#but they should have at least read the previous issues before writing new stuff

[badly-drawn-pigeon]

I can't get over how some W.I.T.C.H. characters just cease to exist as the story goes on.

Endarno becomes a member of the Triumvirat, probably one of the most important people in the universe, but a few chapters later, it's back to Himerish being the sole ruler of Kandrakar and we don't ever even see Endarno again.

Tibor just sort of stops showing up only to reappear in the very final page of the series which makes no sense chronologically anyway.

Eric moves out and tries really hard to stay relevant, but after a while, boom, Hay Lin is apparently single now and dreaming of having a boyfriend. She only casually mentions Eric as her ex MANY chapters later.

Stephen and his gang have been exposed to be able to secretly control the whole city from the underground, yet they are completely evaporated from mankind's records and memories (including Irma's crush on Stephen) soon after their arc ends.

I could probably list more if I thought a bit longer about it.

[rainofaugustsith]

So the Open Library decision came down, and there's already a lot of hand wringing about it. Before you start waving torches about how this is all moneygrubbing Big Publishing flexing its muscle, I'd beg you to actually read the facts of the case. From the decision:

This appeal presents the following question: is it "fair use" for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute digital copies online in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant privisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no. We therefore AFFIRM. (the previous decision). 1. This has never been about the Wayback Machine, Archive.org's historical collections, or out of print books. NOTHING in the court decisions prevent them from continuing that work. 2. This has never been about "libraries being able to have and lend books." 3. Yes. libraries do have ebooks and lend them out. They pay for the ebooks. There are licensing terms. 4. Open Library did not pay licenses. They rebuffed publishers when they were approached about it. They therefore want to claim they are a library without acting like a library.

Oh, and they were marketing this as a positive to other libraries: "get books for free! Don't pay! 5. The issue specifically is about new books, not the out of print stuff.

Here's the thing about that. Unless it ends up being a new timeless classic, most books make most of their money in their first year or so. If sales aren't good, it can impact future book contracts.

Here's the other thing about that. Most authors earn four figures or less annually for their writing, even if they are publishing with a major house. They almost always have to have at least one other job, and often several. I know so many writers who have several jobs just to make rent every month. Often, the money they get for a advance is the only money they ever see from the book - if they even get an advance, which is increasingly rare these days.

Thus, if that license is not purchased, it does hurt them - directly.

"But it's one license at one library!" Cool cool, can we just take a week of your salary and tell you "it's just one week, you won't miss it?" 6. Big Publishing! Money Grubbing Fiends!

Yeah, the big publishers did mount this lawsuit. Do you honestly fucking think that independent midlist writers making four figures a year had the money to hire attorneys to do it? They had the money, they did what the authors alone could not. 7. But people couldn't get the book otherwise.

Okay. Some of those books are like $2 as ebooks or used paper copies. If you can't afford that, there's this wonderful thing called the public library, where you can get a free library card and access to books online for free. Books that have been paid for. If you don't have access to a library in another country - I'm sorry. But this isn't the answer. Maybe when it comes to media you don't always get everything you want all the time. You know, like in the real world with grownups. I'd also add that you can keep using Archive.org's other services that were not questioned here which give you access to lots of other media, with older out of print books, magazines, etc. There are other websites like Issu which offer publications online for free, LEGALLY. This decision isn't the Last Chance Saloon for media access.

I know that a lot of you think authors and other creatives apparently are not entitled to get paid for their work like everyone else, or at least don't translate pirating to "the writer's not getting paid for this." Apparently they're supposed to work for free "for the love of it!" don't need to pay for food, healthcare and housing, and should smile whenever their stuff is pirated. So maybe it truly doesn't matter to you that the big issue here is authors not getting paid, I don't know. That's what it's about, though.

[flydotnet]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where I give myself stupidly niche requests according to this marvelous card… or something. It’s been three years dawg. (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled).

Besides, if I didn't mess up in the first place, this wouldn't have happened.

This fic is quite a long time in the making. I started working on it last year, before I even had the idea for Rice Vinegar, a previous entry in this bingo card series. I was reading/catching up to the absolute banging series that is Brimstone in my Garden, Roses set on Fire by @inkblackorchid. I was on my yearly YGO kick, this time mostly 5D's-related (it's either 5D's or Arc-V, I've come to notice) and reading Snapping Jaws and Piercing Horns (which you absolutely should read, btw, but I have a sneaking suspicion that, if you're reading this, then you've at least heard of SJPH), when the idea for this fic came to me. I really like the friendship between Aki and Crow that the series sets up during the WRGP arc, because it's got my two favourite 5D's characters involved and also it's got canonical whump material linked to it and I'm a sucker for that stuff. Everything was here for success; I was unemployed at the time so I had a bunch of free time on my hands, the inspiration was crisp and I could fuck around and find out with writing new characters I hadn't before. Issue: I hated what I was actually writing.

Since I was reading InkBlackOrchid's works, I was like "God, I need it to be as good as hers". Problem is, I don't have her writing style at all, all the while I was somehow attempting to pastiche how she writes Aki's POV. The result was a very spiteful narration that doesn't even fit Aki at this point of her character development or even the story I was trying to tell in the first place, and a lot of clumsy descriptions. It was bad, y'all. Now, that was the first draft. I had abandonned it at first, thinking I'd just never do anything with it nor with the idea I had, but I just happened to look at my AO3 subscriptions, remembered the banger 5D's fic series, and finally went on InkBlackOrchid's Tumblr. Reading her Autopsy of Crow series of posts reminded me of my WIP and made me want to finish it so I could throw my two cents in the 5D's fight.

I mention Brimstone in my Garden, Roses set on Fire this much because my love for this series is a genuine explanation for some elements of this fic. I like its version of canon so much I wrote established Faithship into this fic as if they were actually dating by this time of the series, forgetting that actually didn't happen in 5D's proper. Sorry not sorry on that front, btw, I've always shipped them and I don't think I'll stop anytime soon. The very first version of this idea wasn't even going to delve into Aki losing her powers after her crash pre-Team Catastrophe (my very own guilty pleasure of a duel, I actually really like it lol), but since I was so inspired by something that did, I figured I had to tackle the question as well. I hope it doesn't fall flat on its face. Be Careful what you Wish for had me by the gametes.

Wow, I had a lot of things to say for something that's kind of just whump I decided to write on a whim like a year ago, huh. I don't even know if my characters sound right (as in, I think my Aki is OOC, she's too open if that makes sense?), it's my first rodeo and it's scary but hey, getting out of your comfort zone is how you improve, ain't it? I don't know if this story is good, I didn't really rewatch 5D's before writing it, just pantsed it out based on memory and what I rewatched earlier this year (I think it was this year? I remember writing a post for my side Tumblr back then mentioning Max Verstappen out of all people and I wasn't into F1 until late 2023. Anyway).

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

Outside the Comfort Zone

Summary: Aki passes by Yusei and Co.'s living quarters to retrieve a copybook. Crow makes it way harder than it has any right to be. (or: a recently-ish powerless Aki finds herself having to care for a very stubborn, unwell Crow, and it goes as well as you'd expect.)

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's (set during the WRGP arc)

Word Count: 4K words

AO3 version available here.

Event run by @badthingshappenbingo

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

There’s something off with the garage of Poppo’s Time, today.

Oh, of course, most of it is obvious: the air’s still, there’s a distinct lack of mechanical clicking and Yusei isn’t here. It’s a minutia of various little details that, added together, make the entire place tilt forty-five degrees to the left.

It’s, unfortunately, not just these which make her feel this way. Frankly, if it was, Aki would’ve already gone out the door and back home. She’s just here to recover a copybook and it should’ve only taken her mere minutes to do that; yet there she is, ten minutes after stepping on the other side of the door, still without her biology copybook, still in a home that isn’t hers, and unsure of where to take the situation next.

The reason might just be the odd-looking Crow that’s standing in the way between her copybook and her.

Is she friends with said Crow? Yes? Maybe? “Friends” sounds a bit strong for their relationship, she’d say; there are no strangers to each other, and she likes sharing a room with him enough to consider them on friendly terms, but they don’t share enough emotional intimacy for them to be friends. At least, that’s how she sees it – maybe he sees it another way.

(Or maybe they’re already friends, and she’s just too afraid of rejection to admit it to herself – better be safe than sorry, even around the most transparent person she knows).

Whatever their relationship is, what Aki knows without much doubt is that Crow isn’t looking like himself. His stance is slouched and unsteady, his hand is holding the doorway just a little too tight for comfort and his eyes look mussed. It’s like his gaze, while explicitly trying to focus on her, is instead looking at something right behind her – as if seeing through her, which is a thought Aki truly has no time to unpack.

“Oh, hi Aki,” he tells her with an indignant wave, head bobbing along with the sway of his hand.

“Goo – good afternoon.”

His smile turns into a puzzled expression, which doesn’t help the impression she’s gotten so far. He looks around, his left eye twitching and his brow furrowed, then looks back at her when it seems like he hasn’t found what he wanted.

“You not hangin’ out with Yusei?”

Aki almost freezes.

“What do you mean?” She asks back, a shiver going down her spine.

Crow’s brow furrows even further, finally pointing her in the direction of the dark rings under his eyes.

“What do you mean, what do you mean? You come here to hang with Yusei, right?”

“He’s… He’s not here, Crow,” her voice staggers against her will. “He’s in Peru with Jack. I just came her to get a copybook I forgot here.”

The reminder, as useless as it should’ve been, seems to have confused him even further.

“Why the fuck would they go to Peru?” Crow asks, anger sipping in his tone. “That’s on the other side of the damn planet!”

He then hacks a lung out, prompting Aki to jump out. It’s harsh, not unlike the coughs she’d get when she was ill as a child and it seemed like the world was melting around her, psychic powers mixing in with the fever – the powers who, like so many people before, have abandoned her.

The silence is too heavy. She can’t let herself falter now. She may be in danger – scratch that, she’s fine, Crow is the one who needs help as far as she’s concerned. They’re friends, or as close as it gets, and she needs to step up now that his foster brothers aren’t here.

“They’re there to follow on a lead Bommer gave them.”

Her heart sinks a little further when all she sees is confusion. In fact, anything she says seems to result in confusion.

“How? That guy’s dead, y’know,” he gulps with a wince. “I know. I watched it happen. And, like, the dead don’t send emails.”

It’s an understandably difficult thing to swallow, she’ll give it to him. To this day, and despite her (former) psychic powers and links to the extrasensory through her Signer’s Mark, she still has little idea how Carly or Misty have managed to rise from the dead. It’s beyond either of their comprehension.

What shouldn’t be for Crow, however, is the whole travel thing. He was there when Yusei and Jack announced they were going. He must’ve been there to fret over them and their budget like Jack likes to complain about. So how come he cannot remember any of this? Why is he so—

“What time is it already?” Crow asks out of the blue.

It takes her aback, but she looks over her phone screen anyway.

“It’s fifteen to six in the evening.”

His face gets splattered in surprise.

“Shit! I’ve got a shift to attend to!”

“What shi—”

His hand lets go of the doorway.

“Sorry to leave this quick, Aki, I’m in a hurry—”

He walks past her, but before he can make it past her, he folds in half into another coughing fit. Fearing the worst, Aki runs to catch him with her arms, the click of her heels almost hiding the harsh sound of his cough. Heat sips through his clothes and through her gloves, ringing the final alarm that finally allows her to deduce what it was that bothered her so much about his appearance.

Despite the audible pain in his breath and the grimace on his face when he moves his arms, Crow still tries rising to his feet on his own. He weakly bats her away with his hands, but he has to lean against the nearest wall to stay upright. It’s an unreal sight, knowing how stubborn and enduring he truly is. Where is the man who was driving with an injured shoulder mere weeks ago?

“Is this shift really that urgent?” She makes no attempt at hiding her ever-growing concern. “You don’t seem like in any state to go to work…”

“What day of the week are we on?” is all he says back to her.

“It’s… Wednesday? Why?”

Crow’s face finally lights up.

“Oh! I’ve got some time ahead of me then.�� He chuckles, but it dissolves into a cough, and she can’t keep her grimace to herself. “I thought we were Monday, for some reason?”

“You honestly seem very out of it,” she ends up bluntly stating instead of going along. “I really don’t think you should go work today.” Or tomorrow.

“Can’t afford not to,” he croaks back, but it lacks any sort of sting.

What looks to her like a dizzy spell ends up taking his resolution out, his whole body pitching forward. Once more, almost in rhythm, her body moves on its own as a result, her arms catching him in his fall.

Heat lingers on her hands even after she has finished bringing him to his room.

Unlike most of Team 5Ds, Aki has never had to care for someone else. She has none of Yusei’s instinct for help nor Crow’s experience with dealing with children. Usually, when faced with this sort of situations, she’d entrust the person in need of care to someone with a lot more ease in this domain – as it turns out, most of the time, it’s asking Jack’s childhood friends to handle his problems, much to his protests. As such, she’s never had to play nursemaid before, and nobody has trusted her with such a role until Yusei came along, and for once, she hadn’t wanted that to change (except for Yusei, but this is a situation that’s unrelated to her current predicament).

Whatever she’s used to, unfortunately, is now out of the realm of possibility. The two people she could ask about it on any other occasion where the need could rise up are respectively currently in Peru with terrible reception and too busy refusing to stay in bed for much longer than a minute to give her a precious hand.

And, you know, you don’t usually ask someone who’s sick to take care of themselves, let alone help you in the process.

Very much to her misfortune, this is all without taking into account that Crow is as stubborn as a patient as he is in every other thing. It was to be expected, of course, and Crow is nothing if not stubborn; but it hasn’t made anything easier. If anything, she should’ve seen it coming as soon as he was too beyond himself to know where his housemates were and why.

Still, it doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try her best in this situation. What friend would she be if she left a comrade in need on his own, harmful to himself? (And she craves for empathy, a part of her whispers, the part of her who misses her powers for the bond she enjoyed having with Black Rose).

Despite a losing battle against his own voice and the way his limbs tremble whenever he tries holding himself out of bed, Crow is insisting that, no, he’s fine to go work, and she has no reason to worry, because it’s not his first rodeo… or something along those lines. Admittedly, it’s difficult to understand everything when he’s struggling to push the sentence out of his throat to begin with, let alone articulate his thoughts.

All that ends up doing as a result is annoying her, because this is oh so similar to Yusei but in all the wrong ways, but that’s once more beside the point. She isn’t here to lash out her annoyance at Crow being an idiot, she’s here to make sure he doesn’t die an idiot.

“I’m tellin’ you, I’m fine,” he whines, a hand already back at gripping the edge of the blanket.

“Why are you so insistent on pretending you are?”

(She doubts it’s because of a martyr syndrome like Yusei’s).

“I’m not pretendin’ anythin’. I’m actually fine.”

His voice is feeble, his words tremble out of his mouth.

“Crow, I know you’re not. Please stop making this harder than it has to be.”

He deflates with a single, wheezing sigh.

“It’s Satellite nature, I guess,” he shrugs with a slight smile. “Both Yusei and Jack got it too, y’know.”

“Speaking of Yusei, right now you’re just like him in that regard.” She lets herself sigh. “Pretending like you’re fine when all signs point to the contrary.”

“Yeah, it’s… Y’know, when you were sick in Satellite, unless you had someone to shelter you and cover your back, ‘t was like signin’ your death certificate.” He coughs again, and it keeps dragging on, worsening, and it pangs at her heart every single time. “Guess that never went away, even now.”

“Even for something like a work shift?”

“Especially for a work shift. Do y’know how tight our finances are? Jack sure don’t seem to, that asshole!” A barking cough interrupts him. “Fuck this shit, I could be literally anywhere else but here. Plus…” He turns to her, and despite the evident weariness on his face and in his eyes, his gaze is sharp. “You should be doin’ better things with your time than watching over me, though.”

Aki rises an eyebrow.

“Such as?”

He shrugs again as a response.

“I dunno. Studyin’. Playin’ cards. Drivin’ a D-Wheel. Tryin’ to… sort through what mess that must’ve been for you, these past few weeks.”

The last bit hits her a lot harder than the previous ones. Having to replace Crow in haste due to a mysterious crash, the conflicting sentiment of her first race as a member of Team 5Ds, her own crash, and now, having to grapple with the sudden and unexplained disappearance of her powers… It’s been a lot of turmoil. Too much, in fact.

Despite all of the pain, it’s somewhat heartwarming to have someone genuinely worry for her, even if it tugs at an uncomfortable heartstring. It means she has the company she so desperately looked for and thought to have found in Divine, now truthful and actually what she needed. Yet, she feels uneasy when she has to show vulnerability in front of them, afraid of what they could take advantage of, of hidden intentions that may be hiding beneath a smile. Letting go of her masks has been terrifying, even if it’s the right thing to do.

For the longest time, she could protect herself with her powers. They were her curse, they were her blessing. They made her unlike the others but allowed her to connect with Black Rose and all of her deck. She misses them even now as she’s within the warmth of Team 5Ds; who don’t judge her for them like the others. Who care for her, like Yusei has ever since meeting her, like Crow is at the moment. Even in pain, they care.

The least she can do is pay them back now that gets the chance to. Now that her powers have left her more vulnerable than ever and created a void she can’t seem to fill on her own.

“I’ll be fine not brooding about it for a while,” is all she tells him in response.

Because it’s the truth. Sometimes, letting the dark clouds consume you is worse. It’ll always be worse, no matter how easy it looks.

“You sure? Because watching over an ill guy gets boring real fast.” He gives her a small smile. “I’d know, I’m usually the one doing the watching.”

She replies with a smile of her own.

“A bit of calm would do the both of us some good, I believe, after all that happened.”

He closes his eyes with a deep sigh.

“Can’t go against that, I guess.”

“Take some rest. I’ll be here by the time you wake up.”

It’s not intended to be a lie to make him feel better about sleeping.

“If you’re lookin’ for it, the medicine is in the cabinet in the bathroom. Pretty sure we got the right stuff at least.”

“I’ll go get it.”

That, and a basin of water, and everything she can remember from hazy memories of childhood illnesses.

Yusei once told her to write down thoughts that were confusing to her, as a way to at least alleviate the black clouds in her mind. He helped her pick a cute-looking notebook for it too, just the size of her uniform pockets, red with an embroidered rose on top of it. It seemed too fitting not to pick it, and Yusei seemed even happier about it than she was. She isn’t sure if what she’s writing in it right now makes sense, but it feels nice to have a place where to dump all of the thoughts that’d usually fester and poison her mind nonetheless.

The loss of her powers continues to leave her at a loss. The best way she can describe the feeling is a bittersweet void it’s left behind: she’s finally normal, like she wished for so long when pretending to be a witch, yet now that she is, it’s like this life wasn’t for her. She misses the bond she had with her Monsters, now that she can’t caress Black Rose Dragon like she could for so long. It makes her feel lonelier in a way that’s wrong to her. It’s like she never knew what she actually wanted out of life, out of the world.

Writing down this loss, this void and this coldness is what’s helping her process some of it. It onsets the way the melancholy would’ve taken ahead of her before she met Yusei and the others. It allows her some lookback and to keep her head out of the water until she can find a solution or get used to a new situation. It feels… soothing, at times, despite it just being scribbles on paper.

A hand strangles her arm, her hands lets go of her pen, her notebook falls to the ground.

“What—”

“Who the hell are you?!”

Shaken, she stares back at her assailant – a frazzled-looking Crow, his eyes glazed over and his pupils dilated. His breathing is erratic, coming out in little wheezes, his teeth gritting.

“I…”

Aki has no idea what to do. A stranger attacking her is no surprise, but a friend? Clearly, something is very wrong with Crow, and she has trouble connecting the dots as to why he’s in such a state. Did she not look after him hard enough? Is she just as neglectful as she was when she was isolated and lost, manipulated, used as a weapon? Is this retribution for that, to be forgotten by those she cherishes?

He lets go of her arm, seemingly against his will – it seems like he doesn’t have enough strength left to actually fight her. She can hardly breathe normally, every gasp of air coming quicker than the last, but she has to compose herself back anyway. She’s the one who’s supposed to fix things here, and now, she doesn’t want to destroy anyone further. Perhaps she can still find redemption.

“What’re you doin’ here?!”

Crow’s voice is unsteady, made all the worse by the cough that’s dried it into being hoarse, and his words slur together, making him very difficult to understand. Aki wishes she knew what do say back, but…

“I’m – I’m looking after you,” she explains back, because calming him down seems like a good idea.

He cocks an eyebrow at her, doubt just barely readable in his half-closed eyes.

“Who’re you?”

“I’m Aki. I’m Yusei’s girl… I’m his friend. I’m your friend.”

His hands grab at her shoulders.

“What’s tellin’ me you are, huh?!”

She looks around the room, trying to ignore how uncomfortable the pressure from his knuckles on his shoulders are, and the heat sipping from them almost right into her skin, before finding a sign of reassurance.

“See this basin of water?” She points it with her finger, he follows it to the bottom of the chair where she sits. “It’s mine. I was trying to keep your fever in check.” That sounded like a good idea, at the time. “I’m admittedly… not great at it, unlike you are, but I’m trying.”

His gaze slightly clears up – and then his eyes flutter close and don’t open up, leaving him in her arms once more.

It’s sort of a wake-up call for Aki, as she puts him back to bed. She should’ve kept a keener eye, but instead got lost in thoughts. She was so sure she had done all of the right things already, yet there she is, only realizing after the fact she wasn’t careful by being attacked by a delirious guy who mistook her for the enemy. Talk about failing at the mission you assigned yourself.

