#goose-adjacent at any rate

[marlynnofmany]

Honking Trouble

This job was a pain from the start. The customer was pushy, giving Captain Sunlight a run for her money on the diplomacy front — not bad enough for us to refuse to make the delivery, but pushing the boundaries — and the cargo was awkward. 

And since it was animals, that was my problem. 

“Keep your distance,” I told Zhee. “I think it can get its beak between the bars.” The cage was large and rickety, with bars a few inches apart. As if to prove me right, a long furry neck with a beak at the end stabbed outward and hissed at us. 

Zhee flared his pincher arms and hissed back, but the creature wasn't impressed. It just spread its batlike wings as far as the cage would allow and made a surprisingly deep honk that echoed through the cargo bay. 

I hadn’t read the documents yet about what kind of animal this was, from which planet, but if those documents turned out to say this was a genetic experiment in unwise combinations, I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised. It was vaguely goose-shaped, just with four feet instead of two, equipped with talons instead of webs, white fur instead of feathers, and a beak that ended in a wickedly sharp hook. After all the hawks and parrots I’d encountered back on Earth, that beak looked ready for either mischief or violence. Probably both.

At any rate, the goose-thing’s honk set off the tiny creatures in the other cage, which thankfully were better contained. That cage was a mesh sphere not about to let any of the little drifting dust motes out. As enchanting as it might be to have the spaceship filled with colorful bits of fluff that moved gracefully and made a chorus of tiny peeps, they just looked like allergies waiting to happen. And I didn't want to think about finding them behind the wall panels later. 

Zhee hissed at the furry demon goose again, clearly hoping to frighten it into submission. No luck. 

“Knock it off,” I told him. “That'll just make it louder. Here, help me get the lifter under the cage.” The customer had brought the cage onboard for us, but this wasn't a good spot for it. So it was up to me, the resident animal expert, to get it moved safely to a room more suited to animal cargo. Nobody wanted to sneak past this biter to get to the rest of the crates. 

Luckily we had a freshly refurbished hoversled with a lifting scoop that could slide under anything as long as the thing in question held still. I convinced Zhee to hold the cage stationary, since his exoskeleton was tougher than my fingers. The goose-thing pecked at him from an awkward angle. I worked the controls, and soon our misbehaving cargo was lifted up onto the sled. 

I looked over at the round cage full of chirping alien pixies. “Let's come back for that one.”  

“Agreed.”

The goose was quiet while we moved it down the hall, taking in the sights with all the attention of someone casing the joint. I told myself not to be too judgmental. Maybe it had never been on a spaceship before, and was curious.

Then Blip walked out of a side corridor, wearing her favorite flowy silk outfit that made her look like a muscley flower, and no: the goose was just looking for opportunities. It snapped at the nearest hem and almost got a beakful, but Blip moved just in time. Then she scolded it for almost ripping quality Frillian clothes.

“Do you know how hard this is to replace? Of course you don’t; you’re a rude animal.” She shook a blue finger at the unrepentant goose. Behind her, Blop appeared and aimed his own frown into the cage.

“Sorry,” I said. “Don’t get too close to this one. At least it was only aiming for your clothes, not something that would bleed.”

Blip folded muscular arms, flared her frills, and scowled. “It would have regretted that.”

I sighed, pushing the hoversled forward. “Don’t punch the cargo.”

Blip muttered as we left. There were no further incidents on the way into Storage Hold B, and the goose didn’t even try to bite us as we got the cage off the sled. It was busy inspecting the view: boxes, cabinets, and the large clear containment pen that had held troublemaking cargo before. It would have been nice to shove this guy in there, but the cage wouldn’t fit through the door, and there was no way I was going to voluntarily let it out.

“I’m watching you,” I told it as I followed Zhee back into the hall. Technically Kavlae was watching, or maybe Wio — whoever was in the cockpit behind the security cameras. They’d be making sure the onboarding process went smoothly before the ship took off.

I knew that, but I was still surprised to hear Kavlae’s voice on the hallway intercom a few minutes later.

“Walk faster,” she said from a single speaker. “It’s trying to open a box.”

“It can reach that??” I asked, pushing the hoversled more quickly. The aura puffs squeaked and twirled. (Their cage had a label, with a species description and the number of creatures inside. They were behaving.)

Zhee scurried ahead on his many bug legs to open the door. Before I could get there, he charged inside, hissing again. I heard answering hisses and the sound of a crate being scraped across the floor.

Once I got the aura puffs into the room, I found Zhee inspecting a gnawed-on box corner with splinters on the floor. The goose looked pleased with itself.

I asked, “What’s the damage?”

“Nothing significant,” Zhee said. “Luckily this is our own ship’s supplies, not something for a client.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t look good.” I parked the sled. “‘Here’s your delivery! You don’t mind a little artistic nibbling about the edges, do you?’ I’m sure that would go over well.”

Zhee shoved a couple other boxes further back and helped me set the aura puffs a safe distance away. Then, under Kavlae’s watchful eye, we went back to the cargo bay for some non-animal cargo.

The intercom chimed before we got there. “It’s trying to pick the lock on its cage,” Kavlae said, still on single-speaker mode. “I don’t know if it c— Oh no, it’s out.”

I left the sled in the middle of the hallway and ran, with Zhee right behind me.

Speakers all along the hall chorused, “It opened the other cage.”

I said a very unprofessional word and charged forward to slam my hand on the door-opening panel. Expecting the one cargo to be actively eating the other, I dashed inside, only to be knocked off my feet by the goose making a break for it. I fell amid clouds of happily chirping aura puffs.

Zhee lunged for the goose, but it dodged what would have been a very painful hug from his pincher arms, and I heard it honking triumphantly down the hall. Zhee ran after it while the whole-ship intercom chimed.

“Escaped cargo. It is large and likes to bite. Currently heading towards the crew lounge. Captain, permission to use stun guns on the cargo?”

After a moment, Captain Sunlight answered from somewhere else on the ship. “Permission granted. All available crew, arm yourselves and proceed with caution. Kavlae, keep us posted on its whereabouts.”

Trying not to feel like a failure, I scrambled to my feet and checked a cabinet for stun guns. Found one. Waving the aura puffs away from the door, I regretfully left them floating about the storage hold while I chased after the bigger problem. Zhee had already disappeared.

I met Trrili in the hall.

“How dangerousss is thisss animal?” she asked, looming over me and flexing her pincher arms in delight.

“I don’t think it wants to seriously hurt anyone, but I can’t say for sure,” I said. “It might go for the eyes if it’s cornered. Try not to damage it.”

“Frrrrightening causesss no damage,” Trrili said, and flashed away down the hall.

I ran after.

Kavlae reported, “It’s in the crew lounge, searching the furniture, probably looking for food. This could be a good place to corner it.”

Trrili waited in position outside the lounge when I arrived, crouched like a spider ready to spring. Zhee was moving toward the kitchen entrance to flank it. A flash of yellow scales at the other end of the hall was Captain Sunlight hurrying forward with a stun gun aimed at the floor. The goose made a muffled honk from inside the lounge, crunching something that sounded like snack food scavenged from under the couch.

I stopped behind Trrili and waited for everyone to get into position. Two threatening predators and two stun guns ought to be a recipe for success against one alien goose.

Then the goose dashed into the kitchen before Zhee could get there, and the whole plan went out the window.

Trrili raced after it. Zhee got in the captain’s way. I reached the kitchen in time to see the creature hiss in defiance before prying open a cabinet door.

It might have thought that was an exit. In reality, it was Paint’s hiding spot, and she shrieked fit to shatter eardrums, curling into a ball of scales and panic.

That was enough of a distraction for Mimi to drop from the high shelf he’d been waiting on, and wrap the demon goose in all of his tentacles. It was surprisingly effective.

That’s not the plan, but I’ll take it.

Everyone was shouting and in the way. I followed Mimi’s example and climbed onto a counter, where I could get a clear shot with the stun gun and not hit him.

I stunned the goose in the butt, and it finally stopped flapping.

It took a while for all the yelling to subside, but the captain wriggled past Zhee and Trrili to declare no harm done. Kavlae told the rest of the ship. Mimi untangled himself from the goose, who had frozen in an inconvenient position. Paint stayed in the cabinet. Zhee clicked away to get the hoversled, then stopped when Trrili simply dragged the goose towards the hold.

Captain Sunlight looked up at me. “Good shot.”

“Thanks,” I said, getting down from the counter. I’d have to wash the footprints off that later. “Paint, it’s safe to come out.”

Mimi was already coaxing her out of the cabinet, offering some of the snacks that she’d apparently been eating when she heard the alert about the dangerous animal.

Speaking of which, I thought. With Paint in good hands (or the equivalent), I hurried after the others. I heard Captain Sunlight say a few words to Paint and Mimi before following.

So we got to put the goose in the Clear Pen For Naughty Animals after all. This pen didn’t have anywhere it could stick its beak out of once the stun wore off, only mesh-covered air vents way at the top and a door that locked (very reliably) from the outside.

Take that, you troublemaker.

We caught the aura puffs carefully by hand (or the equivalent), and put them back in their own cage. Thankfully the goose hadn’t damaged the latch, just opened it with bird-brained cleverness.

“It’s just those last two left,” Captain Sunlight said after counting. “Up there.”

The two in question were floating higher than her little lizardy arms could reach, so I moved to do the honors. As I did, Blip and Blop arrived with the bug-catching net that no one had been able to find earlier.

They also brought with them a feline blur that I caught mid-leap, just before Telly snatched an aura puff out of the air.

“Not for you,” I said, heart beating wildly. “Let’s get you some proper cat treats that don’t belong to a paying customer.”

Blip and Blop exclaimed loudly at Telly’s speed, my reaction time, and the fact that they’d had no idea she was there; they were sorry they almost got the cargo eaten.

Captain Sunlight repeated, “No harm done.” She waved me off to my quarters with the disgruntled cat, and spoke to the others about plans to notify the customer of just what kind of danger fee he’d brought upon himself by not properly securing his chaos-causing animal.

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[polizwrites]

A Secret Garden

It took Bucky longer than it should have to realize what was happening to Tony.  That the floral scent he’d assumed came from his companion’s clothing (or a woman) was in fact coming from very close to Tony’s heart.  

Fandom: MCU/Marvel Pairing: Bucky/Tony Rating: General Major Tags:  Canon-adjacent, mutual pining, hanahaki disease, Bucky POV Word Count:  289

It took Bucky longer than it should have to realize what was happening to Tony. At first, he thought the faint floral scent he noticed when standing next to Tony was just a new clothes detergent he was trying out or (as the darker part of his mind suggested) leftover perfume from a one night stand.

But it was stronger the next time he stopped by, and Tony looked a little paler than usual. “You feelin’ okay, champ?” Bucky asked, and Tony flinched, just a little.

“Yeah - just getting run a bit ragged,” Tony replied, a little too casually. “We’ve got a big product launch at the end of the month and I’m having to tie up a lot of loose ends personally.”

“Thought that was Ms. Potts’ job,” Bucky responded, frowning slightly at his companion’s reply. For Tony to admit he was burning his candle at both ends, well that meant he likely wasn’t getting any real rest at all.

“R&D is still my bailiwick, and I know exactly where and how to goose the teams in order to –” Tony interrupted himself with a cough, wet and hacking. He grabbed a shop rag off the nearby bench and held it to his lips for a moment, then stuffed it into a pocket. “Sorry. Just a tickle in my throat. It’s not contagious.”

“I’ll take your word on that.” A burst of scent had accompanied Tony’s cough, and Bucky’s sharp eyes had spotted a tell-tale blood red petal hanging from the edge of the rag. He knew what that meant; or at least what it used to mean. Bucky made a mental note that – once he was alone, that is – to ask JARVIS if hanahaki disease was still something people could suffer from.

This is a fill for today's  @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt [#FFF188 Where Secrets Lie].  I plan on expanding this by the end of the month to fill my Tony Stark Bingo Secret Admirer square, combining a prompt from   @lacrimulafalsa  (see below cut) and ideas from @hddnone‘s excellent (and angsty!) WinterIron hanahaki fic Seeds of Love .

Lacrimula Falsa#1898 prompted in STB Bingo Discord 5/1/22 -

?prompt Tony catches hanahaki disease - but unlike with the classic trope, the disease attacks people who feel unlovable or alone and can be cured by anybody sincerely confessing love or deep affection for the afflicted person. Bucky has had a secret crush on Tony and comes forward - and oh happy day, they get together. What nobody knows is that Steve's been in love with Bucky for a long time. So now he has hanahaki instead. But not wanting to break up two of his best friends, he keeps it a secret... -- Happy Stuckony ending please.

[periminkle]

Orphic | 02

After moving into your own place, it seems life is finally going your way; the path to independence leading you to a quaint suburban town where even the grass seems to grow a little greener. Although a shocking encounter leads you to believe that perhaps appearances can be quite deceiving.

pairing: hybrid!jk x reader (first person)

genre: hybrid au, angst, fluff

word count: 7.0k

rating: PG-15

warnings: animal cruelty, death, blood, swearing

author’s note: I cut this chapter into two parts bc it was turning into a monster :((( i did try to research DNA and genes and all that fancy stuff but it was too much for my small brain, so beware of inaccurate facts!!! also wanted to say that my heart hurt writing this </3

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The light breeze fluttering through the back door enveloped the bare skin of my legs, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. 

I couldn’t recall the last time I lounged around the house in the morning—not flurrying around like a chicken with its head cut off, in a rush to catch the bus. If it wasn’t work then it was grocery shopping, borrowing articles and studies from the library or filling my car’s empty gas. 

Consequently, I refused to change out of the oversized sweater and the lousy pair of bright yellow shorts that currently adorned my laden figure. With any luck, the comfort from the soft articles of cloth would somehow seep into my mental state as well.

Yet the optimistic notion wasn’t proving its validity thus far, becoming a more of a burden due to the lack of a proper barrier between my humble abode and the wilderness outside. 

For the most part, the structure of the door was left unharmed but the handle containing the lock that had been smashed into was another matter completely. Upon further examination, accompanied by an hour of fiddling around with the busted latch, it seemed to be a problem beyond my capabilities. I reluctantly admitted defeat and ordered a replacement. 

With nothing to secure the door to the adjacent wall, it remained slightly ajar.

Another hour whizzed by, scouring through the limited resources at my disposal to—at the very least—find a temporary fix. I tried taping it shut, propping a chair, a step stool and a table up against the remainder of the handle to no avail. 

A stroke of genius hit when I stuck a command hook on the wall nearby, fastening a broken hairband from the latch to the hook. However, the placement of the hook was a little too close and the hairband a little too loose to keep the occasional draft from finding its way inside. My fluffy pokémon shorts provided meager defence at best, but I could hardly spare a thought to the lower temperature when my mind was fully occupied with more urgent matters.

After the run-in yesterday night, I remained by the fridge, shaken from the events that had transpired for longer than I’d like to admit. I was unsure if the familiar sylvan scent that lingered was a result of the stranger or simply a waft from the forest, which wasn’t unlikely, considering my defective door.

Once I’d finally gotten a hold of myself, I dialled the police, doubting that my shaky limbs could safely carry me to the nearest station at such an hour. Other than an aching wrist and some medical supplies that could be restocked, my physical well-being and that of my house were surprisingly fine. 

Excluding my poor back door, of course.

I was rather fortunate that the robbery, if stealing bandages could even be labelled as such, was more mentally taxing than anything. The drops of blood were rather annoying to clean off my tiles too, I guess.

Trying to get any rest that night was fruitless, tossing and turning, worried that the man might return for something more valuable or another fiend finding his way inside to do worse. 

It struck me as more than a little odd that he would come to my tiny cottage, of all places, for first aid supplies. If he wasn’t looking for some extra coins to pocket, why wouldn’t he go to the hospital? Where had he gotten a wound that couldn’t be treated by a doctor? Maybe he had partaken in various illegal activities that couldn’t warrant the suspicion of a governmental figure? Ugh, my brain hurt the more I thought about it.

Along with my raging thoughts, the perpetual feeling of being watched disturbed my slumber as well. It was if another set of eyes were locked on my vulnerable form, peering past the closed blinds and under the protective layers of blankets I’d piled on. No matter how many times I peeked into the darkness though, I was only met with the sight of my backyard enshrouded in the night sky. 

When the rays of dawn broke through the tenebrosity, I abandoned any notion of sleep and hesitantly called Jin, unsure if the busy man was even conscious yet. His bright and cheery voice quelled my worries and I informed him of what had transpired within the past twelve hours. Relief flooded my lethargic frame as he delved into a crazed panic, which I greatly appreciated, accepting his offer to take a day off.

Jin was excessively sympathetic and compassionate, reminding me of a mother goose with how he squabbled over staying somewhere else for the time being and taking a week-long break. But I didn’t want to be a burden on any of my new friends and going back to the city wasn’t an option at this point. Reflecting on the matter for more than day wasn’t necessary either.

I haughtily believed that the criminal didn’t deserve any more free real estate in my mind than he’d already occupied.

In order to comprehend the situation, as well as the fact that I would be utterly useless if I went to work with my mind engrossed in other matters, I thought one day to digest everything and get it out of my system would suffice. Though I knew it would come more so with time, I also had to work on regaining an impression of security within my own walls. 

To take a rest from my turbulent concerns, I made a trip to one of the populated parks within the small town, figuring that I would feel more safety in the numbers that would surround me. Ridiculously, I found myself stumped when I got there, drowning in my own vulnerability, so I promptly headed back.

