#have this prompt in the meantime

[the-starlit-authoress]

Prompt #2

"You're fired."

Hero stared at villain in confusion. "I'm- what?"

"Fired."

"You can't fire me! You're my nemesis, not my boss!"

"Yeah and I want a new nemesis, so you're fired."

[cryptidclownz]

[finemealprompt]

DP x DC Prompt #60

Alfred does not fear death. He knows what awaits on the other side, so why should he fear it? After all, he's been married to a being of death for a long time.

[emry-stars-art]

So who remembers this doodle and the post it went with

Because these tags and the resulting chats gave me ideas (thanks @jtl-fics 😌)

So now as I frantically sort through my Evernote notebook, trying to find something I might be able to post; I remember I did write this, actually. So have another snippet, because I miss you guys

Find the royal au masterpost here 💕

[blackjackkent]

Karlach - "That's a very stupid idea."

Jaheira - "I don't feel so good."

Wyll - "Why did you do that?"

With or without their usual pairings, as you choose. Pair them up with whoever you feel like :)

(Five-Word Sentences prompts)

Jaheira - "I don't feel so good."

Slowly getting caught up on all my inbox stuff. :D TY as always. I will pick the Jaheira one again, but we're gonna mix things up a bit. >:)

-----

"Mmph." Jaheira squirms slightly. Her head and eyelids feel heavy and for a long, numb moment, she does not know exactly where she is. There's a hard stone floor beneath her, pressing against the back of her head. The distant sound of voices. Someone kneeling next to her head, a hand on her shoulder.

"Kh...Khalid?" she mumbles. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth; his name comes slowly to her lips. But she can feel him nearby, the immensely comforting presence. And she fills with dizzy joy, because it has been so long, although she cannot quite remember why. "My love..."

"No, Jaheira." The voice is jarring, dissonant -- too deep, too sharp, a harsh roll on the 'r' of her name. "Wake up."

The fog fades, washed aside by a rolling wave of painful reality. Her eyes snap open and she moans as she begins to register the shattered state of her body. Nearly every inch of her skin is burned, and to judge by the sharper knifeblade of pain stabbing through the staticky haze of baseline agony, her left leg is broken.

Minsc is crouched over her, his eyes unusually wide with deep alarm - but he relaxes slightly as he sees her eyes open. "Ah, good," he says; it's an attempt at his usual blithe cheer but it falls somewhat flat. A muscle twitches with strain in his temple. "Minsc tried his best with the scroll, but the wizards use such terribly long words..." He swallows, squares his shoulders. "But you live. So all is well.”

A spent scroll of revivification falls from his fingertips as he returns his hands to the hilt of his greatsword. Jaheira stares at the paper, hypnotized by its slow and unsteady flutter onto the stone. Her brain shies away from the implications of its muted gold letters with the magic all drained out of them.

“What happened?” she asks weakly. 

“Raphael,” Minsc says, with an unusual note of venom. He stands up, taking a guard position over her fallen body, his eyes flicking rapidly around the room. She follows his gaze, slowly registering the high marble walls, the shattered soul columns and cracked tiles. “Cursed be his name forever. Minsc would like to spend another scroll and draw him back from death, that Minsc might kill him again for what he has done to Jaheira.” 

“He is dead, then?” Jaheira whispers. Memory trickles in, bit by bit. She remembers it now - the devil’s explosive transformation and the hellfire that surrounded it, licking out, blasting her backwards, surrounding her, consuming her…

Minsc makes an affirmative grunt. “Minsc saw the blood pour from his chest,” he mutters. “Karlach struck the final blow, but Minsc’s heart was in it too…” 

“Good,” she says vaguely. Her head lolls to the side, her eyes drifting half-closed again. “I do not feel… so good…” she mumbles. Oblivion beckons again at the corners of her thoughts; it would be so easy to slip back under, away from the pain. She can still feel Khalid so near her, as if she could turn her head just a little further and see him watching her with his quiet smile and bright gaze…

“Jaheira!”

“What?” she mumbles irritably, squeezing her eyes fully shut against the grating rumble of Minsc’s voice. “Be damned to you, ranger… it hurts…”

“Do not go to sleep,” he says sharply. “The others have gone to speak to Hope. When they return, we will bring you back to camp, so that Shadowheart may tend to your wounds. Then you may rest, and not before.”

“Do not give me orders, Minsc. I will sleep if I… if I please…” Her voice is slurred with pain.

