point about his plans to investigate the source of the drug at Tobey's arcade and try to get his hands on some to sell. Whatever his exact plan was, in Ancient Names Part 1, Moonbeam warns him that pursuing this is going to get him killed. Vide noir isn't just a drug, it's something extremely dangerous, tied to dangerous people, and he needs to get away from "her" (and note that frequently throughout music history, drugs have been personified as a "her" or an unnamed lover, whether for poetic reasons or to evade censorship that might come from talking directly about drug use - and Cursed, off Strange Trails, is one more in-universe example, where "her" refers both to Leigh Green and to drug use, specifically vide noir).

Immediately afterward, Ancient Names Part 2, in addition to serving as a very classic sort of World Enders nihilism anthem, can easily be interpreted as Johnnie saying "fuck that, I do what I want, you only live one life anyway and even if it kills me, I want to make my mark before I go out." Death is something hypothetical - sure, it'll get him some day, it gets everyone, and maybe Moonbeam is even right, but he isn't going to let her warning stop him.

On Strange Trails, Buck and Johnnie cross paths at Dead Man's Hand. On this album they only cross thematically, and the pivotal moment of intersection might be Secret of Life. This song may be the point at which Buck learns some forbidden secrets revealed by taking vide noir as discussed above, but its lyrics speak a lot more specifically to Johnnie's experience, implying some connection between him, vide noir, and the World Ender.

It may be that as we see with Buck in the film, perhaps Johnnie too has suffered the effects of being black-brained prior to taking it due to the time and space-bending effects of the drug (notice, for example, in Strange Trails we get Johnnie's story in a scrambled chronological order) and here he's confronted with the harsh truths of what those past visions of his possible future mean for him: he has been set on a path that is no longer avoidable due to his eventual future overdose. So perhaps it's at this point that he acknowledges that he is going to die sooner rather than later and that his life and death will not have meant anything to the greater cosmos, but this information, which was new to Buck, is not something Johnnie fears. Johnnie is hardly new to this point of view. He's seen past echoes of the knowledge imparted by vide noir throughout his life, both in his future visions of the end of the world (again see Until The Night Turns) and in the knowledge passed on through other World Enders, including their own motto ("The fair, the brave, the good must die", or in Secret of Life here, "The darkness comes for all of us").

(As an aside, there's still a lot to unravel with Secret of Life that I haven't touched on here. It's a fascinating song with some really mysterious lyrics. I've speculated at length in the LH discord about some additional interpretations this song could yield but won't veer off topic here.)

And yet despite what looks like a very certain and dire end, Johnnie maintains hope that perhaps he, too, will live past this. Because if Cobb Avery did, why can't he? This is part of the gang's core mythos - their founder is a dead man. He clawed his way back out of the grave for revenge, they thought it was just so fucking cool that he was unkillable that they had to join him, and together they dismantled the Winthrop Corporation, one murder at a time. When the police finally caught up to him, they lynched him - but the noose did nothing, for he was already dead, and now in the form of a skeleton, he called the gang to his side (see Strange Trails: The World Ender comic book). In the ensuing chaos, he flees, the gang heads west and relocates to east Los Angeles, and in the time contemporary with the events of Vide Noir, he is still present among them but this appears to be unknown to the public (Daily Trails prop, by Kim Berens, used in both Vide Noir and Alive From Whispering Pines where it was modified to Ten years later).

Whether The World Ender is readily visible to and known by most members of the gang at this point is unknown, but we know that those who were black-brained can see him (in the film, Buck sees him approaching, bumps into him, plunges into a hallucination of his own future, and when he comes too, the Ender is gone). Given the Secret of Life lyrics, it's reasonable to guess that Johnnie at least can see the World Ender just fine and one way or another, in speaking with him and in conjunction with consuming vide noir, has learned enough secret knowledge to make some kind of choice - and this is what later enables him, too, to drag his way back to the world of the living.

Fate catches up to Johnnie and as we learn in the film, his death was at the hands of Z'Oiseau's henchmen for trying to gain access to dealing in vide noir. Like Buck, he is black-brained - forced to swallow enough of the drug to kill him. And so the track Vide Noir opens with the Fortune Teller's Theme previously heard in Ancient Names Part 1, and that tune is woven through the track - Moonbeam's "I warned you, I told you so" to both of these fools who disregarded her advice. Although, again, the lyrics are clearly meant primarily to narrate for Johnnie - "Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys, getting high on a pure black void" sounds a lot more like what Johnnie gets up to than Buck. We are given a glimpse of his last words and final thoughts as life slips away and his consciousness is sent straight to the final edge of the cosmos.

---

So ultimately, this is what we're left with:

Vide Noir is an album that tells the story of Buck Vernon, whose fiancee has left him. His journey culminates in a near-brush with death, in finding Leigh, and in learning that she does not love him and that he's nothing, his life is worth nothing more than dust and that none of it mattered or will ever matter, that once he eventually dies he will vanish and be forgotten in time.

Vide Noir also tells the story of Johnnie Redmayne, who for once tries to do something that isn't just for his own hedonistic pleasure but that might actually help bring in money to support his friends and family, but he's too headstrong and impulsive to listen to the warnings he's given, and is killed in the attempt.

One lives who probably shouldn't have and comes out at rock bottom and now has to work out how to move on from here, and one dies a nihilist who should presumably just accept the inevitability of death, but has the knowledge and absolute stubborn determination to enable his eventual return, following in the footsteps of Cobb Avery.

And what happens to both of them afterward? Well, we don't know. Hopefully some day (SOON?? BEN PLEASE) we'll get the opportunity to find out!

[mejcinta]

Writing and Directing Choices of HoTD Season 2 and How They Harmed Storylines and Characters.

Hotd is a cinematic marvel...that much cannot be denied. However, I can't help but wonder had they just directed scenes better, if we could've gotten MORE from the characters as a result?

To me, what is off about season 2 compared to season 1 is this feeling that we're shoved outside as the audience. We're not in the characters' heads and experiencing what they're experiencing in the moment, therefore we wound up feeling like their actions in season 2 are ooc.

Think of Aemond in s1 vs s2. In season 1 we had time alone with him as a kid, when he went hunting for a dragon TWICE. The camera lingered on his face during tense moments to convey his feelings like when his eye was slashed out and he was boiling with anger and vengeance at Viserys' dismissal of his pain. Additionally, we had a lot of screen time with Aemond in s1, whereas in s2 he barely has any.

It's hard enough having a season slashed down to 8 episodes from 10, now we have more new characters thrown into the mix that need focusing on. So the writers had to be smart and the directors super efficient.

A scene of Aemond walking through the Streets of Silk, despondent about the B&C incident before he stops to go inside the brothel to be with Sylvi and vent out his frustrations and hurt would've done WONDERS for Aemond. Just that one scene would put us in his headspace and take us through this new development he has taken up over the 10 days since Alicent pushed him away, his shame, his guilt and resentments. With this one Aemond centered scene we would have perfect set up and context for why Aemond does what he does in RR to Aegon, why he clips Alicent's wings at the small council and tries to force Helaena out of her comfort zone.

Instead, the brothel scene started off with the pleasure house and we followed whores around before being thrust with the shocking scene of Aemond there without any explanation or justification.

Helaena also suffered a bit from poor visual direction. Instead of following her around the Keep before the B&C attack, we're forced to hang around with the criminals and at some point attempts are made to make them seem FUNNY and relatable (Cheese and his dog).

In all that confusion, we are somehow thrust into Jaehaerys' bedchamber where Cheese is holding Helaena captive. So random. Why did we not see HOW that happened?

Would it not have been better to cut from Blood and Cheese approaching to HELAENA preparing to retire to bed and suddenly seeing Cheese in the doorway??? Would it not have been better to be in the room with Helaena as she spends her final moments with her peacefully sleeping children before horror strikes?

Wouldn't it have been better for Helaena to remain in the chamber with her dead child in her arms as his head is carried away, unable to scream...instead of distracting us with her walking into Alicent having sex?

This moment was supposed to be about Helaena and her mental trauma, her grief, her pain. If anything her stumbling into Aegon as she tries to escape would've made more creative sense. And we end with Aegon screaming.

I feel like so much story potential and character potential was wasted in efforts to forcefully remind us that House of the Dragon is Alicent and Rhaenyra's show. In fact if you carefully observe the season, you can notice easily how focus is put on pointless and repetitive scenes featuring them while other characters remain underutilized and unexplored, even just by visual direction.

I truly hope that season 3 will apply better directing and writing that adds depth to characters in the minimal screen time that they have because this season just wasn't it.

[alexanderwales]

Pitchposting: Tradwife

Alright, usually I do pitchposting when I think a concept has legs but I don't have the time or inclination to actually write it. I'm not sure about this one though.

The premise is that it's an isekai, but our protagonist is a Gen Z late-teenage girl who is deep into a neo-conservative neo-traditional mindset that she's picked up from TikTok or whatever. She gets thrust into a fantasy world with their own conservative traditional gender roles, and the story happens from there.

I guess I have to start with what appeals to me: this is a fish-out-of-water clash of cultures story that's premised on the protagonist assuming that this is what she wants. It's "weeaboo goes to Japan". That basic pitch is a classic one, though much more rare than "naïve fish-out-of-water knows nothing", and usually the narrative path is disillusionment followed by some kind of synthesis where either the world changes because of the protagonist or the protagonist realizes that the world has its own merits that are different from the naïve notions that they came in with.

And I think you certainly could tell a story where our tradwifelette protagonist was instantly disabused of the notion that tradwifery was what she was imagining, or where it's instantly shown that she doesn't and cannot fit in, that she is ill-prepared for this world she's been dreaming of, simply does not have the material and emotional skills that she needs, etc. And I think that this would be somewhat boring to me.

So what I'm pitching instead is the textured approach, one where we try to slowly pick apart our protagonist's psyche rather than flash-boiling her. We're not ripping this sweater in half, we're pulling at threads until the whole thing is undone. She gets courted (somehow), and gets married, and her husband is not abusive, and she isn't locked away, but there are expectations and she is confined in the way that she had wished to be confined.

(The central example of an aspirational tradwife wants to be transported into the world that mostly existed in 1950s adverts for kitchen appliances. It's a fantasy that's at least partly about prosperity and leisure, and having someone take care of you. I think "woman transported back to the 50s" is something that could work, but is not to my tastes for a variety of reasons. The central example of a tradwife influencer has a bunch of kids, lots of support, puts on a happy face, and hustles like hell to work on photos and videos and stuff. The difference between the influencer and the false reality the influencer is peddling is interesting, but beyond the scope of this idea.)

Anyway, I feel like there are a ton of romance novels featuring women transported back in time so they can get in romantic entanglements with brooding, muscular men, and the romance genre is so wide that there are many different types of men, and many different types of protagonists. So probably this has been done, and been done many times. But there's something that tickles me about giving our hypothetical Zoomer everything she wants and then watching the ways it makes her dissatisfied.

There are obviously some pitfalls to watch out for here, and I think if I were writing this, it would be with the intent that I get at the fantasy and what makes it appealing, then at specifically the ways in which that fantasy offers its own internal paradoxes, rather than the ways in which it's unrealistic or impossible or whatever, the external paradoxes.

And this would take a lot of research, I guess, because I have some inklings about what makes the Zoomer wannabe tradwives tick, but the point would be to deconstruct it from the inside (hard), rather than from the outside (easy).

[mandalhoerian]

ghost to its haunt, I | leon kennedy x reader

read part 1: moth to a flame pairing: leon kennedy x f!reader summary: Even if it is full of love, all a ghost can do is haunt. But this time, it has to be different. word count: 6K warnings: angst, hurt no comfort, peppers of fluff as a treat, smut (blink and you'll miss it), leon being feral from day one like seriously he's unhinged, his negative self-talk notes: this installment comes in two chapters. chapter two is still being written and will be published and linked here when i'm done. header template can be found here. we're nearly at the end besties, thank you for sticking with me until the end, and please enjoy.

🌀 read on ao3! 🌀 NEXT CHAPTER

i. Leon knew right from day one when you’d breached the solitary safety of his shadowed corner in the bar of his unusual drinking choice, that you were tempting and twice as dangerous as a mirage to a parched man lost in the desert. 

In the pleasantly neon-lit sanctuary of a bustling bar, amidst the cacophony of clinking glasses and spirited conversations, he stuck out like a sore thumb with the air of melancholy around him, making people near his booth uneasy with the way he was observing everything — to them, he was not to be approached, as if one look to his way would be enough for him to start a fight, but in reality it was his inability to relax in crowds, subconscious calculating for unlikely scenarios to unfold and contingency plans on how to get away. Yet he’d wanted to come here just once anyway, see what made here one of Major Krauser’s favorites, it was psychological torture, but Leon did it to himself anyway, knowing so.  

You came to Leon first when nobody would approach him, setting a starting point of the pattern in your relationship where this’d be repeating over and over again. 