She takes off her gloves and puts a hand on his forehead – his fever has gone back up when she wasn’t looking. It makes sense, miserably so. But this is no time to mop for herself, she must be more like Yusei. She must help out her friend even if she has her own issues. She can’t do anything about her powers, but she can do something so Crow doesn’t have to see things that aren’t there.

So she picks up the washcloth that fell onto his lap and twists it cold again, determined to correct her mistakes.

Aki is staring at Crow when he finally opens his eyes again. They’re clear, able to follow the way her hair sways when she backs up from the bed and back into the chair. Her back is trying to make her pay for the unnatural positions she made it endure, but it’ll have to bear through it for a bit. She’s not letting him down now.

“Hey,” he tells her, stifling a cough.

“Glad to see you awake again,” she confesses. “How are you?”

“Erh… Sore. Sick. You know the deal.” He sits up with the help of the headboard of the bed. “How long was I asleep for?”

“I’d say… an hour or so.”

“And you’re still here?” He chuckles, even if it dissolves yet again into a coughing fit. “Gah, forgot how much that sucked.”

“I… I didn’t want to leave you alone like this.”

“Don’t worry, I went through worse. I’m a big bird, I can deal with it on my own.”

The way she’s staring back at him must’ve looked suspicious, because he looks concerned, now, and it’s like cold water seeping through her socks.

“Hey… Did something happen?”

“No, nothing. It’s… it’s not important.”

“Tch, you’re like Yusei. ‘Not important’ my ass.”

“I don’t think I should tell you about it.”

“You’re not makin’ your case any easier. Shoot ahead anyway.”

Aki looks at her hands on her lap, her knuckles almost white. Her skin looks slightly red, especially without her gloves.

“You weren’t yourself earlier,” she manages to get out, “and you thought I was some sort of enemy.”

She can’t bring herself to look up and see what his reaction to that is. Her head’s weighing heavily on her neck.

“Shit, did… I did something to you, right?”

“You… You tried to attack me, yes,” and she realizes how bad that sounds, “but it’s nothing. You weren’t yourself and it wasn’t a big deal. I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound like you are, though… Shit, I’m so sorry, Aki…”

She rises a careful eye, only to see pain distort Crow’s pallid face.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” she replies. “I should’ve done a better job.”

“Hey. Look at me, Aki.”

Hesitantly, she does – and finds no anger, no disappointment in Crow’s eyes, only compassion.

“You didn’t have to put up with my shit, and I was trying to push you away, but you did it anyway. Attacking you was wrong no matter what. You’ve got a lot to deal with at the moment and none of this is me. Don’t beat yourself up for not handlin’ everythin’ perfectly.” He smiles. “So, thanks, Aki. Don’t worry about good ol’ me, I’ll handle myself from now on.”

Silence follows.

“Though I get why you’d doubt that. We don’t really have a good track record when it comes to that stuff, do we.”

“Not really, no,” she manages to chuckle. “But friends need to trust each other.”

“You catch on quick!” He coughs into his elbow. “I’m sure it’s starting to get late, your parents may be worried. You should head home.”

“Can I… Can I stay here for a little longer? At least until Bruno comes back from whatever errand he may be running. I’d… feel better if I knew someone could watch you over.” Like she’d like it if she was as vulnerable as Crow is right now. “It keeps me occupied too.”

He gives her a sympathetic look from which she wants to recoil, but stops herself from doing.

“Make yourself a home, then. Yusei’s bedroom should be available.”

He winks, right in time for her face to warm up.

“Thank you, Crow.”

“If you need an ear to talk to and I ain’t sleepin’, don’t hesitate, okay? I promise I won’t bite your head off this time.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, thanks.”

She doubts she’ll bother him with this when all she’s tried to make him do today was resting, but she very much appreciates the reminder. It’s always nice to know she’s not only accepted, but also cared for by people whose honest intentions she can be sure of.

It’s making her feel welcome, and just for that, she’s more thankful – her and her missing powers, her and her conflicting feelings it, her and her past that she’s just now feeling comfortable with disclosing anything about. Her and the ghost that may continue pursuing her in the future, but which are leaving her mostly unscathed for now.

Perhaps that’s what home is – and it may just take the shape of a friend’s bedroom, or of a garage.

[waywardrose-archive]

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY | 13

stranger things

eddie munson x reader

rated e

5.4k

spotify playlist

for @punk-in-docs​​

fem/witchy/goth!reader, magic, slow burn (for me), friends to lovers, no y/n only pet names, series-typical horror, period-typical sexism and homophobia, historical inaccuracies and anachronisms, drug dealing and use, smoking, alcohol use, masturbation, mutual masturbation, fantasizing, one-bed trope, making out, fingering, dirty talk, consensual pursuit and capture, oral sex, handjobs, condoms, piv sex, reader’s father is a dirtbag, mild spanking, magical violation, mental torture, body horror, aftercare, nightmares, strict parenting, panic attack, past child abuse and abandonment, semi-public sex, tags will be updated as needed

Eddie would have to wait until his lunch break to see this new, hot, weird chick. He wondered which flavor of weird she was. Art weird? Theater weird? Band weird?

Weird weird?

He shrugged. He liked weird.

In other words, you’re the new girl in town, and Eddie is intrigued.

note: More music description in this chapter (with some 🍆 thrown in at the end)! Whee! 😜

They paused their conversation as Gareth hurtled down the stairs to Jeff’s basement. At the top, Jeff’s mother closed the door after him. He whipped a folded sheet of copy paper from his back pocket and popped it open.

“Guys, check out this shit,” he said, and slapped the paper on the coffee table next to the open bag of potato chips.

Eddie leaned in from his gargoyled position in the corner armchair while Jeff and Dougie bent to read the paper from the couch.

BATTLE OF THE BANDS headed the flyer. An angled Flying V guitar silhouette underlined it.

Dougie said, “We’ve done that before.”

“Before I joined,” said Gareth.

“In Gary,” Jeff said as he reclined. “That was an expensive weekend, and—” He threw a hand up. “We lost.”

Eddie continued reading. The competition was set for mid-April in Indianapolis. Rock and metal bands preferred. At least two band members had to be eighteen or older. That was no issue, since he was nineteen and Jeff turned eighteen next month. Grand prize was $3000 cash and professional studio time to record a demo.

Just reading about the grand prize made him want to leap out of the armchair and do laps around the basement. They could give the judges horror, blood, obsession, and sex. God, so much sex now. The original songs he was writing were full of that dark, heady cadence.

He tuned into the conversation to hear Gareth proclaim his drum prowess. He was good, that was true. He was better than their previous drummer, Rich, who’d ditched them for Purdue. Rich had kept a steady beat, but had no pizzazz.

Despite wanting to, he couldn’t blame everything on Rich.

They’d had no stage presence in Gary, nothing to call their own. They’d worn other bands’ t-shirts and dirty sneakers. The only original song they’d had was a complete ripoff of Dio’s “Evil Eyes.”

Looking back, it was no surprise they’d lost.

“Dude,” Jeff said. “We need to practice more if we’re doing this.”

Eddie said, “And I need to finish some songs.”

Dougie groaned around a potato chip. “Those songs about your girlfriend?”

Jeff rummaged in the potato-chip bag as Eddie asked:

“What’s wrong with that?”

“We all agree your girl is hot,” said Gareth. “But come on, your new stuff sounds nothing like us.”

“And what, pray tell, do we sound like?” he asked.

“Like...” Gareth waved his arms around. “Like metal, man!”

He squinted at Gareth.

“That’s what I’m writing.”

“No, you’re writing something else. It’s all... moody.”

“It’s still dark,” Jeff said.

Dougie added, “But it’s not thrashing.”

Eddie sighed and said, “Not every song we put out should go like a bat out of hell.”

“But they shouldn’t all be about witches in the night,” Gareth said.

“Fine, but ‘Ride the Night’ can’t change.”

“I like that one,” said Jeff.

Gareth said, “‘Sabbath Smoke’ needs major rewrites.”

Eddie glowered around the room. He liked where that one was going. It was dark in a different way than “Ride the Night.” It was still about you, but not so overtly sexual. He hadn’t thought the rest of the band noticed his latest attempts centered around you.

“Alright, fine, ‘Sabbath Smoke’ can be about...” He shook his head as he thought. “A sacrifice to the devil, instead, with, like, all the hot blood and ropes of guts you want.”

“What about ‘Black Market, Midnight Track’?” Dougie asked.

Eddie stood and shoved his fingers into his hair.

“Jesus fuck—” His rings caught in his hair. Of course. “I don’t know. It’s a story.” He snarled as he freed them one by one. “I can get rid of the magic part, okay?”

He knew better than to comb through his hair while wearing his rings. Just like he should’ve known the band wouldn’t like the spooky — okay, maybe goth-inspired — turn he’d taken. Corroded Coffin had always been on the thrash side of heavy metal. Their original stuff had to stay in that vein if he wanted to keep the band together.

In that case, he should take the mixtape you’d made him out of rotation. There were songs about dark stuff on it, of course. The riffs were heavy and deep. Sure, most of it wasn’t “heavy metal,” but it was good shit. However, it was too much of an influence.

Maybe you were too much of an influence.

He’d been neglecting band practice since before Halloween. The four of them had only been meeting twice a month to play, excluding gigs at The Hideout, and once a month to write. He knew the guys practiced on their own. They talked on the phone about ideas, but that wasn’t the same as a jam session.

“Hey, dude,” Gareth said to him. “It’s not like we hate what you’ve written.”

“Something is better than nothing,” said Jeff, inadvertently reminding Eddie of the summer.

Summer had been a dry spell. Shit, it had been a fucking desert. The Sahara.

They’d played cover after cover during gigs. Eddie had burned through his stash, hoping to flow enough that original melodies and lyrics would come, but no dice. It felt like a dead end, like maybe covers were all he was good at. When school started in August, he stared at his future with this leaden feeling in his chest.

“No, it’s cool,” he said with a shake of his head. “You’re right. Let’s do some reworking.”

“I like that devil’s sacrifice idea for ‘Sabbath Smoke,’” Dougie said, since he did enjoy horror.

Jeff nodded and said, “Let’s work on that one now.”

“Sure, absolutely,” Eddie said as he popped open the guitar case for his acoustic.

He didn’t want to follow his father’s footsteps by knocking up his first serious girlfriend right out of the service and scrambling to find decent work. Only to settle as a mechanic in, what Eddie realized way later, was a chop shop. As the years went on, he understood his mother. Ditching everything and everyone had its appeal.

That would make him just as bad as them, though. He wouldn’t respect himself if he did that kind of thing to Wayne, you, the band, or even Hellfire. He wanted to do right by his family and friends — and, most importantly, you.

Eddie brought out the composition book they worked in, flicked to the “Sabbath Smoke” page, and set it on the coffee table. Dougie rubbed his greasy fingertips on his jeans while scooting to the edge of the couch. Jeff found a pen on the side-table as Gareth sat on the floor opposite him.

Maybe the guys were right about you transforming his composing. Maybe he was thinking too much with his dick. He didn’t think love would stifle creativity. Wasn’t love supposed to inspire the artist?

With a mental snort, he thought of course he’d be the exception. That would be his luck, wouldn’t it?

Shit, he really did love you, didn’t he?

The new lyrics and melodies and chords and all the effort was for you.

He laid his guitar next to Jeff on the couch, saying he had to take a leak. Once in the upstairs bathroom, he leaned his rear on the vanity and stared at the ceiling. He needed the guys at his side. He wanted to lead Corroded Coffin out of Hawkins, confident they would triumph. It didn’t matter if they started small in Indianapolis or Chicago. They could build a following, open for a bigger band, find a manager, work the local concert circuit, get a contract with a record label, and move to Los Angeles or New York.

He could do it. They could do it, but only if they could write an album worth of songs.

This battle of the bands in April would throw them right into the fray. He smirked at the unintended pun. Still, the timing was perfect. He would prove himself to you, and to himself, and to Wayne, that every sacrifice had been worth it.

He couldn’t do any of that if he was distracted. He wouldn’t be good enough. He’d be like his old man. Without that small win, he wouldn’t be able to provide for you. Or keep up with you. He’d lose you.

He didn’t want to lose you.

The lower half of his vision went watery with a deluge of tears. He blinked the tears away and wiped at his lower lashes. Allowing himself to be shaken by that idea would help no one. There was a solution. He cracked his neck and took a deep breath. He had to keep his eye on the prize: $3000 and free studio time.

You’d understand when he explained it.

He used the facilities and rinsed his hands before heading downstairs. Jeff’s mother stopped him in the kitchen to insist he take cans of pop to the guys. With a wink, he thanked her for the fuel. She shooed him away, looking pleasantly exasperated.

As he descended the basement stairs, he said, “Gentlemen, I have procured refreshments!”

-

Your breath fogged in the chilly night air. Your thighs were nearly numb. Ignoring the weather, you’d chosen to wear a short skirt and fishnets. You’d heard the saying ‘a hoe never gets cold,’ but that also applied to goths. And you had every intention of being eye-candy tonight.

You dodged mounds of half-frozen slush in The Hideout’s parking lot. It had snowed earlier in the week. Not enough to close school, but enough to make the drive a hair-raising event. Eddie said he’d almost plowed into a few mailboxes, which meant he’d knocked over a couple of trashcans instead.

The Hideout was warm and dingy. Behind the sticky bar, the muted TV played a basketball game. Its light flickered through neglected liquor bottles. A few patrons entertained themselves at the billiard table. The jukebox played some country song.

Just like your previous visit, the bartender didn’t ask for ID when you ordered a vodka tonic. You tipped him well before claiming a barstool that faced the stage. You crossed your legs, letting the skirt ride up the outside of your top thigh.

Five minutes before showtime, Eddie parted the split in the stage curtain, guitar slung around his torso. His gaze found yours as he stepped onto the stage. Then he noticed what you wore — and stopped midway around the drum-set. He looked like he’d been slapped in the face. Jeff almost ran into him. Complaints came from behind the curtain. Jeff followed Eddie’s attention and gave you an appreciative once-over.

You smirked, taking a sip of your drink via the mini straw.

Eddie’s face flushed as he put a hand on his chest. You winked just as he was prodded into moving. He stumbled around a cymbal’s tripod legs. You noticed then he wore boots instead of his usual Reeboks. His jeans hugged his thighs and hips. He’d rolled the sleeves of his black t-shirt to show off his tattoos.

The other band members had dressed similarly: Jeff wore a simple Fender t-shirt, Dougie had a navy button-up tucked into black jeans, and Gareth wore a tight undershirt under a sleeveless plaid shirt. They looked good, like a professional band instead of a barrel of fanboys.

They joked with each other as they went through a quick sound-check.

With Eddie turned away from the bar, you could admire the lean lines of him and his round ass. In the morning after you’d gotten some magic back, you’d grabbed that ass as he’d pounded you into the mattress. He’d growled profanities and oaths into your neck with his hands hooked under your shoulders. You’d moved with him, grinding your pelvis against his.

You’d bitten his shoulder to keep from moaning too loud when you came. He’d only encouraged you by pushing into the pain and gasping, “That’s it, baby, that’s it, oh fuck.”

Your cheeks and neck grew hot. The bar was suddenly stuffy. You wiggled out of your leather jacket and pressed cool fingers against your neck. Maybe a quick jaunt around the parking lot would help. Or maybe Eddie not wearing such goddamn tight clothes.

You took another sip of your drink, then popped a thin ice cube in your mouth to take the edge off the heat.

Leaning around Eddie’s side, Gareth gave you a roguish smile. You grinned back. When Eddie glanced over his shoulder, you showed him the ice cube on your tongue. He faced you and waggled his eyebrows, making you snicker.

The jukebox music cut off before the stage lights brightened. Eddie greeted the meager crowd and introduced his bandmates. You set down your drink to clap. A few people slapped the bar in lieu of applause.

The band started their set with Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Gareth used cymbals and the bass drum’s reverb to mimic the bell that starts the song. It was a cool technique and a difficult transition when the other three began the driving beat. Eddie and Jeff stuck their tongues out to each other before head-banging. Dougie added a few flourishes as Eddie approached the mic. You rocked with the rhythm and mouthed the lyrics.

When the song came to a thunderous end, you hooted and clapped. Eddie smiled at you, face already glowing with sweat. He looked so carefree, like nothing could bring him down.

The band played a few more covers until Eddie introduced an original song, “Sabbath Smoke.” You couldn’t believe what you heard. He hadn’t spoken about an original song in weeks. Naturally, you hadn’t wanted to pester him. It wasn’t your place to say what he wrote or what Corroded Coffin played.

The song had a dangerous edge to it. The lyrics Eddie purred were from a demon’s point of view. Jeff and Dougie howled after the chorus, piercing and ravenous. Goosebumps shivered down your arms, yet you couldn’t look away. The center of the song — the heartbeat of the sacrifice — sped with each repeat of the chorus. The song lashed on until the heartbeat abruptly stopped; the sacrifice slaughtered.

The bar was quiet for a moment.

You erupted from your barstool with a cheer. The rest of the patrons applauded or whooped. Eddie thanked everyone before announcing they’d continue in a minute. You rushed to the stage. He stepped around the mic stand and bent. You caught his dewy face and kissed him, unconcerned about smudging your makeup. His eyes went wide, then closed.

After breaking the kiss, you thumbed the lipstick off his lips. They were still stained and puffy. You pushed away the damp curtain of his bangs and smiled.

“Holy shit.”

“You like it?”

“Love it.”

He grinned, catching his lower lip between his teeth and averting his gaze.

“We got one more tonight,” he said and met your eyes.

“Another original?”

He nodded.

You kissed him again. Your lipstick fainter this time, but you still wiped it off for him.

“I can’t wait,” you said as you moved back.

He straightened, appearing on the smug side of pleased. The rest of the band murmured amongst themselves while hydrating. Eddie drank from the lone beer left on the stool behind Gareth.

You perched on your barstool, sipped at your drink, and then discretely neatened your lipstick. It wasn’t as polished as when you first stepped inside, but it didn’t matter. None of the other patrons noticed you.

Especially not when Corroded Coffin returned to their places on stage.

Eddie asked if everyone was ready for more and received a few ‘woo’s and applause in reply.

The band played some covers; one or two you’d heard previously. They were still good, but you awaited the second original song. Your stomach fluttered and your grip trembled, like you were the one who had to play.

You were debating on ordering another drink when the current song ended.

Eddie looked at you as he said, “Last one of the night, folks. We hope you like it.”

You smiled and gripped the sides of the barstool.

Gareth counted down and began playing a deep, primal rhythm you recognized. After a few bars, Eddie added a sultry metallic shred. Dougie added to the rhythm, making it a dark thrum. Jeff complemented Gareth’s rhythm while Eddie built to a grinding reverb. They went through a cycle of that until Eddie put his mouth to the mic to sing about drowning in magic, about fire licking down your spine, about riding the night.

His voice oscillated between crooning and growling, just like you imagined. He used his breath in the chorus, just like he’d panted into your ear. Your stomach swooped and cunt clenched. You wanted to run your hands all over him, cup his erection, and stare into his eyes as they went hazy. You wanted to lick the sweat off his neck and drag your teeth over his jaw and kiss his full lips.

The bar patrons disappeared. The clack of billiard balls and murmuring voices muted. It was you and him; a private pleasure turned public. There was something thrilling and honest about that. Anyone who heard the song would know you and him.

When the song ended, you inhaled a lungful of smoky air. Eddie stared at you — and you at him — as the other patrons applauded. Jeff signed off when Eddie said nothing. The stage lights dimmed. The jukebox kicked on. Someone behind you laughed, hacked, and resumed laughing.

Dougie and Jeff unplugged their guitars while Gareth stood to fold his low stool. Jeff bopped Eddie on the elbow to knock him from his daze and mumbled something close to his ear. Eddie nodded and unplugged his guitar.

With eye-contact broken, you slipped into your jacket and stood. You approached the stage, hands in your jacket pockets. Eddie wound the audio cable around his palm.

“What was the title of that one?”

“‘Ride the Night,’” said Eddie with hardly an upward glance.

“Makes sense.”

Dougie wound his own cable and said, “He wouldn’t compromise on that one at all.”

“Well, it’s his song from start to finish,” Jeff said, shrugging.

Eddie’s cheeks reddened when you focused on him.

“It’s my favorite,” you said.

“Mine too,” Gareth interjected.

Dougie snorted with a roll of his eyes. “No shock there.”

Jeff leveled them a look before turning to you.

“Thanks for coming out.”

“We missed you the last time,” Eddie said.

You smiled as something in your chest fluttered.

“I’m sure there’ll come a time when you won’t be able to pick me out in the crowd.”

Eddie ceased neatening his cable and looked at you.

“Never.”

Warmth creeped up your chest to your face.

Eddie passed his loop of cable to Dougie, who sputtered.

“C’mon,” Eddie said to you, wiped his hand on his jeans, and held it out. “I want to show you something.”

“Um, okay?”

You took his hand and put a foot on the stage, keeping one hand on the hem of your skirt. He pulled you up the short distance to lead you behind the curtain. Backstage was red-lit and littered with open guitar cases and containers for Gareth’s drum-set. Eddie switched off the audio mixer, secured his guitar in its case, and took your hand again.

From the slit in the curtain, Gareth asked, “Is it safe to come back here?”

He held a snare drum, his eyes shut.

Eddie snorted and threw you a grin. “No, Gare-bear, it’s a bit dangerous in here.”

You said, “Especially with your eyes closed.”

Gareth opened one eye to glare.

“Oh, screw you both.”

Eddie sing-songed, “You wi-ish,” though he stepped closer to you.