At nightfall, I skipped out on meeting with the cat yet again. Evidently, I lacked the mental capability to tend to my own needs the day before, never mind another being, thus I didn’t visit the little guy. I felt a wash of regret and worry that I hadn’t even set out some food. As a result of yesterday’s blunder, I put a heaping mass of tuna on the porch this time, hoping the animal would understand my apology. 

The hours flew by as I sat there, stirring in my own solitude. In order to bring the negativity of the day to an end, I invited the trio I’d gotten close to as of recent, although Jin adamantly refused due to his papers that, “wouldn’t write themselves.”

I took the steaming pot of ramen off the stovetop right as the clear ring of the doorbell resounded throughout the cramped place. Hastily, I placed the noodles onto the table with careful hands, grimacing as I realized it took up a bit more than a quarter of the surface.

With a brisk shuffle, I pulled open my front door to the sight of a disgruntled Yoongi, hidden behind the towering stature of a rosy-nosed Namjoon. I barely made out the mutterings of, “it’s freezing out here,” and “took you long enough,” before I was being shoved aside.

As they trudged over to the kitchen, following the scent of freshly cooked ramen wafting around the house, Yoongi scoffed at my tiny table. Since I only purchased two chairs for the space, I cracked open the step stool to act as another seat. I honestly wasn’t sure what I would have done if Jin had tagged along too. Maybe pulled out the ladder too?

The shorter man grabbed the handles of the pot, heading over to the direction of the living room as Namjoon and I trailed after him like baby ducks. “If we’re going to eat like poor college students then we might as well keep up the act and sit on the floor.”

Although Yoongi’s cold and distant facade perplexed me as I was getting to know him, eventually I picked up on the hints of affection he’d drop every once in a while. Mostly, I found that I was able to burn time fooling around with Taemin as he completed enough drudgery for the both of us or a piping hot mug of hot chocolate would be waiting for me in the break room after long hours. 

Even now, though he acted irritated, I knew Yoongi well enough to decipher his true intentions: that he was trying to be considerate of my humble living conditions and opted to play it off as a joke. At this point, I was even inclined to believe he harboured a soft spot for me.

In response, I pretended to be peeved by his actions as I ambled back to gather the bowls and utensils I placed at the table, carrying them to the spot we’d occupied on the floor. It was difficult to hide the growing smile on my face.

Once I’d gotten a few drinks down my throat, I finally felt the tense muscles between my brows and shoulder blades relax, forgetting about the worries that echoed in my head all day.

The TV screen flashed with the intense scenes of an action movie that Namjoon had picked out. I was only half paying attention to the redundant plot line, more interested in the outrageous story spewing from Namjoon’s lips.

“-and now he’s bragging about how one of his puns got milk spilling out of Yoongi’s nose!”

The tipsy state I was in got me laughing harder than I should have, but with both men around me in a relatively similar state of mind, no one seemed to care.

“That’s literal bullshit, Eunmi told me that I was drinking the milk meant for Taemin right when Jin finished telling his dumb joke,” Yoongi complained despite the gummy smile stretching across his features.

I clutched my chest at the mention of one of the creatures who had stolen my heart, “aw, my pretty little Taem, I miss him so much and it’s only been one day!” 

“You’re getting too attached to him Y/N, you know that he’s not gonna stay at the lab forever,” Namjoon lightly warned. I knew he was concerned for my emotional welfare, but even the mention of Taemin being taken away got me stewing in my own misery.

“Joon, why would you say—I don’t even want to think about that!” My inebriated state obviously enjoyed to spill more information than necessary when I stated, “I need to cuddle Taemin enough for the both of them.”

“Both?” The younger man spared a questioning glance at his companion in before turning back to me, “do you have a cat?” The two of them began scoping out the area, trying to locate the nonexistent bundle of fur.

“Oh no, no, I wish I could afford a pet but I think taking care of myself is challenging enough for now.” At their probing eyes, I continued, “I was just talking about a little kitty that visits me every night in my backyard.”

Yoongi’s dark eyebrows scrunched together, a huff escaping him. “If you’re talking about a domestic cat, there’s no way it would be living out there,” he pointed to the forest outside with a tilt of his chin.

With the shake of my head, I felt myself sober up a bit as I explained, “I think it’s just one of my neighbours’ pets.”

Namjoon and Yoongi stared at each other, appearing baffled. “Well, it’s definitely not Eunhyuk, his son is allergic.”

“But you think mean old Sangmin would have a cat? We’re talking about the same guy who refused to have kids because he’s ‘not a bank’ right?”

Namjoon redirected his attention to me. “Are you sure it’s a cat? Maybe you just saw a rat or something.”

“No, it can’t be...” Their insistent refusal planted seeds of doubt that began to fester the longer I thought about it; they both lived here for longer than I had and obviously knew the area much better as well. It wasn’t like I had the best eyesight, anyway. But I remembered the piercing emerald green irises peering back at me, slit pupils honed in on my form with vibrant clarity. “It’s definitely a cat. It has to be a cat.”

A teasing snort came from Yoongi, who was leaning back on his palms with disbelief written all over his face. “You’re just seeing things, Y/N.”

I pouted at their lack of trust in me. An aggressive urge to prove them wrong began bubbling in the pit of my stomach and with a glimpse of the time from the clock above the stove, I noticed that it was well into midnight—around the hour in which I’d meet the kitty.

“Yeah, well, if you don’t believe me you can come see for yourself.”

“Is it outside?” I revelled in the satisfaction Namjoon’s widened eyes brought me and loftily smirked at him.

The plentiful amount of alcohol I’d indulged in forbade my legs from gracefully standing, wobbling like a newborn fawn instead as I fumbled over to the door, slipping the loose hair tie off and yanking the faulty mass open. Strangely, the night air was deathly silent, even the usually chirpy crickets seeming to have migrated to another yard.

“Hey, buddy. You out there?” I mumbled, scanning the bushes nearby, trying to pick up even the faintest flutter. “Bud?”

When I felt two pairs of curious eyes pierce my back, the pressure skyrocketed. I couldn’t let them believe I was spouting utter nonsense earlier, but the lack of response wasn’t proving my case very well.

After a few minutes passed with only the low whistle of the wind to keep us company, I felt a tinge of worry knot itself into my belly. “Okay, that’s enough Y/N. Let’s go back in.”

“No! It’s just scared because there’s a lot of people out now, you two go back in. I’ll call you when it’s out.” Desperately, I examined every inch of the stationary woodlands.

“We believe you, just get back in here! It’s cold and you’re not wearing a jacket, come on.” Namjoon’s long fingers wrapped around my forearm, tugging on my hesitant form.

As the dark-haired male dragged me back, I caught sight of the abundant helping of tuna I’d left on the last step of the porch yesterday. A pang resounded throughout my chest, disquiet settling into the recesses of my mind. Why didn’t the creature eat the offering, was it angry that I hadn’t shown up the last few nights? I couldn’t stop myself from imagining the worst; if it got lost somewhere, collapsed from starvation or was brutally killed by another animal.

If either one of the guys noticed the unusual pile of food, they didn’t comment on it.

Once back inside, tucked into Namjoon’s comforting shoulder and Yoongi’s warm side pressed against mine, I found myself unable to focus on anything of value. It was as if all my senses had dulled to an absolute minimum, barely processing what flashed on the bright TV screen and only picking up bits and pieces of the conversation between the two males. All I could think about was what could have possibly happened to my poor kitty. 

My eyelids began to droop, heavy from the weight of the last few days’ events. With my body molding itself into Namjoon’s sturdy torso, I welcomed the peaceful darkness.

Taemin’s entire body shook from the force of his tiny sneeze and I could have sworn that my heart ceased its endless beating right then and there, was I in heaven? 

Unaffected by my inner turmoil, the baby jaguar started bouncing around, weaving in and out of my legs as if he was participating in his own agility competition. I crouched down to his level to reach for his lithe body. The little guy always transformed into a flurry of excitement whenever I stopped by his cage, elated that he was free to play around without his constricting muzzle. 

Once I’d discovered what a sweet bean he was, I couldn’t help but comply to his wishes. It didn’t take a mind reader to see how he consistently pawed at the contraption, even clawing his face a couple times on accident. 

The reasoning behind all the safety measures wasn’t lost on me though, as I had witnessed the terror he instilled in most of the staff. About a week prior, I caught Minzi trying to lure Taemin out of his cage with some treats, but all her attempts proved unsuccessful when he didn’t even spare a glance her way.

With an annoyed sigh, she reached into the pocket within her lab coat, retrieving a syringe that I knew she had filled with telazol, a tranquilizing fluid for small animals. That prompted a reaction out of Taemin, his haunches tensing and lowering towards the ground, mouth peeling back in a snarl. The low growling sound vibrating from his small body instantly put me on edge; it was the first time I’d ever seen or heard the animal’s anger.

Before I could move a muscle, the irate woman stuck the needle into his hind leg. Taemin yowled in pain, but sunk his claws into her arm when he got the chance, only able to exact his revenge for a couple seconds before his body fell limp. Minzi detched his paw to find a stream of crimson red besmirching her white coat.

Now that I thought back to it, his growl eerily reminded me of the night of the break-in. Funnily enough, I thought the criminal had the more menacing vibration between the two—and Taemin was a jaguar for god’s sake.

What I found truly inhumane was the assistant assigned to handing Taemin his meals. The callous woman didn’t have half a mind to remove his muzzle before placing a handful of dog kibble in his cage. 

At a glance, Taemin appeared severely underweight for his size, but I could have never chalked it up to his nutrition being fed through the bars around his snout. He struggled to attain such inadequate portions that weren’t even created for his species in mind.

Nevertheless, the instant I’d seen his horrifying feeding conditions, I dismissed the careless assistant and took on the task of keeping Taemin alive, a job that I didn’t think someone could fail so terribly at.

Taemin blindly swiped the air, bringing me out of my reverie. I chuckled as I saw he was a just a couple centimetres off the sleeve of my coat and I brought my hand, palm turned upwards, to meet his paw.

His eyelids were shut closed as tightly as they had been the first day he’d arrived at the lab, a fact that Yoongi informed me of when I’d inquired about Taemin’s lack of sight. Neither him nor Namjoon knew why he refused to, or simply couldn’t, open his eyes and my chest ached thinking about the unfulfilling life he was leading.

The memory crushed the lighthearted atmosphere that had arisen from fooling around with the dark-coloured feline. I rubbed the fur covering his foreleg while stealing a glimpse of Yoongi, seemingly hard at work from his hunched form.

“Hey, Yoongs?”

“I thought I told you not to call me that.” The low murmur was slightly muffled from the microscope covering the entirety of his face.

Disregarding his previous statement, I voiced out my thoughts. “What if Taem can actually see? I mean, we could just check whether the PDE6C gene—”

A lengthy exhale interrupted my speech. “Wow, now I guess I know how Jin feels.”

“Listen, I know what you said before but—”

“Y/N, we have tons of gene sequences to analyze, we don’t have time to waste looking for a faulty PDE6C, okay?” He finally tore his gaze away from his work to peer into my pleading eyes, running his fingers through the strands marring his forehead. “You’re lucky I’m even letting you play around considering the amount of work we have to finish.”

At that, I shut my mouth and concentrated back on Taemin’s restless figure, a much better alternative to the DNA waiting to be analyzed at my desk. Since he was confined within his cage all day, I made it my goal to tire him out enough that he would be forced to rest until the next time I had the chance to abandon work, essentially getting paid to keep him amused.

I gently brought his paw to the floor and scurried away to collect his favourite toy; a fuzzy mouse I’d bought one day after discovering the building was devastatingly unequipped to entertain an extremely bored feline.

Although he whimpered at the loss of contact and the sound of my retreating footsteps, I swiftly grabbed the rodent at the bottom of the drawer, by Yoongi’s legs, and hurried back.

Another half hour passed as I tried to exhaust as much of Taemin’s boundless energy as I could, although my plan backfired when I found that my own strength was depleting just as quickly. His natural hunting instincts were definitely still intact, what with the torn up toy in the corner, held together by mere threads at this point. I made a mental note to go shopping for sturdier prey next time.

Presently, he laid on his side as a content, black loaf, purring from the belly rubs he was receiving. To tease the cub, I would pull away every once in a while only to have his long tail wrap around my wrist, tugging my limb back to action.

“Y/N.” My head turned to meet Namjoon who had wandered over from the assistant researcher’s lab where I’d last seen him. “I finished the sequence for his canines. Do you mind leaving it on Jin’s desk?”

I guiltily stood from my seated position, a sheepish grin plastered on as I gave one last pat to Taemin’s head. “Yeah, of course. Could you lock up Taem for me?”

With his affirmation, I took the papers from his grasp and gave a pat to the crown of Yoongi’s bleached head. He shifted towards me in feigned annoyance, but I was out of his reach before he could get back at me and I celebrated my victory with sticking my tongue out.

I began to make my way upstairs, but not before picking up on Joon’s exasperated remark to Taemin, “I hope you know that I could build you from scratch if I wanted to.”

Once in front of the familiar wood of Jin’s office door, I decided to knock in case he had guests. I restrained the awkward memory of walking in on the whole board of directors from resurfacing and distracted myself by rapping my knuckles with more force when there was no response from within. “Jin? It’s Y/N.” I pushed the handle down and pleasantly found it unlocked. “I’m coming in.”

I waited a couple more seconds before opening the door, meeting the chaos that was the assistant director’s office. As per usual, I winced at the mountain of papers piled upon his desk, astonished that it only seemed to grow since the last time I’d seen it. At this rate, I was just waiting for the day that I’d walk in here to see the towers reaching the ceiling. 

Striding over to Jin’s side of the desk, I laid the notes down in the dead centre, resting on top of three separate piles. Sympathy flooded my senses as my gaze roamed across the masses. How could such a hardworking individual accumulate so much work while he was working? 

Even staring at the copious amounts of print made me feel queasy, hence I hurried to get out of the nauseating area. But, as I scuttled by, my gaze caught on a file with thick, messy letters scrawled on the front.

Jaguar.

To say my curiosity was piqued whenever Taemin was involved was an understatement. After a glance back to ensure that I was able to safely snoop around until my heart’s content, I reached for the file, making sure to keep my posterior to the camera in the corner, concealing my actions.

Ultimately, I knew Taemin was brought in to make progress on their “top secret, strictly confidential experiment,” which meant that I wasn’t to touch any of his files. At least, according to the brusque Minzi I wasn’t. However, an underlying, devious part of me enjoyed rebelling against her words and I secretly rejoiced as I directly disobeyed her orders, opening the folder.

Basic information was scattered along the first page, his name, birthdate, birthplace, so on and so forth. I casually flipped through the rest, finding the documents we routinely handed off to Jin when we’d written down sequences that brought about certain genes concerning the jaguar. This was probably where Jin would store the note Namjoon had made me deliver.

Losing interest, I flipped the bulk of the papers back to the front and seamlessly slid them into the file. When I unintentionally skimmed the first page once again, my eyes caught on a baffling sentence.

Heightened sense of sight, especially keen night vision.

I wet my suddenly chapped lips in my state of bafflement, double and triple checking that the file was indeed for seemingly blind Taemin; the very same animal that was probably napping downstairs. The statistics even matched up with what little knowledge I had about the animal, sending me into a greater spiral of confusion. They must have accidentally written the observation down on the wrong paper.

Unless...? 

I shook my head, trying to dispel the outrageous thoughts swarming my mind.

Heading back down, I caught sight of Yoongi still wrapped around his microscope, jotting notes down with his other hand. My attention shifted to the unconscious feline next, muzzled and locked behind bars.

My fists clenched, fingernails engraving crescents into the palm of my hand as I resolved to finally clear out these murky waters.

An hour passed before I finally located it and then another few hours slipped by as I examined the sequence.

The PDE6C gene on chromosome ten. Perfectly intact and working exceptionally until the halfway point, around the thousandth base. Some of the letters got mixed up, binding with incorrect base pairs and bestowing Taemin with his current lack of vision. 

Of course, I was prepared to deal with the repercussions of wasting precious time, examining a sequence that did not correlate to any favourable gene. But after connecting some dots, I recognized the agent that brought about such errors.

Ethyl methanesulfonate, or EMS for short. A chemical mutagenic that induces base substitutions, mutating the DNA molecule as a result. I couldn’t imagine why they’d inject a carcinogenic compound into the mammal, but it obviously had something to do with trying to enhance his natural vision. 

Did they think the possibility of disabling him was worth the slim chance that his eyesight could improve? By the bases that were effected, I guessed that they were trying to sharpen his sight when submerged in darkness. If the guanine alkylation hadn’t spread so far, they might have succeeded in their experiment.

Nevertheless, their hypothesis was dreadfully incorrect and Taemin was blind as a result of their recklessness.

My grip on the pencil tightened in pure, white fury. In the fruitless hope that the EMS hadn’t affected his whole body, I took several samples of cells from various areas of his body. Albeit, samplings of his cheeks, ears and legs all provided the same conclusion that I’d reached earlier—deformed DNA from ill-fitting base pairs. 

All the blood drained from my face from the appalling notion of just how much EMS they must have injected into his blood stream for it to have tampered with every cell in his body. My jaw clenched as my mouth ran bone dry.

They mutilated him.

Digust washed over me, for the false claims that the lab protected their lab animals, for every ruthless employee that harboured such barbaric morals, for myself, who blindly assisted in the cruel methods of this place. My heart rate picked up at my own helplessness, adrenaline coursing through my veins as I scrambled out of the corner I had holed myself up in.