The stifling hot humidity of the South American forest and how heavier the stench of blood stuck at the back of his nose still followed him around months after, and you tracked the trail like a shark in the water, it was in the way you’d been openly watching him upon spotting him in his corner, in the way you slid towards him in the booth, eyes glinting, seeking, curious, expecting — giving straight away of how fresh you were to this compared to the poor unfortunate soul before you chasing after Operation Javier. 

You looked young, around his age, but had a certain softness and eagerness that reminded him of an unprepared rookie back in 1998, so before you could get a word in, he’d said, “I suggest you walk away for your own safety. You know how this ends.”  

You know how this ends. 

Such first words. What a way to doom an entire relationship and a person. 

If Leon knew how his words had shaped the reality he’d chosen, he’d have gone with something promising, more open, like, “How’d you know I wanted company?” — he’d expressed himself more, made his attraction more prominent, secured you to him better, but he was always about safety and protection, wasn’t he? Paranoid beyond belief, self-sabotaging. Of course he’d warned you about taking caution so you wouldn’t get hurt, especially given what had happened to the previous journalist looking into the operation. 

Your reaction to this was opting to buy him a drink instead of getting intimidated. Leon had made it clear over and over again he wouldn’t tell you anything and to go your own way. You didn’t know anything about him other than being a connection of the White House to Operation Javier somehow and he certainly wouldn’t be the one reporting this back to the base, so he made sure this was about saving one more person’s life from being ruined in vain even after this brief encounter had led to a hasty hookup in a bathroom stall and eventually to a hotel room like he was some teenager with no control over his dick —

You had ruined everything. 

Unabashedly interested in him and just pushing, eager, genuine, passionate as you kept talking about your job in wanting to expose corruption the more he kept things dry and silent, and he just saw the same spark in you that he had once; how naive, how idiotic, how endearing — such respect-worthy dignity and enthusiasm and drive that you had managed to find him of all people in your pursuit. He’d never been attracted to anyone quite like this, not the same way with Ada, not in that elusively mysterious and alluring, dangerous and unapproachable, thrilling distance, but the other end of the spectrum, the sort that fed on kinship and admiration that made him want to protect you from what he knew would happen if you kept going like this. 

Jesus, it should have been discouraging you from this path and nothing more, instead, Leon had been randomly snapped out of years of dissociation and autopilot since Raccoon City, and for what? Mind-blowing sex he didn’t even know was coming for his throat on a random fall night in 2002? 

Really, it was his routine being broken that had done it.

His life was meticulously governed by strict routines and unwavering habits, as if each day were a precisely choreographed fight, a paragon of order and structure. Leon’s world thrived on meticulous organization, where every document, tool, and weapon had its designated place. Even the symmetry of his living space mirrored the precision of his mind, with every item aligned flawlessly, punctuality eventually becoming second nature to him, his internal clock a finely tuned instrument, ensuring he was never a moment late, not at all a result of being late in his first day as a cop. Time was a precious commodity, a resource he safeguarded fiercely, as he understood that even the smallest delay could have dire consequences. This devotion to structure allowed him to remain laser-focused on his objectives, and also avoid hellish punishments back at Offutt Air Force Base located near Omaha, Nebraska where he had spent quite some time as a special agent trainee.

Military would make a clockwork out of anyone, but being trained under Major Krauser had turned him into a well-oiled machine that only had training and mission objectives in mind. Leon used to be highly adaptable and open to surprises before, but his encounter with you had revealed just how unprepared and anxious to impulses he’d been molded to become. Spontaneity had ended up a stranger to him, an unwelcome disruption that threatened to dismantle his carefully constructed world, and as an extension, anything else was regarded as losing control — which was, an unthinkable notion; he had been trained to maintain composure in the most chaotic of situations. 

There wasn’t even the semblance of composure in how he handled you. 

Never in his wildest dreams would he entertain the thought of someone managing to unbelievably, randomly, turn him on so uncontrollably one day that he’d lose his mind enough to risk public indecency in a fucking bathroom stall with pants around his ankles not only once, but twice. 

Sitting on the toilet with your back to his chest, one leg spread wide open over his knee and the other hiked up in the air from his elbow, you basically limp in his arms as all you could concentrate on was shutting your mouth tight enough not to make noise as he wildly bounced you up and down on his lap — and the next thing he knew after blowing his load right after with no rest whatsoever was that he had you flat against the graffiti-stained door separating a bunch of girls from what the two of you were doing, one hand clamped on your mouth, having you press your thighs together so he could languidly slip back and forth against the tight crevice of your wetness and the plushness combined that he had to use all his control for the door to not rattle and feeling your pussy spasm each time he grazed your clit, his head buried in the crook of your neck whispering filth he didn’t know his mind was capable of conjuring right to your ear with no filter —- how much of a pervert you were to be enjoying this when all it had to take was a peep from you for people right in front of you to discover you were getting off to the thought the humiliation of being looked at while getting fucked from behind, all the while it was Leon who was dying to explode from how horny he was that it was unbearably painful. 

And the only thing he could think about was to hell with it all and the hammering of his heart to hear you moan uncontrollably, he could just plunge inside you right then and there, had to bite down on your clothed shoulder to hold back the impulse, hell, it took everything in him to keep his breathing steady and not heave, every second the girls didn’t leave was dragged torture, his legs were trembling from holding back and the sheer excitement, but holy shit was it concentrated ecstasy that had his eyes rolling behind his head when they had finally left and he’d rammed himself in to the hilt so forcefully that the hinges of the door had almost broken off.

You had consumed him whole, your skin, your scent, your taste, wrapping him in a cocoon of warmth and pleasure and just digesting his whole being that he didn’t even have one grain of logic or common sense as a pea brain or nothing — just that he wanted to keep fucking and it was so soft and everything just felt so good and good god Leon was going to have an aneurysm from overheating because of you.    

The post-nut clarity after all that was interesting to say the least. 

A blood clot had to have shot up to his brain for his sanity to have snapped like that … And for him to think this wasn’t enough and he wanted more as you rested in his embrace — in a fucking bathroom stall. He wasn’t a people person. He simply didn’t do this shit in the first place, what was even happening?

Leon didn’t know what to be embarrassed about: of himself for doing this kind of thing in a place like this or disrespectfully exerting a woman to this degree, he had no idea whatsoever where all the talk about getting discovered had come from, didn’t that make Leon the pervert? Good lord. 

He had to be thankful that you were coming down from a high and had no energy to turn around and look at his face, because you surely would see him transition from all shades of red out of shame. What the actual hell had come over him?  

Leon was made aware that night that it’d been such a long time since he’d felt such a visceral physical response to someone that his whole body was in a flushed flurry — the kind of intensity that hadn’t even scraped the top of his heated need, he couldn’t even think before suggesting you two take this to somewhere else better that he could drown in this feeling some more. 

The man who said this basking in your afterglow and the man who warned you about how this ended were two different people. 

The man at the very beginning of this would have known better than to let himself indulge in you. 

But your pull was worse than that of a black hole’s, and in Leon’s mind, him taking you to a hotel room was equivalent in his mind to tossing you over his shoulder like an impatient caveman foaming at the mouth, and he knew he’d looked so constipated and unenthusiastic about it back then because he was trying to keep his shit together and not let his libido rush straight to his head, it was absolutely batshit crazy that his mouth was fucking salivating over you and he had to physically fight not to get hard where he stood, especially after having a taste of how you melted in his arms and he just couldn’t keep his together and — this was unreal, Leon had never went into a frenzy over someone before and you’d just taken it. 

He wanted to be gentle, enjoy it, savor it, and you weren’t even going anywhere, but even after he’d gotten him and you a room, Leon had taken you like he hadn’t fucked in his life before, like his dick had gotten hard for the first time in his life, and pathetically like he was desperate for his skin to touch another human being’s — and you… 

You. 

You had made everything worse. 

He still remembered that exact moment when your hands found his hair, the gentleness of the caressing contrasting his rough rutting, he remembered how the rhythmic squeaking of the bed stuttered and gave it right away that he was caught off guard even though his head was buried in the cushion of your tits — embarrassing, utterly disgraceful, all that you’d done was pet his fucking head and his heart had purred like a goddamn cat, and even more shameful was that he’d come right on the spot when you’d started pulling on his strands, Jesus fuck, he wanted to die on the spot. 

One condom change and a carry to the bed later (because Leon had shattered upon passing the threshold of the hotel door and he’d wrapped your legs around his hips and had you against the door, again) things had finally begun to become mellow and sensual as he’d started enjoying you, significantly calmer and more collected compared to before, paying more attention to how you liked it and what you liked, where you liked better, putting those observational skills to more gratifying uses. 

Somehow this was the most satiated he’d been yet, actually taking in the sight of you struggling against the pleasure brought him the unexpectedly superior fulfillment to chasing his own height. He was alerted and awake, sensitive to the very last cell watching you, endeared, wanting to give you every last drop of euphoria he could just to see how you’d react to it. And the more he explored, the more he couldn’t get enough, so adorable, so sexy, so hot, how could he take pleasure in making someone cry? How and why the hell couldn’t his dick stay down for five minutes? 

By the time he’d finally become downright spent and quenched the fire inside, the sun had already risen, the floor was just littered with ripped condom packets, you were covered in hickeys, bite marks and bruises that he’d questioned if he was a feral animal, and the sheets were… disgusting. 

Leon was a repenting sinner with an imaginary tail between his tails when he’d wrapped you in clean linen and laid you on the sofa, changed the sheets, and straightened the pillows, getting you to pee and drawing a bath for you afterwards, it was mortifying he’d made you basically unable to walk for the time being, and he surely didn’t deserve your insistence that you two share the bath together, twice as horrified and disturbed at the tender intimacy with which you’d washed him, warm fingers massaging his scalp almost lulling him to sleep.  

Sharing the room service breakfast, streaks of golden sunlight of the early hours washing your face and making the white of your bathrobe glow as he tried not to make it obvious he was ogling, you’d tricked him into promising you a date for all that he’d put you through that night, you’d be calling in sick; and Leon was covering his face in guilt and embarrassment inside even though all that he’d presented you was an abashed grin and an, “As the lady wishes.” — stupidly giddy enough to have lowered his guard (like that idiot in 1998) that you hadn’t suggested this because you wanted information out of him but were genuinely interested in his company, in him. 

He wasn’t overthinking it back then, just reveling in your presence, luxuriating in the fluffy, satisfied, peaceful feeling, new to him, not afraid of how it could be ephemeral. He was drunk, and not conscious about the fact just yet.  

The withdrawals had hit right after parting ways with you — this was a mistake, this was a huge mistake, he shouldn’t have promised anything, he shouldn’t even have done this in the first place. Leon had no time for this, couldn’t even keep a plant alive if he committed, didn’t know how it’d work, nobody was allowed to know about the kind of work he did, the world of bioterrorism was a secret kept so tightly it became nooses around the necks of nosey individuals. 

He just couldn’t allow himself to loosen the leash around his normal because if he did let go of himself, he would make a mistake. That mistake could doom you. 

More importantly than it not being fair to you, he’d be putting you in danger just by being in your proximity. 

All that fretting around, putting the stress of wishing to see you again but the garbage feeling he mustn’t (that he hadn’t expected to make him this moody) into exercising more intensely than before, and ending up scaring the folks around the office unintentionally in work, only to feel immediately like spring had come at the drop of a hat when you’d called saying because he hadn’t, apparently, and you were waiting for him. 

This was terrifying. How you made him feel... It was entirely out of his control. 

I suggest you walk away for your own safety. You know how this ends.

Leon should have kept telling this to himself. 

ii. The date was at your place, planned from start to finish by you, an attentiveness and special treatment he didn’t deserve, but Leon got warm inside anyway, especially after you said this seemed like the better option since he didn’t seem to do well in crowds. Something about him being noticed on this kind of personal level had caused him to confuse his right from his left and he was sure his palms were sticky just from that and the way you smiled. 

You’d said you wanted to get to know him, and Leon unfortunately didn’t have enough going out experience to decide if cooking together and then sitting down to solve a murder mystery game was the most creative thing ever or not, because he thought it was. 

At the end of this, he knew you much better, and had shown you himself in a way that wouldn’t be possible by answering questions. 

Leon had approached the murder mystery solving game with a calculated and analytical mindset, trained to think strategically, he had diligently assessed every clue, scrutinizing them for hidden meanings and connections. He hadn’t meant to get invested this much, but he had ended up approaching the game like a covert operation and a blast from the past to his police academy days, examining evidence with sharp attention to detail and requiring evidence instead of just a hunch like you kept hitting him with. Each clue was like a piece of intel, and he’d taken the murder of Mrs. Huntington very seriously. Relying on his instincts, leveraging his experience in decoding complex situations to unravel the layers of the mystery, his logical thinking and ability to tackle every single thread of this one by one had brought structure and organization to their investigative process.

In contrast, you had embraced the game with innate curiosity and unlike him, a childlike interest — like a game should be perceived. As an investigative journalist, he’d seen that you had a natural knack for delving deep into stories and uncovering hidden narratives, embarking on the game with a keen eye for the human element, looking beyond the surface level clues to understand the motivations and emotions of the characters involved. You thrived on the adrenaline rush of piecing together the puzzle, always seeking out the next lead or breakthrough, and brainstorming on the possibilities, which clashed with Leon, leading to a sort of bickering that was entertaining, really. Your inquisitive nature and intuition led you to explore alternative perspectives, constantly questioning assumptions and seeking out overlooked details.