Gareth grumbled to himself as he unlatched the drum from its tripod stand. Eddie directed you to the coat-pegs by the backdoor and put on his jacket with vest. In the meantime, Jeff and Dougie entered with coils of cable and their guitars. Eddie told them he’d be back soon and tugged you through the backdoor before they could protest.

The chilly air hit your exposed skin and slithered up your skirt to ice your rear. You folded your jacket around your middle, holding it closed with your free arm.

“Jesus, it’s cold,” he said and shook the sweat-soaked hair away from his face.

The door clunked shut.

Only the green-tinted light above the backdoor lit the gravel service road beside the bar.

“Your hair’s going to freeze.”

“Nah, too salty.”

He dug around in his inner-jacket pocket one-handed.

“What did you want to show me?”

He huffed, released your hand, and patted his jacket down. You crossed your arms as you stepped around to watch.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“Cigs are gone.” He glanced at his van parked a few yards away. “They’re probably in the van.” He patted his jacket along with his jeans pockets — though, how anything could hide in them you’d never know — and breathed a curse. “Keys are inside.”

“Is that what you wanted to show me? Cigarettes?” you asked with a laugh.

He met your gaze, eyes dark and full lips parted.

Your smile faded as you examined his beautiful, flushed face. Forget whatever he wanted to show you and hanging with the rest of the band and getting home before curfew. Eddie Munson had written you a song. All you wanted to do was kiss him.

“Fuck it,” he said before taking your hand again.

He walked you away from The Hideout’s backdoor and his van. The toe of your boot knocked some rocks loose from the compacted snow as you jogged to catch up. He remained quiet and marched around the corner. You had no choice but to follow him behind the building, your eyes adjusting to the unlit space.

You clutched his hand in both of yours.

“Eddie?”

He swung you around and stalked you against the cold concrete wall. You fisted the lapel of his vest to pull him close. He pressed his front to yours, hands on your hips.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” you asked, holding his warm cheek.

“Not exactly.”

He swooped in to kiss you, devouring and needy. Your waxy lipstick smeared between you. His hands trailed down to grip your ass. You pushed your fingers into his thick hair and slanted his head to kiss him harder.

He pulled away far enough to say, “Do you know how good you look tonight?”

You wiped your lipstick off with the sleeve of your jacket. He mirrored you.

“Why don’t you show me.”

You yanked him forward to kiss once more. He groaned and ground his hips against yours. Taking the opportunity, you licked into his mouth to tease his tongue. He tasted like beer, but you didn’t mind.

In reply, he pulled at your ass and sucked on your bottom lip. You mewled, feeling the ridge of his erection. You reached between your bodies to cup his fever-hot groin. His balls were high and tight in your palm, and you gently massaged them.

Eddie tilted his head up with a soft sound as he rocked into your touch. You kissed his jaw, tasted the salt on his neck, and stroked him through the denim. His erection pulsed in your hand. You bet his boxers were wet with precome—

And you wanted to see that.

You dragged his t-shirt from his waistband to snaked your hands over his firm sides. His warm skin was flawless. You had to stop yourself from stooping to worship him all the way down.

Instead, you said, “You’re gorgeous.”

“Look who's talking.”

You hummed a laugh and unbuttoned his jeans.

“Oh shit,” he said.

“Can I?”

“Baby, whatever you want.”

You unzipped his jeans and spread the fly. He shuffled the fabric down his hips enough to expose the thin thatch of his pubic hair.

Softly, you said, “Show me.”

He bit his bottom lip as he dragged his flushed cock from his boxers. It filled out further and bobbed in the air. Your mouth watered at the sight. He really was gorgeous like this.

A thick bead of precome rolled down his frenulum. You caught it with your thumb before wrapping a hand around the heft of his cock and spreading the slick precome over the tip.

Eddie cursed again, watching your hand. “I...” He swallowed and braced his hands on either side of you. “I need you.”

“What do you need?”

His hips jutted forward.

You met his eyes.

“God, I need to be inside you.”

“Yeah? Wanna come in me?”

With a groan, his head flopped forward and cock jerked.

You continued, “Haven’t felt that in so long.”

He kissed you hard. You felt his desperation, his longing. It reflected your own. He wasn’t in your bed enough. You wanted him there every day, every night.

You swept your hands around his waist. He pinned you to the wall with his body. His cock dug into your belly. The contrast of cold wall at your back and hot body at your front had you writhing. You grabbed his round ass as one of your thighs reflexively hitched onto his hip.

His palm followed your raised leg under your skirt. His lips slackened before he broke the kiss.

“You’re not wearing underwear.”

“Nope.”

He plunged his other hand between your legs, making you gasp. His chilled, callused fingers rasped over the fishnet covering your pussy and pushed against it. The texture and tease set your nerves alight. You rolled your hips into his warming touch and leaned your head on the wall.

He trailed kisses over your neck, using his teeth, and nosed under your jacket collar.

“So wet, baby,” he said against your skin. “But I can’t get to you.”

He hooked fingers into the fishnet and gave it a forceful tug. Your hips were jerked forward as the fabric tore with a sharp crackle. You gasped louder this time and slapped a hand over your mouth.

The thought of anyone seeing you both like this — your skirt rucked up and his dick out — thrilled yet unnerved you. You had to keep quiet, lest a bar patron or the other members of Corroded Coffin find you.

However, it felt like a monumental task when he circled your clit just right. You hauled him up by the hair for a kiss. He groaned and tilted his head. His puffy lips slid along yours until it was all madness and heat.

You raised yourself on tip-toe to cant your hips. Knuckles brushed your slit. Then the sleek tip of his cock slid between your folds. The heat and silky skin of his cock had your cunt pulsing in a prelude to orgasm. You rocked with him, breathed with him. It made you weak, made you want everything you couldn’t have just yet.

His tip glanced off your hole. You stiffened. He paused to look deep into your eyes.

“I’ll pull out before.”

“No, I—” You shook your head. You didn’t trust yourself to let him. “Condom.”

“I don’t...”

You’d slipped a condom packet into a jacket pocket before leaving the house. Just in case. It was your last one. You searched the pocket now, praying the condom hadn’t fallen out earlier. Your fingers brushed its plastic packet.

You grinned, held it up between two fingers, and said, “I do.”

“Thank Christ.”

He kissed you hard — once, twice. You held onto his vest and groaned. You were so close to getting him deep inside you. You needed it now, needed him, needed that fullness.

You clutched at his nape and said, “Fuck me.”

His expression went tight as he grit his teeth. He took the condom packet, made space between your bodies, and fumbled the condom on. You nodded and adjusted your leg on his hip. His cock slipped into your wet folds again, brushing your clit.

You tilted your pelvis while balancing with a hand on the wall. Together, you found the perfect angle and his cock pushed right inside. His knuckles bumped your mound as you panted. The stretch of him was nearly too much. The flared crown of his cock ground against nerves you could never reach.

“So fuckin’ tight.”

It was him, you wanted to argue, all him, but you couldn’t form a sentence. You could only hang on and take it. His cock pushed the air from your lungs as he slid to the hilt.

You swallowed a moan at the intensity.

He shushed you and kissed your cheek.

“Feel so good,” you whispered.

Eddie held you still with one hand cradling your ass with the other holding the underside of your hooked leg. You rested your forehead on his shoulder and tried to catch your breath. Your dripping cunt fluttered. He shivered and gulped in air and kissed the rim of your ear.

His voice was strained as he said, “Can’t wait.”

“Then don’t.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh.”

His grip tightened as he started with small lurches of his hips. His cock rocked deep inside. You rubbed your lips on his neck, tasted the new sweat on his skin. Then he began to move faster, deeper, plunging hard with every thrust.

You clung to him with shaking limbs as his cock hit you just right. His chest was tight to yours. You threw yourself into it and moved counter to him. He groaned a broken encouragement. You made each of his thrusts bigger, ratcheting you closer and closer to climax.

“Oh fuck, you’re gonna make me come.” He stilled and crushed you to the wall. “Shit, shit, shit.”

You clawed at his shoulders as your cunt clenched. His cock throbbed, but not enough. You covered your mouth to stifle a groan, because you were already on the edge of orgasm.

“Eddie...”

You stretched to catch his kiss-swollen lips. He met you halfway to give biting kisses and push his tongue against yours. His shoulders tensed as both hands held your ass. With no warning, he hoisted you off the ground. You squeaked, hung on, and wrapped your other leg around his waist.

“Jesus fuck...”

“Yeah, c’mon, fuck me.”

He dug his boots into the hard-packed gravel and slammed up into you. That was what you needed from him. You bit the meat at the base of your thumb, muffling your cries that punctuated every thrust of his strong hips.

He took you mercilessly, completely focused on getting as deep as he could. His breath stuttered in your ear. He forced you to the wall and controlled your body. He hammered his cock inside you until you couldn’t take it anymore. You twisted in his bruising hold a second before your body locked. Then everything came crashing through you — enough that you couldn’t see or hear.

You could only feel.

Each fierce surge of orgasm washed away your strength. You stared into the dark, trying to breathe. But you couldn’t. The pleasure kept going as Eddie fucked you through it.

He gasped the beginning of your name, suddenly, his cock throbbing and filling the condom. You wished you could feel him flooding you with each pump of his hips instead. He’d make a mess of you both.

You hugged him with arms and legs as he stilled. He panted and mouthed at the hinge of your jaw.

After a moment, he lowered one of your legs and eased you down to stand. It was enough movement to displace his softening cock. You whined at losing the feel of him inside you.

“I know, sweetheart. Me too.”

He kissed over your jaw to your lips. He brushed his lips against yours, easy and wanton. You let him support your weight as you lowered your other leg. He swept his hands around your waist until he wrapped you in his arms.

You hummed against his lips and grinned, breaking the kiss. He rested his forehead on yours. You hadn’t expected any of that — the songs, the heated looks, the sex — when you’d arrived tonight.

“Wow,” you said.

“Yeah.”

As you were starting to learn, surprises with Eddie could be really, really fun.

He straightened your skirt, then patted your ass.

“I forgot what I was going to show you.”

[keepsmagnetoaway]

X-Men 94 (August 1975)

Chris Claremont & Len Wein/Dave Cockrum

We're so fucking back.

Following on from Giant-Size X-Men, this was the true regular return of the X-Men, the first issue of the flagship X-Men comic with a new story in five years. It was also the debut of Chris Claremont as writer - sharing the role with Len Wein here, who as we saw resurrected the overall return of the X-Men and then handed them off in this issue to Claremont, who would go on to write them for fully sixteen years in what is arguably the greatest run of comics writing ever (and certainly the most impressive in terms of stamina). Before Claremont can really get going, though, we have to do a bit of personnel management.

Yep! Sunfire straight-up quits on page 2. This is weird but interesting - it firmly establishes the memership as changeable and the storyline as unpredictable. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that is also partly happening because there are now thirteen X-Men, which felt unwieldy (although considering what would later happen to the franchise, well, lol). This also explains a more dramatic and impactful choice:

All that effort rescuing them from Krakoa and then they just quit! How rude. No, obviously, this is the big decision that established Wein and Claremont as doing something totally different with a different bunch of characters. The only one who stays, after some angsting (very funny angsting, as you can see) is Scott, who becomes captain and elder statesman.

And then it's down to business.

In a way this is what the rest of the issue should have been - training and bonding and sick artwork, and taking its time with the team-building. But of course there has to be a villain and a proper fight, so we get the extremely unexpected reappearance of no less than Count Nefaria, a pantomime villain who explicitly calls back to his previous use of the dumbest bunch of villains ever, and shows up with an only slightly less dumb bunch this time to take over a nuclear command bunker.

To be fair, this is doing two good things - tying the new stories into the older continuity, and entrenching the Cold War/nuclear threat theme that is so central to the series. It's just a shame it has to be with this bozo - although at least Logan gets to make fun of him a bit.

Speaking of tying in, here's Beast! Showing up to announce that he cannot help at all. Thanks Beast. I love the looming and distortion he gets on screen though, it's fun.

And then it's off to the races, and the X-Men get shot out of the sky as they approach the missile base, for a nice cliffhanger.

This is an issue that's trying to do masses, obviously, and doesn't have the extra length of Giant-Size X-Men in which to do it, but it's still a blast to read.

Programming note on these stories, by the way: the 50 or so X-Men issues I'm about to read, the earliest of the Claremont era, were reissued in the 80s under the title Classic X-Men with some additional material in each issue: a back-up story, a few extra pages, stuff like that. I'm not yet reading these - I'm reading the original issues - but when this batch is done I'm probably going to go back and do posts on the Classic X-Men issues to, to see what got added. But that's a while away...

[darklightsworld]

I understand that press releases need to have impact to sell the book, especially if it’s something obscure that the general public will not take into their hands. But to blatantly lie and to spread misinformation by writing that shoujo manga, that did not exist before(!!!), was born in the 60s by Mizuno Hideko writing Fire! is so wrong on so many levels I can’t even 😡 Okay, they write it as “it is said that”, but that’s just decoration, nobody says that.

Shoujo manga did exist before. For convenience I’m going with postwar manga, for the media perspective everything published in a shoujo magazine was shoujo manga, so at least 50s. But even if you want to go with a very narrow-minded definition of thematics (romance, introspection) and visuals (big eyes, beautiful lines, breaking through panel borders, etc), that started already in the 60s before Fire!. Btw, Mizuno was there too, so what do they think to call her pre-Fire! works? 🙄

Fire! was not strictly categorized as shoujo manga that time. It was serialized in Weekly Seventeen, a general magazine (not yet fashion magazine) for an older age group than shoujo magazines. Mainly high school girls and maybe slightly older. It was literally advertised in Weekly Margaret, a shoujo magazine, with the phrase that readers should tell their big sisters about this new magazine (saw the ad, took a photo). This age group was referred to as “junior” in the 60s, and many older shoujo manga artists, who wanted to write about more mature themes and characters “graduated” to magazines aimed at them. This eventually developed into the josei/ladies manga genre. Retroactively you might lump it with shoujo manga, but it never "gave birth" shoujo manga.

I guess it’s easy to write whatever when the general public has zero idea, but this is how fals myths are born and histories get bent. Fire! was amazing, and it was something new, so it would have been better to praise it for its real achievements. Like, it was one of the first long(!) series for female readers with a male protagonist. There is some nudity, bed scene (it is said to be the first, but I wouldn’t bet on it, Friends did some edgy stuff in the late 60s, not to mention other junior manga), some nice imaginary, paneling, complex narrative, societal issues, coming of age and so on.

Anyway, I’m glad Fire! got a new edition and I hope many new readers will discover it. I’m kind of wondering if they used the original genga or scanned the previous editions - I can’t tell from the preview. I know at least some of Fire!’s genga exist, as they have been exhibited (maybe only frontispieces?), but I don’t know about how much is still there. I will get them later, because the price tag is quite steep, even if it’s four books in two… (And hardcover books are hard to read, who needs that?! 😩)

[sqbr]

This is interesting! I actually studied at an Australian university, back in the late 90s and early 2000s, but I imagine things are/were different in the humanities.

Note: None of this is really directly relevant to the original topic I just find it interesting to compare notes on how academia works.

As an undergraduate I studied maths, computer science, physics, and a little geology, and to the best of my recollection was given ZERO papers to read. Even the textbooks were mostly there as a reference if we didn't quite understand the lectures. The only time I can remember having to read and synthesise information from multiple sources was when a maths course was so badly taught that it was easier to find books in the library and teach myself, and those were still more textbook than paper.

But then in honours you had to do 50% coursework and 50% a research thesis, which required doing a bunch of reading of relevant academic papers under the guidance of a supervisor, and doing a presentation. We had an extra "scientific communication" course on how to write up and present our findings, which was very useful, but I don't think that taught us how to read academic writing except by implication. Also I think that course only existed because the lecturer had seen how much previous students had struggled.

Your supervisor was expected to tell you which papers to read, but mine at least expected me to come back with new writing BASED on the papers. If I didn't understand the material by myself and produce new ideas (or at least a decent synthesis of the information) and write them up properly (despite still being in the process of learning how to do that) my head supervisor would be very critical. I mean she was a notably toxic person, especially to me, afaict other people's supervisors leaned more towards benign neglect eg An ESL student in my year was assigned a single paper and told to come back to discuss it when she'd read it, and she couldn't understand it so didn't come back for 6 months, and he didn't follow up so she just failed. And we were all researching different thesis topics so couldn't discuss things with each other. It was less an assembly line and more just... academics who'd learned to read papers decades ago not knowing how to teach the skill and just throwing us at the problem to figure it out ourselves or fail.

And I'm sure those supervisors would say Well That's How Academia Works but it was still a sudden change for a bunch of students who'd spent 3 years just having to solve maths problems and maybe write up a paragraph long proof of a theorem. Especially since maths papers are usually VERY badly written, mathematicians are not inclined to be very good at reading or writing papers.

(Why did I do a Phd with the same supervisor after that awful experience? Haaa... well, that's a whole other topic. But suffice to say I should not have, because it got worse)

Anyway. The problems I encountered as a maths student are kind of separate to issues with the humanities. Afaict there is significant pressure to publish etc once you get to postdoc, but I burned out on academia before that point, and that stuff didn't affect me much directly as a postgrad. I'm pretty sure funding for maths in an Australian uni in that era was was much more generous than for the humanities in a US uni today, so noone was quite as stressed.

It wasn't too hard for me to get a Phd scholarship which, with the addition of a little tutoring work and my partner's unemployment benefit, was enough to support two people. For postdocs there were government grants and university funding. Things have gotten much darker for Australian students since then and we still have it easy compared to Americans :( And even back then us theoretical mathematicians had an awareness that we were riding the coattails of finance/mining optimisation etc, and that if the people in power realised the kinds of maths we studied had no immediate real world profit we'd be as screwed as the humanities already were.

i genuinely have no animosity towards ppl who get upset abt not being able to read academic texts + i do think we need to expand the pathways/methods of being exposed to critical concepts so that "sit + read for 2 hours" is not the only option.

however, as someone dx with adhd + incapable of sitting still for even a minute (actually right at this moment i am writing this instead of reading the book sitting open in front of me), i do feel like a lot of ppl do not realize that not all readings are designed to be read like a novel.

as in, it's ok + normal + good to need to reread a paragraph several times, to only read part of a book, to have to research or reference words or concepts in order to grasp the reading, to skip over large chunks of text which are not relevant to your expertise, to continue reading despite not understanding a concept. this is something 'neurotypical' academics do frequently + many of these texts, especially contemporary ones, were designed with this in mind.

there are many ppl with accessibility needs that are not being met by academic texts at this time! many texts (in my humble opinion) are unnecessarily complex in order to show off or hide the fact that they have no idea what they're talking about.

i still feel like many of the kneejerk reactions on this site are based on the assumption that their experience reading academic texts should be similar to their experiences reading a nyt bestseller, rather than a process of thinking, analyzing, researching, processing, returning. some of u are telling yourself that any challenges u face while reading are a result of some internal fault u have + not an expected + precious part of the experience.

[014miki]

ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏⋆ ࣪.⋆ WELCOME TO MY ZONE.

hi everyone! i'm miki (previously as mikiuu6) dnd today I come to tell you a little more about myself and what plans I have for this small space.

୨♡୧ THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS SPACE.

♯⨾ I plan to write "character x reader" stuff or something like that, however you may notice errors that you can let me know by any means.

♯⨾ The characters can be from any fandom (mainly the one to which I belong or where I am still active) however I do not plan to write about problematic or controversial characters. If you like a character like that, don't get your hopes up, there won't be anything about him/her/them around here.

♯⨾ I mostly choose what I write but if you have any suggestions for more work you can let me know by any means.

♯⨾ ¿Gender? both male and female, sorry if in the future I don't manage the issue of non-binary people well. It's not intentional but I will try to make you feel as comfortable as possible.

♯⨾ DNI: homophobic, xenophobic, racist, fetishist, pedophilia, zoophilia, minor (mostly because I wouldn't feel comfortable and to avoid controversy) or some stupidity that is problematic. Do not interact with me if you are one of these or you support people with these ideas. This also applies to the themes to write about characters.

♯⨾ At the moment I don't plan to write about ships but I can still do it if you suggest it, take into account the previous point before suggesting the ship. (I do not accept problematic or controversial ships)

SHIPS THAT I DO NOT ACCEPT: 𖥻 BNHA: bakudeku, torodeku, shigadeku, togadeku, aizadeku (basically almost all of their ships especially if it is one in relation to deku except for uradeku) Attention: I do not want to imply that i am homophobic, only these ships dislike me or make me uncomfortable due to their nature (more than anything, because of the people who pair them up, they become extremely toxic and that upsets me.) but i respect anyone who likes any of these.

𖥻 DANGANRONPA: komahina and saiouma. Only those two dislike me, the rest are ships are fine by me.

𖥻 MIRACULOUS: I don't dislike any ship in particular, but i do is that they normalize Marinette's harassing attitude. That changes if they handle their personality differently (for example in the movie it is a thousand times better than in the series lol) edit: I haven't been keeping up with the series lately so i don't know if that attitude remains the same.

From there i have no problem with making any ship, just avoid asking or suggesting the ones mentioned above.

FANDOMS: Next I will mention my fandoms (at least most of them, if I mention them all I will never end up here)

★ dc comics and marvel.

★ danganronpa.

★ resident evil (all saga)

★ skullgirls (both mobile and 2nd Encore)

★ omori

★ mortal kombat (all saga)

★ brawl stars (new)

★ miraculous ladybug

and more!!

I will be adding more things here soon, however i don't want to make this so long so i hope at least to get along with you. Failure to comply with any established "rule" can make me block you and the truth is i wouldn't want that so... i hope to get along with you here.