I didn’t know if it was the bruising despair or the fuming rage that had me stomping my way across the halls, headed for the director’s office. The rational part of me was aware of the fact that I couldn’t do anything, change their twisted morals or bring down that metaphorical sword of justice that I was so fixated on. But that didn’t mean I had to play along as a clueless, complaisant pawn in their gruesome experiments.

Keycard or not, I was determined to wreak havoc until I could properly screech obscenities at one of the incredibly asinine brains that ran this revolting laboratory. Storming past the Namjoon and Yoongi’s office, I picked up on a shrill cry that seemed to douse my whole body in ice water, stopping me in my tracks.

A turn to my right gave me a direct view of Minzi struggling to pull a semi-conscious Taemin out of his cage, arms which he desperately wriggled against, thrashing violently to escape her hold. Now knowing what malicious behaviour deserved such treatment from kind-hearted Taemin, I rushed at her. 

“How could you!” I roared, seeing red when she turned, glaring condescendingly.

Her calculated eyes examined my rapidly approaching, ruffled figure. “Oh, good, I needed a coffee. Could you fetch me a tranquilizer while you’re at it? I didn’t think he would wake up.”

I grit my teeth as my temper flared, resentment embedded into each of my features. Stopping a step away from her unbothered form, I seethed out, “you guys claim to look after the lab animals? Then why would you permanently damage his genes!”

“What have you been wasting time on instead of researching what we told you to?”

“Answer the question!”

She sneers. “I thought I warned you to stay out of anything that doesn’t concern you. That includes any testing subjects.”

“Testing subjects? How the hell do you think you can get away with—”

“Woah, what’s all the ruckus here?” Hyunho’s lazy form strolled in with a lax yet domineering countenance. The appearance of the other head researcher made my hair stand on end. “Do we need to put up a sign to remind some people that they’re to use indoor voices inside a laboratory?”

My eyes quickly narrowed at his patronizing remark. “I don’t know what kind of fucked up project you guys are conducting, but if you’re harming innocent animals, I don’t want any part of your imbecilic research.”

“Ooh, it seems that newbie is a feisty one, isn’t she?” He took a step towards me, the scent of a cigarette he probably smoked earlier invading my senses and invoking an appealing urge to regurgitate my dinner all over him. “Listen here girly, I don’t know what you’re trying to accuse us of here, but I’ll be sure to report your unruly behaviour to the director if you keep this shit up.”

“As if I give a flying fu—”

A hand wrapped around my mouth before I could unleash the rest of my resentful spew. “Ah, Dr. Lee.” I recognized the subtle undertone of panic in Namjoon’s deep voice as he addressed the burly man with respect that he didn’t deserve. “You see, Y/N had a pretty rough day, some family matters back home, y’know? I’m just going to take her outside to clear her head a little.”

“Yes, that would be a good idea.” Hyunho stepped back to Minzi’s side.

“If you would excuse us then...” I flailed about in Namjoon’s sturdy hold before he all but manhandled my to the back entrance. The refreshingly cool air grazing my overheated skin quelled some of my fury, although I felt its presence simmering beneath the surface. The tall man released my trembling limbs and I whipped my head over to examine Namjoon’s concerned countenance. 

Did he know?

I couldn’t bear the thought of any of the limited friends I’d made in this place willingly taking part in such horrid research. They couldn’t have known. My heavy head fell into my hands, thinking of innocent Taemin who didn’t merit the attention of these corrupt individuals, who had no one to protect him. 

If I quit my job here, would anyone care for him? Obviously his basic needs would be met, Namjoon and Yoongi would make sure of that, but were they aware of what exactly that experiment entailed? I’d only scratched the surface, but the prospect of finding out every gritty detail terrified me.

I felt an overwhelming weight crushed me, being helpless beneath it all. “Joon,” I managed to croak out, “I didn’t come here for this.”

With the low volume of my voice, I didn’t know how much he’d heard, but a tug on my wrist enveloped my body into his embrace. As he stroked my head reassuringly, I held onto his thin lab coat with clenched fists.

If it meant I could save Taemin, I would keep my mouth shut. If it meant I could act as some salvation to each animal that came into this wretched place, I would stay.

My disgust for the laboratory only multiplied.

“I didn’t come here for this.”

A pleasant tranquility took shape after a brief greeting had been exchanged, both Jin and I on a well-deserved break after too much time cooped up in our respective offices. Well, even though the assistant researchers’ office wasn’t technically mine in title, the majority of my belongings resided in that space. Namjoon didn’t mind much and Yoongi complained about everything under the sun, so I made myself comfortable there. 

The hum of electricity powering the building and the whirr of the coffee maker spurring into action intensified as I closed my eyes, resting my head against the back of the sofa. I stared up at the ceiling with a vacant expression and tried to clear my thoughts for a bit.

A ceramic mug clinked against the surface of the coffee table in front of me. “Drink.” I lifted my head to take in the reassuring crinkle in Jin’s eyes. “You look like you’ll need all the energy you can get right now.”

I scoffed at his statement, the end of my own lips flitting upwards. “Just tell me I look like shit.”

Gratefully accepting the cup of coffee, the bitter taste on my tongue already started to rejuvenate my aching muscles. Jin was aware of my deep-seated aversion to the drink, but I guess my appearance revealed too much of the chaos inside my head. “I was going to, but I had a feeling you might just break down if I did.”

Although the work itself was tedious and relatively tiring on its own, the fact that all my efforts were going to fuel that wretched project made me feel rotten to the core. The knowledge sapped my stamina at an exponential rate that I wasn’t accustomed to.

“How’s baby Yeri doing?” I placed the pungent beverage back down, stroking my chin in faux deliberation. “Or I guess I should ask how Chaeyoung is holding up instead, huh?”

Jin let out a hum of aggravation around his own glass, swallowing the liquid before slapping his unoccupied hand against his thigh. “Don’t even get me started. Chaeyoung keeps telling me to take some time off work to come help, but honestly I would take the peace and quiet of the office over Yeri’s nasty diapers any day.” He shook his head at the thought, repulsed by the dealing with another one of Yeri’s accidents.

I’d heard the story one too many times not to let a giggle slip at his misfortune.

Abruptly, an alarming shriek disturbed the placidity. As my head shot up to identify the source, the sound was muffled, then silence resumed. I scrambled to discern who the perpetrator was when my gaze met Jin’s static form. “Did you hear that?” When his weary eyes met mine, appearing confused, I clarified, “that scream.”

“Oh, they probably just dropped something. Don’t worry too much about it.” But I couldn’t find a trace of compassion in his words, especially with how gut-wrenching the shout sounded. Rather than shock, every note was filled with agony and something felt vaguely off about the whole ordeal.

The look of guilt that Jin sported stopped me from prodding. I refused to believe the stubborn man who was always drowning in papers to complete, shoving fried chicken down his throat like there was no tomorrow, who had the sweetest daughter back at home knew anything about the experiment. Not what was really happening.

That’s why the regret and shame written all over his countenance made me pause.

More shuffling, whimpers and yelps filled my limbs with apprehension, seeping deep into my bones and making me restless. Jin kept his gaze trained on the floor, unable to look me in the eye as he excused each sound with the fault of a clumsy, irresponsible researcher and other rationalizations that I wasn’t sure he, himself, believed. 

At this point, the raucous was becoming increasingly bestial and I couldn’t decipher the species that was belting out the miserable noises. I tried to grit my teeth and ignore them, distracting myself with Jin’s moronic cover-ups to keep me glued to my spot. Without a keycard, I had no access to the upstairs lab anyway, it was out of my hands for now.

When my thoughts strayed to Taemin though, I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach, recalling how I had been dragged away before I could stop Minzi from taking him. Suddenly, I lost the ability to think logically, fixated on Taemin’s well-being. I had to know if it was him.

Hastily, I jumped out of my seat, coffee long forgotten as I sprinted down the hall. Jin’s pounding footsteps followed after me, though I gave them no mind.

Once I reached the first floor, the sight of two unfamiliar men dressed in heavy gear greeted me. The bulkier of the two lifted the cage as if it were as light as a feather and I noticed how unusually clean it was. “No, you can’t take it upstairs!” I grabbed onto the bars, halting him in his tracks. “Where is he? Tell them to bring him back here!”

“Sorry, no can do miss,” he drawled out. “We were asked to—”

“I don’t care what you were asked to do! Tell them to bring him back!” He rolled his eyes at my accusatory tone and yanked the cage out of my grasp. As I reached out again in a frenzy, the other man blocked my path. The odds weren’t looking too great for me.

I saw Jin emerge from the staircase, following the ruckus I’d created. Relief flooded my veins as I sought his backup. “Jin, they want to take his cage.” Pursing my lips, I pointed to said object. “Could you tell them to leave it here?”

“No, Y/N. Get out of the way.” My breath hitched at Jin’s steely tone, locking onto his fatigued gaze. I tried to remind myself that he was oblivious to the horrors that they’d already inflicted upon Taemin, but the back of my eyes still burned at the betrayal I felt. “Come on, let them do their job.”

Though I refused to show how dismayed I’d become, I couldn’t bear the idea of Taemin residing upstairs, where they could inject anything without suspicion. “Please, Jin. Please. Believe me when I say that he won’t last a day up there.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, let’s go finish our coffee, hm?” I huffed out through my nostrils in frustration, wringing my fingers together as I debated whether or not to tell him the truth I discovered for myself not too long ago.

“Oh, my. What’s this? I believe I told you what would happen if you caused a commotion again, didn’t I?” Feeling defeated already, I didn’t even turn to meet Hyunho’s form as I heard him approach. “I’ll need you to get out of the way now, girly.”

“It’s Y/N.”

His fake grin put his crooked teeth on full display. “Yes, yes. Scurry along now.”

“No.” With a hardened resolve, I glared back at him. “Bring Taemin back. Let him stay on this floor.” Hesitant but desperate, I added a barely audible, “please.”

At my plea, he brightened up, utterly pleased with watching me grovel at his feet. “You should use that tone more often, newbie, it could really get you places.” The stealthy once-over of my chest didn’t go unnoticed by me and I wrapped the lab coat around me tighter. He pulled back a little, satisfied with my discomfort. "You didn’t hear? He died of natural causes, so we have to clean up this mess for the new tiger cub coming in. Don’t worry though, he’ll be staying on this floor when he gets here.”

I took a step back, skin stinging as if he’d slapped me across the face, feeling my blood run cold. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted the bewilderment reflected on Jin’s features, as well as the sudden appearance of Namjoon and Yoongi, both looking as distressed as I felt.

When my breaths came in heavier and burning droplets rolled down my cheeks, I knew the dam had broken. “Don’t feed me that bullshit... You monsters.” I felt my bottom lip quiver as my voice cracked. “Killed him.”

One of Hyunho’s thick eyebrows raised in amusement at my shattered state. “Haven’t you been taught not to mess with fire, girly?” He crossed his arms after giving a flick of dismissal to the man still carrying the cage. “You could get burned.” 

A pair of arms wrapped around my torso and dragged me away before I could wail anything out. Through the blurry mess of tears, I made out a discarded, mangled mouse toy by the corner.

tags: @aurorakingsley​ @bubbletae7​ @iamunrecognized @bangtanloverrrrr​ @walkingdeadfan25​

[runawaymarbles]

Good omens fic rec

A Letter from “Crawly” to Azirapil by mostlydeadlanguages | 500 Words | G

This remarkable letter of unknown provenance surfaced recently in the cuneiform collection of the University of West Wessex. Addressed to Azirapil from a Mr. “Crawly,” it appears to be begging for the other’s return to Ur from a western journey with another individual, Abiraham. The relationship between the two (brothers? business partners? friends?) is unknown.

404 Email Not Found by Dacelin | 700 words | G

The first the Metatron knew about Armageddon was when Aziraphale contacted him to beg for it to be called off. Being a professional, the Metatron murmured soothing things about it all being part of the plan and rerouted the call elsewhere instead of admitting he had no idea what the principality was talking about.

my black eye casts no shadow by gyzym | 1.5k | Not Rated, probably M 

If you cut humanity to the quick, split it open, found its soul, it would have dark red hair and bright wild eyes.

So You Need To Get Into A.Z. Fell & Co.; Now What? (A Guide For Unfortunate Bookworms) by arkhamcycle | 1.8k | G

London’s antique enthusiasts and rare lit nerds alike know that if you’re looking for a specific vintage or antique book, you have a good chance of ending up in A.Z. Fell & Co. as a last resort. And if you’ve ever been in (or are currently in) this predicament, you know how much of an absolute nightmare it is trying to even get in the door. Luckily, this handy guide, the fruit of a months-long collaborative effort to create the perfect formula for gaming the A.Z. Fell system, will tell you everything you need to know, complete with a comprehensive breakdown of what, exactly, the opening hours are. Compiled by pageknight and inky of the Rare Antique Forums.

Quiet Light by drawlight | 2k | T |

There are rules. The trouble with hearts is that they play by none of them.

between the shadow and the soul by absopositivelutely | 2k | NR

(alternatively: it takes 6000 years for crowley to realize that aziraphale could love him too.)

i just happen to like apples (i am not afraid of snakes) by gyzym | 2k | Not Rated

Written for the following prompt: "Someone write me Crowley the bitter lesbian who only gave Eve the apple because she thought feminism should be there from day one." As such, please be warned that this story contains some fairly radical reinterpretations of Biblical stories and themes; if that sort of thing is not for you, please give this tale a pass.

Secret Agent Man by Emamel | 2.3k | G | 

Edward was very good at two things: noticing things, and not being noticed in return. It was the sort of qualities that made you a good spy. These two never got the memo.

Ten Fathoms Deep On the Road to Hell by BuggreAlleThis | 2.5k | G

Aziraphale is given an assignment as a Captain in the Royal Navy and finds life at sea miserable. Crowley, on the other hand, is having plenty of fun as the Captain of a motley pirate crew.

Untitled Goose Fic by rattatatosk | 3k | T

It's a lovely week in the South Downs, and Crowley is at war with a Horrible Goose.

Anthony J. Crowley, Retired Demon and Airbnb Superhost by TheOldAquarian | 3k | G 

What are you supposed to do when you've been fired from your sweet job in Hell for thwarting the schemes of Satan, you've got a swanky flat in Mayfair, and you're looking for an excuse to spend all your time in someone else's bookshop? Obviously, you turn to the dubious world of short-term vacation rentals. The resulting Airbnb property has been variously described as "an instagram trap," "a vampire den but make it botanical," and "the weirdest bed and breakfast in the shared history of beds and breakfasting."

Salinity (And Other Measurements of Brackish Water) by drawlight | 3k | T | 

It's an odd thing, getting on after the End of the World. Crowley takes to sea-watching.

Stopgap by RC_McLachlan | 3k | T | 

"Can you imagine ruining something so frustratingly perfect just to get a leg up with Management?" Crowley then remembers who he's talking to and why he's here in the first place. "Sorry, bad example, of course you can." A missing scene from Episode 6.

Wednesdays Are for This by magpiespirit | 3k | T

"D'you think we should have sex," he asks idly, pressing post on his addition to the exclusive How to Summon and Bind Demons forum. This one, he's sure, will both give Hell several annoying headaches and make a dent in the problem of demonology rising in the incel community. Bless, he loves having free time. "I think," Aziraphale replies frankly, giving Crowley a really, now look over the rims of his stupid glasses and the top of a first edition of something that probably uses a hundred words to say what could be said in five, "that should is a word best left to Heaven and Hell." And Crowley, who was only looking to fluster the angel a little, belatedly remembers that he's gotten commendations for Aziraphale's temptations.

build me a city, call it jerusalem by gyzym | 3.5k | T | 

Man begets man begets The Tales of Men, and there's nothing godly in that; Those Above and Them Below haven't any need for the stories humans have been hungry for since the snake and the Angel with the flaming sword.

The Plantom Menace by theinkwell33 | 3.6k | G 

There is an urban legend well known in this area regarding The Plant Man. Footage exists, blurry and ill-lit, of the trespassing fiend, but it never provides a good look at his face. He exists only as a rumor; a giggled whisper in someone’s ear at the pub, an inside joke at uni, and a viral sensation. None of these things mean he is not real. That being said, the only person who can corroborate the truth about the Plant Man is the man himself. And unfortunately, Anthony J. Crowley has no idea that it’s him.

get religion quick (cause you're looking divine) by brinnanza | 4k | G |

So it was fine. Even if Crowley couldn’t love him, he clearly liked him well enough, and that was almost the same thing. It no doubt would have continued to be fine, or at least fine-adjacent, were it not for a narrowly averted apocalypse and several bottles of a really quite nice Riesling Aziraphale had found in the back room of his newly restored bookshop.

to carthage then i came by Lvslie | 4k | T | 

‘You’re difficult to follow sometimes.’ ‘Difficult?’ Crowley echoes, feeling hollow. ‘Am I too fast? Am I going—’ And just like that, there’s something new in the silence between them, a tightening. The glass almost slips from his grasp, sliding from between languid fingers. His vision clouds. —too fast for you?’

Snakes and Stones (Never Broke My Bones) by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee | 4.5k | G

No one wants to say it, but the residents of Dorm A, floor 3, are collectively convinced Aziraphale Fell’s boyfriend does not exist. This is their story.

as the poets say by nikkiRA | 4.6k | T

Crowley takes a long drink of his wine and then says, before he can chicken out, “Aziraphale, I have always been sure about you.”