When was the last time he’d had this much fun? Leon didn’t remember. 

All that you’d given him that night was a kiss, he hadn’t minded you halting things before the heavy makeout session that had his brain melting like jello could escalate into something more, and he definitely didn’t mind being hypnotized into saying yes for doing this again sometime in the future — when he should have cut things off. 

Leon really couldn’t seem to think coherently around you.

And, despite his better judgment, there was a third time. There also was a fourth. A fifth. A sixth. Seventh. Until he forgot it was a matter of numbers and he simply kept seeing you — that was it. 

Amidst the unlabeled dates that unfolded between you and Leon, there was an undeniable disparity in your cooking styles. While he considered himself a decent cook, you couldn't help but find his dishes lacking in flavor and spice, often describing them as bland. Nonetheless, there was a silver lining to this culinary discrepancy: Leon's competence in the kitchen ensured that all ten of his fingers remained intact, a feat that seemed elusive whenever you attempted to prepare a meal.

Your culinary misadventures had reached a crescendo one fateful day, as Leon returned home to a scene of chaos. The kitchen lay in disarray, food scattered about, a bloody rag, and a knife ominously present. Heart shooting up to his throat, he practically shouted, "Oh my god, what the hell happened?"

It was then that you revealed your mishap, a deep and severe cut that required stitches. Despite the severity of the injury, you had opted not to seek medical attention to avoid the burden of an exorbitant bill. Unbeknownst to you, Leon possessed exceptional suturing skills, honed through the necessity of tending to his own wounds after the hazards of his missions. He hadn't disclosed this fact of course, but rather emphasized his meticulousness when it came to first aid that he’d taken a course on it in the past.

He kept on boomeranging back to you every time he regretted the previous entanglement the morning after, dreading this was bound to end badly and he should leave you alone. He could… He could get sex elsewhere, he was a dog on a leash because stumbling on physical compatibility on this level had made him an idiot, that must have been it, he thought.  

But that wasn’t the issue at all. Nothing had thrown him off and even affected his daily life the way your absence did. It wasn’t craving the skin contact and fantasizing about the next affair that did Leon the damage, it was simply wanting to see you and be by you that even his appetite was lost along the way — he had been scared of what this was. The utter enormity of it made him panic. 

In the depths of his soul, a bubbling longing simmered up and up, getting close to the surface the more he deprived himself of you, taking over him with an intensity that defied description. His heart echoed with the fading echoes of your laughter, a melody he yearned to hear once more and came back to him when he least expected it — in the field he could chase away all thoughts and concentrate, but in the waking moments devoid of action, his thoughts collapsed toward you, unable to escape the gravitational pull of your absence. A hunger, primal and unyielding, gnawed at his core, a hunger for the touch of your hand in his hair, the warmth of your embrace, the nightmare-free, cloud-soft sleeps by your side. He’d come to find solace in fragments of memories, savoring the remnants of your presence, like faded polaroids etched in his mind. It was unbelievable to notice the world around him grew muted and colorless, as if drained of life's vibrancy, each passing day intensifying the ache, searing his heart with an inconsolable longing, fueling he urge he kept resisting to bridge the chasm of his own making that separated him and you. 

Leon had to accept he liked you despite himself, liked you to the point of no return, and that he was afraid to admit the stronger word. 

iii. He couldn’t tell you who he truly was and precisely because of that, couldn’t fully let you in. 

Countless reasons came up to defend why this was for the best — it not only protected his heart but also protected you by keeping you at a certain distance from all of this ridiculous baggage…

And he took notice of you noticing and being accepting regardless, settling for whatever you could when you shouldn’t. 

He was such a selfish man to keep taking advantage of that to stay however he was able to, a hedgehog’s dilemma. 

Leon had managed to find boundaries of your unpredictability and had managed to establish a routine, an ebb and flow of some sorts, entirely dependent on the volatile schedule of his missions that you had no idea of and tried acting nonchalant about — the absences, the bruises, the emotional unavailability after losses he had to keep to himself. He had to be wearing you down, crawling back through the dirt and the blood and the undying monstrosities only to be mute about everything and go straight for your embrace in search of a moment's peace. 

And what about you?   

The part of himself that was still sane knew he was making you suffer because of his selfishness, stringing you along in this unlabeled affair with the excuse it was with your eventual well-being in mind when it was easier for him — in the sense that if it came to the worst, you’d be able to come out of this on top and just hate and keep blaming him so you wouldn’t be hurt in the long run. 

But it was selfish, he still wanted to keep being around you, though, didn’t have the right or face to say he wanted you, so orbiting you was the best he could afford to do. 

Just for a little longer. A bit more. 

Leon wished you would be done with him and tell him to leave you alone so he could finally get out of your life for good, but in all his returns you welcomed him coming back with open arms. It was the garden of Eden and he didn’t belong there, feeling like a pillager sneaking in and getting whatever he wanted and fucking right off afterwards, each and every time leaving you with less and less and a faded viridescence. 

But he couldn’t stay. Not for as long as he wanted. Never in the way you deserved. 

And before Leon knew it, he and you had toppled two years of his bullshit — and you were still here throughout it all.. 

In 2004, the truth of bioterrorism and the existence of monstrous abominations with no regard for human ethics were thrust upon the world, and wiped yet another Raccoon City off from the map of the mediterranean — and things got so much more confusing in regards to what was allowed to be secret or not.

Unbeknownst to you, it was this incident that unknowingly contributed to the growing rift between you. Leon carried the heavy burden of witnessing the President's decision to deny AUPIT’s assistance to the FBC, leaving him as a mere bystander while hundreds of lives were lost due to the incompetence and inexperience of those involved. Even Terrasave, an organization not known for its extraction expertise, fared better in their efforts.

The Terragrigia Panic became a turning point, a catalyst for Leon's introspection, the weight of the world he couldn’t lift one finger to help pressed upon him, driving him towards self-destruction and an ever-deepening spiral of despair, soul scarred by the consequences of inaction and the haunting memories of present lives lost and a past city long in the dust. He questioned the system that bound his hands, preventing him from making the difference he so desperately yearned for. It was during these tumultuous times that you stood by him, unaware of the inner battles he fought and the toll it took on his well-being, and it made him feel so much worse about everything. 

His heart trammeled with the inevitable conclusion he could no longer ignore, he made the painful decision to set you free from the grip of his own shortcomings. Overwhelmed by a sense of unworthiness and consumed by his own greed, he knew he had to release you, unable to bear the weight of his own inadequacy any longer.

The timing, eerily close to the anniversary of the day he first met you, held a bitter irony. It was as if fate had conspired to test the limits of his resolve, presenting him with the most challenging mission of his life just as he made this life-altering choice. Bound for Spain, his path was paved with uncertainty, fraught with danger — but he’d sworn that things would be different this time and he could actually return, reformed and squeaky clean, somehow this mission could be his saving grace and actually wipe his brain clean of grime and rust.

The break-up had loomed before Leon like an impending storm, and he had steeled himself for the emotional turbulence that would surely follow, however, what caught him off guard was the resignation from you, as if you had anticipated his intentions and thoughts, ready to release him with open arms — eager to say yes the moment the words would slip out of his mouth. 

Devastated would be an understatement to describe him — he’d sat frozen on the kitchen chair, his mind a tempest of confusion and disbelief, the composed and scripted nature of your words waterboarding him as you continued to speak, nonchalantly expressing your expectations of this inevitable departure. You seemed braced, almost as if you had been reading his mind, as if you knew this day would come. The nonchalant manner in which you spoke of his leaving, seemingly devoid of any emotional attachment, tore at his heart. It was like time itself had paused, and Leon felt the dissociation creep in, his mind unable to process the scale of what was happening, the world around him blurring, finding himself lost in a void of numbness. How could it be that you were so ready to let him go? How could you speak of no hard feelings when his heart was shattering into countless fragments?

Yeah, right. 

Betrayal was it. 

He’d felt betrayed by you when he had no right to be angry like that — because he had warned you right from the start. 

You know how this ends. 

You’d taken his advice. Leon should have, as well. 

iv. It wasn’t only his jacket that’d got taken away by the village freaks, but also the watch you had given him as a gift — which the loss of was more personal and lethal to him.

And he had no time to look for it between saving and taking care of Ashley and trying to navigate a much bigger conspiracy. 

Coming to terms with the fact that it was gone, just like you, seemed poetically fitting, a form of karma that he should lose a memento of you when he hadn't proven himself deserving of it in the first place.

At the back of his mind was the memory of you trying to act like it wasn’t for anything special when Leon knew it was the first anniversary of the day you and he met, you just didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, walking around eggshells around him with the vaguest boundaries and definitions unspelled so he wouldn’t run away — Leon knew all too well. 

He had mentioned going for some type of Casio G-Shock when recounting he’d been meaning to buy a new one, and you’d apparently paid attention to that, not at all questioning why he would want a solar powered watch with 1312 ft. of water resistance — and had given him another much more sporty Longines stainless steel chronograph watch on the side, absolutely humbling him on the spot with just how much money you had to have spent on these two — and the amount of thought you had put into it. 

Modifications on both watches were specifically allowed by him, he'd gotten your initials and the Roman symbols of that day in the fall of 2002 engraved at the back of them to deceive himself, interchangeably using them, the Casio one in the missions, and the Longines in casual days, not bothering to buy any other watch for himself after that. You would see him wearing it all the time, but fortunately for his abashed pride, never commented on it, having no idea just how important they were to him. 

And it was Ada who casually reunited him with it, her throw of the watch certainly gentler than that of the jet ski key’s, as she was walking away with the Amber, a mysterious, knowing glance in his way, a perfectly shaped smile on her glossy lips. “Here. Consider this an equal exchange. Learn to take better care of special things, Leon.”

Somehow she wasn’t just talking about the watch and it irritated him, but she was right. 

v. The depths of Leon's feelings for you were intertwined with an overwhelming sense of terror. 

It terrified him to realize how much he needs you, how your presence has become an integral part of his existence, that you were now the surface he swam up to breathe after hours in the dark of the ocean, and the desire for reciprocation, for you to need him just as deeply, and knowing that you do but unable to bring himself to do anything about it, all filled him with longing and apprehension, both holding hands hiding behind the walls of his own making, pulling each other back as they kept watching you from afar. 

He feared that he may not be enough for you, that his flaws and past were going to inevitably cause harm and ruin.

The emotions that surged through him when you were near, the way his heart raced and his thoughts became consumed — it was new, it was unknown, it was exhilarating, it was petrifying. The spotlight of the vulnerability he’s put in was a double-edged sword, for it exposed him to the potential for joy, but also, immense pain. 

He could lose everything and it would lay waste to his soul, yet in the face of this fear, he couldn’t bear the thought of pushing you away completely, because the terror of being without you somehow had become equally paralyzing that he couldn’t breathe in the PTSD-rooted nightmares of them anymore.

Thus, you had found yourselves trapped in a state of limbo, unsure of where to go or how to proceed, but it was his fault, he thought of himself as a flightless bird sitting up on a roof with you, who could obviously fly; if he attempted to follow you he could fall, if he let you go you would migrate to warmer lands and would never come back. so you were both stuck there, and none of the scenarios involved — what if he could also fly? What if he could do what he thought he wasn’t capable of?

The thought of losing you now, after experiencing the depth of how far he could go with you; the promise, the mirage, the illusion, the dream, was a sense of impending devastation. And yet, he was plagued by the fear that it may already be too late to salvage what he once had with you. What he could have with you, if he allowed himself to surrender — 

Leon had changed, he wasn’t the same person, but he also hadn’t changed, hadn’t lost himself no matter the cost, hadn’t strayed from the original path he was treading on — he was capable of saving people, capable of changing the ending.  

Spain was as traumatizing as it was eye-opening and life-changing, through the reunion with Ada, the betrayal of Major Krauser, the loss of Luis and the successful extraction of Ashley, one single thread of hope had been holding Leon up and running:

He had to get back to you. 

He would come back to you, no matter what, even from the grave, even knowing there was a chance you wouldn’t take him back. To hell with taking comfort in a self-defined ending, to hell with the facade of protecting you when it was just protecting him, to hell with everything. 

This time, it had to be different. 

[useless-catalanfacts]

Re the ask about whether pro-Catalan/independence supporters tend to be left-wing, weirdly I've had Spaniards try to convince me that pro-Catalanism/independence is a right-wing movement, but they've never been able to take that further than a bald assertion -- it sounds more like a thought-terminating cliché, and it doesn't square with anything I've seen as an outsider.