NOTE: Something here may not be written well due to my English (which i think i should improve because it is very simple) and i use a translator as support, so i apologize for that. This is because my mother tongue is not English... so i do my best. :c

IMPORTANT: If you don't like what i write, save your stupid comments. No one forces you to read, if you are reading my content it is because you want to. So do us all a favor and avoid giving pity :p bye bye!!

[sluntch]

A New Challenger Appears - A Writing Experiment - Day 5

Welcome back, if you've been here before. Welcome if you haven't (and also you've got some catching up to do). Today, we deal with a mystery illness and take a bit of a sidetrack from the diet specifically. This one kind of gets turbo personal and a bit NSFW. Ye be warned to continue from here on in. Here we go.

So throughout all of this dieting and going to the doctor and "taking care of myself" or whatever, the doctor's major concern is that I have high blood pressure and that my potassium is, what many in the business would call, "dangerously low". I get a bunch of meds prescribed to me. I currently take 6 different medications at varying points throughout the day, even though none of them have actually managed to lower my blood pressure effectively and the potassium levels have been held in a fairly decent range due to the supplement I'm taking specifically for it. The potassium being the doc's primary concern out of those two led her to refer me to a nephrologist which is a kidney doctor and a word I didn't know existed until I was referred to one. The thought process was that the potassium was being leaked or something through my kidneys and that they, in particular, needed to be checked. In the meantime, everything else also seems to be completely falling apart.

The previous information and procedure all took place over the course of about 10 months. The nephrology appointment took place in August 2023 and was the point at which motion was finally taken to get things rolling in the right direction. Before that point, though, a lot of other stuff started going wrong. Early in the year, I began to have fluid just stick in my retinas, causing blurred vision and issues seeing things, especially in the dark. The eye doctor I saw told me it should go away on it's own and may be related to stress. He referred me to an ophthalmologist who told me the same thing. Ok great! It doesn't go away. It actually gets WORSE, if you can believe it. At the same time, I lose all libido entirely. Like nothing, ever, for months on end. My body, specifically my legs, get insanely weak. We're talking so weak that I can barely walk up the stairs carrying my own weight, let alone anything else, without becoming winded. Wounds I get on my body don't heal quickly, if at all, and some ooze this clear liquid. Bruises stick around for a long time. My hair begins thinning. My face starts to swell up and is very red. This all progresses and worsens over the course of Oct 2022 to Aug 2023. In addition, the swelling from the Venous Reflux - yes, the one I got an expensive surgery to try and fix - is still there. So at this point, I'm starting to get pretty concerned, as is my wife.

The nephrologist appointment led to a short bit of information (the doctor spoke in broad terms and mentioned trying to rule out certain rare diseases), a new medication (the 6th, overall), and an ultrasound of my kidneys. The ultrasound revealed no issues with the kidneys. Dillon, whose mother is a doctor (this will be relevant in a second), while I was over hanging out, did some googling after the ultrasound follow-up appointment. He began reading me the symptoms of something he was reading off of his phone. While he read, we discovered I had every single symptom he was reading. The "something" was called Cushing Syndrome, a disease I had never heard of. As a point, I feel, it's not a great sign when you have every symptom of a disease. Cushing is caused by an excess production of the hormone Cortisol, sometimes known as the "stress hormone". That Cortisol overproduction can be caused by few things: Taking glucocorticoid medications (which don't do) or one of three types of tumors - an adrenal tumor that could be cancerous, a lung tumor that could be cancerous, or a pituitary tumor that is rarely, if ever, cancerous. It also turns out that this syndrome affects, or at least gets diagnosed, in 40-70 out of 1 million people and, of those, 30% are male. So I win a weird lottery and have this syndrome (which we eventually being calling the disease it actually turns out to be, Cushing Disease) that is causing me to feel like I'm wasting away which is ALSO causing all of the other things going wrong, including the high blood pressure and low potassium. Dil asks his mom about it and I ask the nephrologist about it. Dil's mom has me do a peripheral vision test which I don't do particularly well at and she takes this as good news. She believes, based on that, that the cause is a pituitary tumor and those are, apparently, very easy to remove and, once removed, would rid myself of the issue. The nephrologist confirms that, by definition, I have Cushing and they just want to rule things out before moving forward with treatment.

An MRI of my kidneys is scheduled and reveals no issues with them and no tumors. So not the hyper-rare cancerous one. Good news. My PCP weighs in while in conference with the nephrologist and I get an appointment with an endocrinologist scheduled for November 29, something both other doctors involved seem to be attempting to get moved to an earlier date given the diagnosis. An MRI of my sweet sweet brain has been scheduled for Oct 30 and I'm anxiously awaiting that day to confirm the pituitary tumor and get the brain surgery (yikers) schedule moving. In the meantime, I've been only getting weaker and weaker and have injured my right ankle from overuse. As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in my living room chair in a boot after a 5-hour, 2:30 AM emergency room trip taken when I woke up with debilitating pain in my right ankle and an inability to put any weight on it. I've had a lot of emotional swings during this time and, again, cannot thank Abbey and Dil enough for being there for me through all of it. Every day I feel worse and worse but with them around, I can keep moving forward and having some hope that this gets resolved and resolved quickly. Though, if I'm being honest with you, it's getting really tough to keep existing like this. All I want is to feel regular again. It may be close but it still feels very far away and I'm VERY scared of getting brain surgery. We'll see what happens.

That brings us up to the current day. The entries from here on out are going to be, most likely, a smattering of different things. They could be about what I ate or did during a given day or random thoughts that I have or some other such nonsense. I don't really know and am just going to begin treating this as my journal that other people can read. As long as I'm writing, I'll build the habit. Thanks for reading, if you did, and I appreciate you very much.

61 days to go.

[scover-va]

An updated Rust McClain (and Rocky) HCs post

Because I've been thinking abt him more and have updated thoughts abt him (og list can be found here in case anyone wants to compare) (it also just has some overall waste world hcs tbh)

CWs because I realized while writing this that it gets very dark in some bits: Frequent mentions of death (Specifically dying in labour, a baby dying, and then Rocky's canonical death), non-specific ED mention. Let me know if I should mention anything else!

Backstory/False Memory HCs

To start off on the same foot as the og post, due to Rust having a very fucked up memory situation going on and believing he's a real person, his mind has basically supplied him with fake memories. I googled it and it's called False Memory Syndrome. There's a similar term, confabulation, but that leans more towards remembering things concerningly wrong (fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories) than having full-on fake memories

His false memories are also made up partially of what Lionel had figured out for Waste World's plot, since this game is a lot more story oriented (or at least, was meant to be before the modding incident)

In Rust's mind + in Lionel's story drafts, the nuke that caused the radiation dropped when Rust was a little kid, ~10 at the oldest

Rust has no memories of having a mom, or any sort of maternal figure in his life, so he has no specific memory for that. He's assumed that she died in childbirth though for reasons that'll be explained ahead

Something that was also actually written in by Lionel was that Rust's dad died in Rust's mid-teenage years. Lionel never came up with a reason, but Rust's mind has made it so his dad died protecting him. His dad handed him a map to the cache and told him to run

Due to Lionel constantly flipping back and forth between 'Rust and Rocky are a father/son duo' and 'Rust and Rocky are close friends', Rust has some. Odd memories when it comes to Rocky

His brain has both convinced him that Rocky is biological and not biological, having two very conflicting memories when it comes to Rocky

Luckily, he's written it off as stress-induced memory issues and, without the help of his FMS, just figured out a reasonable explanation himself. A sad one, and he's probably just making himself mentally iller, but. Oh well

Route One: The biological-son memories. Obviously, Rust needs someone to have a kid with, he can't have a kid on his own. Doesn't matter with a cis or trans hc, can't get a surrogate in the middle of a fucking apocalypse, and he doesn't have magic or anything of the sort

So, as I've mentioned a few times before, brain wife that he completely made up in his head! Her name's Lock and she's mentioned/shown here and here

And as mentioned in a previous post, she assumed he was bad news and kicked him really fucking hard in the back. He now has back problems.

The back problems are Actually caused by his heavy ass fucking bag hidden by his cloak but he obviously doesn't realize this

Blah blah blah, relationship stuff, anyways his false memories are making him believe she died in childbirth, to explain the lack of Badass Wife in game. But bam! Child!

He wasn't there to witness it though, she sent him off to collect supplies. Aka his brain doesn't know what mental imagery to suggest with that one

My girlfriend and I have a joke that she wrote down name ideas for the kid while Rust was supply searching. Unfortunately, he cannot read

However, obviously, his brain also needs to go with the not-biological route. And how was that accomplished, you may ask?

The baby died

Rust can't remember *how*, but it did, and god that tore him apart. Because it was probably just simply a case of 'They couldn't find food soon enough' or something. Like you can't prevent that, shit happens, but it still breaks him apart to think about

So then at some point, Rust finds an abandoned baby (or at least thinks he does, bc FMS), and just. Immediately decides he needs to protect this random baby he found. Whether it's a parental instinct or guilt is up to interpretation

Child raising stuff, or at least the important bits, can be found in this fic, I'm too lazy to go over them again

Pre-Canon + During-Canon HCs

Separated from the backstory ones on account of those are fake memories, this stuff is like. Events that actually happened

He got kidnapped and died. Working on the theory post for that <3

He and Rebecha became fairly good friends! She babysat Rocky if he ever needed to do anything alone

Rebecha didn't get too attached to either of them, considering the fact that she's already gone through Combat Arena X and Secrets of Legendaria, but y'know

Was supposed to fight The Vurm in the forest, but Sado removed the cave so she could, instead, add fog. Because after the forest would (supposedly) be the route that leads to The Cache

Honestly? Most of Rust's planned enemies were never added, but were planned, so he knows about them anyway. Hence why there's only 2 bosses in the Boss Rush Mod

Back to Rebecha, Rocky learned his first ever swear word from her

She earned a lot of shit for that, especially since said word was a loud "FUCK" after Rocky nearly fucking died doing something stupid

Rust has yet to let her live it down

"Rust, I'm sorry, but you just don't have enough resources-" "'Ey remember that one time a while back when m' kid swore? Wonder who taught 'im that." "I said I was sorry, the fuck do you want from me??" "R e b e c h a."

In a Rocky-lives au though, if Rebecha didn't teach him how to swear, there is a sorceress elf who could do that much quicker than Rebecha ever could without trying-

Rust's had to repair his gun so many times

The shotgun actually 'belonged to his dad' so that's why he cares to keep it functioning, not to mention it's hard to find resources out in the Wastes, including weapons

How does he keep ammo? I dunno. He might be able to make it on his own, I don't know enough about guns

At the inn, Rust did try talking to the others. But FPP wasn't saying anything so Rust assumed FPP hated him for some reason, Weasel Kid was automatically an asshole, Chandrelle was also automatically an asshole, and Chandrelle was often sitting with Bryce, therefore excluding Bryce from the viable options list. And Rust just gets a bad feeling from Reggie. So! He sits with Lazarus and chats with him

Genuinely interested in Lazarus' stories. He doesn't understand whenever Lazarus brings up the topic if games failing, or magic, or anything of the sort, but he DOES know what aliens/cryptons are and how shooting works

He has asked Lazarus way too questions about his different guns. He has also talked a lot about other guns. Lazarus is getting extremely annoyed by the gun talk. But Lazarus is too much of a pushover to tell him to shut up. So, the gun talk continues

By the time the ritual takes place, Rust is just...out of it. The memories of what happened to Rocky just made him unable to focus on anything for a while, not to mention that the Mind Control Serum was at least somewhat being used, just so Rust wouldn't back out last second

My hcs for the immediate aftermath of the ritual (from Rust's pov of events ofc) can be found here

Post-Canon HCs

Most of my post canon stuff can be found in fics, so. Here: 1, 2

Not much to say that hasn't already been shown in fics

I do think Rust would isolate himself from the group a little, whether intentional or unintentional. He accepts their help, provides help, etc., but he just. Can't handle having genuine bonds anymore. Not after everything he's been through

So he. Gets a little bit cold. Not a lot, and again, he still does spend time with the others, it's just hard for him

Despite his abandonment issues, that doesn't mean he has trust issues. He has faith in the others, excluding Reggie and Jeremiah

Absolutely despises Jeremiah, and refuses to be in the same room as him, no matter what. He can tolerate Reggie, but doesn't pretend to like him

Has very complicated feelings when it comes to Irving and Lionel, because he never knew either of them. And no one wants to talk about them, including Lazarus, who's chatted with Rust the most

Had developed an eating disorder after Rocky's death due to eating MUCH less than normal, and that's saying something considering the Wastes. He's slowly working on it, though

Oh and also has to work on his sleep schedule

He's just. Overall trying to get better after that happened. Bryce is helping him the most through that

Would likely end up leaving the inn after a while. He needs to be on his own, and the lack of explanations are just frustrating him

General/Non-Specific HCs

Last section! Holy fuck

He's very good as fixing up vehicles! He often borrows or buys tools from Rebecha, who doesn't care, she doesn't want to be working anyways

He can get it functional enough to work for a little while. Not too long, but still

I learned while doing a bit of research that basically if you stab a specific car part you can get gas (or a gas-like eqivalent) from it! So he does that

He also. Somehow. Knows almost everything about guns. He has no access to previously done research. He does all this just by taking apart guns then putting them back together

Is incredibly far-sighted, and really badly needs glasses

He's adapted to shoot based on sound. Instead of trying to be stealthy, he startles his target so it makes noise, then shoots. He can pretty accurately shoot vital bits too despite his vision problems

If using sound isn't an option, he just. Shoots at whatever blob he's aiming at. Nowhere near as accurate but it's better than nothing

Bisexual king

Like I've said before, he doesn't know what sexualities are, he just figures everyone finds men and women attractive

Lots and lots of nightmares. It's been like that for as long as he can remember

Came to the inn some time after Bryce and Chandrelle

I don't have a strict voice claim for him, but for some reason there's a bit of a vibe match with Poor Mans Poison. I'm not sure why

Very accented way of talking, though! Half his words aren't fully pronounced

Probably from the south or the west, but we have no way of knowing for sure obviously

If you asked him for his favourite food, he'd say roasted radrat, but also say that the occasional canned peaches/canned food in general tastes really good. Bryce has made it his mission to make him try out new foods

His blood is a bit of a brownish-greenish-reddish colour now due to exposure to radiation and the mind control serum

It's a miracle none of his organs are failing, really

[paragonrobits]

The Banner stuff is especially interesting to me since I really like EMH Banner but the CHARACTER of Banner himself has generally been a bit eh to me at best; probably one reason I liked Planet Hulk to begin with before I REALLY dug into the genuine tragedy and doomed nature of the narrative was that its main selling point was tons of character development for Hulk, with Banner not appearing at all outside one potential dream sequence. Not to plug Immortal Hulk too much but yes it is an absolutely recommended read but that’s the series that really made Banner APPEALING to me, besides the first Avengers movie; whatever else the MCU has become (and there is a LOT to discuss on that), its portrayal of Banner made him genuinely interesting and compelling in a way that previous Hulk movies hadn’t.

In EMH though, he works really well; part of it may be that the Hulk/Banner dynamic is switched; instead of Hulk appearing in a way that very strongly encourages the writing to make Hulk more volatile or otherwise less desirable to manifest, Hulk is out all the time and Banner is the one whose appearances are mandated by the new rules of the system. (Granted, EMH Banner is not EXPLICITLY a DID system but I’ll go for that anyway.) Consequently, much as how Hulk’s characterization is usually heavily linked to how ambigious his character is based on the snippets we see of him and what we can infer of his motivations, that instead applies to Banner. We know what he wants and that he encourages Hulk to be a hero, and that he’s a good man at his core, but we don’t know a whole lot else about him.

(On that note, I’ve got a meta piece lurking somewhere that should be written at some point about how Banner has very little consistent characterization across different writers, even by comic standards. I think some of the most compelling characterization for him is somewhere between Al Ewing in Immortal Hulk writing Banner as a fundamentally wounded and broken person who is tormented by the thought of the generational trauma and chain of harm that shapes his family making it so that HE is himself a bad person inherently, and as much as he wants the Hulk to be a force for good he still disassociates the Hulk’s fundamentally neutral emotions with bad aspects of himself. Then there’s the Indestructible Hulk run, which is contentious to me, but I really found its Banner interesting in that he is both a genuinely sympathetic and altruistic man, and also something of a cold fish with a massive resentment issue towards other science heroes, that makes it easy to understand why people tend to prefer the more ferocious but easily understood Hulk.)

This general characterization of Banner and his relationship with Hulk is also part of what I think EMH fundamentally does in revisiting these early parts of the characters; while Banner and Hulk don’t transform exclusively at night as with the earliest comics, the specific dynamic they had at that point has the feel of something they’ve already worked over prior to the events we see on-screen. Instead of it being an automatic process, and of course its VERY easy to see this Hulk as being a defense mechanism superpower taken to an extreme, it feels like they’ve already worked out some kind of an accord. So as with the earliest comics, there’s a lot more complex give and take between them that isn’t QUITE mental wrestling contests for control, but its not a purely automatic process neither has much input on.

(One thing I REALLY like about Hulk’s friendships with Hawkeye and Wasp is that these are characters he NEVER really interacts with in the comics; at least, not Wasp. Hawkeye is pretty notable for that one time he agreed to kill Bruce if it looked like he was Hulking out again, resulting in what Hulk himself argues is an assisted suicide when he could have just done something more productive for Bruce’s mental health, and Hawkeye’s own belligerent attitude implicitly contributing to Bruce’s mental health decline is probably a factor? Point is, the EMH dynamics aren’t something you see much otherwise and I like them!)

Earth's Mightiest Heroes is just such a goldmine in the Marvel adaptations; especially if you like Hulk as much as I do it's such an ideal interpretation and strikes the ideal balance between the ambiguity between him being a hero or a monster (he can't be TOO straightforwardly heroic or he loses a lot of what makes him compelling, but Hulk shouldn't be malevolent or mindless and MUST be a hero in some way) that I don't think has been properly captured since Planet Hulk or Immortal Hulk. Maybe Thor Ragnarok if you look at the subtext around him.

One thing I consider is that EMH specifically seems to take the earliest characterizations of the Marvel heroes, without being too influenced by the MCU (which if I recall was only just starting out then, enough to influence things but not so much that it completely dominated the characterization) and reinvents this earlier characterizations, making something rather new and unique to this series, so you get things such as Wasp (who is one of the most liked takes on the character here) and as noted, Hulk. Much like the Devil Hulk alter from Immortal Hulk, in this series his characterization here reads as a reinterpretation of his initial characterization as a smarter and unpredictable entity driven by his resentfulness.

Hulk is done so well! I feel like part of why season 2's writing suffers overall is that they had to put him on a shelf for the entire Secret Invasion plot.

What I also like about it is how Banner is incorporated into the story. Bruce Banner is a lot more unconditionally heroic than The Hulk, and that's shown right from the jump when he essentially makes a heroic sacrifice by agreeing to let The Hulk stay transformed indefinitely in exchange for him helping the others fight Graviton. Hell, when Hulk gets briefly mind controlled by the Enchantress, the person we see doing the standard Heroic Willpower Fighting From The Inside stuff is Banner. Banner's appearances are a rare treat after the opener, because he's characterized perfectly - brilliant, businesslike since he's always on a clock, and completely up to speed on everything the others have been up to. And it's also kind of fun how the other Avengers are always quite protective of Banner on the rare occasions he gets forced out mid-fight.

And I like how it's clear that Hulk and Banner communicate more than we get to see. There's Banner knowing exactly how to stop the Gamma World plot even though he hasn't had Using The Body Privileges in weeks, and later there's a cute moment where Tony is trying to analyze some mysterious energy and Hulk just immediately IDs it while noshing on a turkey leg. Banner isn't useless or mired in angst, and Hulk isn't dumb. It really feels like they've long since stopped trying to fight each other and have accepted that they're on the same side, and that's a nice change for Hulk storylines!

Also Hulk's friendships with Wasp and Hawkeye are just. Absolute highlights. The dynamics are so good.

[lwt28brave]

LT2 masterpost

If it was up to me, we would get an autumn or winter EP. Since it’s not up to me at all, here, enjoy this post with everything we know so far of LT2, which is to say, not much at all. Everything here is hypothetical. I’ll be updating every time I see something relevant. A little disclaimer that while this is a masterpost (kinda), it could be read as discourse (duh, it’s also a theory), AND it’s also by me, and you shouldn’t expect me to be serious at this point.

Due to me restraining myself, there’s no reference to any of the times he’s mentioned his guitar skills and him improving but I hope you know I cried every single time.

I’m also linking my old pinned here. It was written before AFHF and around the free merch thing that didn’t lead to much, but I still think I made some good points.

Possible tracks:

Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Change

Faith in the future??

369??

Possible names:

369

Faith in the future

When is the album coming out?

Your guess is as good as mine

Friday 28th of January 2022. Almost two years after Walls. It’s a Friday. It’s a 28th. What else can I say?

Here you can find @want-to-be-loved timelines for every month.

Here you can find @berlinini’s timeline of what Louis has been up to this year (2021).

The rest is under the cut. And here you can find a PDF version where Tumblr can't tell me how many pictures I can add.

2020

He said back on May 2th 2020 he wasn’t writing anything new yet.

(x)(x)(x)

Interestingly enough, he’s said many times after that that the album’s not ready cause he has no new experiences to drawn from. I won’t call him out because he does it himself.

May 4th. He liked a tweet from DMA’s Johnny Took saying they had to go write together again. Louis has been credited as an influence for them and (kind of) participated in their previous record, so I’m assuming he meant for their music and not his, but you never know.