Re-Recalled by Jennistar | 5k | T |

Halfway through an argument, Aziraphale gets accidentally discorporated and doesn't come back. Crowley does the sensible thing and panics.

the bookshop nemesis witch by FlipSpring | 5k | G

The life and times of Nicole Percival Castings, Witch. Featuring: her ongoing love/rivalry with a particular magical bookstore, an Eccentric(TM) shopkeeper who keeps a huge snake in aforementioned bookstore, finding oneself and one's magical power, the cyclicality of life.

your smile speaks books to me by laiqualaurelote | 5k | T 

Aziraphale's bookshop becomes accidentally famous on Instagram, to his great distress. Since Crowley invented Instagram, it's also his problem.

it's a new craze by attheborder | 5.5k | G | 

CROWLEY: I try not to make a habit of gratitude, but I must give our appreciation to everyone out there who’s been listening and subscribing to The Ineffable Plan. AZIRAPHALE: Ooh, yes, we’ve become quite popular, haven’t we?CROWLEY: Yeah, just hit number eight on the advice charts … No advertising at all.  AZIRAPHALE: Mm. How … miraculous. CROWLEY: … Aziraphale. You did not.

your apple-eating heathen by katarzi | G | 5.7k

History is written without them, and Crowley’s no lady.

the blues have run the game by indigostohelit | 6k | NC-17 (more of an M)

Halfway between the Beginning and the Apocalypse, Crowley visits the court of King Saul, and runs into a prince, a war camp, and a songbook. 

the earth has never felt this old by brawlite | 6k | T

Crowley has a long history with holy places.

TwoFish by Grindylowe | 6k | T | 

A love story about angels and demons. Also, fish

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More or less just the opening montage from 'Hard Times' but they're lesbians - a series of vignettes from the Garden to now.

parable of shepherds by Lvslie | 6k | T |

‘Aziraphale, you need to stop telling that goddamned story to everyone we stumble upon,’ she hisses. ‘I’m serious. You keep it up much longer, everyone’s gonna think we’ve gone and murdered that alleged husband of mine. ‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale says blithely, a serene smile plastered to her face as a familiar-looking man passes by, ‘Dear. That’s what I want them to think.’

Nothing Like The Sun by mirawonderfulstar | 6k | T |

One tended to go through a number bodies in six thousand years, even if one was as cautious or sturdy as Aziraphale. Crowley, who was neither cautious nor sturdy, had gone through a large number. He’d changed appearance so many times that in Aziraphale’s memory he was often just his eyes, for no matter if Crowley was tall or short, lithe or stocky, blond or raven-haired, his eyes stayed the same. 

Blessed/Cursed Retirement by DictionaryWrites | 7k | T

Liam Buttersby, a very normal, nine-year-old boy, makes a friend in the retiree who has recently moved to his village in the South Downs. The retiree in question claims to hate it, and is a liar.

the technology is neutral by Deputychairman | 7k | NC-17 | 

“Stand up?” he echoed, incredulous but too undone by sensation to express the full force of his disbelief. “I can barely even remember my own name after that, and you want me to stand up?” “Your name is Anthony J Crowley, apparently, although you never did tell me what the J stood for so I can’t help you there,” he said, not hiding his smile. “Do stand up, I promise you’ll like it.”

Part of the Plan by HardlyFair | 7k | T |

In which things do not return to the exact way they were Before.

Where Thou Art by Mottlemoth | 7.5k | M | 

A late-night bus to London, a few human comforts, and a long overdue confession... nothing will ever be the same for an angel and his demon.

The Ark by rfsmiley | 7k | T 

We’ve all been assuming that it takes them 6,000 years to figure it out, but what if it takes 6,300?

Or: the ineffable husbands evacuate a dying Earth.

Ad Astra by drawlight | 8K | NC-17

Some things can only be said in the dark.

except you enthrall me, never shall be free by curtaincall | 8k | T

It's a classic story: Angel meets knight. Angel volunteers to get beheaded by knight. Knight turns out to be angel's demon frenemy. Somehow, there is kissing. Based on the Middle English ballad Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Falling Rain by Aria | 8k | T |

Once upon a time, an angel and a demon hitched a ride on the Ark.

such surpassing brightness by Handful_of_Silence | 8k | G | 

The revelation that Aziraphale might have been in love with him for thousands of years is surprising. The fact that literal books have been written on the subject comes as even more of a shock.

Without Creativity by htebazytook | 8k | NC-17 |

Another Crowley and Aziraphale through the ages fic, with some heavy symbolism thrown in for good measure.

Exit Wounds by racketghost | 8k | T

“At least they were together for a time,” Crowley says, staring at the lit end of his cigarette, “maybe that’s enough.”

On The Matter Of Touch by Somedrunkpirate | 9k | T

“On the matter of touch,” Crowley begins, waving his teaspoon in what he hopes passes for idle curiosity. “Thoughts?”

and, so on by PaintedVanilla | 9k | M | 

Crowley doesn’t remember heaven, but Aziraphale remembers him.

Going Home by Daegaer | 9k | G | 

Aziraphale is recalled to Heaven, Crowley isn't impressed.

The future's going to break through by nieded | 10k | T

My take on South Downs: Aziraphale and Crowley decide to become professors. This is inspired by the headcanon that Crowley has 20 different degrees. He is the Serpent of the Tree of Knowledge after all.

Wings and How to Hide Them by triedunture | M | 10k 

Crowley's been annoyingly in love for six thousand years. What's another lifetime between friends? Or: Aziraphale definitely fucks and isn't that just perfect?

The Gospel of Crowley by gutterandthestars | 10k | T

Crowley tempts Jesus in the wilderness! Turns out Jesus gives as good as he gets. Also Crowley pines over Aziraphale and has Big Gay Angsty Feelings because, well. Because Crowley.

A Nanny? In MY Summoning Circle? by pukner | 10k | Not Rated

(it's more likely than you think) Warlock "Lockie" Dowling summons a demon. Or, he buys a book off a suspiciously familiar bookseller and is convinced into demon summoning. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

damn.nation, now available on itunes by antistar_e (kaikamahine) | 10k | T

When lowly tempt-pusher Amphora (formerly of Stairwell 7B North, before she Fell,) gets the notice that end times are nigh, she gleefully quits her job and cancels her Netflix subscription and takes her place among the legions of hell. This, it turns out, was a bad plan.

Lie Back And Think Of Dinner by jessthereckless | 11k | M |

"Crowley, this is a disaster. This is everything I ever wanted. We’re in love. And there’s a picnic. And we don’t seem to be able to get…amorous without causing earthquakes.” Aziraphale attempts subterfuge. Crowley sees right through him.

Something to do with these sacred words by Solshine | 11k | T

Crowley confesses early, and Crowley confesses often. Aziraphale never knows quite what to say.

A Resurrection of Whales, and Other Omens of Varying Goodness by Margo_Kim | 11k | WIP | T

After the end of the world doesn't end anything, Heaven and Hell send replacements to Earth while the old representatives try to figure out their new normal.

Serpentine by sergeant_smudge | 11k | G |

Five ways in which Crowley is a snake. *And one more thing.

what's to come by PepperPrints, restlesslikeme | 11k | T 

Post-Apocalyptic AU. Even without the Antichrist, both Heaven and Hell insist on Armageddon. Aziraphale is missing and Crowley sets out to find him, driving through a scorched Earth with a witch in his passenger seat.

Basking by bomberqueen17 | 15k | NC-17

Crowley is extremely confused about how or whether celestial beings can experience physical sexual desire. He's also not fantastic at using his words. Things go all... snake-shaped.

Nanny Knows Best by DictionaryWrites | 17k | M

Being a nanny, that should be simple. Simple. Easy as pie. Crowley wished that were true.

One Night In Bangor (And the World's Your Oyster) by Atalan | 17k | NC-17

"All right, I know I'm going to regret asking this," Aziraphale says. "What exactly does this wager entail?” Crowley grins like the cat that not only got the cream but has absconded with the entire cow. He grabs the bottle and swigs straight from it despite Aziraphale's tut of disapproval. "The pot goes to whichever demon can get an angel into bed by the end of the evening."

Soft (A Love Story in Three Bites) by mia_ugly | 18.3k | NC-17

Crowley was an angel, once. Before she fell. Aziraphale was a warrior (she fell too. It just took a little longer.)

The Persephone Clause by Zetared | 20k | T |

When Crowley is forcibly recalled to home office, Aziraphale conspires with a denounced saint and strikes a deal with the agents of Hell to get him back.

in search of the wind by drawlight | 27k | NC-17

After the World Doesn't End, Aziraphale is not returned to his body. Crowley tries to find a way to get to Heaven's fast-shut gates. Aziraphale tries to find his way back from the sky (and back in time).

And So We Come Full Circle by Hekateras | 30k | T | 

"Angel. You know it's gonna be really bad, this time around," Crowley says slowly. "When the times comes, I want you to-"

Mirror, Mirror by ImprobableDreams900 | 44k | T

Adam, Eve, and Crawly flee Eden through the Western Gate, and it turns out that that simple decision makes all the difference in the world...

Slow Show by mia_ugly | 90k | NC-17

In which temptations are accomplished, grand romantic gestures are made, and two ineffable co-stars only take four seasons of an award-winning television program to realize they’re on their own side (at last, at last.)

Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm | 100k | T

What Aubrey Thyme, a professional, thought, upon first seeing her new client was: you’re going to be a fun one, aren’t you?

Eden!verse by ImprobableDreams900 | 550k | T-M

When Crowley gets captured by angels and dragged up to Heaven, Aziraphale knows he has to rescue him—no matter the consequences.

[birdsandwords-13856149]

In-Depth Research+ Drawing Through Research

Shoebill

Commonly referred to as “prehistoric” -> emphasise the dinosaur likeness??

Found in Uganda

They can stand totally still for hours on end

Ruffled feathers from the front -> scarf? Clothing opportunity

They have the slowest flap rate of every bird -> characterised as lazy, thoughtful, heavy, ability to fly easily taken away?

Lives in swampy, boggy areas-> incorporate that into clothing?

Less than 10,000 left in the wild -> but they only support their strongest chick, which isn’t helping their population, therefore, turkeys voting for Christmas?

Build their nests on floating patches of vegetation because they’re so light

“Cultures believe the bird is taboo and bad luck”

Lungfish is their staple diet

It’s beak is razor sharp at the edges, which they use to decapitate their prey

They defecate on their own legs to keep cool, which at first glance looks like turkeys voting for Christmas but is actually beneficial to them

Live around still water which has lots of diseases

Translucent eyelids that covers their eyes when hunting and preening

SEYMORE THE SHOEBILL

A local took him in after fearing he would be killed by other locals. Keepers at the zoo used a life sized wooden shoebill to comfort the chick. Parents usually dribble water down their beaks into the chicks mouth, so keepers draped themselves in a grey sheet and poured water into the chicks mouth.

Found in the Bengweulu wetlands

THE STORY OF THE GREY HERON

From “The King of The Snakes” but Rosetta Bakersville, a collection of African short stories and folklore.

The stork saves a frog from being eaten by a snake, and the frog thanks him, but doesn’t warn him when an eagle flying above drops a branch on his head, and the stork dies. His family is upset and tell the frog never to come back otherwise they’ll eat him and his children.

This was how the storks, which I’m assuming are shoebills because they’re never called that, are described. “Each one was tall and thin, with a long graceful neck and a think pointed beak, they were a very grave family.” My only doubt is the description “long, pointed beak” because the shoebill has a large, thick beak in comparison to other wetland birds in the area. But tall and thin?

GENERAL RESEARCH

It’s eyes and face are what usually stick out to people who meet it face to face. “More African mask than bird” -> do NOT stick an African mask on it.

“According to legend, if a man goes missing in the swamp, a shoebill is to blame.”

Roughly 60% of their attacks are successful.

People steal their eggs and burn the wetlands to make space for farmland, which kills the chicks.

Fisherman inadvertadly compete with shoebills.

Shoebills are docile around humans,but will act aggressively to defend itself.  

Shoebill protection plan  

LOOK UP THE PLACE

Local fisherman are hired to guard shoebill nests from poachers.  

“King of the marshes”

Communities in Uganda differ on lungfish, some think it’s fine to eat while others think it’s taboo.  

IDIOM

Doing something that is obviously bad for you, most used in British politics, started in the 1970s but is being used more recently due to brexit.

Similar phrases  

Shooting yourself in the foot, Doing something without intending to which spoils a situation for yourself

To be your own worst enemy  

Asking for trouble

Digging your own grave, a warning when someone is doing something that will cause their own failure.  

EXAMPLES OF DIGGING YOUR OWN GRAVE

Cheating on exams

Reckless credit card usage

Investing in a failing business

Not studying

Burning yourself out

Eating junk food and not excercising

Leaving work early

Doing hard drugs

Skipping class

SYNONYMS  

asking for trouble

Looking for trouble  

Being your own worst enemy

QUINTESSENCE

The fifth element, also known as Eeather in medieval philosophy, was also the medieval equivalent of modern dark matter.

The fifth element out of earth, water, fire and air, and seen as the pure element, as it was what planets and stars and gods were made out of. Where the word quintessential comes from, the purest form of something.

Quintessence was believed to move in circular patterns, and helped lead Aristotle’s explanation of observed orbits of stars and planets.  

The use of “quintessence” was popular in medieval alchemy, it was believed that consuming it would cure any illnesses or ailments and it was the “pure element”.

“Quintessence” could be made by distilling alcohol 7 times. (Amazing)

Synonymous with elixirs, alchemy and the philosophers stone.  

“The empty space between objects”  

All space is permeated by “excessively small whirlpools” which would allow light to travel through them.

Before gravity was understood, Jakob Bernoulli theorised that the hardness of Aether is what gave objects a solid heaviness.

MODERN QUINTESSENCE

Theoretically, the substance that causes the universe to accelerate.

Most forms of energy (matter, radiation) cause the universe to slow down with their gravity. But quintessence could be the substance that is causing the universe to accelerate anyway.  

More on Bangweulu Wetlands

Adjacent to Bangweulu in north western Zambia

Looking up if any plants and animals have any cultural meanings  

Cyperus Papyrus, people in ancient Egypt would present these flowers as thanks to gods.

Miombo Woodland, nothing.

Crocodiles, can be very close with communities of people, can be vengeful on behalf of their friends and family.

Burchells Zebra, nothing.

Bushbuck, nothing.

Common Tsessebe, nothing.

Elephants, represent strength, power, wisdom.

Hippos, according to folklore, used to have hair but it was set on fire by a jealous hare.

Hyenas, in west Africa, symbolises immortality, dirty habits, and reversal of normal activities, clever sorcerers. Also in middle eastern folklore, representing treachery.

Jackals, clever sorcerers.

Migratory lechwe, nothing.

Oribi, nothing  

Reedbuck, nothing

Roan, nothing

Sable antelope, no folklore specific to them either, but I think their horns are an awesome shape.

Sitatunga, nothing.

Straw coloured fruit bats, nothing.  

Hamerkops, some legends say other birds help build its nests. When one flies by it means someone has died. Also, people who steal from / destroy their nests can get leprosy or struck by lightning. In Kenya, they’re linked to witchcraft,, alchemy? Potential link to quintessence.

Cormorants, used by humans as tools to fish by tying strings around their throats.  

Ducks, nothing.

Egrets, nothing.

Geese, nothing.

Herons, nothing.

Ibis’, important in Egyptian mythos, toth, god of maths, literature, measurement and time.

Pygmy goose, nothing.

Waders, nothing.

Lungfish.  

Has several villages living on the wetlands with an overall population of 50,000 to 90,000 people.

The habitat is threatened by burning for farming, overfishing and poaching.  

Mosquito nets used for fishing.

Due to efforts, fish stocks have managed to recover.

[recipeblackjack818-blog]

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Megaways Jack Slot Review

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[laughingpinecone]

Yuletide letter

I am laughingpineapple on AO3  

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic (when in doubt, tell me what’s happening to them five, ten, twenty years in the future!), hurt/comfort, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, tropey plots that are already close enough to characters/canon, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploring the ~deep lore, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played entirely straight, sensory details, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues, actual covid (fantasy plagues are okay)

Les Cités Obscures: any

This is a very general “please, anything in the style of canon, just maybe with less thoughtless sexism” request. I want to lose myself in these cities again, and in the strange lands that connect them. I’d be happy to follow any of the known characters and/or OCs, or eschew characters altogether and write about the cities themselves. What caught your imagination in Brüsel, Xhystos, Taxandria, Alaxis...? The history of some cool building that was only marginally featured in one of the stories? Or an OC city! If you’ve got a favourite European city that doesn’t already have its obscure counterpart, please tell me all about it! Go big, go wild! What strange and classically surrealist happenings take place within its walls? Or even... outside Europe... Nerding out about architecture is of course very welcome. I would also love to read a story based on any Schuiten illustration, contextualizing it as if it were part of this ‘verse. Here’s a bunch of them, for example!

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down… him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles… I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back.