Depends on who you ask, Catalans are stereotyped in opposite ways. Speaking Catalan or having a Catalan accent makes us "villagers", "poor and uneducated", and "stupid farmers" until it's the left wing who wants to criticize us, then Catalan makes us "bourgeois" and "never worked a day in their life" and "Catalonia was a flat land with nothing until Spanish people arrived and worked to build it". Catalan is "basically dead", "nobody even speaks it anymore", "it's only spoken by elderly people in villages and everyone else hates it and hates to be associated with it" but when it's more convenient it's "all-powerful", "if you don't speak Catalan they mistreat you", "everyone speaks Catalan all the time just to exclude Spanish speakers". Catalan independence is a "radical anti-capitalist extremist movement full of terrorists" and often gets mixed with "anarchist terrorists" until the person who wants to criticize it would think that's cool, then it's a "right-wing movement based on greed". Everything always has two completely opposite stereotypes, which allows them to criticize without having to actually listen to our experiences or what we have to say, they can decide simply based on their prejudiced beliefs.

They right-wing stereotype is a newer one, it started gaining popularity about 15 years ago at most and lots of Spanish nationalists have been obsessed with it since, even going as far as trying to fund a right-wing Catalan independence movement into existence. It's very strange because it comes out of nowhere, they're just obsessed with wanting it to become true because that would make their argument easy. Catalan people have always (for centuries) been stereotyped as greedy merchants (think the Jewish stereotype, in Spain many of the "jokes" that in English are "a Jewish man does x" in Spanish they're exactly the same word by word but with a Catalan instead; in fact in the 1900s in Spain there was a significant movement of antisemitic Spanish "intellectuals" who argued that Catalan people are "racially Semites") and this stereotyped is deeply believed in by many people in Spain. Thus, it's very easy to wave off pro-independence concerns with "ah see but it's just that they're being greedy! The whole point of independence is that they're secretly rich and don't want to share!". This is an easy way to make Spanish people not need to listen and rethink their prejudices, because holding on to the prejudices is seen as somehow "sticking it to the power", and it breaks leftist solidarity.

An example of how this belief manifests is some of the tweets posted by the Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón (the main actress in Emilia Pérez movie):

Translation from Spanish:

1. I'm following the NASA press conference. There's water in Mars. Wow! Luckily NASA aren't Catalans, they would have kept it to themselves.

2. They invited a Catalan pro-independence man to a wedding and he ended up eating alone in a corner, he couldn't stand seeing food be shared with all the guests.

She was literally tweeting about imagined hypothetical horrible Catalan people she imagined. These people aren't real, this didn't happen, she just wanted to talk shit of Catalan people based on stereotypes. (There's another tweet by her calling Catalan independentists Nazi rats and saying she hopes we all die or rot in prison, which is not directly the stereotype we're talking about here but it goes to show where these beliefs end up taking the person who has them).

These aren't unusual and the only reason I'm pulling them out as examples is because she's a famous person and I think it's a better example than random people, but this is a widely-held belief in Spain. It doesn't make sense to paint a whole culture like this, and if we were to look for any clues I think we would find all the opposite, solidarity has always been very important in Catalan culture (like in most cultures throughout history!).

[lunarflux]

I find it so interesting that Alicent's only reference to what Aemond "somehow" has become is strictly based on what happened to Luke at Storm's End, and I suppose what happened at Rook's Rest with Rhaenys (I don't think it was said that Cole told her it was him, but idk). It's one thing to have seen your youngest (sorry, Daeron) son grow up to be a psychopath and show no sympathy towards anything, but up until that point, Aemond really didn't do much outside of what was expected of him.

Her tending to Aegon with guilt set my brain on fire because what did she honestly expect? She coddled her children with blankets soaked in ice water and expected them to find warmth on their own. All three of her children display different results of what happens when you neglect your children. Aegon acts out to get any reaction from her because any reaction is better than no reaction, and when he finally goes to her, pleading for help because no one wants to listen to him during Small Council, she just shuts him down. Aegon is still young, and there was more than enough room in his development for her to be his mother in all senses of the word. Helaena basically gave up on anyone trying to understand her, and had Alicent offered like... a minute of actual comfort when Jaehaerys died, Helaena might not have had a literal panic attack (though that panic attack was totally warranted because that scene was honestly suffocating even as a viewer).

In terms of her relationship with Aemond, exactly how often does this woman talk to her children beyond the niceties? Aemond's choice to own what happened to Lucerys was a result of "no one did anything, so I fucking did it myself" instead of "I was angry, and maybe I did want him dead, but I didn't understand the consequences of holding onto anger and letting it fester, and now it's too late." Aemond 100% admired his mother when she tried to claim Luke's eye, but where did that motherly protection go? Even if she went full tilt and took the "Well, Luke never got punished" stance, yes, Aemond might still be where he's at, but she wouldn't be outwardly condemning his actions and might not be confused as to how we ended up here. Better yet, she wouldn't be shocked that Aemond has the silent confidence to take over as Prince Regent.

Aemond's face while waiting for the Small Council's decision on who will rule in Aegon's stead was honestly so funny. He already knew - he played the game. He let his brother flail helplessly and drown as King, and spent time showing his hand, showing how capable he can be. All this to say, Alicent REALLY ignored whatever the hell he was doing because if she hadn't, she would have found more than one moment where she could step in and mold him into a ruler who takes her opinions into account.

"Aemond is still young" so is Aegon?? And you were?? Idk okay with him doing whatever the fuck he was doing???? He also has little experience, so you can't use that argument now that the Council is backing Aemond.

I know the woman is fed up because of all the men fucking things up around her but holy shit woman - use your power as a woman and as a mother to mold them through manipulation without them knowing.

Quick edit now that it's the morning and can actually think past fatigue: I know what we're privy to about Alicent/Aemond's relationship is mostly inferred. There's a lot left to the imagination, and when I say "passed the niceties," I'm referring to the kinds of conversations that are essentially shallow. Alicent says what she needs to say, but there's no warmth since she speaks from the position of duty. There are touches of this when Aemond volunteers to go find Aegon in s1. We see Alicent confide in her father, but we don't see those thoughts said to Aemond which might have provided more for him in terms of her sympathy and protectiveness towards him (following the eye incident because she does comfort him there). Additionally, my main focus and why I have these opinions is Alicent's use of the word "somehow." Aemond has, for the most part, made an assumption of his mother's behavior, so she does the same. The assumptions can be made through the observation of someone's actions and not necessarily through conversation.

That being said, I am taking these stances from the POV of someone who only watches the show as I don't like to compare the developments between the product and the source material. Comparison is the thief of joy, and adaptations for TV will never be as accurate and concise as we'd like them to be.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Most Toxic Situationship I have ever Seen...And I Loved Every Second

As far as sequels go, I cannot deny that this one rocked. It can be so, so hard to follow up a first book without it feeling like retreading old ground or that there is arbitrary or artificial conflict that doesn't feel natural. Xiran Jay Zhao did not have those problems. This book felt immediate, vibrant, and deeply fucked up in the best possible way. I loved how messy it was, and how it refused to make deeply morally, ethically, and organizationally messy things simple, instead giving us the chance to watch the mess unfold and force characters to make choices in situations where there is not right answer. Let's talk Heavenly Tyrant.

This is you SPOILER WARNING. If you go below the cut, I'm SPOILING THE END of the book in like the first two sentences. You've been warned.

Sooooooo...she fully stabbed Qin Zheng in the heart, which somehow radicalized him into a full-on misogynist and patriarchal asshole (although let's be fair, that wouldn't have happened if he wasn't already well on his way to this point), and Shimin is a mechanical bird now. That's a LOT to deal with, and we're going to get there, then this whole book was a LOT. You don't just casually wake up a historical hero, crown him emperor, end up in a toxic situationship with him where you both plan to take down the gods and then murder the hell out of him without a lot of other elements.

Oh also, there was a reign of terror in there that got a little out of hand before they reined it in.

Now, as a heads up for those of you who like all the sci fi stuff in these books: I'm not so much a sci fi girl, so I'm not really going to talk much about those elements of the book. They were well executed and fine, but I was here for other things, so if you want a deep dive into the more sci fi elements, this is not the review for you. My focus is really going to be character dynamics and the politics.

Zetian and Qin Zheng

Sooooooooooooooo. So so so so. These two. The absolute fuckery that is the power dynamic between Zetian and Zheng is unquestionably my favorite part of this whole book. She is out here without the education and experience he has, but the conviction that women are people, the end. He's over here being this weird combination of toxic Mr. Darcy who has the education and principles but SO MUCH PRIDE and patriarchal baggage that it fucks up his implementation and Phantom of the Opera who thinks women are property.

This is what we in the business call an irreconcileable difference. So naturally they have to rule Huaxia and defeat the gods together, which requires finding some way to WORK together. And they do, technically. They get into all these weird power and dominance struggles behind the scenes, but there are also some AMAZING saves because the truth is, they need each other for now. I'm thinking particularly of when Zetian saves Zheng's ass at her coronation and pulls off a "it was a tech glitch" cover for him low-key almost dropping dead mid-ceremony. That was an A-level situation save.

And then she goes around licking things in front of him to assert dominance, which...is a choice. That I kind of loved, not gonna lie.

That said, Zheng did that absolutely bonkers thing where he had to interact with Zetian every day, heard her advocate for women, and somehow STILL managed to think she'd be chill with being his personal fantasy of a tradwife? Like...my dude. She crushed a building of people who wanted that for her, and you think you're going to be the singular dude who changes her mind? And then he had the SHEER NERVE to be surprised when she stabbed him.

Qin Zheng. Sir. Zetian fought you tooth and nail this entire book and was in the single most mutually toxic situationship I have ever seen and you genuinely thought she LIKED YOU??? The cognitive dissonance and self-delusion there is astounding. And somehow also completely unsurprising. Although the fact that he went full paternalistic patriarch in the epilogue had me just DREADING what was coming for Zetian in the next book. And "After all, his son cannot grow up without a mother" is a HELL of a line from this man.

Now Zetian...Zetian learns SO MUCH in this book. She learns about building her own power base separate from Qin Zheng, but also she kept getting hit in the face with patriarchy. She kept getting "be a wife and mother" and "get pregnant" and "don't hurt the (extremely fake) baby" and "use your sexuality to get what you want." All of which are SO IRRITATING even as she learns to weaponize them. Literally patriarchy hurts everyone, and watching her having to use the tools of the patriarchy and hating it but having no recourse was painful and infuriating in the best way. And Qin Zheng somehow didn't see it coming because he didn't see Zetian as her own person.

I seriously want to shake this man.

Zetian and Yizhi

Yizhi just kept making me go, "Sir. SIR. Explain your damn self" through this entire book. Taking down his family made sense, but then he kept doing cloak-and-dagger secrets and betrayals and double and triple agenting, and SIR WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR ENDGAME HERE??? It seemed to be some combination of protecting Zetian as much as he could with what he was given, having a weirdly personal beef with Qin Zheng, and taking down capitalism, but I want this man's perspective and inner monologue because WHAT EVEN.

I did ADORE that he was over here quadruple agenting and conspiring to trick Zheng into thinking he would die horribly if not in isolation and mucking around with IVF procedures. Although the "Dammit Zetian, I'm a political and criminal mastermind, not a doctor" line when he said the baby PROBABLY isn't Zetian's was just...*chef's kiss*

That said...he did still definitely violate Zetian's bodily autonomy, even if it was to stop Sima Yi and Zheng from forcing her into having a biological child. It's...one of those situations that is so fucked up there just isn't a RIGHT answer, there's only the answer that you and the woman you love can (probably, we all hope) live with. I love how MESSY this whole thing was. Yizhi is a messy drama queen in the very best way possible.

And the vibes I got from how Yizhi said "entertainment establishments" on the giant-ass space station made my heart hurt for him. I was really impressed that Yizhi could be as hard and soft as he was simultaneously.

Zetian and Her Various Girl Squads

Zetian is absolutely correct that women need more autonomy. Does she go about this perfectly, or even in the most effective way possible? Big Sister showing up in a dream to ask what she's doing for the 97% of women who can't be pilots would suggest no, but we aren't going to be the people who stop trying because the solution we have in the moment isn't perfect. And one of the strengths Zetian has is that she pulls lots of different kinds of women around herself and she listens to them.

She reforms the Iron Widows and she takes as much of a personal interest as she can in these girls, helping them follow in her footsteps. Then she also brings Wan'er and Taiping into her circle and she takes the different perspectives in, synthesizes them, and does her best to advocate for them with Qin Zheng before they collectively figure out how to scaffold other structures and organizations to do that work independently. It's not perfect, and it's probably not going to be enough now that Zheng has decided he understands why binding women's feet is a GOOD idea, but Zetian made real, concrete strides forward to support and protect women.

I also love her relationships with Wan'er, Quielo, and Taiping, because again, this whole book is about fucked up situations and relationships, but Zetian does manage to make these real, valuable, and lovely connections that bring meaning to her life, both personally and publicly. I love a good girl squad, and Zetian manages to find hers, even after being surrounded by men and betrayed by a female mentor figure in the last book. That kind of resilience and willingness to see messy nuance and keep moving? Impressive as all hell.

The Shimin Thing and the State of the Polycule

Shimin is a metal bird now. Shimin is the Vermillion Bird. This honestly left me with more questions than anything else, because it's not entirely clear what Shimin is, where his head is at, or how he is. And it's not clear how Yizhi and Zetian are about getting him back in this form, in this way, especially after accepting that he was gone.