Nothing(literally nothing??? how did we survive) until 11th of July. We all know what happened that day. We all celebrated it. Nonetheless, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

(x) So, by the beginning of July 2020 he was working on concepts and ideas for the new album. That was fifteen months ago. I know perfection takes time but…

Brief summary of important things that happened from then until the next mention of new music:

Louis left Syco!!!! 10 days later he rescheduled the tour for the first time. He followed Matt Vines on Twitter, probably so we could publicly shame him into doing something. Also, the 10thanniversary. He followed more people I wish he hadn’t.

Then more nothing until September. Not even a single tweet. The first merch drop was on the 28th of August but he just RT’ed the tweet. He first mentioned Free my Meal on the 25th of September. Then on October 1st Walls hit #1 on a lot of countries and Louis was incredibly happy and excited about it ^^

And then, that same day, October 1st, 2020, he dropped this bomb:

(x)

He also said it was too soon to be sharing new lyrics with us (x)

And, obviously, this tweet which is actually what made me start this whole post. I would hope you know mate.

(x)

He also told us he was cooking "banger after banger" and that he was incorporating more social themes into his music (x)(x) (I believe any social issue is a political issue but that’s not the point rn).

COPY OF A COPY OF A COPY?!?!

These next paragraphs are brought to you by my mind not remembering things and me not having any links. I’m assuming COACOAC came from those writing sessions that supposedly happened in October. Or in LA but I have no idea if he actually was in LA at any point other than a Daily Mail article putting him there on December which would have been too late, but I do remember that someone said he was in the studio in LA last autumn???? A rumor. Maybe. IDK. Did I mention already all of this is very hypothetical?? Well, this is it. I can’t even remember if this was October or November or what. So, take this with a grain of salt.

I’m also… taking the liberty to assume, if you must, that Copy wasn’t meant to be a Walls reject because it sounds more mature and darker and it has a vastly different tone that Walls songs. I know he’s said that song probably isn’t getting into the album, but I want to have faith (in the future) that I’m getting a studio version. (But also, Louis, if you’re reading this, first of all GET OUT OF MY BLOG second of all, please don’t ever feel pressured again to add a song to the album because we have already heard it before. It’s your art and it should always be under your own terms).

So yeah, I believe that Copy is either one of those four songs (then imagine the other three??!!) or was written around the 1st of October date.

---End of the Intermission---

Then not much important (other than sharing more about Marcus Rashford fight against food poverty and the 2nd merch drop) until he announced the livestream on the 24th of November. (x)

It wasn’t until a few days before the livestream date we even thought again about new music (jk, I know we’re always thinking about new Louis’ music). So, December 9th/10th, 2020. Nine months ago. We got our first taste of new music!

He made sure we knew Copy of a Copy of a Copy isn't a cover! (x) (x)

(x)

Ok, so that’s it for 2020. (I feel like I’m missing something from September 17th because tweet was deleted but maybe he was still talking about cucumbers. We might never know. Unless I understand how Tumblr tags work). Expected, cause Walls was released in 2020. We needed to let it sit for a while.

2021

Another Summary: Louis third tweet of the year was telling the UK government off. So was the fifth. What a good beginning. On the 26th of January, he said he prefers pancakes over waffles. I hope he meant pancakes other than his own. More importantly, he tweeted the infamous “you lot read into things too much”. Don’t get me started, Tomlinson. Don’t. Then the 31st came around and Walls was one. He tweeted this. How wise. And Project Defenceless happened!!

15th of February!! Who cares about Valentine Day when the next day we got this? ♥

(x)

(x)

So…AN EP?? AN EP?? PLEASE RELEASE AN EP.

“I’m sure I will have something out this year but unlikely that will be the album”. Unlikely but not impossible. Also. A single would be good. This is the second time he mentions releasing something in 2021 and he sounds surer about it than the first time around.

He also said that he isn’t sure we will get a studio version of Copy. And that the best bridges from Walls to LT2 are Walls, OTB, KMM and Copy. Can’t wait!

Then we jump to March 6th when he announced he was going to create his own management company. “Sometimes action is needed first to encourage the motivation and belief”. As we can tell he was already manifesting some stuff which will lead us to the numerology stuff/Tesla… kidding. Or not. We might never know.

On the 22nd of March he answered some questions:

He told us music was still his main focus ♥ mwha. (x) I included this tweet to guilt-trip him into giving us music in case he’s reading this even after I told him to leave. ILY.

(x) I’d love to get a visual EP this autumn. Just saying. It sounds like a lovely concept.

(x)

…next (I will get into it, I promise. I’m just mad).

On the 25th he left for Mexico until April 10th. You could assume it was just for the documentary where we got ten seconds of footage or admit the obvious: LT2 its a Mexican baby!!

On the 26th (so, not so far apart from that first 369) we got the first Faith in the Future mention: (x)

Back then we were innocent people who had no idea what was coming upon us. We still have no idea because what the fuck does he mean with these. Please explain. I have one braincell and I don’t use it enough for this. I’m linking some theories.

On the 30th of March he confirmed he was already working on the documentary. So AFHF was already on the works. Will it take this long for us to get the Veeps numbers? We also got this tweet: "Got a decent chorus idea down" (x).

Same person that got the “something out this year” exclusive. If you know something share with the class. Also. Is this Change? I feel like this could be Change but I also assume he wrote Change after hanging out with his friends or being in Doncaster. But who knows.

(x) And the second mention to 369.

(x) 15th of April. The second "Faith in the future".

On the 19th of April he announced that he had something BIG for us later on the year which turned out to be the Away From Home Festival ♥♥ (x) I love him so much.

Then on the 28th he announced the 369 merch drop (which it’s probably the Walls drop? Except that the TOU and KMM ones were “drop 1 and drop 2” and this was drop 369 which, again, makes no sense) but we still don’t know what 369 means.

Into May’ 21 we go.

He rescheduled tour again. And dropped another bomb (x).

He announced he has signed with BMG as an independent artist by RTing this tweet on May 10th. The article also says that he’s already working on writing and recording LT2. The timing… we don’t know. What this deal involves… we don’t know either. Bear with me here because I have a lot to say about this.

I think the deal is only a distribution one, but that BMG are interested in Louis and what he (us) could bring to the table. They were either present at the festival or watching it, but officially they had no involvement at all with it (everything is credited either to Louis own company, 78 Productions, or Charlie Lightening’s company). That’s the case for both giveaways too; the vinyl one and the tickets for the festival.

I think it would be an unbelievably bad move not to test the waters with BMG now or soon-ish. At least a single, to see how it performs. Due to the circumstances, it’s obvious there’re certain limitations on place but I want to see how they push it, whether the radio play exist this time around and if the song is playlisted and promoted and all that… I would also love to know, since it says he signed with BMG UK, but it also states it’s a global deal, how things are going to go on the US and other countries.

Yes, yes. I know those are all questions and no answers. But I know the same as you, sadly. If any of you know more than you’re letting on… again, share with the class.

Where was I? Yes, on the 25th of May Louis had a great day writing (x). Since the first time he had mentioned he was officially writing to this date there’s almost eight months. And I believe he was writing before October’ 20.

He followed Robert Harvey that day and, on the 28th of May (why is it always the 28th???) he was spotted at the studio for the first time.

June was an interesting month for the fandom ♥. Lots of LHL content which I will love and cherish for the rest of times. On June 4th, June 9th, and June 10th he was spotted at the studio, but I believe he was there more days.

(x)

This was posted on June 6th and captioned Studio. Charlie also shared it with “Mega tunes being put down, can’t wait for this @louist91 #louistomlinson #LT2” as the caption. This gives me 2019 (Elton-Joint) vibes. I like it. Feels like we’re getting closer to something.

He added the Milano date on the 9th too which I’m mentioning because I’m going alone. Anyone wanna go with me please? I’m nice and I never eat anything before a concert so you can have my food. On other news. It didn’t come home.

During July he was at the studio at least three days too. Probably more. Feels like more with all the fan pictures we got. Or was that June? Anyway, July 1st and 9th we got some videos from Robert Harvey and wearesuperhi, which is who Louis has been working with the most, that we know of. I don’t know for sure they’re from that day. And on July 5th we got an article and lots of pictures of Louis looking really good outside the studio.

On the 12th of July the first fans started getting the free, 369 bucket hat and print. We still don’t know what the purpose was other than to thanks fans. Maybe that was it. I want answers and I still think it relates to a future project (see theories above), but it could also just be a bridge with the Walls breaking.

He didn’t tweet about anything interesting for a while, mostly because he lost his phone (he either throwed it in the air or smashed it who knows). Then on the 29th of July he announced the festival!

I’m glossing over it because there’s already been a lot of talk about it (rightfully) and while it was a wonderful thing, it doesn’t have much to do with LT2.

Let’s talk Change!

On August 3rd he tweeted this about the setlist.

(x)

And this (x) on the 28th! I can’t stand him.

We didn’t get it, obviously. Because who was going to get that. But we read too much into things. Alright.

On the 16thof August Dave Gibson shared this post tagged #LT2 with the eyes emojis 👀👀👀. I believe this has to do both with Change but also with whatever else came out of that Mexico trip.

(x) Last relevant tweet related to LT2 is this one.

So, on the 30th of August we got Change and we cried, and we know that Change is going in the new album. He said it. With those exact words. He also said he was “getting a feeling for it”. This has to meant he already has a general idea of the vibe of the new album and what’s going in it!!!!!! (Right? RIGHT?).

Anyway, let’s go back a few weeks because some other things happened on August. He was at the studio a few more times. Or it was suggested that he was there. On the 17th and the 18th. (Why was it so time-pressing to be at the studio instead of rehearsing for the festival? There was no studio at all on the documentary. Which makes sense, but again, then why?).

On the day of the festival we got another mention of Faith in The Future that made me feel part of a cult ngl. The words were flashing on the screen for less than a second. Okay.

And then he tweeted those words again after watching the livestream/documentary on the 4th of September (x). This is what makes me suspect it's either the name of the album or of the single.

On the same day, we got some interesting quotes about LT2 on the documentary.

“Soon I’ll have to think about me second album, which in my head I’ll get the tour out of the way and then I’ll address that. So, I hadn’t really given it much thought, to be honest”.

“When every day is the same is hard to feel creative and it’s hard to have any kind of proper inspiration”.

“As season started to come back, I started writing again and it was great and some of these songs turned out alright”.

And I think this is it. I might be overlooking some important details but that’s what we know and what we don’t know.

So. Conclusions. That’s what you missed on Glee. I do believe the album is, if not mostly done, partially there. And yes, this post is pointless and never-ending but it’s all in here if you need to tell Louis “Hey, you said this, mate”.

[writing-with-olive]

Developmental Editing - Rewriting!

Alrighty! It's been a hot minute since I've talked about developmental editing, but since I'm a pretty big proponent of helping people not fall for the "replace these 59 crutch words with slightly longer phrases and that's it you're done editing" I figured it's probably about time for another one. (to be fair, that was a bit of exageration, but I am serious that superficial/cosmetic edits probably won't cut it if you're trying to go from first draft to publishable work)

One of the biggest tips I can give is that at least once, it's a good idea to consider rewriting. I don't mean throw your current draft out and start over (I would hate that), but have a printed copy of your WIP or do a splitscreen and go through scene by scene and rewrite. 

(why this is, in fact, a good idea, and also how to go about doing it below the cut)

Why this is helpful:

It helps you make changes you need to make. Basically, if you're just editing the pieces you think are the worst issues from your book, then when you hit something you're not completely sure if you need to change, the impulse without doing rewrites is often "eh. I'll do it later/I don't need to do it." With rewrites, it's often "I might as well." Basically, you can get a much deeper level of change.

If you've moved around scenes, there's going to be instances where they're not going to fit perfectly. Maybe a character offhandedly references something that now happens after the scene but started out before. Or they come into the scene in a mood that is no longer explained by the preceding scene. Rewriting scenes will help keep things like tone and chronology consistant without having a giant mess to try and clean up later. 

Your writing abilities have almost certainly improved since you began writing the previous draft. A full rewrite is a pretty good way to make your style more consistant over the course of the book.

You've probably gotten a better sense of your characters and setting and overall vibe of the story. This is a pretty good way to make sure you can clear up inconsistancies from when you were still figuring them out and also the issues that cleanup may cause.

Knowing you're going to do a pretty thourough edit later can help get the words down. At least for me, I can stomach doing a horrific first pass at a scene or chapter because I don't have to worry about it staying bad. My priority is getting the words down so I can move on with the story.

How to go about doing rewrites:

Take a deep breath and don't panic

No actually take that deep breath. It's good for you.

Identify the core issue you're going to be working on. For me, it was adding in the necessary plotpoints I had missed the first time around and fixing some of the pacing (because 14-year-old me did NOT understand story structure when I started writing my WIP). There will be secondary issues that you will probably be fixing along the way (like awkward dialogue, etc) but the core issue should be the focus. 

Go through your manuscript if scenes that need ot be rearranged, added, or subtracted, make a note of them. Similarly, if you need to rearrange the content of scenes (maybe shuffling around when characters arrive at a place, or when certain catalysts happen), make notes of them too. Also note anything that you were particularly happy or unhappy with when you were reading through your work. If you have a chunk that's particularly tangled, it's usually good to figure out what you want to change when you're just in the edit-planning stage, because it becomes harder when you're trying to figure out what to do as you're actively trying to do it. Basically, don't worry if figuring out how to fix things takes a while. It's natural. For simplicity's sake, I refer to everything in this bullet point as "pre-edits"

Open up a new doc - it is NOT in your best interest to work on your original. For one, it's nice to look back and see how far you've come, but there's also the feeling of a fresh slate that can be really freeing. 

Go through scene by scene, or chapter by chapter, and rewrite it while regularly referencing your marked-up manuscript. If you decide on a whim that you should make changes that you didn't mark originally, go for it. At this point, you've got a pretty good sense of what should be happening in a given place, and sometimes you don't realize edits until you're really in it. If you get to scenes that you need to write from scratch - ie they weren't in the original, treat it like that section is a first draft. Don't worry if the quality of writing is lower than everything around it. Like when you were originally drafting, the most important thing is to get everything down on the page. There will be more editing rounds after this. 

Embrace that rewrites will take a while. It's fairly easy to break into small chunks though (scenes, chapters, arcs, etc), so it doesn't need to be daunting. Just take it one step at a time. 

When you get to the end, celebrate! You just completed a lot! 

Anyway, I hope this gives people a potential path forward for editing. If you have any questions or places you want me to go into more detail on, PLEASE send me an ask or put it in the comments. I love this stuff and will gladly tell you about any part of it!

++++

Taglist (sorry I keep forgetting to tag people - I'm working on it):  @bookdragonfanish @book-limerence

As always, if you would like to be added to or removed from any of my tag lists (found pinned at the top of my blog) just let me know!

[ssahotchhner]

like real people do

PART TWO

hi! this is my first criminal minds fic, i haven’t watched the show all the way through in several years and while doing a rewatch discovered that i HAD to write hotch. this will be two parts, here’s the first! let me know your thoughts please, i love talking to my readers (:

words: 5837

pairing: hotch x reader

warnings: usual criminal minds nastiness, rape mention, death, curse words

Everyone knew that SSA Aaron Hotchner has been emotionally unavailable since his divorce, so everyone was that much more surprised when he kissed you at the bar in front of all your colleagues at the BAU. You wouldn’t lie, you had had a crush on Aaron for years now, but you had imagined your hypothetical romance much differently. As it was, Aaron had immediately left the bar in a flurry of embarrassment, murmuring a hurried apology on his way out leaving you to the unabashed teasing of your coworkers that you had pretended to brush off. Now, days later, Aaron still refused to so much as look at you.

“Y/N,” Morgan rolled his chair over to your desk, “I’m dying to know, is Hotch a good kisser?”

You sigh, “Fuck off, Derek.”

“Leave the poor girl alone, Derek,” Rossi says as he passes by, “Don’t you think it’s bad enough Hotch is giving her the silent treatment now?”

You tried to hide the way the tears pricked the back of your eyes at his comment, but you were surrounded by FBI profilers.

Morgan lowered his voice and reach out his hand to touch your arm, “Hey, babygirl, I’m sorry, I was just teasing, maybe you should try talking to Hotch--”

“Talking to me about what?” Aaron had been so quiet walking up on you and your head had been low, so focused on not crying that you hadn’t heard him.

“Nothing.” You say quickly, and as expected he avoids making eye contact, “Do you need something, sir?” You don’t miss the way he flinches at the formality. Good.

“We have a new case.” He says simply and walks away.

Morgan let out a low whistle, “You really hit him with the ‘sir.’” You started to get up from your desk, but Morgan put a hand on your arm again, “Seriously, Y/N, I’m sorry. If you need to talk I’m here.”

You sighed and stood up again, forcing a smile, “There’s nothing to talk about Derek, I’m fine. Now come on.”

“We have a serial rapist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” JJ starts immediately as everyone files in. You feel Morgan’s gaze on you the entire time and try not to get frustrated. He’s been like a brother to you since you joined the BAU a few years ago and you know this overprotectiveness was just him being a good friend, but it was bound to drive you nuts. “Victims are all white women ranging from their late teens to early twenties at a local university.”

“Why are we being called in for a rapist on a college campus?” Reid asks, “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but we all know the statistics. There are dozens of serial rapists on college campuses.”

“Because this one is torturing them while he rapes them and leaves them notes leading up to the attacks.” Hotch says as Penelope begins to pull up pictures on the screen of these women. “Slut, whore, bitch, cunt. All carved on their chests.” You do your best to hide the nausea that rises in you as you look at the pictures. Do your job. You remind yourself.

“What do the notes say?” Emily asks.

“They seem like thinly veiled threats,” Reid begins, “They sound romantic at first glance, but if you read closely you can see the context.” 

“He breaks into their dorms when they’re at class or at parties and waits for them to come home and then he holds them at knifepoint so they won’t scream.” Penelope says, trying not to let her voice shake.

“Risky to do in a dorm building and no one’s seen him?” Morgan says.

Rossi ponders this, “That means he must blend in, someone no one would think twice about being inside. A student, an RA, or a university official.”

“University officials don’t normally enter student dorms unless there’s an issue, they’d be more likely to stand out and students would talk about them showing up.” Hotch muses.

“Y/N, you’re awful quiet today,” Emily nudges your elbow, “What do you think?”

You can feel everyone’s eyes on you, but Aaron’s. Still looking at his manila folder as if Emily hadn’t addressed you. As if you didn’t exist. You clear your throat, “I think the RA or student theory makes sense. We should probably interview the RA of the first victim, assuming he’s a man. It would make sense to me that he would start with one of his own students and then begin to branch out. Maybe he thought he could stop, get that release he needed after just one, but the need only grew stronger.”

“Wheels up in thirty, we’ll discuss more on the plane.” Hotch says and stands, walking out of the room without another glance.

“Did something happen last night at the bar?” Emily murmurs, the only member of the team who didn’t make it out the night before, “Hotch is acting really weird around you.”

Derek snickers on the other side of you and you elbow him, “That’s it, I’m going to talk to him.”

Reid winces, “Good luck.”

“It’ll be fine, kid.” Rossi says and squeezes your shoulder as you pass.

You take a long breath before you finally build the courage to walk into Aaron’s office where he’s packing his briefcase. “Sir, can I talk to you for a moment?”

“Can it wait until we’re on the plane, agent?”

Agent. You roll your eyes toward the ceiling, “No, sir, it can’t.” You can’t hide the bite in your words this time. He finally looks at you, really looks at you. You wonder what he sees.

“Close the door.” He says quietly and then sits behind his desk.

You walk slowly to the seat in front of his desk. This time, he watches you. “This is the first time you’ve looked at me all day.”

“I wasn’t aware you were analyzing me.”

“Are you telling me you haven’t been analyzing me all day?”

“Agent, what is this about? We have a plane to catch.”

You stare at him for a few moments longer, “Fine,” You stand, “If you want to pretend nothing happened, I’ll do the same. But if you could at least stop ignoring me, that would be great.”

“Agent--”

“And use my goddamn name, for Christ’s sake.”

He stares at you and you know he hates your emotional outburst and that in turn makes you hate yourself. “Then you stop calling me ‘sir.’” He says quietly.

Your eyes soften for just a moment and then you storm back out of his office nearly plowing over Rossi as you leave. Rossi walks into Aaron’s office to see him rubbing his forehead, “Well that doesn’t look like it went well.”

“I screwed up, Rossi.” 

“Oh, come on Hotch, it was just one kiss. It didn’t mean anything--”

“It did mean something. To me. Maybe not to her.”

Rossi shakes his head, “Then why are you giving her the cold shoulder?”

Hotch sighs, “Because we work together, because she doesn’t feel the same, because she’s the first woman I’ve kissed since Haley. Pick a reason.” Rossi looks like he’s going to interject, but Hotch stands, “We don’t have time for this, Rossi, let’s go.”

Rossi sighs as he watches Aaron walk out of his office and follows after.

***

You’re quiet most of the plane ride, conscious of the looks everyone is giving you as you read the information in the manila folder over and over, trying to be good at your job instead of thinking about your boss.

“When we get off the plane, JJ and Prentiss, you go talk to the victims. Rossi and I will touch base with the police. Morgan, Reid, Y/N, you go talk to anyone you can find at the dorms, see if anyone’s seen anyone suspicious.” You make it a point not to react, but everyone else reacts anyway, watching you carefully. Hotch almost always assigns himself with you. 

“If you guys don’t stop psychoanalyzing me I will eject myself from this plane.” 

Everyone looks away except Aaron and when you meet his eyes, he’s smirking. Those smiles are so rare and you can’t deny how it satisfies you to know you were the reason he did so. You quickly look back down at your work, careful not to reveal anything you’re feeling.