“Minsc will set Boo upon you to hold your eyelids open, should it be needed.” There’s the faintest touch of humor in Minsc’s voice, though it is still underlaid with strained worry.

Jaheira laughs just a little, in spite of herself, and the motion sends a bolt of pain through her whole body; the sound morphs rapidly into a groan. “Nngh… howling hells…” she says with a pained grimace, forcing her eyes open again obediently. “All right. All right, I am… awake…”

As it should be. There is too much yet to do. Always too much yet to do…

“Are you hurt, Minsc?” she asks.

“It matters not,” he answers quietly.

“Minsc--”

“It matters not,” he snaps, and the ferocity of the words startles her. “Minsc will rest when you are safe. His aches are greatest at the heart, where no healer can reach.” A pause. “You are no wychlaran, you have told me so. Minsc knows this; he has listened well, Jaheira. But wychlaran or not, the pain was still the same to watch you fall.”

A long, long pause. “Minsc has watched too many fall…” he adds in an undertone, almost too low to hear.

She frowns. For once, she does not have the heart to try to push his loyalty away. There is something comforting, after all, in the guard-dog posture he holds, standing over her with his sword in both hands. Boo sits on his shoulder, watching the door of the room intently.

Her oldest friend… She feels a sudden bleak gratitude towards those nameless ambushers who turned Minsc to stone all those years ago. In their attack, they gave her a gift, that his friendship is not lost to her in these dark hours, as so many others have been.

“Thank you, Minsc,” she says quietly. “Do not fear. You have done well. And I will stay awake…”

He relaxes visibly, his habitual smile already tugging at his features, indomitable again with this reassurance. “Good. That is good to hear.”

[writing-on-the-wahl]

Betrayed

Hi hi friends!! I wanted to post today but I have been working on not one but TWO snippets- one hero x villain (songbird part threeeeee anyone?!? 😈😇) and one urban fantasy (dragons and wolves and mages, oh my!) to post and neither of them are quite where I want them to be yet.

But fear not! I will be posting them as soon as possible:) In the meantime, here is a short snippet I wrote AGES ago based on this prompt by @gingerly-writing:

Prompt #2784

“You can’t give me to [villain]! You can’t! You’re supposed to be my friends!”

“We’re also supposed to save the city. And right now, that’s more important than saving you.”

Sidekick couldn’t keep the panic out of her voice nor the trembling out of her bound hands as she was led, well, dragged, out of the car towards where three men in black suits stood waiting next to a black SUV parked beside the pier. 

“Please! Please don’t—" Her voice cracked as those she had once called friends pulled her to a stop a safe distance from the men. Hero and Hero’s Soulmate gripped her arms, stopping her futile attempts of escape. 

“Her, in exchange for the city’s safety?” Hero’s question sounded more like skepticism than confirmation, and if terror wasn’t pounding in her veins, Sidekick would have been offended. 

The figure in the middle, the man who’d been wreaking havoc on the city for years, nodded, his deep voice smooth and certain. “You have my word.” 

That must have been reassurance enough, for in a flash, Hero and his team—the team she’d been a part of—were back in their car and speeding away. 

She cast a quick glance around the deserted pier, the gentle glow of the fading sun staining the calm water with soft streaks of pink light, a far more appealing picture than the sharp lines and harsh blacks of the supervillain and his men.  

She could try to make it to the water. 

But her hands were bound. She wouldn’t last long. 

They would pull her out, and most likely be furious with the delay. 

She swallowed her fear and turned towards the three men. They hadn’t made any move to come closer. 

Dark sunglasses blocked out their eyes despite the fading light, and a shiver ran through her. 

She closed her eyes as her mind filled her head with all the things that could happen now that she was here, defenseless, sold to buy freedom for everyone else. 

“Come.” 

The quiet word from the man in the middle carried across the distance between them, and she instinctively took a step back before lurching forward, terrified she’d displeased the one whose mercy she was now at. 

It took an eternity and no time at all for her to reach the front of the SUV. She stopped, unable to bring herself any closer to the man who had the power to bring the city to its knees with a flick of his fingers, who had instead demanded her. 

Her breaths were loud in the stillness of twilight, and she kept her head down, as though memorizing each inch of her shoes was the most important thing in the world. 

“They taught you to fear me.” It wasn’t a question, and it was filled with displeasure.

She flinched. 

Then flinched again at the angry noise he made at her flinching. 

The gravel crunched until she could feel his presence before her. 

Warm hands caught her bound ones, lifting them. She hardly registered that the bindings had been cut as he turned her left arm to expose the dark swirling mark on her inner wrist. 