Not to mention that the Yizhi-Zetian size of the iron triangle is...a little rusted, to say the least, and Zetian had whatever the hell she had with Zheng too. Yes, she stabbed him. But that was complicated by the relief mixed in with the frustration when she didn't succeed in killing him. So uh...the triangle is doing something weird and we're going to need to address that more in the next book. None of them are ok, and they're ALL going to need to deal with the aftermath of the past year-ish.

The Politics

OK SO. The sheer amount of cognitive dissonance in Qin Zheng's whole "the products of labor should belong to the laborers" and the whole productivity fetish and the "don't be a money-grubbing capitalist" thing coexisting with "women aren't really people" thing is insane. Also, the whole, "your value in society is contingent upon the labor you provide" tends to rub me the wrong way because it does not take into account things like severe disabilities or illnesses and implies a devaluation of anyone who does not provide labor that society considers valuable. Which Zetian DOES address from a gender perspective, because Qin Zheng clearly misses the amount of labor women do that simply isn't acknowledged as such. And Zetian tried to ameliorate this. But I also wish just a little that the existence of a human life was valued more than anything else.

Zetian also learns how to perform politics in this book, which is a really interesting journey to watch, and having her go from randomly screaming slogans Wan'er feeds her to actually plotting photo ops and events is intriguing.

Overall, this was a FABULOUS book, and I cannot wait to see where these characters go and what Zhao will do next.

[hurt-spock]

Blood (complete fic)

He could feel the sheer joy in the air around him.

McCoy, flying the bee had successfully manoeuvred the craft in time that they were able to save Jim's life, who in turn, had just defeated Krall and saved everyone on Yorktown.

McCoy was whooping with joy as he tried to find a way to land, while Kirk struggled to recover from his fight with Krall and Spock said nothing. He didn't monitor McCoy's attempts to land and he didn't engage Jim in conversation.

Instead he focused on himself. On his ebbing energy, on the injury that had been ripped and torn as he pulled against the sheer force pulling Jim away from him. He'd been certain he'd be pulled out along with the Captain but somehow, he'd managed to get him inside, but it cost him and he couldn't let them know that until they landed.

“Bones, what are you doing?” Kirk asked as the craft seemed to be ascending again.

“I have no idea how to land, okay. I don't want to crash again. One crash landing a life time is enough for me. Besides, I don't think you or Spock could stomach that.”

Kirk shook his head. “I'm fine, surface damage is all,” he assured. He looked to Spock, expecting him to insist he was fine too but Spock wasn't paying any attention to them any more, staring at some spot on the floor. “You need some help, Bones?” Kirk asked.

“If you think you can figure out how to land this, be my guest.” Bones shot back.

Kirk got up and headed towards the front, a supportive hand on Spock's shoulder as he passed.

Spock could hear them trying to figure out landing and soon enough, with a slight bump, they had landed safely.

He got up as the pair headed back towards him, swaying a little as he first got up. Jim headed out first and Spock heard the familiar voices of the crew as they greeted him. A little longer, Spock told himself. He steadied himself and McCoy scrutinise him. He was about to take a step closer, likely to assist him but Spock shook his head. “Not in front of the crew, Doctor.” Spock insisted.

“Whatever,” McCoy huffed heading out first, Spock following behind. He wondered vaguely if he'd offended the Doctor but he had to focus on suppressing the pain as they made his way after Jim, who seemed to be taking the crowds of the crew with him, McCoy just in his wake and Spock close behind him. He almost found himself faltering in his steps, the pace steady but each steps jolted the wound and he felt nausea rise in him.

Spock saw Kirk giving direction to Sulu and Chekov and them taking groups of the crew with them to different areas. Spock couldn't focus on what they were saying and he almost walked into Kirk and McCoy who had stopped just in front of him.

Kirk held onto his arm to steady him.

“You okay? You gonna collapse on me again?” McCoy asked.

Spock didn't feel particularly steady on his feet right then. “Unknown,” he said as a way of answering.

McCoy had noticed he'd gone back to covering his wound with his hand again. He wondered if there was a green patch forming underneath. Kirk headed into a building, McCoy and Spock following behind. Once they stepped inside, Spock turned to one of the workers in the building. “Do you have a restroom?” he asked. He was pointed towards a door and Spock headed for it. He heard McCoy call Jim's name and footsteps follow behind him.

He got through the door and braced himself at the sink.

He hung his head as he concentrated on breathing.

“What's wrong with him?” Jim asked.

“He just needs to get some proper medical care, that's all.” Bones said.

“So what are we doing in here?”

“Just give him a minute, okay.”

“He's not looking so good,” Kirk observed.

Spock took that moment to vomit in the sink.

“That's why we're in here,” McCoy said reaching over Spock and turning the tap on.

“He's bleeding again,” Kirk stated, pointing out the fresh blood on Spock's hand.

“Why don't you go and find out where the nearest transporter is. Once he's done in here that's the next stop.”

Kirk hesitated a moment before relenting and heading out.

Spock balked a few more times before he was finished. He scooped up a little water in one hand, which shook terribly, McCoy noticed, and rinsed his mouth out. “We'll get you out of here in a minute,” he promised. “I'll have you on the table, unconscious in seconds. You'll feel much better when you wake up.”

“Less pain, maybe. They will have no blood.” despite the choppy sentence, McCoy got the drift and he knew he was right.

That was true enough. If Spock needed surgery they were out of luck because there was little chance his body could withstand an operation on top of everything else. “Don't you worry about that.”

Spock didn't answer, instead turning back to the sink and vomiting again. That wasn't a good sign. Kirk got back just after Spock had finished cleaning his mouth out after the second bout of sickness.

“There's a medical unit on standby,” he said to McCoy.

McCoy nodded. “Grab his other arm,” he said.

Spock resisted the grip. “The crew-” he started.

“They're not out there, don't worry.” Kirk said.

They got to the door before Spock dropped to a dead weight in their arms.

“Crap!” Kirk said as the pair struggled to keep Spock off the floor. They made it through the door.

“We need some help here!” McCoy called. Several people came over and assisted them to the transporter. Kirk typed in the co-ordinates and they were gone in seconds.

2.

“So?”

“It's a damn mess is what it is,” the doctor said as he entered into the room where Kirk and McCoy were waiting.

“Yeah, I know but there wasn't a lot of options out there.”

“Take it easy, Bones.” Kirk said, feeling the tension rise.

“There's a number of problems not least of which is that he's of mixed race and we don't have his blood here. I can't even begin to fix the damage because if something goes wrong, I have no back up supplies. We barely have supplies of Vulcan blood here, what with the Vulcan disaster. So the best I can do is a temporary fix that will hold him together to stop him losing more blood.”

“Pretty much the same as the Protophaser,” McCoy tells Jim.

“That's what you used? No wonder it tore. They were okay if you're laid up in bed. Even slight actions and they start to give way.”

“Okay, so you can patch him up until we can get him somewhere else then?” Kirk pressed

“No. The other problem, and don't take this the wrong way,” he said turning his attention to Bones. “Is that when you used the heat seal on the wound it's caused an infection. I've looked at his files and half of what I think would maybe work on him is either non-affective or he's had a reaction to at some point according to his medical files. I don't know what I can do for him.”

A knock at the door and a nurse appeared. “Doctor, you're needed.”

He nodded to her. “If you can think of anything then call me. I can't leave that infection untreated for long before I have to try something and I don't want to make this worse.”

Kirk nodded his understanding, McCoy deep in thought. Once the door closed and they were alone, McCoy sank onto the seat. “Dammit, this is all my fault.”

“Of course it's not your fault. He'd already be dead if it wasn't for you.”

“I know the risk of a heat seal. It dramatically increases the chance of infection.”

“So what other choice did you have? Leave him impaled, walking around? Because I'm sure that the piece of metal in his was completely sterile itself, right? And I'm sure crash landing on an alien planet there could have been nothing that could infect him out there either.”

Bones rested his head in his hands. He was exhausted. Everything was supposed to be okay now. He couldn't think straight. “I don't know what to do.” He confessed.

“Yes you do. I believe in you, Bones. Look, you can help him. I wish I could but I can't. So you tell me what you need me to do and I'll make it happen. People, equipment, whatever. I'll get it.”

“I need... coffee. I need a room, access to Spock's files. I need to contact New Vulcan. I new Miller, Mar'xia and Faeri from my staff- damn, I don't even know if they made it, Jim.”

“I'll find out.”

“You need to tell Uhura before she hears it from someone else.”

“I'll do it.”

“And.. I need to see Spock before I do anything else.”

~

“He's sedated, but he might come round if you're examining him.” the Nurse said.

“Do you have the scan of the injury?” Bones asked.

“They're all on this PADD here,” she indicated to one at the foot of the bed.

“Thank you.”

“I'll be outside if you need me.”

McCoy nodded. He waited for the nurse to leave before he really took a look at Spock. The colour of his face looked off. He always looked pale but this looked more than just a bit pale. Even his lips had lost the colour.

He turned to Spock's injured side and removed the thin sheets covering Spock's body. One look and he could see the signs of infection. There were areas of the skin where the heal seal had been ripped apart again and resealed by the doctor here. The skin was inflamed and weeping. The doctor was right, they couldn't afford to leave this for long before they had to treat it.

He covered Spock back over before he moved round to the PADD and took a look at the scans. He could see how close the injury was to several vital arteries. Completing the surgery without nicking one would be tricky.

At least the surgery could wait. Spock wouldn't be up and moving any time soon, but he was stable with the injury as it was. What he couldn't survive was the infection if that took hold.

His focus had to be on that.

He turned to leave before a familiar voice spoke to him.

“Doctor?”

McCoy sighed and turned back round.

“Did it work? Did we save the Captain?”

“You don't remember? Yeah, we did. Jim's fine.”

“For that, I am grateful.” Spock could barely keep his eyes open and McCoy realised he must be fighting off the sedation.

“You need to rest,” he told him.

“Don't tell Jim I wanted to leave,” he said. “He might not understand.”

“I'm not telling him anything.”

“And Nyota. Tell her... I am sorry.”

“Tell her yourself, I'm not your delivery service.” McCoy replied softly. “Come on, you really need to rest. I need you to keep fighting this.”

Spock winced in pain and curled himself up slightly.

“I'm gonna go. I need to find a way to make you better, okay? Just rest. It'll be over soon.”

McCoy said and he paced out of the room, leaving Spock alone.

He shuddered in fresh pain as his body started to fall into the grip of fever.

His eyes closed, welcoming darkness.

3.

It was like the heat controls of the Enterprise had broken. He always had his room a comfortable level for a Vulcan, though he frequently turned them down if Nyota came to spend time with him there.

He was thinking how he needed to go and visit Mr Scott about the issue, see if he needed help fixing it, but something stopped him from doing anything, from moving.

And then he remembered that none of it was real.

The Enterprise was in pieces on Altamid and he was in some medical facility. He recalled Doctor McCoy and Jim being with him at some point but neither were currently present.

Jim had been fighting before that and he couldn't remember if he had faired well.

Maybe he was being treated here too. That would also explain McCoy's absence.

He decided that he would locate the pair to see how the Captain was doing, but as he pushed himself up onto his elbows a wave of heat came over him and he realised the heat from his sleep wasn't part of a dream but that something was wrong with him. He could feel his muscles tremble as he tried to remain upright but he realised seeking out the Captain wasn't going to happen and he let gravity assist him laying back down. He was all but panting with exertion, sweat beading across his brow.

That was when McCoy decided to enter and Spock felt relief at the sight of the man.

McCoy took one look at him before taking several large steps and being bedside him in seconds. He checked monitors and notes before he turned his attention back to Spock. “In case you can't guess, you're suffering from a fever.”

“Jim?” Spock asked, surprised by his hoarse voice.

“His fine. He'll be by to see you soon, if that's what you want.”

Spock nodded dumbly and closed his eyes. The lights were bright and he wanted to go back to sleep.

“Any pain?”

“No.”

“Well, at least we sorted one problem out.” McCoy muttered.

“There are others?”

“Besides the fact we can't operate due to lack of blood and we can't treat the infection because I don't know what to give you that's not going to make you worse, you're pretty much good to go.”

“It is possible... to mix the correct dosage of human and... Vulcan blood.” Spock muttered looking to the doctor, to see if he understood.

“Yeah, I know it's possible Spock, but they don't have a lot of blood to begin with. Most Vulcans are on New Vulcan so there's not a high demand for it all over the galaxy.”

“You think I should be on Vulcan. With my own kind.” Spock said. It wasn't a question. He closed his eyes again.

“What? How did you get that from what I said?”

“It is true though. You think I belong with my own kind.”

McCoy exhaled loudly. “Shut up, Spock. Now this,” he held up a shot before injecting it into Spock's neck. “Should help bring this damn fever down.”

“Jim is wrong.” Spock mutters quietly.

“About what?”

“He does not need me. The longer I remain by his side, the more I will hold him back. He does not have the confidence in himself he should have as I have stifled him.”