***

“Do you have feelings for Hotch?” Reid asks without preamble when you’re in the car with Derek.

“Spencer!” You exclaim in outrage. Derek just laughs from the driver’s seat.

“What? You both wouldn’t be being so weird about one kiss if it wasn’t something more.”

“Okay, Romeo, remember that she’s armed.” Derek cautioned.

“He’s my boss, Reid. It’s weird because he’s my boss.”

“Well, sure, by definition Hotch is our superior but we all know--” Reid cut himself off when he saw the look Derek was giving him in the rearview mirror, “Yeah, you’re right, it’s weird.” He said quickly.

You sigh and turn to the window and ignore Derek and Spencer the rest of the ride.

***

“So you mean to tell me that ten women have come forward about being raped in their dorms and you told them to consider themselves lucky they weren’t murdered and sent them home without doing a rape kit?” Aaron’s furious. Furious with himself for the previous night and he’s more than happy to take out that anger on the local Milwaukee police department.

“Look, man, we get a lot of he said she said in here, we don’t have the time or the man power to follow up on every one.”

Just then his phone rings. It’s you. He wishes he could ignore the pang that goes through him just from reading your name. “Hotch.” He answers.

“Sir-- I mean, Aaron.” You correct yourself quickly, and then realize you should have called him Hotch, but it’s too late. “They’ve found a body.”

He frowns, “A body? That doesn’t fit his MO.”

You swallow, “Yeah, well, everything else does. He seems to have gotten a little carried away with the carving this time.”

“We’ll be right there.”

You hang up your phone and then turn back to Reid and Morgan who are looking over the crime scene. You sit with Victoria’s, the victim’s, distraught roommate and try to calm her and maybe get some actual information out of her. You don’t hear or see Aaron walk in until he’s already next to you, “Did you get anything from her?”

His closeness makes it hard to focus, “Just regular roommate stuff, she might be more useful once she calms down. I asked if her roommate had a boyfriend or anything like that and she said she was quiet, kept to herself. Boys were out of the question.”

“He’s escalated. Why?”

You shrug, “Could be because we’re here, that might have upset him and he lost control. But it could have been an accident, roommate says Victoria had a heart condition. The stress of the situation might have killed her.”

Hotch nods, “Good work.”

He was trying to be normal, you could tell. And he was trying so hard. “Thank you.” You said softly and then you excused yourself. Everything about him set you on edge and over and over the moment he kissed you plays in your head.

***

You’re both laughing to near snorting while sitting at the bar and Aaron can’t stop watching you, “You have an incredible laugh, you know?” He says softly when you’ve both settled down. “Sometimes when I think this job isn’t worth it, I’ll hear your laugh outside my office and just that sound…” He realizes what he’s saying suddenly and turns his head away from you smiling at his drink now.

“You make it worth it for me too.” You say and his eyes are back on you, “You so rarely ever smile, but when you smile at me… It makes it all worth it. The long hours, the horrible cases… all of it.”

When you look back at him he’s suddenly serious again. You can see his eyes calculating as he searches your face and you realize with a bit of shock that he’s trying to see if you’re lying. When his eyes finally settle back on yours, he gently reaches up, almost without thinking about it and curls a loose piece of hair behind your ear.

And then in the next second, his hand still on your face, his mouth is on yours.You forget that there’s anyone else in the world for those few seconds that he kisses you. Until everyone on the team starts jeering and Aaron pulls away like he’s seen a ghost.

“Aaron?” You say, frowning as he jumps up from his seat, not looking at you and gathering his things.

“I’m sorry.” Is all he murmurs and then runs out.

Derek’s laughing as he walks up to you, “Damn, princess. You broke Hotch! I gotta say, you’re incredibly out of his league.” You glare at him. “What? You’re out of my league too.”

You smile at that and try to act like everything’s normal, but you’re sure Spencer notices that you drink more and laugh a little too loudly.

***

You’re pulled back from the memory as JJ walks toward you, “Hey, you alright?”

“Yeah,” You nod, “Fine, just needed a second alone to think.”

She stops in front of you and rests her hand on your arm, lightly squeezing, “You can talk to me, you know, about men. Even Hotch.”

You smile, “I appreciate everyone’s concern, but I’m fine, really. It’s not that big a deal.”

“It’s a big deal if it starts interfering with the job, and I can see it on both of you,” She’s stern all of a sudden, “I know he’s our boss, but underneath that he’s just any other man, Y/N. Don’t let him fool you into thinking otherwise.”

“Guys,” Derek interrupts, sticking his head out into the hallway, “You’re gonna wanna see this.”

When you come back in the room, Spencer is crouched over the body, gloves on, examining the carvings in her body, “There’s hesitation in the cuts this time and you can tell they were done after she was dead. And if you look a little bit closer…”

“‘Sorry…’” You read the small script, astonished. “Remorse. It was an accident.” Your eyes dart back and forth as you lose yourself in your own thoughts while the rest of the team discusses, “I think we can deliver the profile.”

***

“We’re looking for a white male in his early to mid twenties.” Hotch starts, “He most likely is able to gain the women’s trust, maybe he’s a student RA or a student tech worker, but they let him in without a second thought.”

“I thought he breaks into the dorms and waits for them?” A cop asks.

“He does,” You say, “But the initial access is how he chooses his victims. He’s a loner, doesn’t have many friends, certainly no girlfriend. It’s possible that he asks these girls on dates when he first meets them, and when they refuse he feels entitled to them anyway which is why he comes back for the rape.”

“What about the murder?” Another cop asks.

“We believe the death of the last girl was an accident.” Reid responds, “She had a heart condition and the medical examiner has confirmed she died from sudden cardiac arrest. The unsub even seemed to show remorse when he defiled the body after, carving the word ‘sorry’ into her body.”

“The killing has most likely set him on edge. He’s remorseful, upset, overcome with immense guilt, but he blames the women. If they had just said yes to him, he wouldn’t have to do this. She wouldn’t have died.” Derek continues, “You should be looking for someone who was soft spoken, but as the rapes started he became more assertive, maybe he had an altercation with a professor or supervisor.”

“You’ve probably interviewed him already,” You say, “He inserts himself into the investigation because he feels guilt and watching the investigation play out validates that he was right for doing what he did.” You sigh, “There’s one more thing. He didn’t intend to kill Victoria, but… He spent time with the body after she had passed. He mutilated her as well as continued his rape of her afterward. It’s possible that he enjoyed the kill and will kill the next time as well. So stay vigilant and… please tell the girls not to let any men in their dorms. Thank you.”

Aaron comes up to you, “Can I speak to you alone for a moment?”

You nod and follow him into a conference room and he closes the door behind you, “You’re really an incredible profiler, agent.”

Again with the ‘agent.’ “Thank you, sir.”

“I just wanted to assure you that I will remain nothing but professional around you from here on out.”

You tilted your head to the side and you knew the pain was evident on your face as you didn’t try to hide it, “I see.”

“You’re upset.”

You laugh, “Did you mean anything you said at the bar, Aaron, or were you just drunk?” You’re aware of how vulnerable you’re being in front of him now as you can hear the tears in your own voice.

You see him calculating what the best response is and this just infuriates you more, “Forget it, you’re just going to talk to me like some unsub, trying to best figure out what to say to calm me down.”

He shakes his head, “That’s not what I’m doing.”

You start to walk out and stop to stand next to him, “You just said yourself I’m an incredible profiler, so please don’t profile me and think I won’t notice.”

He closes his eyes as you continue walking out, “Y/N, wait.” Despite yourself, you do stop at the sound of your name. “I’m sorry, I-- I meant the things I said at the bar, I’m… But I’m your boss and I don’t want to make it difficult for you to do your job.”

You force a smile and look up at him, “Don’t worry, Hotch, won’t be a problem.”

And then you’re gone and he gets the feeling you won’t call him Aaron ever again.

***

Spencer walks in the entrance of the dorm you’ve been staking out, two coffees in hand. He hands one to you wordlessly, “Have you gotten any sleep?”

“Obviously not.” You sigh and happily guzzle the coffee, “Thanks.”

“Hotch is upset.”

“About what?” You murmur, half paying attention, half going over the case again on the papers in front of you.

“About you, obviously.”

You don’t look up, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. How do you even know Hotch is upset? He always looks like he’s pissed at something.”

“Because I’m a profiler. Everyone knows he’s off, no one will say to his face that it’s because of you.”

You sigh and look up at him, “Spencer, we’re fine, okay? We’re adults.” He’s quiet, but he won’t stop staring at you, “What?”

“I know that I’m… not the most perceptive when it comes to emotions, but… I think he’s in love with you. And I’m pretty sure you’re in love with him.”

You smirk, “And what makes you think that, Mr. Profiler?”

He smiles back, “Well, Hotch is always watching you, mostly when you’re not looking and when he does his expression sort of… softens. He almost always assigns the two of you together when giving the unit assignments, which I think is partially because he likes to be around you, but also because he’s trying to protect you, especially after that hostage situation a few months ago. He was a wreck when you were in there. Screaming at everyone, I really thought he would kill the unsub when he found him.”

“He would do that for any of us, when any of us were in danger.” You said, quickly shaking your head to dismiss the idea.

But Spencer shakes his head, “You didn’t see him. It was different.”

“Spencer, he barely gave me a pat on the back when I left that hostage situation alive.”

“That’s because he doesn’t trust himself around you. Why do you think the only time he’s ever given you a hint at the way he feels was when he was drunk?”

Your head is spinning as you look at Spencer, “No, that doesn’t make any sense--”

“It makes perfect sense and I know you know that.” Spencer’s phone rings, “Reid.” He sighs and lowers his head, “Where? Okay, we’ll be right there.” He hangs up the phone, “There’s another body.”

You sigh, “I really hate being right.”

***

“You were right,” Hotch says from behind you, “He’s discovered he likes killing.”

It was never easy looking at bodies, but somehow it was always worse when you had predicted it and still not been able to stop it, “How did he do it?”

“Manual strangulation.”

“Has anyone checked for skin or blood under her fingernails? Sign of a struggle?”

Aaron nods, “Already scraped off and sent to Garcia.”

“Even if she can’t find a match, we’ll be able to narrow down suspects by the injuries she left.”

“The school is panicking, they want to evacuate the campus.”

“If they evacuate we’ll never find him, he’ll just start again somewhere else.”

“That’s what I told them.”

You sigh, “Why are the girls still letting him in?”

“Maybe they’re not,” Hotch mused, “Maybe he’s starting to pick the girls from his classes now that we’re here.”

“The last two victims, do we have their schedules? Their majors?”

“They were both nursing majors,” Emily interjects, “Third year.”

You nod, “Okay, so by that point, third year, majority of their classes are restricted to nursing majors only.” You flip your phone open and dial Penelope.

“Hello my delightful fairy princess, what can I do for you?”

“Garcia, the last two victims, can you cross reference their class schedules and tell me if they had any classes in common?”

“Yes, just a second… Three classes in common.”

“Okay, cross reference with the remaining victims.”

“Um, okay, wow, all of them had two classes in common.”

“Shit.” You mutter, “Can you send over the class rosters of both those classes, but just the men. And also send pictures.”

“You got it.”

“Thanks, Penelope.”

You shake your head, “They were all nursing majors.” You say as you hang up, “How did we miss that?”

Reid was shaking his head, “We didn’t have a lot of time to interview the victims before the first body turned up.”

“Alright, we need everyone looking through those rosters, rounding up every male we can and interviewing them.” Hotch starts, “Y/N, you’re with me for interviews, the rest of you keep in touch with Garcia and find out anything you can.”

You try to ignore the shock you feel that he picked you this time, noting Reid’s raised eyebrows as he left the room. “You sure you want me on interviews?” You ask when you’re alone.

He’s looking at all the evidence on the corkboard, “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Wasn’t sure if you would want to work closely with me anymore.” You say, standing next to him now and also looking over the evidence.

He looks at you now, “You have the same features as a lot of the victims, I’m hoping it’ll get a rise out of our unsub if we find him.”

You nod, “Makes sense.”

“And,” He says pointedly until you meet his eyes, “As I’ve said already, you’re an excellent agent and I could use your help on this.”

You heave a big sigh, “Okay, how do you wanna play it?”

He shrugs, “I think you already know what role I need you to play.”

***

This is maybe the tenth or so interview you and Hotch had done with no success. You were tired of playing this role, especially in front of Hotch.

“Jordan.” You smile sweetly at him, making sure to lean over the table just a little to give him the view he wants, “Did you know either of these girls?” You lay the pictures of the last couple victims on the table, wait to see his reaction. He brings his hands up to rest on the table and you see the shallow scratch marks on them, you share a discreet look with Hotch who barely nods in acknowledgement.

He stares for far too long. Hotch notices his hands clench into fists. He’s excited by the bodies.

“Yeah, I knew them.” He’s still looking at the pictures, “They were in two of my classes.” He finally looks up and gazes at you hungrily, “You seem awful young to be an FBI agent.”

You smile again and then look away, a sign of submission. “Stop flirting with my agent.” Hotch says placing his palms abruptly on the table. Jordan doesn’t flinch at Hotch’s presence, not taking his eyes off you. He’s more confident than either of you anticipated. Was the profile wrong or is this the wrong guy? “How did you know the victims?”

“I just told you, from class.”

“Did you ever see them outside of class?”

He shrugs, “I don’t know, maybe, to do a project, not in a while though.”

“Jordan, do you know if either of the girls had a boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend?” He frowns, “Those two? No.” He practically scoffs.

You tilt your head to the side, “Why do you say it like that?”

“Those girls aren’t the boyfriend type. They’re whores.” There’s the bitterness in his voice.

You try to make your face as empathetic as possible, “What do you mean by that, Jordan?”

“Well, you know, they slept around… Wouldn’t give a nice guy like me a chance. You must know their type, you’re the FBI.”

You nod, “It must be so hard for a handsome, smart guy like you to get rejected. I can’t imagine why anyone would dream of missing out on that,” You shake your head, “Their loss.”

Hotch audibly scoffs and you watch Jordan glare at him. He’s getting angry. Good. “Hotch, why don’t you go get Jordan a water?”

Hotch blinks at you, trying to figure out if you had really just given him an order, “Agent, I am the lead interrogator on this case, I’m not leaving you alone in here--”

“Agent Hotchner,” You turn in your seat to face him, hoping he’ll read your expression, “Please get the young man a water, he’s been in here for hours.”

His eyes search your face for a few moments and then he leaves the room without another word. He won’t be getting Jordan a water. You know he’s watching carefully from the other side of the glass. “Sorry about him.” You say, “He doesn’t understand men like you.”

“Men like me?”

“Men who know how to get what they want.”

His face transforms as he watches you and he leans back in his chair, relaxed, legs spread to assert his dominance. “And you understand that?”

“There’s nothing sexier than a man who goes after what he wants… No matter what.”

He leans forward and whispers, “Even when they beg me to stop?”

You swallow past your disgust and, though you hate to admit it, fear, “Did they beg you to stop? Victoria and Erica?”

His smile widens as he watches you, “You remind me so much of them.”

“Can you tell me what you did to them? How you killed them?”

He licks his lips now, you think he’s lost all sense of where he is, falling for the delusion you’ve set in front of him, “You’re just like them, a dirty little slut. You want to be punished, don’t you?”

“Please.” Is the last word you whisper before he practically jumps across the table to grab your throat. Your chair falls backwards and he’s on top of you, crushing your windpipe. How could you forget that he was uncuffed? Hotch rushes in, he yells as he pulls Jordan off you, but you’re not sure what he’s saying. Then he’s cuffed Jordan and taken you out of the room.

“Sit.” Aaron says, ushering you to a chair that you practically fall into. You’re still coughing and you’re shaking a bit as Aaron gives you a water.

“I forgot,” You start, your voice hoarse, but Hotch brings the water cup to your mouth, insisting you drink before talking. You take a couple swallows, “I forgot he wasn’t cuffed.”

He shakes his head, “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have left you alone with him.”

“No, I needed you on the other side of the glass. He wouldn’t have fallen for the delusion otherwise. I needed him to forget who I was and just see me as a potential victim.” Aaron wouldn’t meet your eyes, not wanting to admit that you were right, “I’m going back in there.”

“No, you’re not, that’s out of the question.”

“Is that an order, sir?” He scans your face in frustration, “You know it has to be me. He won’t talk to you. I’ll be fine.”

He sighs and rubs a hand over his face, “Fine. Ask him about Erica, don’t ask about Victoria.”

“Why?”

“Because he didn’t kill Victoria himself, it’ll ruin the fantasy and he might lie to you to try to impress you. The details of the murders weren’t shared with the public, only the unsub would know how each of them died. He needs to reveal how he killed Erica to you and then we’ll have him.”

“Okay.” You stand and hold your hands behind you so he won’t see them shaking, but he’s a profiler. The attempt is mute.

He takes a step closer, “You don’t have to go back in there,” He says softly, “No one will think less of you.”

When he’s this close, looking at you with such concern, it makes you want to melt in his arms. But you had a job to do, “I can do this.”

And before he can make you think about it more, you turn away from him and march back in the interrogation room.

“Sorry about that,” You sit back down at the table and smile at him, “My partner gets a little jealous sometimes.” You lean in and whisper, “He’s usually the only one I let handle me like that.”

Just like that he’s back, “Why don’t you uncuff me so we can continue?”

You bite your lip, “I’d like to hear more about the other girls first.”

***

“Why is she in there by herself?” Rossi came up behind Aaron who was watching the unsub’s every move, ready to jump in again if needed.

“She insisted.” Hotch says simply, “She almost has him.”

Rossi sighs, “She’s stubborn. Like someone else I know.”

Hotch is quiet for a moment, “I can’t be with her, Rossi, it could ruin her career.”

“You can’t know that. And besides, don’t you think that should be her decision to make?”

Hotch doesn’t answer, he just continues watching you.

***

“Does it turn you on hearing what I’ve done to them?”

You’re sitting on your hands now, trying to stifle the growing panic in your head that was telling you to get out. He’s unarmed, he’s cuffed, Aaron is right there. He can’t hurt you. “You have no idea.” It came out breathless from your fear, but he interpreted it as desire.

“First, I knocked her out, tied her to the bed. Then I waited for her to wake up before I began. I stripped her clothes off her at that point and then I fucked her while she cried,” He’s smiling at you and you’re doing all you can to keep your expression neutral. “I took out the knife and started carving her up. You should have heard her beg. And then, when that’s all finished, I strangled her while I came inside her.” He leans over the table to get closer to you, and it takes everything in you not to move away, “Have you ever watched the light leave someone’s eyes, sweetheart?”

You calmly scoot your chair back and stand, buttoning your shirt back up and then resting your hand on your gun, reminding him of who you really are, “Thank you, Jordan. You’ve been incredibly helpful in this investigation.” And then turn to leave ignoring the way he calls after you.

When you exit the room, Aaron and Dave are both waiting for you and you sit down, exhausted, resting your head in your hands.

“Nice work, kid.” Dave says with a squeeze on your shoulder, and then he’s gone.

Then, there’s another touch on your back, more gentle and hesitant. You look up to see Aaron watching you, concern masking his face, “I’m fine, Hotch.” You say, shrugging him off.

His hand drops and you immediately regret it. “When you were taken those months ago, by that unsub…” His words are slow, as if making sure this is what he really wants to say to you. You know exactly what he’s going to say before he says it, “He raped you, didn’t he?” Your eyes snap up to meet his. “You would never tell us what actually happened, all those hours he had you, a sexual sadist.” He shakes his head, “There’s no way he would’ve been able to control himself.”

You shake your head just lightly, “I can’t do this now, Aaron.”

“Then when?” He’s frustrated now, borderline angry, “You lied at your psych eval, you said nothing happened, we let you come back after just a couple of weeks--”

“And I’m doing just fine, aren’t I?” You stand so you’re nearly eye level with him.

“You think I didn’t notice the way you almost fell apart in there?”

“But I didn’t. I finished it and I did a damn good job and you know it.”

Hotch erases all traces of emotion from his face as he stares you down, “You’re suspended for two weeks, effective immediately. Hand over your badge and gun, agent.”

You nearly stumble back from him as if you’ve been hit, “Aaron?”

“What’s going on?” Prentiss has entered the room now followed by the rest of the team, all watching with confused and worried expressions.

“You heard me.” Hotch says, never taking his eyes off you. You make no moves to take out your badge or gun, “Now, agent.” There’s bite to his words this time.

You feel humiliated. With the whole team watching, you place your gun and badge on the table and brush by Aaron without a second glance. Pushing past the team, even Spencer who reaches for you.

“What the hell was that, Hotch?” Derek says once you’ve left.

“She lied in order to pass her psych eval. I did what I had to do.” Everyone’s staring at him, but he walks by, seemingly unphased, “Good work, everyone. Get some rest, we go home tomorrow at first light.”

[shurisneakers]

shut in [8]

Summary: When your high profile mission goes terribly wrong, you’re forced to hide in a safehouse with a man you’ve never met before. With seemingly nowhere else to go, you’re forced to work together to figure out who is trying to have you assassinated before it’s too late. (Sam Wilson x Reader, Hitman AU)

Warnings: cursing, implied abuse, death, implied ptsd, injuries, guns, anxiety

Word count: 4.2k

A/N: oh my god oh my god sam stans how are we feeling djkghdfjkhgdf. no thoughts only sam wilson in ep1 of tfatws <333

i also appreciate feedback so if you would like to, please consider dropping me an ask or comment ly guys!! 