And in turn revealing the matching mark on his. 

Taglist:

(this is my general taglist for all my posts containing my writing, if you'd like to be added, pls lmk by asking to be on the general taglist! If you prefer to only be tagged in certain snippets, you can specify:)

@im-a-wonderling @shieldmaiden-of-gondor @watercolorfreckles @distance-does-not-matter @onestopheroxvillain @lolafaiy @chaoticgoodandi @1becky1 @tobeornottobeateacher @himynameisorla @superherosweet @brekker-by-brekkerr @crazytwentythrees @great-day-today @sunflower1000@selectivegeekwithstandards @chibicelloking @trantolette @sapphiques @jinpanman @genesissane @wish1bone1 @amongtheonedaisy @distractedlydistracted @kitsunesakii @glitterythief @jinx1365 @cherrychewingbrat @in-patient-princess @thepenultimateword @sorrow-and-bliss @technikerin23 @deflated-bouncingball @talesofurbania1 @rivalriotrenegade

[daisychainsandbowties]

bea - eviscerate + stitch

this dark is everywhere, we said (and called it light)

a percy jackson au

///

Lilith wakes to the latent heat of volcanic glass seeping up through the palms of her hands, lacing along the blade of her cheekbone, drinking down the tears that scatter out of her lashes as she lurches awake, gasping.

She’s lying spreadeagled on hard, garish black rock, glittering with the reflection of enormous stalactites – a ceiling of sharp ends diving down out of the gloom. Her hair, distinguishable only as a more greyish shade of black, is stuck in clumpy patches to the ground and it peels away as Lilith forces her leaden arms to move, pushing away from the ground that always seems like it wants to eat her.

A tremor of white pain travels from her breastbone to the hook of her floating ribs, and she groans as she glances down at blood-sticky rock. It is shiny, glassy like a dead black eye – and Lilith sees her sword lying in the manner of a crooked smile underneath her upraised body. The hilt is shaped like a fishhook, the blade concave near the hilt and pitching out into a broad convex near the tip.

There’s a chain of soft gold running from the hook of the handle to the blade, and it shines strangely in the wet reflective surface of the volcanic stone that runs up to the high walls of hell itself.

Lilith knows, without looking, that there is a very specifically-shaped bruise running from just underneath one of her breasts down the rungs of her ribs, terminating just above her hip. Others too, splashed across her jaw and the socket of her right eye. There is dried blood crusted in her hairline and on her lips, cuts beneath her clothes that have bled into the fabric.

The last thing she remembers is fighting, knee-deep in snow somewhere in the Himalayas. Red spotted in the drifts and an old oil lantern trying vainly to scoop the darkness up off the snow, throwing reflections onto white-capped stone. She was following a fresh trail of blood and gore up a switchback that couldn’t really be described as a path when a great shape came crashing out of the night.

She recalls being swept aside by a massive paw, or maybe a hand, and landing dazed in the snow. Rolling aside just in time to avoid a sharp-seeming downstroke. Might have been claws, or a blade, or a set of enormous teeth. Her lantern rolled away, and Lilith heard the ringing in her ears that announced death. She scrambled to her feet and saw where her light had been tossed away, where it came to rest by a shape lying limp in the snow, surrounded by a halo of blood.

Lilith didn’t need to roll the corpse over – didn’t have time, as snow swirled and a shape stalked her. There, with snow and ice muddling the feeling of stone beneath her feet, she felt powerless. She couldn’t reach out and rend the earth, couldn’t call fire up from the mantle of the planet. Too much interference, too much fear.

There was a crumpled polaroid in the back pocket of her jeans, showing a smiling woman in a puffy green jacket, pretending to blow on her hands for warmth, though she stood next to a bonfire and underneath a clear, starry sky.

There was no need to roll the corpse over because the jacket lay in pieces around the body, rent by claw or blade or teeth, and Lilith felt anger surge up inside her as she tore her sword out of its sheathe and turned in a wary circle, trying to pierce the blizzard with the tip.

But then she heard a flurry of movement behind her and something rammed into her back, tossing her forward and face-first into snow. A phantom voice in her head whispered through the wind as Lilith reached vainly, dizzily, for invisibility, for her god-given power over not being. Coming up, as usual, against the wall of her own scattered focus.

A voice in her head saying, shut the fuck up and fucking Travel, or so help me I’ll come back to life and murder you.

And so she Traveled. Reaching out to gather up the shadows into a soft blanket, into a blade she pressed willingly through her own body, carrying it away from the blood in the snow and the monster in the dark. And there was nothing and no one and nowhere to think of but home, wretched though it is.