“He has confidence in himself. All that stuff he says about how he needs you and he doesn't know what he'd do without you, he doesn't mean as a Captain, he means as a person. Your his friend and you give him something that no one else on the crew can because only you are you. I don't know why I'm bothering to have this conversation with you when you're like this. Go to sleep, you'll feel better when you wake up.”

“You told me that last time, Doctor.”

“Hush.”

4.

“Sir, we got this, you need to go.” Miller had said to him.

They'd theorized some formula's that could help Spock's infection and they were going to prepare them. Miller had told him he looked dead on his feet, that he should get some sleep and he had intended to do just that, but he stopped by to check on Spock first and had never left.

The last shot had done nothing for Spock's fever, it was still steadily rising. He checked the wound and was certain it looked worse than the last time, swollen and weeping still. He changed the dressing on it, cleaned it the best he could.

The increase in temperature seemed to be accompanied by an increase in pain. Spock's was still unconscious but restless.

Spock woke suddenly, as if startled. He sat up a little before laying his head back down and closing his eyes.

“What do you need?” McCoy asked.

Spock said nothing but started to roll over on to his bad side. He grunted in pain, as McCoy helped him sit up enough and held him while he was sick.

“And this is why I can't go to sleep,” McCoy grumbled to himself as he held the small container for Spock to use. Once he was finished he helped him lay back down, grabbing a tissue and handing it over so Spock would wipe his mouth.

“Jim?”

“He's not here.” McCoy said.

“He did not know.”

“Didn't know what?”

“That he was my friend.”

“Of course he knows that.”

“I did not tell him.” Spock said, seemingly growing distressed. “What were the services like?”

“What?”

“The whole bridge crew. Gone.”

“No, they're not gone, they're fine they're just not here right now.”

“You should not lie to me, Doctor. I know.”

“I'm not lying to you. They're fine.”

There was a knock at the door and Chekov poked his head round the corner. “Doctor, I stopped by to see how the Commander was doing. Ensign Miller asked me to pass this along to you, Sir.”

“See, here's Chekov.”

Spock looked at the younger man sceptically. “I do not know how you are able to project these images-” Spock started.

“Give me that hypo,” McCoy gestured and Chekov passed it across. “We really need this to work.”

“I'm sure it will, Doctor.” Chekov said.

McCoy administered the shot and watched the Spock's stats as the pain reading decreased and his temperature seemed to stabilise. “Have you seen Jim?”

“He was talking with Lieutenant Uhura,” Chekov said. “She was most upset so I decided to come and see the Commander for myself. He is no better?”

“We get this fever sorted and I'll be happy. That's what's going to kill him right now. Not that it's going to kill him, it's in hand, you know.”

“I understand,” Chekov said. “You are tired, Doctor. I can stay here and watch him. Let you know if he needs you.”

“I can't just leave him.”

“He's asleep.” Chekov said, indicating to Spock.

“I don't know if I should go.”

“I will call you, Doctor. Anything change and I'll call you straight away. I promise.”

“Okay fine.” McCoy said. He set some alarms to sound if any of Spock's levels went too high or too low. “Anything starts beeping, you call me straight away, okay?”

“Aye, Sir.”

“And if Jim or Uhura stop by don't let them disturb him, okay?”

“Promise. Russian promise a good promise, Sir.”

McCoy smiled. “Okay, I'm going.”

5.

It had seemed like the right thing to do.

When Commander Spock has grown restless and somewhat distressed, Chekov thought back to how his Mother had comforted him as a child.

He'd spoke to him softly, tried to comfort him with hushed comforting words and when that had failed he had tried touch, somehow managing to forget everything he knew about Vulcan's being touch telepaths.

He couldn't tell you what happened next. He knew, when he was out of it and sat on the floor breathing heavily from the experience, that he had been in a mind meld with Spock. And he couldn't describe it.

Nothing was solid or real, it was feelings and experiences that he felt, he didn't see. What he did see didn't make much sense but then, he knew Spock was sick right now and it made sense that his thoughts weren't very clear.

He got himself back off the floor and looked at Spock who was sat up, looking at him, tears running down his face.

“Why were you think of my Mother?” he asked, his tone harsher than Chekov had ever had directed at him.

“I er... I did not think I was, Sir. I was thinking of my Mother.”

“That was not who I saw,” Spock accused.

“I- I suppose the truth is Mister Spock, that I think of her often. I should have been able to save her.” He couldn't look at the Vulcan as he spoke. “I carry it with me every day.”

Spock's expression lessened and he lay back down. “It was never your fault. I am to blame. In every sense. My other self was the reason Nero attacked-”

“That is not you-”

“More so, I went there to save my parents. I held my Mother's hand the whole time but let go to call the ship.” He let the words fade into the silence of the room. “I did not need to let her go.”

“It was not your fault. You should rest. You are still not well, Commander. I can get the Doctor for you. Would you like that?”

“Would you find Jim? I need to see that he is okay.”

“Yes Sir. I will do that. You will wait here and rest. I will be back very soon.”

He waited for Spock to settle back down before he left to find the Captain. Spock waited mere seconds after Chekov had left before he got out of bed and headed out the room.

6.

It was late by the time Jim got finished.

He ended up checking on several members of the crew who had been injured during the whole fiasco. The list of the deceased crew members was being compiled ready for his grisly task of contacting next of kin.

He only wanted to go through the process once.

Talking to Uhura had been painful. She was upset. She knew Spock had been injured but he'd done a good job of keeping the truth of the injury from her. So now she felt awful that she hadn't done more for him. And then she'd told him all about their relationship. That she wasn't sure what Spock wanted any more, but she was starting to think it wasn't her.

And Jim didn't really know what to say. He wanted to tell her that it was okay and that Spock loved her and they'd work this out, but he didn't know any more. When he thought about the last few months, he couldn't really remember much time he and Spock spent doing anything together. They used to play chess on some evenings. They often ate together.

But Spock had been busy in the labs. He'd been speaking to his Father on new Vulcan and eventually, they'd stopped doing anything together except their shifts. Jim knew he could have tried harder himself but he started to wonder about his own future and things snowballed.

So he couldn't tell Uhura they'd be fine because he didn't know himself any more. He hoped they would. She'd been through a lot with Spock and he'd hate to see they ruined now, after so long making it work.

She'd been too upset to see Spock and Jim told her Spock was resting right now. Told her to get some rest and come and see him in the morning when she felt a little better herself.

She nodded in agreement and headed off.

Even though it was now late into the night, Jim headed back to Bones so he could check up on Spock before getting some sleep himself.

Everywhere was quiet as it was the night time period on the station and Jim didn't see anyone as he made his way back towards the medical unit.

He hoped Bones had made progress. While he wouldn't admit it, Jim knew how worried he was about Spock. He'd been somewhat relieved that after Spock had been beamed aboard the Franklin and he'd doubled over in pain that Bones was the one who appeared seconds later. He knew that he'd been taking care of Spock the best he could and when he cracked out a joke about him and Spock being spliced together, it gave him a little hope that maybe Spock wasn't as badly injured as he thought.

The fact that he collapses seconds later had ruined that idea though.

He turned a corner and almost walked straight into Spock.

“Spock, what are you doing out here?” He asked though it was apparent that he was in no condition to be making any decisions himself. He had no top on, just the hospital's pants and Jim could see the dressing over the wound was in need of changing. Spock had nothing on his feet and despite the generally cool temperature in the facility, Jim could see a light sheen of sweat all over Spock.

“C'mon, I'll take you back to your room before Bones notices your gone.”

Spock didn't say anything and let Jim lead him back to his room and assist him into bed. He pulled the covers up over him, wanting Spock to be warm despite the heat radiating from him.

Pulling out his communicator, Jim called McCoy.

“What's up Jim?”

“Hey, I just came to visit Spock. When you get a chance, can you get someone to change his dressing. It's looking pretty funky.”

“I'm heading over there now.” he said and ended the call.

“You're not dead,” Spock said quietly.

“You saved me, remember?” Kirk said, smiling.

Spock grimaced in pain and Jim hoped McCoy got there soon. Spock had suffered nothing more than a few minor injuries on their missions before, a least to Jim's knowledge.

He was aware that Spock could be awfully cagey when it came to medical information, something that he thought Bones knew more about than he did but he stayed tight lipped about it as well.

“Why don't you try and get some rest until Bones gets here.”

“Will you stay?” Spock asked.

“Of course.”

Jim sat beside the bed expecting Spock to at least attempt sleep but it was clear enough that he wouldn't be able to sleep. He was in too much pain, too uncomfortable. “Spock, what can I do to help you?” he asked.

“Jim?” It was Bones, entering into the room behind him. He felt the need to get up, though he didn't know why. “He's really in pain, Bones.”

“I know he is. The last hypo I gave him initially helped him manage the pain and his temp dropped but it didn't last long enough. We're still working on it.”

“I know this isn't your fault, Bones, but we got to sort something out. This can't happen. We can't even give him pain relief.”

“It is my fault, Jim. I could have worked on something with him. He was going to get badly hurt sooner or later. I knew we didn't have anything to effectively treat him. And now this is my fault.”

“Bones-”

“Not now, Jim. Not in front of Spock, okay?” Jim relented and dropped the subject as Bones pulled the cover down from Spock and exposed the wound.

He gently peeled off the dressing. Jim's description wasn't exactly medically accurate but he couldn't argue with it either. It didn't smell good, which was a bad sign and it looked messy.

There were a few things Bones had concluded in the time he'd spent working on how to treat the wound.

They'd been on an alien craft when Spock had been injured. So there was no telling what types of foreign bodies had got into the wound.

Heat sealing it, while an effective way to stop Spock bleeding to death, hadn't solved the issue and came with more chance of Spock getting infected.

Saving Jim had reopened the delicate and badly damaged skin. Again exposing Spock to any foreign bodies around. They were, once again, on an alien vessel at the time and Spock's immune system right then was compromised. He might have been acting like he was a lot better but it was simply because he could.

One thing McCoy had learnt about Spock was that he was a terrible patient. He didn't tell McCoy anything and would stand until he couldn't any longer rather than sit down before he fell.

So he was left with a green, bleeding wound to treat. It was still weeping badly, the infection raging on in Spock's body and a clear fluid was also present. He had no idea what that was.

Jim watched as Bones carefully cleaned up the wound. Jim became his assistant, passing over anything Bones would need.

He was amazed by the gentle steps McCoy went through to make sure he didn't cause any discomfort to Spock and he was a little surprised to see Spock had finally managed to get the rest he needed. He put a new dressing on Spock's wound and covered him back over again.

“At least he's sleeping,” Jim said.

McCoy looked over Spock's stats quickly. “Yeah that's-” he stopped frowning a little.

“What's wrong?”

“I can't believe it. I think he's actually gone into a healing trance.”

“That's good, right?”

“It's great. He'll heal much better and quicker this way. He just didn't go into it before, I- Oh, I get it now. It was you.”

“What was me?”

“He was freaking out earlier, thinking the bridge crew died. He kept thinking you were dead. He couldn't go into it until he knew you were okay.”

“You really think so.”

“Jim, you've been here minutes and he's gone into a healing trance. If that's not proof, I don't know what is.”

Jim smiled tiredly at Bones. “I'm exhausted.”

“Me too. I'll get one of the nurses here to watch him and then I'm going to bed for at least four or five hours.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

7.

“So, how did he get injured in the first place?” Sulu asked. “Was it on the ship?”

“No, I think it was when they landed.” Kirk replied taking a bite on his sandwich.

“And he's okay now?”

“He's in a healing trance,” Kirk supplied and shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know much about it, but Bones are really happy about it.”

“He was not looking so good when we beamed him aboard.”

“Yeah, I don't think he was doing so good.” Kirk agreed. “But, I checked in with him this morning and his temperatures going down and the infection seems to be clearing up now so the trance thing seems to be doing it's job.”

“Well that's a relief. Is Uhura with him?”

Kirk didn't want to say anything that would reveal too much about Spock and Uhura's personal situation right now. “She just needed some time. She was upset, so I'm sure she'll go and see him when she's ready.”

“Well, at least we can't get called out to help anyone else without a ship.”

“There's the positive side, Mr Sulu.” Jim said, laughing. They all needed a little break after what they'd been through.

“I'm going to go and meet Ben. Will you keep me updated on Mr Spock, Sir?”

“Of course I will.” Kirk said as Sulu headed off to spend the day with his family. Turning to Chekov, Kirk asked, “So what have you got planned for the day?”

“No plans yet, Sir. Yourself?”

“Lots of reports. The worse thing is, I have to pick up the slack for Spock too.”

Chekov smiled “I am sure he would be most unhappy if you did that, Sir.”

“Y0u're probably right. But, I do have to report the injury he sustained to Starfleet so I guess that's one he can't do. I'll see you later.”

~

Jim was hoping Spock might be up and about by now. What he didn't expect was for McCoy to be stood over the Vulcan, hitting him.

“Bones, what the hell are you doing?” Jim said, rushing over next to him.