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Shut In Masterlist

“Hey, I’m just going to step out for today.” You looked up from the doodle you were making on the corner of the paper. “Catch you later? Just find me if you need anything.”

“You okay?” You automatically sat up straighter, blanket creasing under you. Something was amiss in his body language.

“Yeah, just-” He seemed like he was struggling for words. “-Brooklyn.”

You didn’t get what he was making a reference to until it suddenly dawned on you.

It was the codeword he had suggested right at the beginning of your time in the house. If he was in danger you were sure he’d tell you, at least an inkling of information.

But no, this was for some time alone, further confirmed by the distant look in his eyes.

“Oh.” You blinked. “Take all the time you need. I’ll be here if you need.”

He gave you a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, turning around and leaving the room.

You were left staring after him, the drawing you were making of the house layout discarded on the bed. You were working on strategies, vantage points- anything that could help in case something went wrong.

Was it because of the dumb ‘moment’ you had shared two days ago? It didn’t seem like it because he hadn’t brought it up at all and God knows you would never. Was it something else that had happened, something you did?

Stop overthinking. He probably just needs a day to himself.

You had spent almost a month in each other’s company and he had never once complained. He had a tendency to be petty about minor inconveniences, like you trying to watch a movie when his favourite segment on the local news channel was going on. He liked the cooking show they hosted.

He had never made it a point to specifically tell you that he needed some time to himself, much less use the word.  

“Get yourself together,” you whispered to yourself, shaking off the nagging feeling you had.

If he had an issue, he would have voiced it. He never shied away from doing that before and you knew he wouldn’t start now.

You forced yourself to think about something else, grabbing the copy of American Gods you had already gone over once before but were subjecting to a reread. Opening the page you had last left it at, you were determined to distract yourself.

Nearly twenty minutes later and exactly zero pages since you had started, you realised that no matter how much you forced yourself to get into it, you went over the same line over and over again, not a single word registering in your head.

“Motherfucker,” you groaned, letting the book fall on your face. You took a long look outside the window, mind drifting.

It was a nice day out. Maybe some sun would help.

You lifted your legs off the bed, taking your book with you to the kitchen. You could get a nice sandwich-- the same as the last three fuckin’ weeks but you digressed-- a glass of water, and you could sit outside for a while. A mini picnic.

You opened a new packet of sliced bread, taking two out before stopping. You pondered over whether you should make him a sandwich for when he returned, knowing that he didn’t eat lunch before he left.

You thought about it for a good minute before rolling your eyes, pulling out two additional slices to make him one as well. It was just a sandwich. It wasn’t a big deal.

Tucking your book under your arm, you carried your lunch and a glass of water to the patio around the back.

The wind rustled the leaves and the sun wasn’t harsh. The low buzz of insects was the only sound that kept you company.

The air was crisp and you instantly felt better than you had all day in the room.

Setting your stuff down on the bench, you sat down, inhaling deeply.

The book suddenly didn’t seem so impossible to complete as you tried once more, slipping into the pages easily. Even after you finished your food, you continued to lounge about there, too engrossed and content to move.

You didn’t notice the afternoon go by, evening coming and going just as swiftly. You swatted at the occasional fly but nothing else bothered you.

It felt like summer break. At least what you thought it would feel like. You never had one, being homeschooled about things from various people in the organization. There wasn’t a singular, long break. You were just forced to adapt.

You didn't know how to deal with the suffocating realisation of knowing there were so many things you missed out on. It grew the longer you spent time away. You just shoved it away, forcing yourself to deal with it another day.

He comes back when the sky is slipping into shades of orange, a backpack on his shoulder. There was a patch of sweat around his neck and his head was hung low as he walked.

“Hey,” you hoped it didn't look like you were waiting for him. It could easily be taken as you camping out there, waiting for your husband to return from a hard day in the fields.

Sam looked up at your greeting. You noted that the bruise on his nose was starting to change colour but the swelling had reduced from how bad it used to be.

“Left you a sandwich on the counter if you’re hungry,” you added. He nodded in acknowledgement, making his way up the stairs and into the house without another word.

You let out an exhale, feeling a little better knowing that he was at least back in one piece. No reason to believe otherwise other than the anxiety you had developed over imagining the worst case scenarios.

You picked up your book again, intending to finish off the last bit before you went back inside for the day.

About half an hour later Sam re-emerged from the house, your attention snapping to him as the door opened and shut. He had changed into a new pair of clothes, looking a little cleaner like he was fresh outta the shower. He had a sandwich in his hand that he had already taken a few bites out of. You wondered if it was the one you left for him.

You didn’t expect him to take a seat next to you on the bench. He didn’t look at you or open his mouth to talk so you followed suit. You continued reading, or at least tried to, as he just sat there, finishing his sandwich without any kind of other interaction.

There was a strange tension he wasn’t addressing. He instead leaned back, arms crossed behind his neck to support his neck and closed his eyes. His foot tapped against the wooden floor and rather than getting annoyed, you found solace in the repetition.

“They recruited me on this day,” Sam said to no one in particular. His eyes were still closed and his feet still tapped against the ground. “Parents died when I was a kid, I got shifted around orphanages and homes a lot. Finally Ransone had someone pick me up.”

You closed your book softly, setting it down beside you. That’s what was bothering him.

Secret adoption is what they called it officially in the business, but around the organization it was just known as the recruitment process. Every record of Sam being alive would have been destroyed to maintain anonymity.

To the world he just… disappeared.

It was a day that clearly brought with it so much pain. You were too young to remember when you joined, and no one had kept track either. You supposed it was for the good.

It was supposed to be a happy day, one filled with new beginnings. Maybe that’s what he would have thought when he got picked. It’s what you did.

“I’m sorry,” you said, not having anything else to offer. You relieved your memories everyday in your head. Having a morbid anniversary of sorts would no doubt drain the life out of you; remembering one singular day that would trigger the rest of the decisions you made in your life.

He didn’t say anything in return. You turned your attention to the sky, finding it easier to look at that than the disturbed look on his face.

“Do you regret this?” he asked out of the blue.

“All of it,” you replied, without skipping a beat.

“Every single one, huh?” Sam’s one eye opened to peer at you.

“It wasn’t up to me to take someone’s life away.” You were just a child. You knew nothing other than what you were taught; so then why was it so fucking hard to forgive your past self for straying into this. “Even once I realised that I couldn’t leave.”

You didn’t form any relationships while you worked with Ransone. Whoever you did allow yourself to care for ended up dead or worse, sometimes as a cruel lesson to not make friends in the organization you worked in because all they served as were distractions and liabilities. Others were plain scum; people who you knew were using you but you didn’t care. The loneliness hurt worse.

“What about you?”

“I’d give anything to go back and change things,” he admitted. He didn’t have a say either. It didn’t make things easier.

“You regret all of ‘em too?”

“Mostly,” he said. “One of them I don’t.”

“That one must have deserved it then,” you deduced. It was the only logical explanation you could think of; the worst of the worst.

“Nah. I let him go.”

It took a while to register what he said.

“What?” You twisted your body to look at him.

“First mission I ever did.”

His hands were shaking lightly, barely holding on to the gun. This wasn’t what he was taught. Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.

He had already managed to get his way into the house through the back. His partner had taken care of most of it and Sam only had to knock people out. He hadn’t had to kill anyone yet.

But now his partner was injured outside the door. Quick shot to the leg, a punch in the face and he was out cold. Sam was already in the master bedroom by the time it happened. He had no idea about where his partner was, only the crippling fear of being left alone and the nerves from the threat posed to him if this didn’t go right.

He knew he didn’t have enough time. He had only a few minutes to kill him and get out of there before his family returned.

The man itself was sitting at the study table, his back towards Sam. Just pull the trigger and get out of here. It was deadly silent.

“I know you’re here to kill me,” the man said suddenly. Sam nearly jumped but instead tightened the grip on the gun.

“Stay where you are.” He sounded confident.

“I’m not planning on going anywhere.” His chair swiveled around, letting him face Sam. His hair was white with a beard that matched. He was dressed down in his pajamas, a robe covering him. He didn’t look nervous.

“Stop talking.”

“You’re younger than what I expected,” the man observed, not paying heed to what Sam was in. He was a considerable distance away. “You’re not even legal yet, are you? I got kids, I would know.”

Sam didn’t say a word, only lifted his gun up to align with his forehead. “I said, stop talking.”

“I’ve made mistakes. Several, actually,” he mused, “It’s why your boss sent you here. I’ve accepted my fate.”

“Then it should be easy.”

“Oh, it never is,” the man chuckled. “It doesn’t get lighter. You learn to ignore it but it’ll weigh on you for the rest of your life.”

Sam’s jaw clenched. It would get easier. It had to.

“I doubt that’s what you heard, however,” he continued. “Ransone’s a bit… unstable. It’s in his blood, but you- you don’t look like you could live with it.”

Ransone’s history was well known enough that rival gang leaders knew it too, apparently. The man would have been delighted at his infamous reputation.

Just shoot him. Just shoot him and end this.

“What’s your name?” the man asked, taking a sip from the tumbler he had in his hand. “You’re going to be the last person I talk to. It’d be nice to have a name.”

“Sam,” he whispered, inwardly cursing himself.

“Sam. That’s a strong name,” the man said, clicking the roof of his mouth with his tongue. “Are you sure this is what you want to do, Sam?”

It wasn’t.

“I don’t have a choice.” He hated how defeated he sounded. It was a weakness.

“They want you to believe that. It takes away your freedom. I would know, I’ve used it.” The man smiled, setting down his glass. “I’ll tell you this though, Sam. You always have a choice.”

“Stop talking, man.” Sam pulled the safety off.

“Once you go down this way, there’s no way you can escape. Someone will always have to die; either him or you.”

“That’s not true.” He could leave at any time. He just needed-

“You’ll see for yourself.” The man leaned back on his chair, resigned. “But for now, go ahead. I’ll make it easy for you.”

He simply closed his eyes and sat back.

You waited for Sam to continue.

“Couldn’t do it,” he said, shaking his head lightly. “Son of a bitch got in my head and I knew what he was doing too. Told him to get the fuck out before my partner shot him in the face.”

“Does Ransone know?” You were still reeling from the incident he recounted. You didn't know what else to say.

“Holds it over me every damn day,” he scoffed. “Some fucked up way of saying that I owe him one.”

To be frank, you were surprised Sam was still alive to tell you. Everyone knew that Ransone forgiven the first mistake someone made, but this was huge. If it were anyone else, he would have had someone try out a hundred different ways to push Sam to the brink of death and back; having him begging for the release that death would bring.

“He hasn’t ever cashed in that favour?”

“He did. Had me take out the leader of the Ten Rings after that.”

“So then why did you still continue?”

“I did something extremely dangerous a couple of years ago that he found out about recently. Used that to get me to come for this mission.”

He didn’t elaborate what he meant and you didn’t ask him to. You supposed it was a story for another day. This was heavy enough.

“He wants to get rid of me as much as I want to get away from him, trust me. We’re the weird, toxic relationship those self-help Instagram pages warned you about.” Trust Sam to make a dumb joke during a conversation like this. “Probably the only time someone from the gang let their target go and not died.”

That wasn’t as true as he thought he was but you didn’t want to seem like you were one-upping him. You didn’t want him to think you were making this about you.

“You remember the big break you were talking about?” you tread carefully, gauging his reaction before you continued. “The one that pushed me up the ranks or whatever.”

He gave a small hum of acknowledgement, bringing his hands from behind his head to fold across his chest.

“Similar story, ‘cept Ransone doesn’t know.”

“What?” His eyes shot open. “How?”

“I was so tired of him treating me like a child. Everyone around who joined after me was out there doinghardcore missions and I was stuck with petty shit.” You didn’t know any better. You wished you had. “So he told me if I made it through this one, he’d send me on more.”

This wasn’t your first mission. You had handled hits before, mostly in the shadows, from a distance.

This was different. It was broad daylight, waiting behind a wall near the gated entrance of the house for a car to pull up.

A challenge, Ransone had posed, with strict instructions to do it in broad daylight. If you got out of this undetected, he’d consider sending you on more sophisticated missions.

“Highly stealthy. They’re dangerous,” you were warned. “You won’t know what hit you if you’re caught off your game.”

The low rumble of the car outside the gate alerted you of your target’s arrival. The gates weren’t going to open, the guards were dead.

The car stopped, waiting for the path to open up. When it didn’t the car’s engine slowed to a stop. The man in the driver’s seat got out to open the gate, giving you a clear shot.

You took a deep breath, clenching your eyes shut for a second before taking aim.

The body hit the gravel and you quickly made your way to the car. You could see the woman in the backseat gaping at where the man was standing a few seconds ago. She was struggling against the door, trying to escape.

She finally succeeded, the door opening suddenly as she stumbled over herself trying to get out.

“Stay there,” you commanded. She slowly looked up at you, face white as a sheet.

“Please,” she croaked. “Don’t hurt us.”

“I’m sorry.” You truly were.

Her face changed, dropping the facade immediately. She just looked on in acceptance, not making an effort to move. Manipulative. She almost had you convinced

You held the gun over her, pulling the trigger. A single shot. Her body slumped over.

You stared at her in silence, expressionless. You let out an exhale, tucking the gun back into the waist of your pants, stepping over her body to leave.

A small, staggering breath made you stop in your tracks. It was so slight you barely heard it. You took a step back, trying to trace where it came from.

You ducked your head to peer into the car, your heart stopping. Your hand instinctively reached for your weapon.

“What the-” you muttered, facing a boy who looked only a few years younger than you. He was staring straight ahead, muscles in his jaw tight.

The son wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be abroad, according to the case file. Unless there were two of them you didn’t know about, this boy wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Listen,” you began, but he didn’t look at you. Just stared straight ahead, body trembling. He was scared. He didn’t show it.

“Show no mercy,” Ransone’s voice rang in your head.

“He’s a child,” you murmured to yourself. Your gun felt heavy in your hand.

Show no mercy.

You could only imagine what would be in store for you if you returned to Ransone with some tale of sympathy. This boy was only a few years younger than you. He didn’t have anything to do with this.

Show no mercy.

“Kid,” you called out. He slowly turned his head. “Go on. Get out of here.”

“What?” he asked, voice hoarse.

“Leave. You can’t be seen if someone comes back,” you urged. “I won’t be able to help you.”

“You killed my mom,” he jeered, unmoving.

“I’m sorry. I had to.” Your voice was quiet. Your hand clutched at the hood of the car to keep your balance. “But I don’t want to hurt you. Go.”

When he didn’t shift, you slammed the hood of the car, scaring him enough to pull at the door and stagger out of the car.

You turned your back to him, not waiting to see where he was going. The more deniability you had, the better.

“Did he make it?”

“He did,” you divulged the information you had found out a while ago. It was a messy confrontation to say the least but you got out unscathed.

“And Ransone doesn’t know.”

“There’s no record of this kid. He thinks he was at boarding school.” You shrugged. “Wasn’t going to correct him either.”

“If he did find out-” Sam trailed off.

“I’d be dead,” you concluded. “Being his favourite wouldn’t matter.”

“Why was it such a big deal, this mission?”

“She was a part of a major gang that Ransone was losing to.”

Sam just nodded knowingly, looking ahead again. You knew he’d done missions like this as well. Things like this were common so it didn’t need further elaboration.

“This job sucks,” he let out.

You gave a short laugh. That was an understatement.

“I want out. Can’t keep doin’ this for much longer,” he continued, however, to your surprise. “Don’t wanna keep doin’ this.”

You bit your lip, eyebrows knitted in concern. “You will.”

“How?” You hadn’t seen him like this before, this hint of desperation in his tone that left as quickly as it came. “I’ve tried, everything just comes up short.”

“I’ll help you.” You wanted to, God you did.

“You gonna kill him for me?” He looked at you. “‘Cause that’s really the only way out of this.”

If you were pushed to the limit, if he was on his knees in front of you and there was a gun in your hand pointed at him; would you be able to pull the trigger? Would you be able to kill the only constant you’d had for more than half your life?

“I can’t,” you muttered, dejection making its way into your thoughts.

“I know,” Sam said softly, “I wouldn’t ask you to either.”

You took a moment to observe him. The sun did him good. There was a soft glow to his skin, the colours of the sunset dancing in his dark eyes. Laugh lines were becoming more prominent around them, only adding to its charm.

He was a good man. He deserved better.

“I’ll find a way,” you sounded determined, “I promise.”

You didn’t say that very often. Your word didn’t mean a lot to people in the business, but it seemed to, to him.

“Thank you.” He appeared taken aback but didn’t show it in his words.

You simply sent him a smile, a reassurance. You knew what you had to do, just weren’t sure how.

He was right. There wasn’t a way out of it other than the one he proposed, but it wasn’t an option. You had to find another.

You would. You’d figure it out.

“It’s Cinnamon, by the way,” he said without any context.

You looked at him in question.

“My embarrassing nickname.” This was not where you saw the conversation heading but you were delighted all of a sudden. “My ma used to call me that all the damn time. Mortifying.”

“Cinnamon and Buttercup.” You didn’t bother hiding the grin that spread across your face. “World’s best assassins.”

“If that name ever leaves this conversation, I’ll know who to murder.”

“You couldn’t even if you tried,” you said playfully, nudging his shoulder.

He shrugged, face relaxed. “T’was worth a shot.”

An unintentional pun you snickered at. You didn’t tease him any further, just filed the name away as a memory. Maybe you’d use it later.

“Have you ever let anyone go after that?” You didn’t want to keep coming back to this conversation but you liked having someone to relate to.

“No.” Sam shook his head. “Didn’t want to test my luck.”

“Me too.” One had been enough. You lived in fear for so long, waiting for someone to pull the plug and tell him what you’d done. That fear only grew everyday, finding a place at the deepest corner of your mind to fester.

“It’s what I meant when I said Serpentine had a motive to want me dead,” Sam said, piquing your interest once more.

“Huh?”

“The man I was supposed to kill- he was their old head. He disappeared after that and no one heard from him but it pissed off everyone, right from Ransone to their stupid gang’s janitor,” he explained, your eyes going wide with every word. “So the irony is, if we’re right, I might have led us into this situation. They’re looking for revenge.”

“Holy shit,” you uttered under your breath.

“I just assumed he died of old age if someone didn’t get to him first. He looked like he was one birthday away from the grave anyway.”

“How are you still alive, Sam?” you asked in wonder.

“I’d do it again.” He laughed, a deep one from his stomach.

He was reckless, clearly. Happily and unashamedly so. And if you continued to hang out with him after this was over, he’d probably get you killed in some stunt or two.

But maybe you’d deal with that if the time came. 

He leaned back again, this time no creases on his forehead from stress. He looked at peace.

You sat together in silence. You occasionally stole glances at him as the sun set in front of you, a small smile on your face.

You leaned your head on his shoulder tentatively. You could feel him tilt his head to look at you and you prepared to have him ask you to move.

It never came. Instead, he scooted closer to you, letting you rest against him more comfortably. Your heart skipped a beat; barely but surely. 

A realisation quickly hit you, suddenly before consuming you. Your stomach sank.  

“Fuck.”

Next part

[lepusrufus]

To bargain for immortality pt.5

Another few good weeks passed before they heard from their so-called goddess, gone who knows where. Not that anyone would ever question her absences, even the lords knew better than to stick their noses in her business.

When Nicole found herself once again following Emma through blue-lit underground corridors, there was an odd determination in her strides. She wanted to figure out what the hell was going on with her and Miranda, if nothing else, was a scientist who above all loved solving an equation. And what else could her situation be described as if not an intricate equation with a bit fat X as her missing factor.

She was right in thinking that Miranda would find her issue of interest, as when she finally brought it up the woman furrowed her brows and turned to face her, a clipboard grabbed from a nearby table.

“And there was nobody else?”

“No. Just me, Cassandra, the pharmacist and some guy that came for his medicine,” Nicole answered with a barely contained huff.

“What for?” Miranda tapped her pen against the paper in anticipation, a clear sign that she may be onto something and was only putting together some puzzle pieces that nobody but her could see.

Nicole had to dig through her memories for a moment. “An infection. At least that’s what the pharmacist mentioned.”

Miranda hummed and scribbled something else. There was no point in trying to decipher what exactly, the woman had the handwriting of two drunk doctors put together. How very fitting for her.

Without another word, she was on her feet, unbuttoned lab coat flowing after her the same way her black robes did when in goddess mode. “Follow me. I want to test something.”

And what else was she supposed to do really?

Quick steps took them down the hallways, black stone walls surrounding them and taking on an odd shine under the unnatural neon lights above. At least Nicole didn’t have to jog for once, Miranda not being that much taller than her.

The journey was short and they reached their destination quickly, which seemed to be a door not unlike the one belonging to the lab they had just vacated, except this one had the number 24 engraved on a small plaque on it. Miranda pushed it open to reveal a small hospital looking room, four beds divided by grey curtains but only one seemed to be occupied, a sleeping woman hooked to a heart monitor whose rhythmic beeping caused some memories to resurface in Nicole's mind.

Those memories however were quickly pushed down by a sudden burst of nausea at the decaying smell that seemed to forcefully crawl its way down her throat. Nicole all but slapped a hand to her face and turned around in a pathetic attempt to block out the overwhelming sensation. Some blood also started to trickle down her face and past trembling fingers, although thankfully not an ungodly amount like before.

By some mercy of well… herself, Miranda didn't stop her when she decided to do a wobbly turn and hastily exit the room. She followed Nicole out and observed as she slumped against a wall, pulling a tissue from a pocket to wipe at her face.

"What… the fuck," Nicole breathed out.

"Was that the same as before?" Miranda's eyes were full of a weird kind of glee that could only belong to a mad scientist. Not that that would be an inaccurate description for the woman.