Hades.

Lilith stands, dragging the sword with her so that it dangles with the tip almost touching the ground, resting the blade flush against the curve of her boot. It has a soft black glow, down here in such proximity to the waters where Lilith stood, stripped to the waist and running with cold sweat. Where she dipped the fresh-forged blade into the polluted waters of the Styx.

She’s wearing her black aviator jacket, sunglasses sticking out of the pocket, over a somewhat threadbare t-shirt with a weird, shadowy creature on the front. She keeps meaning to Google what it is, but a giant snake ate her phone last month.

And, anyway, there’s no one left to call.

As ever, a pall of ghoulish green light sits over the gateway to the underworld, seeping along the riverbank in both directions. It’s a little like dry ice, but this isn’t a stage or a theatre. It’s just where she lives.

Lilith frowns down at herself, at the spots where her jacket has frayed, where the black leather has cracked or been scraped away by claws, the chill sitting barely above her bones from weeks of sleeping rough up on the surface. The golden chain on her sword settles against her knuckles – a faint, weird warmth – and Lilith lets a small sigh escape from inside her mouth as the greenish mist rolls past her.

There’s something about the mist that feels animate, today. It almost seems to cup her cheek, to flow over her cheekbone like a cold thumb, taking a little heat out of the bruises. Though, there’s a pressure to it – almost a reprimand.

Lilith stares towards the gates and the looming canine shape that sits squarely inside, worrying the inside of her lip. Is it her imagination, the slightly-chiding care that runs through the green light, the cool river mist?

She doesn’t speak to her father – not more than a handful of times in her life. He didn’t save her mother from the bombs or her sister from starvation, and he tucked her away in a dreamless sleep until he had a use for her. So what does she owe him?

Nothing.

Certainly not conversation, or whatever paltry imitation of love he can scrimmage out of his rotten heart. Fuck you, she thinks. There’s no benefit in saying it aloud, but Lilith lifts her middle finger, pointing it towards the mammoth walls, toward Cerberus and the stupid, banal bureaucracy of death.

The ghost in her head chuckles, low, and Lilith feels the golden chain brush her fingers again though there is no wind here to move it.

A wave of dizziness wash over her – a wild urge to lift the hilt of the sword up to her mouth and kiss the chain, but all she does is stand there in the shadow of her father’s kingdom, aching down to the marrow of her bones.

Then, from behind, from down in the direction of the ferry, she hears the scrape of wood over stone. Here, on the parallel shore of the Styx where nothing moves or walks or breathes but Lilith.

She whirls, sweeping her sword around so that she stands – unsteadily – with her body held sidelong in a narrow target, blade parallel with her raised arm, tip pointed towards whatever foul thing has crawled up out of the river.

Then she freezes, blinks, feels all the moisture in her mouth turn coppery and sour, because it’s not a monster.

It’s a girl.

Shorter than Lilith, with a pair of dark eyes pooled above a grim little mouth. Lilith realises – with a sense of disquiet – that she is beautiful. There’s a dust of freckles sitting like an afterthought on her nose, her cheeks, drawing out the dark shadows beneath her eyes. Her mouth is pulled tight, grimacing, but it hardly upsets the softness of her jaw.

She’s wearing a dark blue shirt over what looks like a thermal base layer. It’s cold down here, though it has never truly bothered Lilith. She’s built for it, or just used to it. Despite the extra protection, there is still a faint tremor sweeping through the girl as she stands, black rock glittering underneath her.

It’s easy to see why.

She is drenched in blood, leaning heavily on a spear made of bronze, decorated with tiny winged shapes. Lilith can’t make out what flying creature it is, but she makes a guess. There is, indeed, an owlishness to the girl as she stands, blinking through the gloom at Lilith, making no move to defend herself as blood spills out from where her palm is pressed into her stomach. Lilith can see the pink glisten of unearthed viscera beneath it, can see that her fingers are pressed inside to the knuckles.

A half-blood, then.

Lilith’s fingers tighten around the hilt of her sword. It’s Stygian iron – a substance that can only be forged in the waters of the Styx, capable of absorbing the essence of monsters, ripping them even out of Tartarus. Monsters and mortals and gods fear it, but the girl only blinks down the curve of the sword as Lilith holds it aloft.

Her voice, when it drifts out of her mouth, rolling into the mist, is clipped and precise and soft. All by itself it makes a crack in Lilith’s resolve.