“Trust me, Jim, I've not gone mad.” he said as he hit Spock again, his palm striking the side of the Vulcan's face. When he went to strike him again, Spock's hand shot up and stopped him before he touched him.

“Thank you, Doctor.” Spock said.

“Anyone want to explain why I just walked in on my CMO beating up my First Officer?”

“The Doctor was merely assisting me in coming out of the healing trance.”

“You have to slap him out of it?”

“It doesn't have to be a slap, but it's a bit more gentle than a punch.” McCoy said, shrugging.

“You Vulcan's are really weird.”

“I shall remind you of that after the next bar fight you are involved in, Jim.” Spock replied.

Jim couldn't help smirking. “So you feel better then?”

“I am functioning adequately, Captain.”

“The last time you told me that Spock you were collapsing seconds later.”

“I may have misjudged my injury previously.”

“I would say so.”

“Doctor, I would like to tha-”

“No. I don't want to hear it. I've had to put up with you for days, now. And you know, the only thing worse than a sick Vulcan, is a healthy one. So I'm leaving you Jim in charge of him, to make sure he doesn't do anything else stupid while I get some lunch. Do you think you can manage that?” McCoy looked to Spock who just looked away. McCoy might have offended him, it was hard to tell. Jim just shrugged and said “Sure, you go. You always get cranky when you need your coffee.”

And with that, he left, muttering all the way that he wasn't cranky.

The two of them were alone and Jim felt relief that he was able to look across at his friend and see him looking well. He might not be fully recovered but he was a lot better. “Do me a favour and don't get impaled again.”

“I shall try, Captain.”

Jim sat in the seat beside Spock and reached for his arm. “I know I said it already.... I couldn't do this without you, Spock.”

“Although I find your faith in me most.... interesting, Captain-”

“Jim.”

“Jim, I must disagree. You are more than capable of running a ship with or without me onboard.”

“Okay, maybe technically. But I don't mean I couldn't give orders. I mean that I wouldn't want too. If I left, you could run the ship no problem, but without you.”

“Captain, why do you think that I would wish to run the ship if you were not there?”

“You wouldn't want the ship?”

“Command was never what I was aiming for.”

“You don't want the responsibility.”

“I do not. But like you, I would not find the experience satisfactory if you were not there.”

“Okay, so, neither of us should leave then, I guess. Not that, I was planning too.”

“Nor I, Captain.”

“Am I interrupting?” Nyota asked as she appeared at the door.

“Oh hey, not at all. I was actually just leaving and erm, well someone needs to stay with him.”

“I guess I inherited the job, then.” She said and smiled to Kirk as she moved passed him and into the chair he vacated.

“Spock, I'll come and check on you later, okay?”

Spock nods as Kirk heads out the door.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hello, Nyota.”

She smiles at him. “I'm sorry you got hurt. But thanks for coming to rescue me anyway.”

“I should thank you for rescuing me.”

“You could have got hurt a lot worse doing that. You know I can take care of myself and... considering what happened... it wasn't your place to risk yourself for me.”

“I regret that in the time we were on the ship we were unable to talk things through more thoroughly. I take full responsibility for this as I was not open to such discussions at the time.”

“It's okay, you don't have to say it-”

“I believe you do not fully understand, Nyota. It was never my intention to leave you. I wished to leave my position within Starfleet. However, I felt if I was in a relationship with you when I took such a step, it would be expected for you to leave too. I felt this was unfair to you and you should be able to make your choice independently of what my wishes were. And it will always be my place to risk myself for you. I could think of nothing that I would not risk to know that you are safe.”

Spock closed his eyes in a long blink and took a deep breath.

“Your tired still. Get some sleep and I'll be right here when you wake up, okay.”

“Thank you, Nyota.”

[sirowsky-stories]

Forward Luxation

Summary: You're recovering from a dislocated shoulder and have to go to a physical therapist. But getting there, you find nothing at all is what you'd expected, least of all the man in charge of your training.

Requested by @bilibiche

Rating: Mature 18+ONLY Warnings: Marcus Moreno x female reader, reader is not described at all, and yes, we're taking liberties with the fact that any visit to an expert in human functionality requires one to take their clothes off. Lots of sexual tension here. Word Count: 2750

   The waiting room is surprisingly cozy for a physical therapist’s office. Although you’ve never been to one before, so you don’t really have anything to compare it to. You’d just sort of imagined it being a bit like a dentist’s office, with the cheap magazines, plastic plants, beige curtains which haven’t been changed in five years, uncomfortable chairs and squeaky linoleum floors.    But this is nothing like that.

   You’re sitting in one of the four available really nice armchairs, each with a little coffee-table to the side, on top of which are no magazines but instead a selection of pamphlets with useful information about the most common muscle injuries and treatments, and phone numbers and websites to other reputable establishments where people can find help for all manner of problems, from yoga studios to psychologists.

   The wallpaper is cream white with a discreet floral pattern in the same color, but glossy against the matte base, and the curtains are a deep green which together with the wallpaper somehow gives the impression that you’re sitting in a park. Especially since the chairs have exposed wood along with the soft cushions, which are the same color green, with embroidered flowers in pale yellow. And you’re pretty sure they’re made entirely of silk.

   Even the coffee is fucking excellent.

   If not for the fact that you had to sign in at the front desk, confirming your appointment and even having to show your ID, before being shown in here, you would’ve thought for sure you were in the wrong place.    This all seems so much more expensive than what you could ever afford. You’re here courtesy of your insurance, so you don’t need to worry about the cost, but it still feels way too fancy for you.

   “Good morning,” a soft and pleasant voice interrupts your thoughts, and you turn your head to find a tall, fit, brown-eyed, ridiculously gorgeous man smiling at you.

   “Uh… g-good morning,” is all you manage in response, because he’s literally taken your breath away by just standing there.

   “My name’s Marcus, welcome to my rehabilitation center. If you’ll please follow me, we’ll get started with a quick exam,” he continues, giving no indication he’s noticed your flustered reaction as he politely steps to the side to indicate which direction you’ll be heading.

   Air floods back into your lungs when you start to move, getting up from the chair and falling in behind him, at which point, your brain starts working again.

   “You own this place?” you ask, jumping at the first topic to come to mind.

   “I do. I started this business eight years ago,” he replies, before reaching a room with a door already standing open, where he stops just outside and beckons for you to enter. “Does that surprise you?”

   “Well, no. I’m just a bit confused overall,” you admit.

   “Oh? How come?”

   “It’s just… My insurance company made it seem like it was a big deal to even get a spot here. That this is like, the best physical rehab center in the country. And then I get here and the only person I’ve seen is the receptionist.”

   “I see. You thought that such a prestigious establishment would have thirty employees and patients constantly coming and going?” he guesses, and you nod, feeling slightly embarrassed.

   But he’s smiling when he gestures for you to take a seat on the large examination table in the middle of the room, while he closes the door and then takes a seat on a mobile stool in front of you.    You note that the temperature in here is higher, and a moment later you realize that it’s probably because people need to undress for him to examine them properly, and suddenly you’re flustered again.

   “The reason why we’re considered one of the best, is precisely because we don’t take on more patients than what we can effectively handle, both from a managerial standpoint, and from a practical one.    Since it’s just me and David here, that means our slots are usually limited to five people per day. Obviously, I’m in charge of the actual therapy, while David handles the charts, bookings, contact with hospitals, insurance and so on.    These limitations enable us to work entirely stress-free with our patients, allowing each session to take almost however much time it requires, whether due to physical restrictions, or mental ones.”

   “Mental ones?” you repeat, getting slightly caught on the notion, since it seems misplaced to you.

   This is physical therapy, not psychological, right?

   “Bodily injuries often result in emotional distress, most of which only comes out when people are confronted with the consequences, which is essentially the heart of what we do here.”

   “So, you’re like a jack-of-all-trades kind of therapist, then?”

   “I suppose I am,” he agrees with a small chuckle. “Now, if you’re satisfied with our business model, we should get started.”

   “Sure,” you say entirely without confidence, feeling the hairs on your arms prickle with nervousness at the mere thought of potentially having to undress in front of this man.

   “Dislocated right shoulder. Forward luxation, if I remember correctly,” he recalls without looking at any charts or notes. “May I ask how it happened?”

   “Oh, I have horses,” you sigh, knowing he’s probably not gonna need much more explanation than that.

   And sure enough, he mirrors your sigh.

   “Ah, yes. That’ll do it. So, how long did you wait before calling for help?” he asks, crossing his arms over his waist with a knowing, although friendly, glare in his eyes.

   “About an hour.”

   His eyebrows shoot up at that, but he can’t seem to find the words at first. And as always, the moment you feel the slightest bit judged for your passion for horses, you get defensive.

   “I couldn’t just drop everything, I had two horses who were panicking because of a fucking snake, I had to get them into the stables.”

   “Yeah, okay, fair enough. How long did that take?” he prods, and you hesitate.

   Because you’ve had both of your horses since they were foals and you’ve trained them well enough that they always trust you, even when they’re scared, which is why it had only taken you a couple of minutes to get them into the stables that day.

   “I don’t have anyone who can help me,” you quietly explain. “I had to make sure they’d be okay if I had to be in hospital for a few days.”

   His expression softens then, but he’s not done investigating.

   “So, you went around hauling hay, probably some buckets of water, checking fences and gates… I assume you also made sure to get rid of the snake, only calling for help once you’d double-checked that you hadn’t missed anything.”

   “I didn’t call. I drove myself to the hospital,” you conclude, at which point Marcus seems to give up any notion that you’re a reasonable human being.

   “As impressive as it is that you were able to endure that kind of pain for so long, you do realize by delaying getting this injury corrected, you probably added another month to the rehab you’re gonna need? Which is only gonna keep you from working with your horses that much longer,” he admonishes, but he sounds concerned more than anything, which tugs at your heart because no one ever concerns themselves about you.

   “I know, but I was… scared,” you admit, surprising yourself, since you haven’t even admitted this to yourself yet. “I’ve never been seriously injured before, and I hate hospitals. I knew I had to go, I just… had to convince myself of it.”

   Unexpectedly, he smiles at you then.

   “Thank you. For being honest with me. That’s always a good start.” He looks so grateful and earnest as he meets your gaze, you struggle not to look away.

   “I know it might not seem like it, but I do want help. I’m just really crappy at asking for it or accepting it.”

   “Well then, you’ll be happy to know I’m stubborn as hell, and I don’t take no for an answer when I know I’m right.    Chances are, you’re gonna get amazingly irritated and sick of me before we’re done, but if you can trust me despite all that, I’ll get you well again,” he offers, and you struggle to believe you could ever get sick of such a wonderful person.

   “I’m not great with trusting people. But I’ll try.”

   “That’s all I can ask for.    Now, I’m gonna need you to take your shirt off so I can assess the mobility of your shoulder.”

   Well, that went from sweet to nerve-wracking in one fucking sentence…    Suddenly your pulse is pounding in your ears, but it’s not like you can refuse. At least, not if you want to regain full mobility.    Internally cursing yourself for wearing a t-shirt and not a top with thin straps of some sort, you start fumbling with the fabric, trying to get it off without causing yourself too much pain.

   He notices that you’re having a bit of trouble and steps around behind you to lift the shirt at the back, which is nice of him. Except that when his warm fingers brush against the bare skin of your neck, you involuntarily shiver, which he of course also notices.

   “Is it too cold in here?” he wonders. “I try to keep it warmer than the rest of the building, but if you need me to turn it up further-…”

   “No, no, I’m fine,” you interrupt him, feeling absolutely ridiculous at how strongly his mere presence affects you.

   “Alright, but just so you know, it’s no trouble. If there’s anything I can do to make this more comfortable for you, don’t hesitate to tell me,” he says, as he carefully starts to prod and examine your shoulder now that the shirt is off, and you’re abruptly having trouble breathing again with the sensation of his skin exploring yours.

   “Oh, you don’t want me to do that…” you think to yourself, while doing your best not to be self-conscious about your choice of bra for the day.

   “Why is that?”

   His mildly bemused and curious question makes you freeze, and as the realization hits you that you’d actually spoken out loud just now, panic floods your every cell in no time flat.    Wishing the ground would open and swallow you, or that lightning would hit you right now, you let your torso fall forwards and then brace your good elbow against your knee so that your hand can catch your head as it drops so heavily into your open palm that it feels like you’ve just slapped yourself.

   “I am so sorry,” you mumble, seriously wondering what the fuck is wrong with you, you don’t even know if the man’s single. “Please ignore me, I don’t get out much.”

   He’s quiet for a moment then, and in that short space of time, you manage to imagine several scenarios for how he’s probably about to scold you for behaving inappropriately.

   “Ah… You didn’t mean to say that out loud, did you?” he finally replies, and he still sounds only bemused, but it does nothing to rid you of your shame.

   “I’m sorry,” is all you can think to say, because that’s how you feel.

   “Hey, don’t feel bad, you haven’t done anything wrong. You’re allowed to think whatever you want.”

   “Even if it’s totally objectifying and unethical?” you counter, and there’s another pause before you hear a low chuckle behind you.

   “Okay, now I’m really curious. What were you thinking?”