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs also if it’s not infidelity and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always. Like, just saying, but assume he’s pining big time and Jowd and Alma figure it out - they’d make a national sport out of excruciatingly protracted teasing.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right… I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being super into Cabanela being roughed up is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business. ...incompatible kinks, truly tragic. they’ll have to find some other common ground. they’re smart, resourceful, playful fellows, I’m sure they’ll manage)

Kentucky Route Zero: Donald kentuckyroutezero

I love everyone in the cast, all acts and interludes, and I am extremely into all the themes this incredible work of art ended up exploring. Agreeing with the overall doom and gloom up to Act IV, I was blown away by Act V’s strong affirmation of the importance of the arts and of the bonds we make and of carving up spaces for ourselves in capitalism’s wake. Donald was, indeed, not a part of any of that. Even the final interlude updates us on Lula and mentions Joseph, but the big guy is nowhere to be seen. So, you know, there’s fanfiction! He’s so static, defeated. I am fascinated by the chain of metaphysical spaces that goes surface -> Zero -> Echo -> Dogwood and even within that framework, the hall of the mountain king is like a hopeless dead end. Dude’s terminally stuck. So - once again, in the spirit of transformative works, how could he get... you know... unstuck? Did Lula’s momentous appearance in Act III shake him? Having a functioning Xanadu again, perhaps? How could he interrogate that oracle, what recursive wonders would it show him? If he decides to leave, what does it feel to be on the surface again after so long, or on the river perhaps? Maybe he is forced to leave by the flood, if not this one, the next... Having him meet any other character would be amazing. Past or future time spent with Weaver... seeing Conway again, changed... programmer guy chatting up musician androids... did he know Carrington from his college days or was Carrington only a friend of Lula’s?

As for Lula herself and Joseph too: “Flipping through the pages, Conway is able to gather that it’s a story about three characters: Joseph, Donald, and Lula. It’s something like a tragic love triangle, but much more complex. Some kind of tangled, painfully concave love polygon.” 😔 I ship them as a full triad, if you can nudge them in that direction, good. But I’m very open to non-romantic resolutions as well, going past their messy feelings to find each other as friends after so many years maybe. Or... a start. idk.

I’d be interested in fic that leans on the game’s adjacent genres: wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I’m also open to AUs, real or through Xanadu. This also feels like a good place to stress that I really, really like caves.

And now for something completely different: FAQ:  The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense is in the tagset this year. I’d say that the crossover with the snake portion of Here and there along the Echo writes itself, but it would not be correct, as in fact I would like you to write it for me. Feel free to not feature Donald if you focus on this crossover instead!

Uru would be a fun crossover too, for Donald specifically. He’s very DRC-shaped in how he tilts at doomed projects which just so happen to be deep underground.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. I adore everyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to add a Nightwing or two to any prompt, please do! I also love all the Scribes and find Erisa a compelling tragic figure, while out of the other triumvirates, I’m “love to hate them” for Manley, Brighton, Udmildhe and Deluge and would not like to see them featured in sympathetic roles. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. I really really love everything he stands for, even if he’s overbearingly smug in standing for it. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? What daring act of resistance did he and Bertrude pull off at some point in their past? It’d be cool if one of his old pamphlets came up at some point. Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?“/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue”? Dude could easily be voted sexiest voice in the Downside - how much is he aware of it? Does he sing? I love how he bears his ‘reader’ brand proudly. And speaking of scars, I have to wonder, looking at Manley for comparison, if the shape of his head, with that massive crack, isn’t also due to injuries.

As a refrain from my general likes: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like… I’d love to read all your headcanons.

Ship-wise, I enjoy him with Tariq as this kind of esoteric connection of minds, guarded words full of secret meanings, long contemplative walks together (is any external pov watching...?), Volfred’s Reader powers brushing against Tariq’s mind and getting weak in the knees at the starlit expanse he finds there, so unlike mortal thoughts. Tariq finds his individuality learning from him; Volfred presumably gets a transcendent glimpse of the Scribes. And I enjoy him with Oralech as pretty much the opposite of that, Oralech is so very mortal compared to him, such a precious, fleeting, burning life especially after his fall. Oralech’s idealism is very dear to me, it was their plan, their shared revolutionary spirit, I find it deeply moving. And I am very interested in seeing them rebuild their connection now that Oralech is back, changed, and in some ways he can learn to let go of his misconceptions and slowly open himself to Volfred’s love again, but in other ways that’s who he is now, with this deep-set anger, and what does it even feel to realize that you’re the symbol of the end of an era (the end of the Rites, the fading of the Scribes). I’m interested in both topside and downside endings for all of them, as long as they end up on the same side, the revolution was peaceful and they don’t angst too much about the side they ended in. Tariq can ‘find his way home’ in the near post-canon somehow or even be summoned again, as a different aspect of the same ‘moonlit vision’ that once inspired Soliam Murr.

Strandbeest: any

https://www.strandbeest.com/

I would just like words to go with these, please and thank you so very much. Worldbuild to your heart’s content! Specifically: I’m fascinated by the premise that the strandbeest are living creatures that evolve and adapt to their ecosystem. A world where life is just wind stomachs and sandy joints, and the tide that can catch you unaware. I would like a story that feels distinctly inorganic. The wonder that is the existence of these creatures. Their unique struggles. Weird and experimental if you like. With a mechanical focus, maybe?

I nominated four critters as a selection of the different cool things they can do - Percipiere Excelsus is huge and has the hammer mechanism, Suspendisse’s tail senses the hardness of the sand, Uminami is my fave caterpillar and the caterpillars overall feel like a new paradigm after a mass extinction event, Ader straight-up flies... but they’re all wonderful. If you want to focus on different strandbeest, please do!

Twin Peaks: Lucy Moran

Case fic but they don’t find out jack shit, someone disappears, David Bowie was there, it’s complicated. Fragmented, shifted, mirrored identities. New Lodge spaces. The risks of staring into the void for too long. Gentle illusions. Transcendence. The moon. Static buzzing. Any title from the s3 ethereal whooshing compilation used as a prompt, actually. Whatever goes on on Blue Pine mountain or the even more mysterious things that go on on White Tail mountain where exactly zero canon locations are found. Twin Peaks is all about the mystery to me, the awe of mystery and unknowability and the human drive to look beyond and the risks of getting a peek, and about shared consciousness and trauma taking physical form in an uncaring world. Go wild with the ethereal whooshing! But I also love the human warmth at the heart of it all, and sometimes it’s enough to anchor these characters and let them have a nice day. A fic entirely focused on some instance of coziness against the cold chaotic background of canon would be great too.

For Lucy specifically, a big draw for me is how canon (...s2 need not apply) empathizes with her way of processing the world. Not just Peaks, but On the Air’s protag who is basically a Lucy expy also gets the narrative completely on her side and that’s great. And I love how in s3, her focus on the small things around her is always echoed by bigger, climactic events beyond her horizon (bunnies / Jack Rabbit’s palace, chair order / Garland’s chair, her first scene talking about the two sheriffs / doubles everywhere...). It feels to me like some kind of off-kilter mindfulness and I love it. She’s also got a loving husband and an amazing son, which, in this economy and also this canon? Damn. The one functional family, imagine that. I am not interested in focus on family dynamics, but singularly, either Lucy/Andy or Lucy&Wally are great - in particular, I’m interested in how strange they are and yet they make it work. With the ruthless critique of traditional family structure that’s all over canon, maybe they make it work specifically because they’re not doing any of that. A bit like the Addams family... but... not goth...? Anyway. I’d love to see Lucy interact with and maybe strike a friendship with any character she’s never shared a scene with in canon! In the tagset, there’s Diane for some secretaries bonding, Audrey because??? why not?, Albert because it’d be an epic enemies to friends slowburn, some version of Laura in the future, if we’re feeling really daring maybe even some version of Coop in the future, still fragmented... or anyone you want! Outside the tagset I’d be curious about Hawk, Margaret and maybe Doris in particular, I think, and Phil, and Nadine and the Invitation to Love fandom in general (Frost says it still airs - did it get as weird as TP s3 did?), but if you have an idea with someone else, absolutely go for it!

Canon-specific DNWs: any singular Dreamer being the ‘source’ of canon, BOB (let alone Judy) being forever defeated in the finale, Judy being an active malevolent presence in the characters’ lives, clear explanations for canonical ambiguities, ‘Odessaverse’ being the reality layer, the Fireman’s House by the Sea being the White Lodge, whatever Twin Perfect’s on about, Cooper/Audrey, Cooper/Laura

[bellsybuilds]

[Part 2 of the Truck Stops and Tribulations series (link)]

<< previous part | next chapter >>

The way home - chapter 1 (T rating and warnings will change)

Din Djarin, Paz Viz(s)la, Baby Yoda, Jack “Agent Whiskey” Daniels, Poppy Adams (modern AU, all human, road trips, found family, family reunions)

---

Din just wants to keep this kid safe, but the effort is taking him cross-country and he's loathe to admit he can't do it alone. Paz is the trucker who rescues them one night, and is strangely happy to keep on helping them. Jack is the estranged, obnoxious brother Din likes to pretend he doesn't have, but beggars can't be choosers.

And Poppy is the up-and-coming drug mogul who will make them all reconsider their life choices.

Set pre-Kingsman: the Golden Circle.

Daylight is low, the sun all but set, and the air has sharpened with the oncoming chill of night when the three men emerge with the child from the Kentucky diner.

Din Djarin has barely slept since the Eastern bounty hunter's guild of Nevarro cut ties with him a week ago. He could have survived without the guild's network but the bounty on his own head doesn't help with the matter of getting a restful night's sleep.

Not when he's already running to protect one smaller and so much more vulnerable. A bounty is too large a burden for any toddler to bear.

They’re risking a lot in the hope Din's twin, Jack Daniels, can help with that.

“So, the ones following you.” Jack glances over his shoulder, waving them toward the black Wrangler parked out front and centre. “Who are they?”

The practiced answer catches in Din’s throat when he sees the way his driver looks at Jack’s jeep: Paz Vizla has a mean glower when he wants to use it.

“We’ll bring my truck,” Paz says. He doesn’t sound nor look interested in arguing the point.

Jack cocks an eyebrow from the six-feet-five-inch trucker to his blue, gold and red semi-trailer waiting by the adjacent country road. The cowboy blows out a long exhale and tips his hat back at the truck so large it couldn’t fit in the diner’s lot.

“Well,” he shakes his head. “I don’t mean to sound indelicate but-- aren’t we trying to fly under the radar here? Maybe Optimus Prime ain’t the ride you want for a quiet entry where we’re going.”

Paz shakes his head, frowning and lost. “Where are we going?” 

“Distillery,” Din says, quiet and firm. “Right? Same place?”

His brother nods, scanning him with a considering look. Din wonders if he’s weighing the risk of bringing them home -- a stranger and the one who spurned the opportunity of a lifetime.

Well, one man’s golden goose was another man’s choking hazard.

“Why--?” Paz begins to question, but Din catches his eye, holds it, anchoring the man with him. 

Caution, they had agreed. Not too many questions.

After a heavy pause, Paz huffs impatiently under his breath. He straightens, stubbornly resigned, broad shoulders pushing back under that unseasonably thin down jacket (what an envy, not to feel the cold). They had agreed to err on the side of caution with Jack, but Paz placing his trust in Din at all is still a wonder to him. At the end of the day, he and Paz are still strangers to each other. One week is not long enough to know a person.

“Fine.” The driver looks to Din’s brother. “I’ll follow you. I’ll park a block away and come the rest on foot. Keep a line open to let us know when we’re close.”

Din watches his brother adjust the kid on his hip. Jack had been awful reluctant to give up the chance to carry the little one, even just a little bit farther. 

The kid’s small hands are closed tight on his thick sleeves, dark eyes gazing up into his face, lips parted and glistening with the threat of a fresh dribble. Jack looks down into that round face with a small smile. The little one burbles a soft noise of wonder, entranced. Maybe it’s the moustache. 

Jack looks to his brother, jerks his head at their taller company. “Do we need him?”

Ugh. Din sighs. Jack has never been shy about speaking his mind and making Din’s life difficult. And people complained about Din’s manners.

In the long shadows of dusk, Paz’s frown pulls deep. Din glances away before the man can catch him staring. 

“He’s coming,” Din says. “And the kid’s booster seat is still strapped in. All our stuff is on that truck.”

Jack glances between them, coming to some conclusion, and it rankles how his mouth again draws into a shallow shrug: if you say so, little brother. “Note the license,” He directs Paz to his Jeep’s black plates. “Don’t get lost.” And then to his twin, “Take it you’re riding with him if the kid’s seat’s up there?”

Din frowns at the Jeep, gently biting his inner cheek. 

Has it really been only days since he met Paz? It feels like months. Maybe once they’ve spent more than a week together, Din will trust the kid alone with him. 

Unlikely.

I don’t trust anyone.

Din steps in and opens his hands for the child. The kid automatically raises short arms in response, and Jack’s expression softens. He hands him over with the familiar confidence of someone accustomed to handling tiny, floppy humans, and Din wonders what small children have been in his life lately.

“You mind giving my brother and I a minute?” Jack nods to the semi waiting on the other side of the road.

Behind Din’s shoulder, Paz grunts in assent and steps off, the crunch of gravel fading with his distance.

Jack watches him leave, gaze lingering on his broad back until he’s satisfied, then his hands find his hips and the look he gives Din makes his gut churn in old anxiety.

“Where the hell did you find him?”

“He… found me,” Din explains lamely, throat dry. 

The child pulls itself up higher on his chest with a loud yawn, small hands in his collar. 

“And why was he looking for you?”

“He was passing through the same diner on his way to finish a job. He saw us getting shot at. He stepped in.”

Jack’s expression twists with ugly skepticism. “Awful samaritan of him.”

How was Jack always so infuriatingly patronising? 

“We’ve been running for a week, Jack,” Din snaps. He is so tired and his brother is annoying. “He took a big risk giving us cover. But don’t worry. I’m cutting him loose.”

“Hey, I’m not worried. It’s your life. But you could have come straight to me.”

Din snorts under his breath. “Right.”

And all would have been forgiven after Din left him with a broken jaw and a black eye.

He swallows, throat tightening. “You told me not to come back,” Din reminds him.

Jack shrugs it off, shaking his head. “And when the fuck have you ever listened to me? We’re brothers. Remember, you and me? That’s all we got.”

Din scowls at him. He’s not the one with a memory problem.

“We got a lot of catching up to do,” Jack murmurs, searching his twin’s face. “It’s been three years, Din.”

Din bites his lip, his gaze dropping. Gravel crunches under the kick of his boot. “Yeah,” and goddamnit, his voice still cracks. 

There are a lot of things they could (and should) talk about, but this isn’t the time and he can’t name a single subject he’d volunteer to start. 

He’s grateful for the excuse of the child, shifting the warm bundle to the cradle of his other elbow to give all his nervous energy somewhere to go. 

Small fingers curl into his short beard with a quizzical noise. The kid’s dark eyes search his, sweet mouth pouting up at him, as though asking, What are you doing? Where are we going?

He tugs the kid’s thick beanie low around its ears and heavy lashes blink under his brush of its nose. It’s going to be okay.

“You look alright.” Din notes the good state of his brother’s clothes, the lack of shadows under his eyes, and the absence of bourbon on his breath. Three years ago, it was a different story.

Jack snorts a quiet laugh, pleased as always for every compliment. “And you look like you ain’t seen the struts of a real bed in months.” His voice drops. “I can’t get you inside, but we can get close enough and get the kid seen to. We got lodgings usually used by tour groups, but should be space enough for the two of you and the--”

Jack tips his hat in Paz’s direction and shrugs for lack of a satisfying way to summarise.

“-- Trucker.”

Din just nods, refusing to rise to Jack’s scathing tone. His brother can keep wondering. “Thanks.” 

For helping with the kid. For their shelter. For not asking all the questions Din had expected, and agreeing to see him at all. He doesn’t remember his brother as a generous man. He swallows, just a mite nervous. 

“I can pay you.”

Jack waves him off, nose wrinkled. “Don’t want your money. But the ones following you and the kid. They close?” 

“We got a day’s lead on them. Maybe less.”

“You’d gain more if you ditch that guy and his transformer. The semis are known and tracked. If they saw you get in that thing, they’ll see you coming for miles. And this guy.” Jack’s shoulders rise with the casual shrug of his offer. “He sounds too convenient. Am I gonna have to shoot him?”

It’s an honest offer and as casual a gesture as taking out the trash. Jack doesn’t even ask if Din could just dismiss the guy. It’s so Jack, and sheds years of distance between them. Some of the tension drops from Din’s shoulders. 

He wants to argue that there are still good people out there.

He shakes his head.

“If it goes bad.” Din glances to the truck and Paz is watching them, leaned up against the tall wheel, thick arms folded, eyes dark. “I’ll shoot him myself.”

///

Once back in the truck, Din says, “After this, we go our own way.”

Paz has just shut his door behind him. The cabin is briefly swamped in darkness, and pale light washes in from the diner’s sign over the dashboard. He stares at Din, the weight of his frown prickling on Din’s neck. The silence draws out a beat longer than comfortable. 

Jaw tight, Din keeps his attention on buckling the kid into its booster seat between them.

“What did he say to you?” Paz asks, low and cautious.

The little one watches Din’s hands with keen interest and his small feet kick happily once secured.

“Your truck is distinct. We need to stay discreet.” Din reaches for his own seatbelt and looks ahead to the road. 

“The truck the only problem?”

Din worries the inside of his cheek, rolling his jaw. “Your taste in music could use some work.”

Paz snorts a laugh and his seatbelt clicks into place. “You mean: you could use an updated education. Hick.”

Din bites his lip to repress a smile, looking out the window.

The truck rumbles to life. For a moment they idle, waiting for fuel to warm the engines. It’s not so cold that Paz probably needs to worry about the lines freezing, but there’s snow out there and Din has learned Paz is not the sort of man who likes to take chances with his home.