Nicole only nodded, trying to get her face on a more presentable level before speaking again. "Is she-..."

Miranda scoffed. "Are you deaf? I can assure you the woman is quite alive," she responded with an eye roll.

The soft beeping monitoring the heartbeat could be heard faintly from behind the closed door, so her words had to hold some truth to them. Though her intentions were still shrouded in mystery.

"Then why the hell does she smell like that?"

"She doesn't," came the nonchalant reply and it had Nicole almost seething.

Is your ego stuffed up your nose, is what she wished she could snap and say, but she knew better.

If Miranda noticed the daggers in her eyes, she paid them no mind. Instead she noted something down on the paper precariously attached to the clipboard she got a hold of before exiting the lab they had been in previously. When she finished, she simply motioned for Nicole to follow and continued further down the hallway, without a second glance.

She only stopped once to exchange a few words with an unfamiliar assistant on the whereabouts of certain patients. Patiens. Why would Miranda keep any sort of patients down there?

Before she had time to dwell on it, Miranda pushed another door open, this time leading to another corridor dimly lit by strategically placed torches. Apparently nobody bothered to get electricity to this particular part of the underground maze of tunnels, the warm light so pleasant on the eyes as opposed to the harsh neons of the previous area. The tunnel was also long, way too long for it to be an often used path, especially given how awfully humid the air was becoming. Nicole tried to take a mental note of where they were heading, squinting her eyes in an effort to imagine what was above them, but with how convoluted the tunnels down there were, it was fruitless.

After maybe fifteen minutes of walking, awkward silence -at least awkward on her part, Miranda didn't seem to care- only broken by the echo of steps and the soft sounds of crackling fire from the torches, the tunnel ended in what looked to be a far too modern stairwell. Nicole had to pause for a second, looking at the unnerving contrast where dark ancient stone gave way suddenly to gray concrete and steel, going up in sharp angles and blocking the view to whatever laid above. The overall architecture did look vaguely familiar though, but Miranda didn't seem to have the patience for sightseeing as she quickly started walking up the stairs.

At the top of the staircase stood a steel door that was quickly unlocked to finally reveal a place that Nicole recognized. She blinked rapidly in surprise, all but freezing in the doorway at the sight of the hospital corridor she had walked down on so many times before, complete with a handful of nurses discussing in a corner. She shook her head and slowly followed the woman, not wanting to remain behind. It didn't take long before they came across the one person Miranda was apparently searching for.

"M- Mother Miranda," Salvatore's voice came in an oddly high pitch, at least for him, when he almost crashed with her in his hurry to get somewhere.

"Moreau," Miranda greeted with a nod and unreadable expression. "I need the documents on each of your patients and where they're staying." Straight to business apparently.

He simply nodded and moved his attention to one of the nurses standing nearby, instructing him to finish whatever task he was supposed to before their arrival. The man moved rigidly, painfully aware of Miranda's presence. Then, Moreau led them to his office, starting to pull out a consistent number of files from a large bookcase.

His office was, unsurprisingly, a mess aside from the one place he held the documents keeping track of all his current patients, complete with a few books and office supplies haphazardly placed on the desk. A few spare white coats were hanging just by the door, together with a long and worn leather jacket that he often times wore when outside the building. A familiar string of bones was also peeking from one of its pockets, nowadays worn as a necklace since, after the effects of his mutation were lessened, he found the crown quite unsightly.

"Are you coming by anytime soon," his voice came from behind, snapping her out of her exploration. "We could use a hand sometimes."

Nicole turned to give him a polite smile. "I may, but I have some things to get out of the way for now."

A glance in Miranda's direction revealed the woman hunched over the documents on the desk, writing down a list with the aid of whatever she was reading. They could do some small talk for the time being.

"How have you been," Nicole asked, turning to him again.

She and Salvatore were on quite friendly terms ever since she started occasionally helping out in the hospital that he was in charge of. Not that they had much time to ever hang out, but the few times they did, it's always been a pleasant interaction among colleagues.

"Some days are better than others," he responded with half a shrug.

Judging by the deep purplish circles under his eyes, today wasn't particularly stellar. He was slightly hunched, whether it was out of habit from a time when sitting straight was quite impossible or from tiredness, she couldn't tell.

"Any news from the castle?" He asked with a chuckle. He was rarely welcomed in Alcina's home so the curiosity wasn't unwarranted.

Nicole shrugged. "Same old same old. Bleeding out prisoners, stopping Daniela from breaking vases and all that boring pseudo nobility stuff."

He let out a quiet laugh. "Nobility? Should I start calling you my lady?"

Nicole snorthed, giving his shoulder a small shove that didn't make him move in the slightest.

Their joking banter was interrupted by Miranda all but shoving her way in between them and out the door, calling for her to follow. With a small wave, Nicole was quickly after her, falling in step just slightly behind the other woman. Though it was a small building after all, so it didn't take long to reach the first door on Miranda's list.

"I want you to tell me exactly what you feel," she flatly told Nicole while pushing the door open.

She frowned, eyes slightly narrowed in confusion and glued to Miranda's back as she stepped inside the small room after the woman.

Any incredulous question died on her tongue when she seemed to be yanked back in time, to the yearly family trips her father insisted they all go on. It was to a relative, or family friend, Nicole couldn't quite recall, who owned an old cabin near a lake. Problem was, the lake was always murky and full of algae, the water gaining an unpleasant scent under the August sun. She and Alex never tried swimming.

"Well?" Mirada raised an eyebrow, impatient.

Nicole scrunched up her nose, both wanting and desperately trying not to take a deeper breath. "Pond water? The kind of water that's stagnant and muddy in summer, full of dead fish and weeds."

She tried not to fidget, her mind running a thousand miles an hour. The so-called goddess seeming completely uninterested in shedding light on what the hell they were doing was not of much help either. A frustrated sigh threatened to escape when another person spoke up.

"Doctor?" A meek voice came from the only bed in the room, from a young woman who seemed asleep when they had walked in. She looked between the two of them confused and with squinted eyes.

Miranda simply raised a hand, not even sparing the girl a glance. "Pay us no mind, we're only here to check on something. We'll be on our way in a moment."

Nicole couldn't help the confused look she threw the girl's way. Was she not recognizing the woman this whole town worshipped? An amused snort almost escaped her but she knew better. Besides, who could really blame her? Mirada was wearing an oversized lab coat, blonde hair held back in a ponytail and there was no trace of the makeup that usually accompanied her ceremonial robes and mask.

Not that Nicole had time to appreciate the odd humanity of Miranda's outfit, as the woman turned on her heels and exited the room as soon as she was done writing. She was starting to grow annoyed with the uncooperative and know-it-all attitude, but decided against voicing any opinions and settled for following along to the next door.

It kept on being a rinse and repeat of the first room, only variables being the patients inside and her answers. Sometimes the change wasn't too obvious, maybe just a more metallic undertone or a new faint smell latching onto her senses, like the sickly sweet aroma of honey. A handful of times though she had to all but slap a hand over her face to not be overwhelmed by the enveloping stench. One room in particular made her almost stumbled backwards and out the door, when a strong metallic smell contrasting the accompanying one of decomposition hit her like a slap in the face. The man inside, who was evidently not doing particularly well, didn't seem appreciative of the apparently crazy woman coming in and rudely interrupting his rest.

Nicole didn't look forward to lingering around by that point, but there was one more room to check.

They pushed open the door, and the familiar stinging scent of decay immediately overtook her senses, seeming to latch on to the very inside of her throat. A small rivulet of blood also started dripping down her face, and Nicole quickly pulled out a paper tissue from her pants pocket to press against her nostrils. It was both to stop the bleeding and to shield her senses from the smell.

Once outside, Nicole was trying to catch her breath while Miranda was simply writing something down. Another set of steps approached them, who turned out to be Moreau coming to check on their findings. Upon being given the clipboard to read -he could actually decipher her chicken scratch, really?- he let out a curious hum.

"I need to go over John Abbott's file and compare them," Miranda started, clicking her pen and putting it back into her pocket. "I'll send an assistant after it later." Then she looked her way and waved a hand dismissively. "You're free to go, I'll send Emma after you when you're needed."

Nicole blinked, dumbfounded, her voice coming out harsher than she probably should've allowed it to be. "That's all? What did you find?"

The exasperated edge in her voice did not go unnoticed nor was it appreciated. Miranda rolled her eyes slightly and gave her an answer. "You can distinguish illnesses by smell. We'll do a more comprehensive test and list, but for now we have enough to say that's how the Mold manifested with you," Miranda explained, half turned away and ready to leave.

And she did turn to leave as soon as she was finished. With a nod towards Salvatore, she made her way back down the hospital corridor and presumably towards the passageway that led back to her lab.

Nicole wasn't particularly keen on going down there again if she could help it, so she instead stuck by Salvatore's side as they walked back to his office.

That day wasn't the first time Nicole had entered that room, so the fact that it also served as some kind of archive did not go past her. The office itself was decently sized, and even had a storage room attached to it with the sole purpose of keeping old files that may be important but Miranda didn't need at hand. Although, in all honesty, Salvatore wasn't particularly skilled in keeping everything organized. That's what my secretary is for, he would say, ignoring the fact that Miranda would gut anyone who touched those documents if they weren't part of the small group of people she deemed worthy. Therefore, the files were a mess, the only saving grace being that he at least had the foresight of organizing them by decade.

With a sigh, he started looking through the binders all but stuffed on one of the many shelves. Nicole sat down at his desk, occupying herself with a crayon that she started twisting around her fingers absent mindedly. There was some semblance of relief in finally figuring out what had so cruelly changed in her body, and what an ironic twist of fate said change was. To have spent years pouring over books learning about the illnesses that now were recognizable by something as simple as an acidic smell of blood. On the other hand though, the knowledge that Miranda had a tendency to find some kind of use for all her experiments left a sensation of dread slowly making its way into the deepest crannies of her chest, where a certain parasite had burrowed and made a nest for itself.

"Mind if I call the castle, I don't really feel like walking all the way back," she asked, eyes settling on the phone pushed to the side by a couple books and scattered pens.

"Sure," he responded without moving from where he was pulling out papers, only to shove them back inside their folders when they weren't the correct ones.

Her hands hovered over the keys for a moment. She wasn't about to call Alcina's personal phone to ask for a ride, heavens no. The phone in Carolina's study, where the Constable would spend her time when not in the stables, would be the best choice if only she could remember the number from memory. Nicole decided that the one in the main hall was the best next thing, where one of the guards at the entrance would probably hear the ringing and answer.

She dialed the number and listened to the typical ringing sound once, twice, until she thought nobody was actually around, but at last, a voice came from the other end.

"Alo?"

Nicole took a moment to recognize the voice as Dalia's, the head chambermaid.

"Hey, it's Nicole," she started toying with the pencil again. "I'm at the hospital, can you send Carolina with a horse to pick me up?" She sensed the slight hesitation on the other woman's side and thought to clarify. "I'm not injured, just with Moreau."

She heard a slight exhale from the other end of the line and had to entertain the thought of whether the woman was relieved due to genuine concern for her wellbeing, or she was well aware of how irritable her wife could be. Her being injured definitely made its way on the list of things that would bring out the anger and cruelty carefully crafted over almost a century.

Before hanging up the phone, she sighed and thought better of her request. "Actually, tell Cassandra to come."

She could almost feel the slight grimace from Dalia at being asked to go talk to the most sadist of the sisters, and with a request no less. Oh well, there's to hoping that Cassandra wouldn't be too peeved at said request coming from her wife.

She hung up after hearing an of course, my lady.

With a way to get back home without having to do the trek on foot assured, she leaned back in the chair, watching Salvatore continue on his search. He was standing with his hands on his hips, eyebrows pulled into a frown that slightly wrinkled the already rough skin of his forehead. He looked almost as if he resorted to glaring at the piles of papers, hoping that enough intimidation would scare the right file into jumping into his hands.

It almost made Nicole snort, were it not for the curiosity that both acted as a distraction and pleaded to get some more answers. "So, who's this… Jack Abbott?"

"John Abbott," he corrected without tearing his eyes from the shelf in front of him. He grimaced then. "He was one of Mother Miranda's earlier experiments, and had a very similar mutation to yours."

At that Nicole's eyebrows shot up past the low line of her fringe, interest successfully piqued. She turned in her seat to fully face him, one arm thrown over the back of the chair. When he didn't continue talking, instead pulling out one of the last binders on the shelf labeled 1930's, she impatiently prodded for more information. "And?"

Moreau pulled a face, probably wondering if he was even supposed to talk about it. It didn't take long for him to let out a defeated sigh, the demand to play dumb were Miranda to ever ask about this going unspoken, but more than understood. "Same thing as you really. He could tell what illness someone had by a specific smell, down to the nasty nose bleeds whenever it got too much," he started, noticing a few drops of blood that had dried on her upper lip.

He turned back to pulling out the very last binder dedicated to that decade and relaxed his posture ever so slightly when he saw JOHN ABBOTT written in big letters and black ink on one file. Another frown tugged his cracked lips downward, the information written in such a clinical way only mudding the memory of the frail man he had briefly met so many decades ago. "His body took well to the Cadou until… well ,until it didn't. I don't know what went wrong, but his body just rejected it at one point and he died being slowly consumed by the infection."

At that Nicole's face fell, dread now overtaking her usual curiosity. He must've noticed, for his next words came the slightest bit rushed and with a strained kind of reassurance that wasn't convincing to either of them.

"It may very well not be connected."

Nicole almost scoffed, not at him but at the situation at hand. The hand holding the pencil was tense and, had she not been as weak as she was, the wood would've probably cracked by then. "Did you know him?"

With a slight shake of his head, he answered, not a negation but more a gesture of pity. "Barely. I was brought here only after he started," he narrowed his eyes at a wall somewhere behind Nicole trying to find the right word. He didn't. "...deteriorating."

That was about as much as her brain wanted to know at the moment, letting a heavy silence fill the space for endlessly too long. She was caught in her own thoughts that started to twist and turn into countless what ifs. Thoughts that crashed to a halt when a nurse knocked on the half open door to announce her presence.

"Lady Cassandra is waiting outside," she told Nicole, expression pulled in a poker face that could only belong to someone who had to deal with her wife and tried to seem unbothered. Tried and failed.

Nicole sprung to her feet, circling the desk and about to make her exit when he called out. "Take care of yourself," Moreau told her, looking up from the papers he was reading.

Her lips turned slightly upwards into a smile. "You too." And then she left, rapid pace taking her through off-white hallways and slight smells that she was now painfully aware of.

Stepping outside was a breath of fresh air in more ways than one, the orange hue of the setting sun welcoming her after the hours passed under the harsh lab lights. How ironic was her hatred for the damned neon lights, when not too long ago she would've gladly spent her life under their bluish glow.

Even better than the warm sun on her skin, was the sight of Cassandra, dressed in her usual riding attire and absent mindedly scratching the furry muzzle of one of the castle's Clydesdale horses. A big beast of a horse, black and white with its feathery legs that, Nicole realized with an eye roll, she wouldn't dream of getting on without help.

Her pace quickened until she found herself embraced by a pair of strong arms, the stable smell mixed with Cassandra's cologne filling her senses with something finally pleasant. She didn't let go until she felt a gentle kiss placed on top of her auburn hair.

"Darling," Cassandra greeted her once she pulled back, gloved hand coming to rest on a pale cheek. "How are you?"

Nicole sighed and pushed into the touch, the kind of tiredness that could only be felt after a day spent bending over backwards to every one of Miranda's whims settling into her bones. "Ready to go back home."

Cassandra simply nodded once and moved her hands on her hips, getting a good enough grip before picking Nicole up to where her foot could reach the stirrup so she could pull herself up. Her wife decided that climbing in the saddle was below her at the moment, choosing instead to turn into a swarm, only to retake her human form a mere second later, on the horse's back, her front comfortably against Nicole's back. With a few taps of her boot against the stirrup still occupied by Nicole's foot in a silent demand to let her guide the horse, she took a hold of the reins and they finally started moving down the stone paved road.

There was no complaint on Nicole's part, taking it as a good opportunity to sit back and enjoy the ride, pressed to her wife's chest.

A few eternally long minutes were spent absentmindedly scratching the horse's muscular neck, where short black fur met the mane held in a beautifully done french braid, that only their Constable could pull so seamlessly. A few long minutes spent mulling over what she had found out, thoughts twisting cruelly with every worst case scenario her mind could conjure. Had she made a mistake? Was the infection a mistake to begin with? How cruel could fate be sometimes. Back in New York she had come to terms with a meaningless life, the only truly important thing she had amounted to at that point being choosing a career path to spite her father. But now, after finding a place to call home where she ached to stay to the point of seeking eternity for it, the very thing that could allow her to remain there forever could also take her life away, miserably so.

"What's wrong?"

Cassandra's voice snapped her back to reality, so much so that she even shook her head a couple times to chase away the lingering thoughts. She gave an inquisitive hum in an attempt to play dumb. The attempt was met with an incredulous eye roll.

"You're quiet," she simply responded.

"I'd think spending decades with Daniela would make you appreciate quiet people," Nicole jokingly threw back.

"Not you," came the reply, one hand leaving the reins and coming to rest on her thigh. "I love hearing you talk, even when you're blabbering about proper medical technique."

At that Nicole let out a light gasp, turning around with mild offence written in her eyes. She couldn't find anything to retaliate with for once, setting instead for giving her wife a slight shove with her elbow, that only elicited a laugh.

She shook her head and let out a sigh. "We did figure out what's with the damned nosebleeds." At a curious hum and Cassandra's chin coming to rest on top of her head, she went on. "Apparently I can distinguish illnesses by smell. Now that would've been useful during med school," she finished with a bitter laugh.

Her wife responded with a snort. "If I were Daniela, I'd say you're joking to hide how you really feel." She shrugged. "However I'm not her, and I'm assuming you'll simply tell me without the need of an impromptu psychoanalysis," she said almost smugly, the hand that was until then lazily placed on her leg finding its place around her waist.

The times when Nicole wished to curse her wife's apparently impeccable observation skills were rare, but this was one such occasion.

She almost let out a groan, pushing further back into Cassandra's form. "There was this other man, John Abbott, with the same mutation. Except his body rejected the Cadou and he died slowly and painfully," she explained, her voice quieting halfway through, but almost flinched when the arm around her went stiff with an almost vice-like grip. The realization of how long Cassandra has really been in the Village for slowly crept its way from Nicole's memory, having been filed away and almost forgotten in a metaphorical drawer of obvious things that however were rarely brought up. "Did you know him-"

"You won't end up like that sorry bastard."

The conviction behind that one simple sentence almost had Nicole letting out another short bitter laugh. Not out of bemusement of course. Irony perhaps, at how determined her wife was to double down on cheating death, not only for herself but her too. Even when death could be brought by the very thing keeping them alive.

"Not much we could do about that," she said in a small voice, one hand toying with the black fabric of Cassandra's sleeve.

"Don't think for one moment that I'm joking," she started, an edge of a warning behind her tone. Her hand came to rest more gently on the bottom of Nicole's sternum, where the skin had healed in a dark scar that seemed to send jagged cracks all the way to her stomach. "I'll pull the wretched little thing out of your chest myself if I have to."

At that Nicole actually let out a laugh. "Way to go with something morbidly romantic."

Cassandra chuckled close to her ear, bending down slightly to leave a peck where her neck and shoulder met. "You're not going to die. I won't allow it."

A silent possessiveness accompanied her words. An implication that she now belonged there, in her arms, and frivolous things such as death had no place to come between them. She should flinch at such implications, were it not for the fact that it was mutual and Cassandra knew better than to recklessly throw herself on death's path, knowing well that soon her wife would follow in her steps.

The soft kiss was returned when Nicole bent back again, until the angle between their bodies allowed for their lips to meet tenderly, in a way that anyone would believe was so utterly uncharacteristic to the both of them, ruthless in their own ways but soft like velvet running on smooth skin with each other.

They rode in comfortable silence up until the gates to the stable, where they dismounted and handed the reins to one of the servants waiting there. The sun had set by then, purple and dark blues reigning the skies as they entered the castle through one of the secondary doors.

She parted ways with her wife, saying that she would soon join the rest of their family as she headed up the stairs. A change of clothes was due. That and a request to their seamstress.

Oh her way back down, she stopped by the open door to the woman’s studio, busy with readjusting some garments for one of the ladies. A curt knock on the wooden frame of the entrance got her attention and had her pulling a face upon realizing that she had probably lost count of whatever she was mentally keeping track of. Nonetheless, she offered a polite smile when greeting Nicole.

“My lady, what can I do for you?”

“I need a facemask,” Nicole started.

The woman’s eyebrows pulled in a confused frown. “I thought a new batch of surgical masks just arrived the other day.”

Nicole raised a hand when she went to check on the shipments list. “I meant something I can wear for longer and outside the lab, surgical masks have a tendency to clash with an elegant gown, you know,” she explained with a chuckle. “Preferably that can filter out any smells?”

“Oh. Of course, I’ll just need to take your measures to make sure it’s fitted for you.”

“I’ll come by tomorrow,” she proposed and, after the seamstress gave her an hour, she continued on her way down the hallway to where the rest of the Dimitrescus were gathered.

Being home brought some peace of mind, thoughts of dying and being forcefully ripped away from her life momentarily placated in favor of enjoying a few hours by the fireplace with her family. Leaning against Cassandra as she draped an arm around her shoulders and listening to Daniela and Bela have a hilariously heated debate over the latest book they've read felt downright blissful in its mundane aspect.

Although no matter what, the little parasite that now called the inside of her chest its home, was quietly gnawing at her worried mind.