   “Never mind, just… continue your exam,” you hurriedly try to deflect, even more mortified by the prospect of having to own up to your completely premature infatuation with him.

   But instead of leaving it alone, he rounds the table until he’s in front of you again, taking a seat on his stool so he’s at your eye-level.

   “As previously discussed, I’ve got time. So, please, do tell me what you think would make you feel the most comfortable with me,” he grins, clearly fully aware that it’s gonna be something juicy, and almost childishly excited to know what it is.

   For the most part, humiliation runs off you relatively easily. But that’s also because you rarely stray out of your comfort zone, which revolves around horses, dogs, driving tractors and using power tools.    Still, on the rare occasions when you do manage to get yourself cornered, you generally suffer for a minute and then you find a way to shake it off.

   And on the super-rare occasions, such as this one, when you’re so far beyond mortified that you don’t even know how to get out of it, something else happens.    You become kinda angry and a bit feral.    The last time it had happened you’d ended up spending a night in jail, and you hadn’t even been drunk.

   You can feel that anger take control of your brain and you know you’re about to say something ill-advised, but there’s no stopping it.    Raising your head, you lock gazes with him and see him flinch at the abrupt shift in your expression.

   “Basically any scenario in which you’re butt naked and in my bed,” you hear yourself almost snarl, and somehow, there’s no shame accompanying the words.

   As crude and inappropriate as they are, it’s the truth, and it wipes the sweetly crooked little smile off his face in a hurry. Although his eyes remain alight and curious.

   “Somehow that’s not what I was expecting you to say,” he slowly observes, and you can’t help how your face falls, hearing that.

   “You and me both, darlin’,” you exhale, feeling the anger fade as the air leaves your lungs, and in its wake, only regret remains. “Maybe I should just go.”

   Standing, you reach for your shirt at the top of the table, but he stops you with a hand on yours, and when you turn to see what he’s doing, he’s suddenly very close.

   “I told you that if you can trust me, I’ll help you.    It might’ve been unintentional, but you were honest with me just now, even though you didn’t want to be, which is a good sign.”

   “Not really,” you protest, starting to feel smaller against his large frame, “I get like that sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed. I blurt things out with no filter, it’s not a choice.”

   “It was still the truth, wasn’t it?” he persists, and you can’t deny it, so you nod. “Okay then, we have a baseline, so let’s build on it rather than abandon it.    I suggest we start with today’s session, and when we’re done, we make dinner reservations for this weekend.”

   You’re so unprepared for that last part, your mouth falls open and your mind goes completely blank for way too long. Like a damned fish, you just stand there, staring at him while his hand still holds yours, gently prying your shirt from it before he motions for you to take your seat again.    Grateful to be guided, since you still can’t think for yourself, you follow his directions and before long, the exam is done and he’s helping you get dressed.

   From there, he shows you out into the gym where he meticulously instructs you on which exercises to do and how often, making you swear not to overdo them.    And you might be imagining it, but you feel like he jumps on any excuse to touch you, holding your waist to make sure your core musculature doesn’t move when it’s not supposed to, or physically redirecting your hips when you’ve unknowingly turned them, even though he could’ve just told you to correct it yourself.

   When you’re done for the day, he takes you back to the exam room where he makes a few notes about how the session went and what you’ve agreed on.

   “Again, no lifting hay, grain, or heavy buckets,” he reiterates for what has to be the tenth time, and you can’t help but roll your eyes at him.

   “I heard you the first nine times.”

   “And you’re still not gonna listen to me, are you?”

   “I live alone with two horses and two dogs, I make no promises, one way or the other.”

   “I’m just gonna have to tie you to the bed then,” he says without a hint of a joke in his voice, before he reaches for a calendar on his desk. “But, dinner first.    How does six o’clock on Friday sound?”

THE END

[heartfullofleeches]

Imagine Miller doing a subbathon with yan chat except instead of donating bits to keep the stream going, they’re donating bits to see Y/n. Y/n is just sitting there next to Miller reading a book or something whilst they play a game and anytime the counter runs out because chat didn’t donate Miller juts kinda, throws a blanket over them or something until someone donates

A shadow appears outside your tent.

"Mind if I come in? Looks so cozy from here I might not leave.. Ow, ow, shit- not again." Setting up for the stream, Miller pokes their head through the curtains of your enclosure to attach a mic piece to a hanging frame, cerulean dreads snagging on the velcro latch in the midst of their playful banter. They mutter expletives, since as they tear their locks free. They crawl inside the tent and tap the mic overhead where you lay with a book in your lap and surrounded by a small library filled with more novels and other items needed for the duration of your stay. When Miller told you they'd be pulling out all the stops for your new corner - they meant it.

The whole idea for the space came when they discovered the very foundation for it online. They had mindlessly scrolling through various forums looking for ideas to make their room feel more of a home for you when they came across a frame for a floor bed fashioned in the design of a small house. It went in their cart that second and on their doorstep a day later. After gutting one side of their floor and setting the bed up, Miller fit it with your favorite sheets and pillows. They strung up mood lights and installed shelves into the walls for your trinkets. By the time they were done, the area was more decked out than their entire apartment. A fair act given who it was for. You warmed up to it well enough and that's all they could ever ask.

Miller grabs the remote for the lights and turns them up. "Quiet read in the dark unless you want eyesight somehow worse than mine." Their voice softens the closer they get until their lips graze your cheek. "You good to start?"

"Mmm...." You pull the blanket trapped beneath their knees over your lap. "Now I am."

Miller smiles. "Good. Remember, just turn off the cameras if you can't handle the attention. There's one there, there, and obviously here-" They point around the room, stopping on the front facing camera of your laptop. "And you have my card if you want order something to eat while we're live. I'll check on you in about an hour. Be good."

Miller nabs the pillow cushioning your elbow and lightly smacks your knee with it before backing out of the tent. They place it behind their neck as they sit down at their desk and adjust their headphones over their ears. Waking their monitors up, they find the feeds from your cameras on one and the scheduled stream on the other. Right before they tune in, Miller presses a kiss to the pads of their fingers and places it on the screen where you sat. The curtains draw back.

"Saw that!"

Miller hushes you, wiping the snicker off their face as the stream goes live. "Hey, guys. As some of you may know if you follow the community page, we have a special stream today."

They eyes the chat as you get comfortable. You yawn, laying on your side with your book in hand.

[I'll take your entire stock.]

[So glad I got paid yesterday. How are they so freaking cute?!]

[If someone gives a certain amount can they read to us too???]

[Alexa, what's my location]

"Your first mistake is thinking I'd have one of those things. Your second is not realizing we plan on moving every two years. You can watch them all you want, but it's best you remember Y/n is my partner. Cross any boundaries and I will take them away just as easily as I have shown them off to you.... but I'll still send pictures from the wedding!... Baby, you doing okay?

You hold your finger over your laptop's camera, reading the flood of messages and donations from your phone. "They absolutely hate when I do this.... but I think it works in our favor."

[welldonekhushi]

Okay guys, I'm back and.. I needed a short break after what happened in the MWIII campaign. Words can't express how shocked I was when I reached the end of the campaign and.. it left me in confusion, denial, depression and anger.

I'm putting a "read more" below because, if there are people who still haven't played MWIII, I'll keep ya guys safe.

Our theories before were constantly revolving that who's gonna die and what worse is going to happen.. it first pointed towards the fate of Price or Gaz. But, turns out we were jinxed. JINXED.

The campaign was.. okay but at the same time I felt it was small. Quite rushed. I did have a light of concern over their release date when MWII was currently trending. I was reading others reviews of how they felt about the game and yes, I agree with the same. But I wanna talk about Soap's fate this time..

Soap, who JUST started his journey, like, the one who only appeared in MWII and hoped we would see him more develop in the further games to be just.. killed off? When were they moments away from achieving victory?

So only because it's called MW3 ✌🏻 and you wanted to give us all a nostalgic experience you'll.. give them the original plot treatment? Both Soaps in the Modern Warfare universes.. died under the hands of Vladimir Makarov but in different circumstances.

This is where I got a bit angry at Price because, why didn't you kill Makarov instead of taking him in custody in Verdansk?! That guy is a walking grim reaper, and if Price took that action before, not just Soap but MANY more lives would have been saved. Soap was a man who was ready to take immediate action but always got backed off because of being bound to orders.

The end scene when they took out his ashes.. it broke me. Like, how unexpected this can be? Well, though I know Makarov already gave a warning that he was going to kill him off in the heli scene, but.. it's just not it? Like, honestly, I was hopeful Soap would survive.. it's disappointing for me, as someone who loves him so much, like anything.

So ScarSoap's now an angsty ship? Because let it be for both universes — OG and Reboot, Scarlet's going to be left behind? Welp, I'm more sad now, lol.

Otherwise, the expectations I had for the campaign were somehow, not met to the fullest but let's talk about the good things.

Price killing off Shepherd. YES, THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. I freaking knew that he was going to die and my prediction called itself right. But, now that Price killed a 4-star General, he's gonna go rogue. You mean, batshit, crazy and unhinged Price on the move?!

Julian Kostov. The man. Bro, like, when he was featured in the reveal trailer, I was just hoping that he'd play the role of Makarov well and guess what? He did! I absolutely loved how he portrayed the man and he looked intimidating and twisted like a true psychopath. Truly, he could compete with the OG!Makarov and it's proven! Hats off to the actor, really <3

Price DOESN'T die. Neither in my beliefs, Farah and Alex. A relief. A pure relief, for real. The trailers showed him passing out but glad he's good in one piece. But, did that happen for the cost of killing Soap? :')

Graves and Shepherd betray each other in the conference, LMFAO! Who knew they were going to turn their backs on each other. Graves really had nothing to do with this, he was just a man following orders.. the problem lies with Shepherd, and always has.

Now, these guys said we're gonna release the "full campaign" on November 10. You mean.. the early access didn't show much of the story? So there's hope? OR NOT? Sigh, I don't want to think about it.. I just don't. I've been delulu, haha

Anyways, these are my thoughts for Modern Warfare III! What do you feel about it, let me know in the comments!

[morskisir]

The public is VERY interested in your Sniper thoughts. Please, I need them. Phobias? Eating habits? Can he dance? *Should* he? Is he aware when he makes direct eye contact he looks scary af? Is he good at poker or does he not even play?

You are one of my strongest followers o7 THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTIONS!!! I will answer them all individually below.

Phobias?

If we're talking about proper phobias and not fears in general, then he doesn't really have any? UNLESS you count social phobia, which, yeah, he's got that. (I would like to clarify social phobia and social anxiety disorder are different things but he's got both of them, so.)

Social phobia is like, specific social situations that will continuously bring you anxiety/fear. The shit that will have him shaking every single time is a person genuinely trying to get to know him. Even a simple question such as "What's your favourite colour?" could set him off into a state of anxiousness. He LOATHES conversations like that, he wants to be left alone, he's not anyone you should pay attention to, he's not interested in doing this, go away. His fear of being known past the point of "professional assassin" is deep and greatly impacts his life. What the fuck are social relationships am I right?

Another social situation would be: phone calls! You can imagine how nice it is for him to only be able to call his parents when he isn't visiting them at their home in Oz. <3 It's the fear of I cannot see this person and I don't know how they're really reacting to this. He already isn't the best at reading people's faces, phone calls are just another level of hell.

2. Eating habits?

MEAT. MEEEAAAAT- if he could get away with only eating meat the rest of his life he fucking would. Alas, meat doesn't give your body all of the fuel it needs. Heartbreaking. (Not for me I dislike meat sdgkhdskg)

He will still insist on having meat in every fucking meal, and do not, do NOT make a steak that isn't at least a little bit raw. This guy's an animal. Give him his blue steak or he'll think your cooking is shit.

Anyways, I wouldn't say he eats a lot. He eats enough, I guess. Cunt's just running on a lot of coffee + a couple of cigarettes. He's more addicted to caffeine than tobacco.

3. Can he dance?

No. I don't know if Australian schools did this, let alone in his time, but if they did: he would skip every single P.E. class where they would do dancing instead of just chucking some ball around. He is SCARED he doesn't want to be in such close proximity with someone else hksdgkj (except Spy) (who said that) He doesn't have interest in learning how to dance, either. If he's drunk and you somehow get him to dance you'll see a horrible, non-existent dance move.

4. Should he?

No. Spy would beg to differ.

5. Is he aware when he makes direct eye contact he looks scary as fuck?

Yes and no. When he stares at someone on purpose to scare them away- it works! It's reliable! He's aware of the power that stare holds! He just doesn't realise he kind of always looks like that. The Stare(tm) is simply even more intense. There is a great darkness in his eyes........... /ref

6. Is he good at poker or does he not even play?

He can play it! He's only really decent at it- it's not his thing. Only really learned how to play it through peer pressure. (there is lore to this, but uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

Scout begs Sniper to play with him and he very begrudgingly accepts because no one else does hdsghj. He is very bored and would rather read his tracking books, but he cannot escape the ADHD. (You call out the smallest act of sympathy he just did and he'll beat the shit out of you)

^ Scout when he wants to play poker