That’s what this truck is, after all: more than a transport and a vocation, it’s the man’s mobile home on the road. Din hasn’t asked if there’s a more permanent place waiting for Paz at the end of the line. The thought makes him uncomfortable in a way that’s difficult to name.

A soft thud lands by the kid’s booster seat. Din startles at the tall, feline face that suddenly rears into his vision, the weight of heavy paws pressing against his thigh.

For such a large animal, Paz’s maine coon is adept at sneaking up on him time after time. Din’s had a week to train his senses, but this giant among cats only makes a sound when it wants to be heard. Din could stand to learn a few pointers from its stealth.

He sags, shoulders dropping their tension. The ginger cat sniffs his cheek, his chin, blinking up at him curiously. Long whiskers tickle his beard. Maybe it’s scenting the roast he had in the diner. And to his surprise, the creature is purring.

Din glances to her owner, wary at her proximity. The last time she got this close, she was glaring him down into the pillows, fur aglow in the late afternoon sun wondering why this stranger was waking up in her human’s bed. 

Where else was he supposed to sleep?

It is not lost on Din that he's painted a target on Paz, too.

The kid perks up with a burble of delight, small hands reaching for the cat's thick tail swishing back and forth in his face.

“She deciding if she wants to eat me?” Din asks, leaning away from her roving nose.

Paz shifts the truck into gear with an easy smile and reaches over for his charge, stroking a firm hand down her back. His fingers disappear in the long fur. “C’mere, baby.”

The feline meows at the familiar touch, turning and pouncing immediately into Paz’s waiting lap. She’s large enough to fill his arms and make him crane around the impressive flare of her tail as tall as his torso. Din stares and wonders, not for the first time, why Paz decided on an attack cat instead of a dog like any normal trucker.

Din hasn’t known many truckers, but there’s something different about Paz. 

The other man blows out a comical breath of exasperation at the cat circling over and over in his lap to find the perfect spot. She fills his face with fur as he checks his mirrors and pulls them onto the road. He pats the dashboard, “Up” and she follows the instruction seamlessly, well accustomed to this routine.

The cat stretches along the dash’s full, impressive length and Paz tosses his cap up beside her. She’s a driving hazard, but one Paz is clearly familiar negotiating.

“You ever thought about giving her a real name?” Din asks, pointing to his brother’s Jeep waiting at the street corner.

'Ms Kitty' worked so long as there were no other competing felines in the district.

Paz grunts an unimpressed noise under his breath and pulls the truck into convoy. “You call your kid ‘kid’.” It’s a nudge, not unkind; don’t judge me. Pot, kettle.

Din almost smiles . But the kid is not his kid. 

Not that Paz needs to know that. 

“Point taken.”

The distillery is not far from the diner. A twenty minute drive at most. 

The cat dozes with its long limbs stretched out and the kid yawns into his over-large jacket collar. The quiet has almost settled back to the silent ease they usually enjoyed.

“What you said in the diner….”

Din looks over at their driver. “What?”

Paz is watching the road, eyes intent. The muscles of his jaw visibly tense. “Have I… done anything to make you not trust me?”

Din is grateful for the shadows and Paz keeping his eyes on the road so he can’t see the warm flush rise on Din’s neck. Damn it. He bites his tongue and idly grinds one fist into the palm of his other hand, wishing for the gloves in his pack behind the seat.

“It’s nothing personal,” he says, eventually. No, that feels… not enough. He sighs and unclenches his jaw enough to push the words out. “I’m grateful. For your help. You didn’t have to help us in the lot and... driving us cross country. Now, with Jack. I know it's a lot.”

“It’s fine,” Paz says quietly.

“We’ve asked enough. We'll be out of your hair soon,” Din decides. 

It has felt unsettling leaning on someone like this: like easing down into a familiar chair but wary of how long its frame will hold. It’s sad to say, but he hasn’t asked for nor accepted the help of another person in a long time. 

They’ve travelled together for a mere week. But a week in Din’s book would convert to long months by a normal person’s standard. And he hasn’t enjoyed many measures of ‘normal in his life’.

“If you want to go, I won’t stop you,” Paz says. He sounds distant, mind faraway. “It’s been my honour to help you two.”

Din frowns, hand closing tight over his fist.

It makes him uncomfortable when Paz speaks like this-- the air electrifying around him, his words falling with the gravity of things Din can’t see or understand. Paz would sound ridiculous if he didn’t sound so genuine.

It’s unsettling being in the presence of… that. Whatever that is.

“What you said,” Din parries the attention. “Growing up with guns. Running. Was that true?”

“It is.” Paz nods, glancing over his shoulder to change lanes as Jack’s rear lights signal a turn ahead of them. The long wave of Paz’s dark fringe almost falls in his eyes and Din watches him push it back with a hand, fingers threading through those heavy waves. “It was rough. I wouldn’t wish that on any kid.”

Din thinks about that and the way it resonates, the ghost of an ache down to his bones. “I’m sorry.”

Paz shrugs. “I’m not a kid anymore. I’m doing all right.”

He glances Din’s way, catching him with a wry smile. Din can’t help but return it and huffs a laugh under his breath. A warm stillness blooms through the tension in his chest left from his conversation with Jack.

Maybe there are still good people out there. But he’s not going to wait around to be disproved.

A small, loud yawn breaks between them, tailing to an exhausted whine. 

Din winces with guilt, looking down into the kid’s slow, teary blink under the lamp lights streaming by. How does something so small make such a large sound?

“Aw, kiddo.” Paz sighs, equally pained in sympathy.

Din leans in, heart twisting when the kid turns its face up to the hand he smoothes over its tufty hair, thumb gently stroking its forehead. “Not long now,” he murmurs. “I promise.”

The kid closes its eyes with a soft, unhappy sound and leans into his palm. So small. So vulnerable. He doesn’t have it in him to pull away, fingers sinking into the short, black fuzz of its hair. This kid needs -- the kid deserves more protection than he can provide.

He’s guilty to admit Paz had answered some of that anxiety up until now. But they can’t hide here with him forever.

It’s mere minutes later that Paz announces, “All right, pulling over.”

Din steels himself and strokes the baby soft skin beneath his thumb. Forever is a nice dream, though.

///

Humidity is supposed to be good for one’s skin, but Poppy Adams would sooner dehydrate and mummify than weather another night in the jungle without air conditioning.

Night brings little relief. The jungle hums, chirping and screeching, the nocturnal shift of nature leaving no illusion of her party’s solitude. These ruins were ‘undiscovered’, but although no other humans linger within radio distance, they are not alone. It doesn’t matter.

This is her home now.

Break over, the scream of chainsaws fills the night and Poppy’s team resumes the heavy work of clearing the jungle strangling the old settlement.

Sighing, she turns the electric fan up beside her to its max setting and sighs at the fresh blast of air, collecting her hair up off her neck. Squinting at the monitor before her, the video feed is difficult to see beneath the glare of floodlights casting their clearing as bright as day.

The black and white picture on the monitor freezes and distends. Poppy scowls, pressing buttons to no avail. What the hell is this, the actual 1950’s? After a patient stretch of seconds longer than any technology deserves, she throws up her hands in disbelief. 

“Eli!”

The technician appears at her elbow, shoulders hunched and drawn. Poppy’s face wrinkles at the acrid stench of sweat that fills her nose from an arm’s distance. She expects a certain level of dress sense and hygiene from her people, but...

“Baby, why do you smell like that?” she asks, gaze lingering on the thick sweat of his brow. “Am I not paying you enough for deodorant?”

Taking Eli on was a favour to her late father, the man’s previous employer. Eli is her man for telecommunications, her doctor for everything technological. Getting a clear and reliable signal this far out from civilisation is reason enough to sweat, but that’s why she brought him on board. Eli was supposed to be the best and worth all the times he made her teeth grind with his nervous twitching. Nervous people are so annoying.

“I’m sorry, Miss Poppy. It’s just--” 

“Poppy,” she corrects, appraising his pitiful, shiny demeanour.

“Poppy.” He ducks his head in apology. Poppy pulls a face when he mops his brow with his sleeve and it comes away with a wide, dark streak. The soft grey of his suit is already stained with all shades of jungle. Well, she won’t be sending him to represent her at any board meetings, that’s for sure. “I will re-apply as soon as I get back to my things.”

Poppy waves off his ramblings. More constructively, she thrusts a hand at her unresponsive monitor. “Why does my surveillance feed look like a boiled VHS tape?”

Eli blinks, wide eyes darting to the suitcase-mounted computer. “Ah. That may be… m-may I?”

Spinning the computer around to her tech support, Poppy sits back, fanning herself even as the electric fan whirs on. 

Getting the diner water-tight and wired up with A/C is the first priority. Until then, the building is a dank tomb trapping the worst of the humidity and she is better off braving the elements with her fan, the work site’s bright, bright lights and all the jungle’s insects it attracts.

An uncomfortably large cricket the size of her hand falls down dead with a loud zap by her thigh. She brushes it away with a grimace.

The things she endures for better world order.

Eye on the prize, Poppy.

Eli straightens before the computer and turns it back round to her. “There you go, Miss Poppy. Please try again.”

She blinks at him, slow and heavy. She does not spare a glance to her restored monitor. “Eli, baby, I’m not inspired with confidence in your abilities when you can’t even remember how to address me properly.”

His eyes fly to her face and his sweat-flushed complexion pales to a pallor that almost makes her cringe in pity.

“I-I’m sorry, Poppy. It’s just how I was raised. Respect for our elders--”

“Oh, you’re saying I’m old?”

Eli pales even further. His shoulders begin to shake with his nervous tremors. “N-no it’s… respect for superiors, a-and--”

Poppy throws up her hand to mime a beak closing. “Your face, your voice. They grate on my nerves. I’m sorry, I feel terrible saying it, but it’s true. So, be quiet. And let’s see if you fixed this.”

She presses play on the video. This time, the visual snow resolves into the high vantage of a large parking lot filled with cars. The image is smooth and fluid as the seconds tick by. In the bottom corner, movement --

She claps in exasperated delight. “Oh, at last! It’s working.”

It’s difficult to make out at first: the blur of indistinct shapes coalescing into hooded figures under the tall street lamps. A long semi-trailer occupies the bottom right of the frame. 

Light flashes in the dark at the foot of the Waffle House stair; the spark of a gun firing.

Poppy glances up at Eli, hovering with some trepidation at her shoulder. “Is there sound on this?”

He tests a few commands on the keyboard. “N-no, Poppy. It doesn’t seem so.”

She hums in disappointment. “Oh well.”

The surveillance footage lights up with more flares in the dark, glittering around the carpark like the desperate putters of dragonflies. Multiple shooters. 

“Just a moment,” Eli reaches past her again, the image paling and brightening under the magic of his intervention.

“Oh that’s much better,” Poppy smiles when the featureless dark encompassing much of the image sharpens with the outline of vehicles parked row upon row, a full customer contingent even at 2am in the morning. 

Where are they….?

Poppy leans in, squinting at the barely discernible figure standing strong at the foot of the stair, a significant lump high on their back. 

The picture almost whites out with an abrupt flare of light from the bottom right of the frame, long and spitting. The gout of flame peters out and at its source towers a new person: broad-shouldered and stalking towards the figure at the stairs.

“Whoa,” Eli breathes as the flamethrower erupts again, spewing at the bounty hunters now cowering back against the cars for cover.

Poppy leans in. “That’s him.”

They watch the tall one shift the heavy flamethrower to his back, something equally bulky but short sliding into his hands from the opposite shoulder. The muzzled puff that alights from the barrel of this artillery is an anticlimax after the draconic display.

But Poppy’s eyebrows rise at the consequent explosion engulfing several cars in a furious inferno.

“Okay… okay,” she murmurs, knuckle brushing her lower lip as she considers the possibilities. 

It looks like the target had called for support, and the cavalry was packing heat.

“Update the intelligence,” she glances at Eli still gaping at the monitor. “It looks like he has help now. Advise they’re heavily armed.”

As they watch, the figures dash to the cover of the semi-trailer. The large truck shudders to life, a new explosion billowing up in the car park as it pulls onto the road, the carnage covering their escape. And conveniently lighting up the night well enough to get a read on the license plate.

“It’s only a partial,” Eli clarifies as they both squint at the frozen picture, the image’s fidelity failing to stand up to the demands of magnification. “But between this and the truck’s markings, it might help.”

“Up the bounty.” Poppy fans herself, settling back in her seat, face wrinkling as her shirt clings to her spine with sweat. “If people are going up against that kind of firepower, they’ll expect to be well-compensated.” 

And let nobody say that Poppy Adams won’t compensate for a job well done.

Eli almost bows to her, head low. “Yes, Poppy.”

She snickers, watching him. He’s endearing, for all that she wants to dunk him in a pool of deodorant.  “Go now, Eli. We’re on a deadline.”

<< previous part | next chapter >>

[flora-jimin]

No Place He’d Rather Be

Pairing: Daycare Teachers!Sope 

Genre: The Fluffiest of Fluff| Domestic Vibes

Word Count: 5.3k

Prompt: Chocolate Covered Faces

Rating: G

Summary:  Yoongi gets called to help out at Jin's daycare and the following is a small, fluffy oneshot of him realizing Hoseok's wonderful at childcare and that he's fallen head over heels for the man.

A/N: @apotatomashedbybts I’m so sorry it took me so long ; w ; this was changed and revised so many times but I hope the end result is still enjoyable. This was almost a Taekook easter bunny thing but i missed the window oops. Please enjoy and feedback is always welcome~

AO3 Link

Yoongi sighed as he nervously ran his hands down his pants leg. Today was his first day as a helper for a daycare owned by his close friend. He normally wasn’t much of a people person, and high-energy kids would surely take a lot out of him, but Jin, the owner and his friend, had all but begged him to help out for at least a month while he tried to find someone to fill in.

Worldwide Smiles was the product of all of Jin’s love and hard work, having invested all of his time and money to open a large daycare in Seoul that took in elementary school-aged kids. Jin had hired several close friends to take care of the kids with Namjoon and himself as the caretakers for the children from the fourth and fifth grade. Taehyung and Jimin for the first through third grades, while Jungkook and Hoseok had taken over the children in both pre-k and kindergarten.

Jungkook was going off to college, and since he had signed up for morning and afternoon classes, he wouldn’t be able to assist Hoseok anymore until he graduated.

That’s where Yoongi came in, as per Jin’s request. The older man had asked his long time friend to step in until he could find someone to permanently take up the position.

Yoongi stopped outside of the room with the sun painted on the door, lips pursed as he heard the chaos unfolding inside spilling out into the brightly colored hall. He inhaled deeply and twisted the door handle, taking a step inside.

Almost immediately, a hand shot out in front of his face and he flinched, letting out a startled scream.

“Sorry! Hey, I told you guys no throwing!”

With a hand over his heart from the shock, Yoongi took in his surroundings, seeing the children all scattered about the large room, some of them playing what looked like duck, duck, goose, and some of them playing with plastic food near a play kitchen area that was directly adjacent from the door. The hand in front of him retreated, revealing a plastic apple that had been lobbed through the air. Yoongi followed that hand to its owner, finding a warm, dimpled smile greeting him.

“Hey, Yoongs. Sorry about the chaos. It’s raining today so I had to reschedule today’s park trip, that means play time is indoors.” Hoseok explained, walking over to return the apple to the kitchen area. Some of the kids in the room had paused their ministrations, instead turning their attention to the lavender-haired man.

“Hobi-hyung! Hobi-Hyung!” One child tugged at Hoseok’s pant leg, pointing to Yoongi as he awkwardly shut the door behind him.

“Yes, Minhyuk?”

The child, Minhyuk, bounced on the balls of his feet, pointing more aggressively at Yoongi’s form.

“Who is that?”

Hoseok smiled, patting the child on his head before he raised his voice to get the attention of the other children who weren’t currently watching Yoongi with curious interest.

“Good question, Minhyuk. Kids! I have someone to introduce to you, huddle up!” Hoseok called, moving to the large circular carpet on the floor. Yoongi noticed it had a fantasy design instead of the usual ‘city with roads’ design.

Hoseok stood in the center, waiting for all of the wiggling children to follow suit. Once they had gathered for him, he wiped his hands off on the brightly colored apron secured around his waist and motioned to Yoongi.

“Everyone, this is Min Yoongi. He’s going to be filling in while Kookie is away at college, say hi!” Hoseok introduced the man cheerfully and Yoongi swallowed uncomfortably as he suddenly had several sets of eyes refocused on him. There was a beat of pause before he waved once.

“Ah...hello.”

The room exploded into chatter almost instantly, Yoongi was surrounded by nearly all of the children, with them shouting different questions and requests at him.

“Why is your hair purple, Mister Yoongi?”

“Where did you come from? Do you know Kookie? He’s my favorite!”

“Mister! Mister! I want some juice!”

“You look like a cat! Can I call you Mister Kitty?”

Yoongi’s eyes widened as he struggled to process the chaos around him. Hoseok chuckled lightly and clapped a few times to gain a bit more order.

“Alrighty now, kids. Let’s give Yoongi some space, alright? We can’t go overwhelming him on his first day, right? There’s 10 more minutes until nap time, how about we play a bit more while Yoongi gets settled in, hm?” He suggested, grinning as the kids eagerly dispersed.

Yoongi exhaled, smiling gratefully at Hoseok as the younger man handed him an apron.

“You may wanna put this on. It gets messy in here and you don’t want any stains on your first day, right?” He teased, clapping Yoongi on the back playfully as he motioned for him to follow him to the desk designated for them both.

Yoongi secured the light green apron around his waist, settling down in the extra chair beside Hoseok.

“I know you haven’t really taken care of children, but I’m sure you’ll get it in no time. The day usually starts with an hour and a half of teaching and helping them with homework, then we move on to the first snack time. It could be a little tricky since some of the younger ones like to play with food. After snack, we let them play. Kook and I would try to take them out to the park as much as possible, but obviously we have to keep them inside on cold and rainy days. After they’re all tired out, we put them down on the mats and blankets for nap time for an hour. Once that’s done, we get them up and let them eat a light snack one more time and usually that’s around the time their parents come to start picking them up.” Hoseok read of the days activities as per the planner on his desk, pointing to each activity and times. Yoongi scanned the schedule, nodding along as he listened.

Hoseok looked at their class with a fond look on his face.

“Some of them may open up to you a little slower than others, we do have a few kids that have a couple of special needs, but as long as you’re patient, everything will be alright. While they sleep, you can look at our full roster of kids. Obviously they respond much better if you famiralize yourself with them as opposed to calling them ‘kid’ or something, y’know? They may be kids, but they deserve some respect, too. A lot of people forget that, for some reason.”

Yoongi noticed the slight change in Hoseok’s tone and cleared his throat, gently elbowing his friend, now co-worker.

“You’re normally so spacey and out there, I didn’t expect this side of you, Hobi.” He teased. Hoseok blushed, running a hand through his hair.

“What can I say? Coming in to work and seeing these kids is my favorite part of the day.” Hoseok mused, gently pushing away from his desk to move to a small bluetooth speaker shaped like a blue and purple horse. He gently pressed the top of it’s head, and the kids perked as a tiny voice emitted from it.

‘Bluetooth mode, on! Hello! My name is Mang! Paired!’

“Alright everyone, Mang is on, so it’s time to get your blankets out of your cubbies while Yoongi and I get the futons, alright?” Hoseok spoke loud enough that everyone could hear as he pressed play on his phone, with the gentle sound of lo-fi music drifting into the room. Yoongi trailed after him, following him to the back closet where the futons were located, taking them out and settling them on different spots on the floor after they had pushed the tables aside.

“Okay Yoongs, we gotta tuck them in. Line up by me!” Hobi gently called to them and Yoongi watched as the children all waddled in line.

“Hi Lisa, I like your new blanket. The cats are cute!”

“Jooheon, you can sleep next to Changkyun again but remember not to chatter, it is nap time.”

“Hyuna, your mom brought your Pikachu plushie today.”

Yoongi stood back awkwardly, watching in amazement as one by one the children walked up to him, either giving him a hug, a high 5, or a kiss to his cheek (of which he returned with a kiss to their heads). In less than 10 minutes, the kids had all shuffled away to their futons, with Hoseok surveying all of them with a satisfied smile and nod before he motioned for Yoongi to follow him to the play area so they could clean up.

“I saw some videos on the internet of some schools in America having teachers use a little chart with their students so the kids can choose what kind of affection they recieve. Not everyone is comfortable with hugs or head kisses so I let them choose what they would prefer. We do this when they walk in, before bed, and before they get picked up by their parents. All of their parents enjoy this, too so it’s a win-win. Let’s clean up and I’ll show you all of their names.” He quickly explained, scooping up an armful of toys to gently dump into the toy box. Yoongi followed his lead, picking up several scattered toys and trying not to step on any of them.

Once they had straightened up everything, Yoongi sat down at the desk, opening the little photo album Hoseok and Jungkook had created for the class. Hoseok hummed along to the lo-fi music as he let Yoongi study, typing away at his own computer.

After about 15 minutes, Yoongi nodded, having confidence that he’d memorised all of the children by name and face.

“Didn’t it get overwhelming taking care of so many young kids?” He inquired, looking over Hoseok’s shoulder to find him typing out what looked like a permission slip for the kids so they could participate in a cooking activity. The younger man didn���t lift his eyes from the screen, his fingers flying across the keyboard.

“It does, I had no idea what I was doing at first but Kookie seemed to take the lead when we started, most of it is just keeping your cool and listening to the kids whenever they need something. Patience is the most important thing when caretaking. Show these kids you're willing to know them and things kind of fall into place later.” Hoseok responded quietly, and Yoongi could swear his heart stuttered for a moment.

He hadn't expected to see this calm, mature side of Hoseok, but it drew him in like a moth to light.

Well. That was unexpected.

Yoongi cleared his throat. He was here to help, not redevelop old crushes on his friend he thought he'd quelled years ago.

This shouldn't be too difficult.

-30 Minutes Later-

Okay, maybe he lied.

Yoongi grunted as Matthew climbed on his back, eagerly trying to play with the new aid as he tried to wake up other children.

“Mister Yoongi! Pick me up!”

“Matthew please, I'm trying to wake up Somin-”

“Move! I wanna play with Mister Kitty!”

Yoongi nearly toppled over as Bobby all but barreled into him. Below him, Somin cracked her eyes open, startling when she saw Bobby and Matthew pulling Yoongi every which way. Tears welled in her eyes and she burst into tears.

Instantly, both boys scattered and Yoongi frowned, kneeling down to her.

“H-hey, don’t cry Somin, it’s alright.” Yoongi gently soothed her, lifting part of his apron to offer to her to wipe her eyes. She sniffled, looking at him hesitantly before she took the fabric, bringing it up to her nose.

Yoongi watched in horror as she blew hard, the sound leaving her small nose nearly making him gag. Satisfied, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sent him a wide smile.

“Thank you, Mister Yoongi!” She cheered, bounding away to the table to join the other children. Yoongi looked down at his apron in clear disgust, slowly taking it off so he could discard it as soon as possible.

Hopefully Hoseok had some more on hand.

Yoongi noticed one more child still on the futons, clearly having no intention of getting up. She was small, her round cheeks cherub and slightly flushed as she followed Yoongi’s every movement. He walked over to her, kneeling down to her. He noticed the way her eyes narrowed at him, but he patiently smiled at her.

“Jennie, right? It’s time to eat snack, can you come over and join us?” he inquired. She pursed her lips, frowning in distaste.

“I want Kookie.”

Yoongi blinked in surprise, but tilted his head.

“I know it’s not fun to have your favorite teacher leave, but he’ll definitely come to visit. Maybe we can be friends, too?” He offered, holding his hand up patiently for a high 5. Jennie didn’t even spare his hand a glance, she snapped her head in the opposite direction, hugging her pink rabbit close to her.

“No! You’re a doo-doo head! I want Kookie!”

Yoongi sat there dumbfounded as the girl bounced up to her feet, rushing past him to sit at the table. Hoseok looked up from the fridge, frowning at her as soon as she sat down.

“Jennie! That’s not nice at all! You owe Yoongi an apology.” He told her firmly as he walked over to the table with one of the two containers containing the snacks for all of the kids. Jennie frowned, hiding her face in her rabbit.

“Jennie is only upset because she had a crush on Mister Kookie.” Hyungwon hummed, grabbing his sippy cup and avoiding Jennie’s sharp glare with a sassy head turn. Jennie went red in the face, slapping the table.

“I do not! He’s just not fun like Kookie-Oppa and his face is stupid!” She huffed as soon as Yoongi got close enough to the table. The other kids gasped and Yoongi blinked in annoyance. What was this girl’s problem? It wasn’t his fault Jungkook had to take college classes.

Before he could open his mouth, Hoseok swooped in, kneeling down to her level with a calm, yet stern expression on his face. Jennie frowned, shying away from her teacher’s clear disapproval.

“Jennie, I’m disappointed in you. Kookie and I always told you guys to be nice and polite to everyone. I know you’re sensitive to change, but Kookie has to do what’s important for himself and Yoongi volunteered to help out on such a short notice. You’re being very mean to him. You won’t get any cupcakes or cookies after dessert today, and please apologize to Yoongi.” Hoseok firmly told her. Tears welled up in her eyes, but they never fell as she snapped her gaze over to Yoongi, who had started passing out small premade sandwiches to each child.

“‘M’sorry.” she muttered, squeezing the paw of her plushie repeatedly. Yoongi nodded, bowing slightly. He couldn’t help but to feel bad for the girl. He and Jungkook had vastly different personalities and he was certainly no replacement for the high energy man.

“It’s okay, Jennie. I hope we’ll be friends soon.” was all he said in response. She only bit into her sandwich angrily, sniffing to herself.

As the kids finished eating and Jennie moved to the television to separate herself from the others (and their cupcakes and cookies for dessert), Yoongi joined her, sitting a few feet away. While Hoseok wasn’t looking, he grabbed a chocolate chip cookie, gently presenting it to the girl as a peace offering.

Jennie looked at the cookie in surprise before looking back at Yoongi, hesitantly taking it. She bowed her head slightly.

“....thank you.” she mumbled, eating the cookie quickly.

It was a start.

-1 Week Later-

“Okay everyone, we’re going to be cooking today. Split up between me and Yoongi so we can put your aprons on!” Hoseok ordered lightly, bringing up a little box with aprons in all colors for them. Yoongi smiled as he sat in one of the tiny chairs, beckoning some of the kids over to his line.

Kihyun all but bounded into the line first, having been the first child to take a liking to Yoongi when he came. Behind him, Hyunwoo, Jinhwan, Sunmi, Lisa, and in the back, even Jennie joined the line.

One by one Yoongi helped each child into their desired apron, rewarding them for sitting still with a high 5 or a hug. Hesitantly, Jennie shuffled over to him, not meeting his eyes.

“Can I have the red one?” there was a pause. “Please?” She added, still not meeting his gaze. Yoongi smiled softly and nodded, opening the pack with the red apron and gently draping it over her neck, securing the strings in the back. Jennie swished the apron around before she nodded once, leaning up to hug Yoongi for a brief second before she quickly hurried away.

Yoongi perked, a small bloom of joy filling his body. He turned to see if Hoseok had saw that Jennie was finally opening up to him and froze in place, transfixed on the scene before him.

Hoseok was kneeling by the first table of children, between Jisoo and Minhyuk, a small, calm smile on his face as he showed the children how to mix the batter while also telling them the desserts they’d be making today. The gentle tone in his voice, the way all the children obediently and happily listened to Hoseok’s instructions, all of it made a sudden, startling thought come to Yoongi’s mind.

Hoseok would make a wonderful father and husband.

Yoongi could swear he let out the most unattractive sound, instead pivoting on his heels to dart to the other table, seeing if any of his kids needed any help.

“Mister Kitty! I’m gonna make you into a kitty cupcake!” Lisa cheered, as she mixed the colors in the icing. From the looks of it, it seemed like she was going with a cupcake that would resemble Hello Kitty. Yoongi-though he hated the name at first, had come to enjoy the nickname the kids had given him. He sent Lisa a smile and gave her head a little pat.

“It looks great, Lisa. Do you want me to bring over some glitter sprinkles?” He inquired, chuckling when he saw how excited she and the other children at the table got. As he moved to grab the sprinkles and the other toppings for the finished treats, he looked towards the end of the table, watching curiously as Jennie started lining up some chocolate chips on the oddly shaped cookie she had placed on the pan in front of her.

Yoongi smiled and left to grab the rest of the toppings.

-30 Minutes Later-

He had chocolate cupcake batter on his nose and cheeks. Glitter sprinkles twinkled in his hair and honestly, Yoongi couldn’t think of anywhere in the world he’d rather be than right here in this daycare with Hobi and this class.

The kids had all finished their work (after the two adults had to rush around to prevent Chanwoo and Changkyun from starting a food fight with everyone) and lined up by the sink,with Yoongi helping them wash off their hands and faces one by one while Hoseok stood ready to dry them off.

Yoongi felt a tug on his shirt as he got towards the end of the line and after looking behind him, he found a shy Jennie holding her extra cookie out to him.

At first glance, it didn’t look much more than a brown circle with slightly overdone arms and legs and a toothy smile on its face, but Jennie shuffled and spoke up..

Yoongi smiled at the dessert in his hand.

“Good job, Jennie. It looks great-”

“He’s a cookie. His name is Shooky. I made him for you...because you’re always so nice to me and you always give me cookies and cupcakes...even when I’m not nice.” She muttered, looking from the ground to Yoongi several times. The man blinked, feeling touched.

Jennie, having said her peace, ran off to get ready for nap time, leaving Yoongi stunned. There was a small laugh from beside him and he looked up, seeing Hoseok looking at him with a hand on his hip and a dimpled smile on his face. Yoongi couldn’t help but to notice the chocolate high on Hobi’s cheekbone.

“I knew my cookie and cupcake counts were off on days Jennie was supposed to be on timeout. You keep rewarding the kids when they’re supposed to think about why they’re in timeout and they’ll get spoiled, hyung.” He playfully scolded him, though his tone and demeanor told Yoongi he probably knew full well what he was doing.

Yoongi stood up, trying to casally evade giving Hoseok a proper response in lieu of using the moist towel in his hand to wipe Hoseok’s cheek, probably standing a closer than necessary. Hoseok held his gaze as he did so, making the simple gesture far more intimate than Yoongi had intended. The older caretaker swallowed thickly unable to tear his eyes away from Hoseok’s calm, half lidded gaze.

“When work is out, we should hang out. ” he whispered suddenly as he leaned down to Yoongi’s ear before motioning for him to follow him so they could put the kids down for nap time.

If Hoseok noticed Yoongi trip over his own feet when he went to follow, he didn’t say a word.

-Later-

Yoongi curled up between Hoseok and Namjoon on Jin’s couch as the men waited for the oldest man to return with popcorn. Jungkook was seated on the floor, balancing a pencil on his nose as he bounced his leg, scanning the homework he was supposed to do over the weekend. Jimin had his head on the love seat’s arm, one of his hands dangling down to run through Jungkook’s hair while Tae idly rubbed the smaller man’s calves as they lay draped across his lap.

Yoongi honestly missed just hanging with his friends like this.

Though, he had begun to notice the way his heart fluttered when Hoseok smiled around him and how he woke up with an extra bounce in his step on days he knew he had work. Unconsciously, he pressed closer to Hoseok and the man noticed the subtle move. Hobi wrapped an arm around his shoulder, pulling him almost flush to his side.

“You looked cold, hyung.”

Yoongi really wondered what were the chances of this couch swallowing whole as Jin plopped down on the other side of Namjoon, starting the dvd movie they were waiting to see together. Hobi rested the top of his head on Yoongi’s, his thumb idly rubbing circles on Yoongi’s arm that made butterflies flutter in the older man’s stomach. Yoongi tried to suppress the flush in his cheeks in lieu of paying attention as the opening credits played.

“So, I’ve got some exciting news! Someone’s inquiring about the caretaker position! Yoongs, you’ll be able to step down soon-”

“No!/Why?!”

Jin and Namjoon jolted as both Yoongi and Hoseok shot uprite in protest. Even Jungkook startled, dropping his book while Jimin and Taehyung observed the two with raised brows.

“Aigoo, you scared the shit out of me! What’s wrong? I thought you told me you were only helping out until I found someone to stay permanently?” Jin inquired, tilting his head. Yoongi shuffled in his seat and Hoseok worried his lip between his teeth, taking the man’s hesitance as a bad sign.

“Y-Yoongs is a great help though! And it’s not good for the kids if we keep switching teachers!” He started, using his hands animatedly as he spoke. Yoongi sat up straighter, nodding.

“Yeah. I actually don’t mind, and I’ve gotten used to the kids. Uh...I guess what I mean is, maybe I can have the permanent position? I-If that’s okay?” Yoongi mumbled. Jin looked between the two of them for a moment before he grinned, sticking his hand in the bowl of popcorn.

“Well, if you’re so passionate about working with Hobi, I couldn’t bear to split you guys apart.” He cooed in a teasing manner. Yoongi sent him a half hearted glare while Hobi only let out a small sigh in relief, putting his arm back over his hyung’s shoulder.

He pulled Yoongi a little closer to him unknowingly, but the older man only curled into his touch.

-Next Day-

Yoongi grunted as he stood on his tip toes, reaching for a box of construction paper for the day’s painting project for the kids. It was still early, so no one had arrived yet, which gave the men enough time to set up the tables before the small, adorable chaos poured in.

There was a shuffle above him as Hoseok placed his chin on his shoulder, effectively crowding against Yoongi. The older caretaker blushed, turning his head a fraction and regretting it when he noticed how close he and Hoseok’s faces were from the move.

“I’m happy I get to work with you, hyung.” he mused, his voice holding that tender tone that Yoongi had come to fall in love with all over again. The smaller man hadn’t noticed, instead fixing his gaze on Hoseok’s upturned lips.

This was a dangerous situation.

Hoseok noticed the staring and hummed, angling his head down until their noses were brushing against one another, making Yoongi’s gaze flick up to meet his. Apparently he didn’t mind the proximity, and Hoseok took that as a sign for what it was.

Yoongi craned his head up, pressing his lips against Hoseok’s cheek for the briefest of moments before he playfully put a hand on his chest, pushing him away lightly as he took a step back.

“I enjoy working with you too, Hobi. You’ll make a wonderful father one day.” He mused, cringing when he realized he had added that last part. Hoseok blinked in surprise, his brows going up in surprise at the sudden compliment.

“Yoongs-”

“The kids are gonna arrive soon. We’ll save this for later, alright?” Yoongi muttered quickly, ducking his face to hide his embarrassment. Hoseok put a hand on his hips, a crooked smile coming to his face.

“I’ll hold you to that, hyung.”

-Epilogue, 4 Years Later-

Yoongi grunted when he felt a tug on his comforter, lifting his head and blinking a few times to gather his bearings. There was a small form standing at the edge of his bead and after rubbing his eyes, Yoongi couldn’t help the smile that came to his face once the figure became clear.

“Appa, we have to brush our teeth or we won’t be able to eat pancakes. Appa Hobi is making them with chocolate chips!”

Yoongi nodded in understanding, already smelling the sweet scent of chocolate filling the house.

Rolling out of bed, he smiled down at the child waiting for him.

He and Hoseok had been together for four years now. They started dating not too long after Yoongi had accepted the full-time position at Jin’s daycare beside Hoseok. Three years later, the two had settled down and decided to create a family of their own, adopting their son shortly after being married overseas.

“Appa, pick me up please?”

Yoongi reached down without hesitation, picking his son Yeonjun up, balancing him on his hip like he had done countless times before. If you had asked Yoongi years ago if he believed would be in his early 30s, married to one of his best friends in the whole world with an adopted child of their own, he would’ve laughed in your face.

Now, he couldn’t imagine his days being anything else.

Yeonjun wrapped his arms around his father’s neck, tucking his face into his shoulder as Yoongi walked the two of them to the bathroom, grabbing the small Anpan rag to wash his son’s face to get him more alert and awake.

With that done, he assisted the child with putting toothpaste on his brush, mirroring him as they both lazily and diligently brushed their teeth, both of them sleepy with half-lidded eyes. Yoongi gently brushed down the wayward strands of hair both of them had acquired from sleeping and turned the faucet off, sending Yeonjun a small smile, giving him a small bunny kiss.

“Let’s go get breakfast.” He cooed, tightening his grip as Yeonjun wiggled about excitedly.

Together, the two of them walked out of the bathroom, inhaling the smell of various breakfast foods deeply.

There was a dual sound of stomachs rumbling.

Both of them exchanged a look before laughing heartily. Yoongi set Yeonjun down, watching as the toddler ran full speed into the kitchen, hugging Hoseok’s leg.

“Appa!” He cheered, trying to jump up to see what Hoseok was arranging on the plate. Hobi smiled wide, picking the toddler up and planting a small kiss on his forehead.

“You finally got up? Are you ready for Appa Hobi’s delicious pancakes?” He grinned, motioning to the stack of pancakes. Yeonjun’s eyes lit up when he saw the large, fluffy Japanese pancakes on the plates on the counter. He bounced and wiggled eagerly, reaching for the syrup bottle on the counter.

“I wanna put the syrup on! Appa, lemme put the syrup on!” Yeonjun cheered, plucking at the cap on the syrup bottle.

Yoongi smiled, rounding around to the other side of Hoseok to kiss his husband’s cheek.

“You made pancakes, Japanese ones, too. Is something special going on?” He inquired. Hoseok beamed, moving to set Yeonjun down in the only chair at the table with cushions in the seat. The toddler wiggled, hugging the bottle of syrup as Hoseok and Yoongi both set the plates of breakfast foods at the table. Once the plates were made and they were seated, the younger man spoke.

“It’s the anniversary of the day you started working at Worldwide Smiles. I wanted to celebrate!” He beamed proudly, gently lifting a fluffy piece of pancake into his mouth. Yoongi paused mid-bite, blinking in surprise as he saw the genuine, pure joy on his husband’s face.

“You remembered that? I didn’t even remember which day was my first day. Why do you just know that?” He squinted, pointing his fork at Hoseok. Hobi propped his cheek in his hand, a soft, sentimental smile on his face.

“Seeing you on your first day helping out and seeing how much you were willing to step out of your comfort zone to bond with the kids was really eye-opening to me. Suddenly my best friend was in a different light and even though you definitely looked like you were going through it the first month or two, I couldn’t help but to think ‘Yoongi would make a great father.’ I knew this was destiny when you said the same thing to me after taking the full position.” He mused.

The fact that the same words that had swirled through Yoongi’s head time and time again had also popped up in Hoseok’s had made the smaller man blush, hiding his face shyly.

“Ooooo, Appa Yoongi is blushiiiing!” Yeonjun chimed, swinging his feet as he danced in his chair. Yoongi blew a raspberry, but otherwise let the child tease him, glancing back at Hoseok after a moment had passed.

He hadn’t expected this when Jin had asked for his help all those years ago, but sometimes all it takes is one, tiny action, that can lead to a brand new chapter in life.

As they cleaned up half an hour later, with Yoongi washing the dishes and Hoseok cleaning chocolate off of Yeonjun’s hands and cheeks from the chocolate chips in the pancakes, there wasn’t a single place in the world that Yoongi would rather be.

[jacewilliams1]

Airline delays – sometimes you just can’t win

All human endeavors are plagued with delays. No doubt those apes in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey were a few minutes late to the party when one of them had a hard time finding a suitable bone. Trains are often delayed everywhere but Switzerland, and roads are so congested all over the world that traffic delays are not even the butt of jokes these days. Air travel, on the other hand, is amazingly free of delays… and watch as his nose grows longer and longer!

Actually, delays in air travel occur at about the same rate as delays in other forms of transportation, especially those forms in which the number of users occasionally overwhelms the system. In fact, the majority of all transportation delays stem from overuse of the system. Although the Wright brothers probably had a few mechanical delays on December 3, 1903, the potential for air delays began to really grow the day the world’s second airplane was constructed.

In the world of aviation, delays have three main causes: mechanical delays (involving both the airplane itself and a wide array of ancillary equipment), weather delays, and system or throughput delays involving saturation of the air traffic system (these are, in turn, often initiated by weather). Operators (airlines and individual pilots) have control over only some of the causes of delays.

Mechanical delays can be minimized by careful attention to maintenance and inspections, along with an extra airplane or two on the property that can be used as a spare. But things are always susceptible to breaking at the last minute, even in the best run outfits. Weather can be coped with by training and equipping to the latest standards, but there are things like hurricanes, thunderstorms, blizzards, and certain kinds of icing conditions that simply cannot be safely handled. The ATC system could mayhap be upgraded, akin to adding lanes to a freeway, but although this is ongoing as we speak, it is glacially slow and extremely expensive. Meanwhile, more and more of us want to travel.

Airlines are almost always trying to better their on-time performance, the more so when the government takes an interest in such things, as it does from time to time. I recall the time when, back in the 1980s, the Department of Transportation (apparently overwhelmed by a sudden urge for clarity that has never existed elsewhere in government) began to publish the airlines’ on-time statistics. American’s hard-driving president Bob Crandall sagely perceived that whoever topped the ratings for the first year or so might derive some bragging rights from the achievement, rights that just might outlast their tenure at the top.

So for about a year, AA pulled out quite a few stops and succeeded in topping the feds’ list of on-time airlines. This was done, among other ways, by an all-hands-on-deck push to ensure that every airplane got out on time for its first flight of the day. Maintenance, the aircrews, the flight attendants, the ramp crews, the catering crews and passenger service all pitched in to ensure this result, with surprising success. It was also fortunate that this effort occurred at a time of relative labor peace on the property!

A bold marketing claim for an airline.

It worked, and the poet laureates in the marketing department soon began creating advertisements that sang the praises of “The On-Time Machine,” an appellation that has seldom been applied since then to any airline! But for some years after that time, an aura of the On-Time-Machine clung to AA, long after we were eventually toppled off our perch.

No airline employee wants a delay. The corporate cultures at most airlines are distinctly non-Japanese; that is, blame is fixed, rather than problems. A delay of even the shortest duration will start a downhill flow of a substance that is neither colorless nor odorless. On some properties, too many delays can be detrimental to a career, sometimes terminally. No indeed – delays are an anathema to all.

Along the way, we must get one thing straight – there is no such thing as a “delayed” takeoff, for the simple reason that there is no scheduled takeoff time. The scheduled departure time is the block time, the time the wheels start turning (usually backwards) upon the start of pushback or taxi. This time is also the FAA’s definition of the beginning of flight time, as pilots log it. The time you actually get airborne is completely outside of the immediate control of the airline, or your pilot, and has no meaning other than whatever psychological importance it may have to you as a passenger. It is indeed a rite of passage, but not a scheduled one.

So, on we go to some delays that I have known. We can start with one that I created myself. One fine morning, while doing my walk around inspection as flight engineer on one of those first-flights-of-the-day that we were often so obsessed with getting out on time, I was inspecting the tires of my shiny Boeing 727. It was always my wont to inspect the tires closely, since they were and are a very important element of the collection of parts known as the airplane. Any damage to tires that is sufficient to be noticed is worthy of close examination, and this includes the small pebbles and shards of detritus that are often pressed against the tire surface as it rolls over the tarmac. I always took care to brush such things off the tire, lest they possibly come off on their own during takeoff and fly into one of the engines.

On this day I saw what appeared to be a small pebble, about half the diameter of a dime, adhering to the surface of one of the main gear tires. As I attempted to brush it off by hand, I was surprised to notice that it did not budge; in fact, it resisted all of my efforts to dislodge it. Closer examination (my eyesight was perfect back then!) revealed that it was not of mineral origin, but rather metal; and it appeared to have penetrated the tire to a significant depth. This was now out of my league, as far as an immediate fix was concerned, so I called maintenance and the ensuing delay began.

The mechanic immediately confirmed my suspicion that this metallic bit was only the tip of the iceberg. They began to change the tire, and when they had finished and managed to extract the offending bit of FOD (Foreign Object Damage), I was informed that what I had detected was a 5-inch bolt that had completely penetrated the tire, with only a small pebble-like remnant visible on the outside. It had apparently been there for at least one previous flight! Attention to detail paid off that day, but we were delayed some 30 minutes in the process.

A long and distinguished line of airplanes – which means a delay.

Fast forward many years, to the apex of my career in the left seat. We were bound for Rome one evening, and the lineup for takeoff was, as Goose in Top Gun might have said, “long and distinguished.” So long, in fact, that we would be able to shut down an engine while waiting, since we would be stationary for at least 30 minutes, and possibly more. But to our great surprise, the selected engine would not shut down! Now ordinarily this sort of dedication might be applauded – the little airplane that could, with engines that just would not quit. But the inability to shut down an engine is indicative of serious problems within it; and what might possibly ensue should we actually need to shut it down, perhaps for a fire or other failure?

We had immediate recourse to maintenance, via radio, who offered various ideas to get the engine stopped, none of which worked and one of which, pulling the fire handle, I declined to do lest we might not get it started again to taxi back to the gate (we were well overweight for single-engine taxi). By this time I was determined to get the airplane inspected more closely and get the problem definitively fixed. So I imparted to Ground Control the sad news that we had to return, only to be told that since we were nowhere near an intersecting taxiway from which we could escape the conga line, it would be a good hour before our part of the gaggle might begin moving enough to get us headed home.

And so it was.

Once we got to the gate, it turned out to be a matter of replacing a stuck fuel valve, which was a 30-minute job, and then we joined the conga line again. By now, of course, most of the line had long since taken off, so our delay was relatively minor, but we were over three hours late compared to our original schedule. There are never winds sufficient to overcome a three-hour delay, and so it was that we were three hours late arriving in Rome. It was one of the stranger situations I ever encountered – the inability to shut down an engine.

A flight to Bermuda from JFK is only around 90 minutes long, and when it also has a 32-hour layover on that delightful island it is a pleasure indeed. One evening we left the gate right on time, but unfortunately just as a line of thunderstorms was bearing down on the New York area. Early evening at JFK is rush hour, and the lineup was nearly 60 airplanes long, with us starting out in the tail-end-charlie position.

When things get this congested at JFK, the conga line wraps entirely around the airport, sometimes even using runways as taxiways to double up with the adjacent parallel taxiways. So things were that night. One by one, the western departure gateways were shut down as the storm drew closer, and that got things stalled completely, since the number one through five airplanes were all westbounds. You would think that someone might have anticipated that, and held the west departures off to one side somehow, but no.

Now in gridlock, the entire lineup watched from their cockpits as nature unleashed one of the most spectacular displays of lightning and thunder I have ever witnessed – the lightning was so close by and frequent that you could almost read by it on the darkened flight deck. We took nervous comfort in the notion that due to its rubber tires the airplane was insulated from the ground, but a time or two that confidence was shaken as lightning struck nearby. It took the storm nearly 30 minutes to move away from the immediate vicinity of the airport, but our ordeal was not yet done, because now the south and east departure gates were still shut off, and only a dribble of westbound flights were able to get out initially.

No flying in that weather!

All in all, our out-to-off delay was over two hours, which was considerably longer than our eventual flight time to the island. Fortunately, the passengers had been front row witnesses to the spectacle outside, and needed no reminding that in flying, as in life, discretion is sometimes the better part of valor. This was one delay no one complained about!

The Mother of All Delays, at least in my career, took place, appropriately enough, at that vortex of all delays: Chicago O’Hare. This one was also back in the early days of my AA career, when I was flying sideways tending the fires and watering the horses. We were embarking upon a three-day trip that started, as so many did at AA in those days, with an LGA-ORD leg, to be followed by a flight to Tulsa or some such place. Our weather briefing at LGA (done live by dispatchers who, at that time, actually occupied the operations area upstairs in the days before AA brought them all to DFW, to a centralized dispatch facility) indicated that the weather at ORD was going to be “interesting,” in the Chinese sense. And so it proved to be.

We picked up our first holding instructions in the vicinity of Detroit, and spent some time circling the Motor City. Fortunately, the Captain and the dispatcher had agreed to carry as much fuel as the ship could bear, and so although we were quite heavy we enjoyed a surfeit of fuel, such that diverting to an alternate was not yet a concern, nor would it be for some considerable time. The cause of all of this was a massive line of thunderstorms moving from west to east across Illinois. It was dissipating, but still lively enough to thrash the ATC system at Chicago into submission for awhile. After about 30 minutes over Detroit we were advanced a bit west to the Pullman VOR, southwest of Grand Rapids, where we spent another half hour boring holes in the sky.

While this was going on, I queried the company on the number two radio as to the situation on the ground at ORD. The reply was intriguing, suggesting as it did a state of total chaos on the field. Apparently the airport had run out of room to handle airplanes since there were so many on the ground awaiting takeoff. For further entertainment, I tuned ORD ground control on that same radio and we listened with amazement to controllers who were out of space and ideas all at once. It did seem that, by strenuous effort, they had managed to keep the inner taxiway more or less fluid, at the price of keeping some airplanes just going around in circles until their gates opened up.

So when the weather near the airport began to dissipate (it actually more or less evaporated in situ, and we never did have to penetrate anything more significant than a rain shower, quite fortunately) they were able to accept arrivals even though there was still a good bit of weather off to the west, and many of their departure gateways were still hors de combat.

After around 45 minutes at Pullman, we were vectored toward the field, albeit with quite a few speed reductions. When we were on final, we could finally see what was happening – and I had never, before or since, seen so many large airplanes on one airport at one time. It looked like Oshkosh for Boeings! There were hundreds of planes, lined up and down every taxiway and several of the runways that were not in use. The line snaked past the Air National Guard, past that old Comet jet that was still decaying in place at that time, through the maintenance area, in out around and through the maze of taxiways that, in those days, bore evocative and occasionally humorous names instead of letters like Alpha and Bravo.

It took us the better part of 30 minutes to taxi to our gate, which was fortunately available. Yet another piece of good fortune for us was the fact that we were to keep the same airplane for the next leg of our journey; and dispatch, eager to avoid increasing their problems, kept it that way. So after about 45 minutes of unloading, refueling and loading we got back into the conga line, which did not seem to have diminished by as much as a single airplane.

When O’Hare runs out of taxiways, you know it’s busy.

In a move of sheer desperation, ORD ground control sent us off to the only patch of unoccupied concrete they had, way off at the northwest edge of the field at the departure end of 32L. In so doing, they informed us that they expected a delay for us of several hours. So we shut down all of the engines, and gave the flight attendants clearance to do a beverage service of sorts. But our fortune was to be better than most that day, for lo and behold the wind shifted, enough that they decided to start using 14R, the runway that we were number one for, for takeoffs.

They literally had to get us out of the way in order to be able to use it! As soon as the cabin crew was able to button everything up in back we were on our way to our next destination. The total delay, inbound and outbound, was over four hours. And we had it perhaps an hour better than just about everyone else that day. Later that evening, at the hotel, we toasted Fortune, hoping that she would continue to smile upon us. And she did, for I never again encountered such a delay in my career. Oh, there would be delays aplenty to come, but never involving that many airplanes on one field!

These days, airborne delays are becoming rare. The FAA and the airlines tend to hold airplanes on the ground, in so-called ground stops, to prevent airborne holding. Instead of being in an airliner flying in circles, you will probably spend your delay in one of the airport bars, which is certainly a more pleasant prospect than sitting in coach for what might seem an eternity with the seatbelt sign on. And when things start to really look bad, like a hurricane or a major winter storm, flights in the thousands are flat out cancelled, so most of us don’t even have to go to the airport at all, at least on the original day.

But spare a sympathetic thought for your crew when next you are delayed on a flight – their plans may be getting even more messed up than your own. And take what comfort you can from the plight of passengers on Amtrak, who can be delayed many hours by the myriad freight trains that often take priority on the rails. At least, while holding or waiting in the bar, you do not have to gaze upon the impudent cause of your delay, as you sit motionless on a side track watching a mile long hot-shot freight whiz by, to arrive at your destination hours, perhaps a day before you will get there. That must be frustrating – even in the dining car!

The post Airline delays – sometimes you just can’t win appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2019/11/airline-delays-sometimes-you-just-cant-win/

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