‘You’re the daughter of Hades?’

It is, Lilith thinks, mostly a statement. In her bruises and her battered black clothes, with the life-eating pall of a Stygian sword in her hand, Lilith looks like the bastard child of death.

The stranger is a hazy shadow, cut to the quick by the perpetual drain of this place; the sewer of the Styx washing by with a sound like a hundred thousand muttering voices.

Blood patters softly onto the stone at her feet, but it scarcely has a chance to pool before the stone swallows it. The girl, hair half-unbound around her shoulders, strands falling down around her face to complicate it with shadows, stares at her own boots for an instant, wobbling. Lilith understands what she is feeling; it took weeks for the rock of this place to feel solid, to stop warbling underneath her with the threat of turning to liquid, to blood, to ink.

Lilith has dreamed of the bottom of hell, and this is not it. This is only the threshold.

‘Who’s asking?’ she growls, taking a careful half-step forward. It’s more of a shuffle, really – a habit born from fencing lessons held deep inside the walls of the Underworld, in a garden full of soft fruits and the promise of spring. The place she learned to fight.

The girl straightens, stiffening under Lilith’s scrutiny. There’s a sort of raw-boned intensity to her, like she’s holding herself very precisely in check. Her fingers, too, have tightened around the haft of her spear.

She’s shaking, blood now flowing down to drip from the tip of her elbow where it’s clamped tight against her body. Lilith wonders what it took for Charon to ferry a dying girl across the river.

The tip of her sword is only a foot from the girl’s throat as it bobs, as she raises her chin to expose the bumpy layers of cartilage sitting in a line; the very slight bulge above her windpipe.

There’s no point in asking who sent her. If she’s a half-blood, there’s only one place she could have crawled from.

Softly, again, the girl speaks. Backlit as she is by the green glow on the shore, she carries the countenance of a ghost. Lilith might mistake her for one, if she didn’t know better.

‘My name is Beatrice,’ she says, in a voice like cold water and warm milk, ‘I am a daughter of Athena.’

There’s blood on her lips, Lilith realises, as they pull into a grimace. They shiver as Beatrice pulls her fingers out of the slit in her stomach, holding them out in wry invitation.

It’s utterly bizarre, but Lilith finds herself lowering her sword, leaving it to sit against the leg of her jeans. Beatrice has proffered her right hand, so Lilith is forced to juggle the sword into her left so that she can reach out, tentative, to wrap her fingers into the sticky, blood-stained cup of Beatrice’s hand.

‘Lilith,’ she says. Somehow, it feels like an admission, like giving something away.

The daughter of Athena smiles. Pink-tinted saliva dribbles down her chin. It’s ghastly, but Lilith finds that she is somewhere on the opposite end of disgusted, wherever that might be.

There are, after all, no destinations along the river Styx but one. Death.

Beatrice squeezes her hand. She takes a ragged breath, her dark eyes heavy-lidded and hazy, boring into Lilith’s. ‘Pleasure,’ she says, a little giddily. ‘I thought I would have to go deeper into hell to find you.’

‘Well, here I am.’

A tightening around her hand, not quite a squeeze. ‘Here you are,’ Beatrice says. She lists forward, catches herself, ‘I’m here-‘

She coughs, and the redness of it floats weirdly in the mist. Beatrice stares, shakes her head like she’s trying to banish a ghost.

Her voice is very faint. ‘We need your help… daughter of Hades.’

Then the daughter of Athena, her skin like dark gold even in the bad light of the Underworld, falls forward. It happens slowly, at first, like she’s just taking a step, but then Lilith sees her knees buckle, watches the spear slip through her fingers.

And without thinking she steps forward, capturing Beatrice’s warm body in her arms.

...

Ten minutes later Lilith crouches next to a limp figure she has propped up against the pitted, high stone wall, feeling like a thief as she unbuttons Beatrice’s blue shirt and peels her black base-layer away from the slice in her lower abdomen.

Her sword is on the ground next to her, at a right angle to her body, the hilt in easy reach. Beatrice’s spear is propped up against the wall. It is, indeed, covered in tiny filigreed owls.

Beatrice does not stir as Lilith raises her hand, ignoring the unhappy shiver of the mist against her back as she draws on the power in her blood, summoning up a sliver of bone from a tiny vial of bone dust she keeps tucked inside her boot. It forms in the air, turning from powder to liquid to solid bone in the span of a moment, before settling down into Lilith’s red-painted palm.

It’s not ideal, but she can hardly wash her hands in the river. It’s full of plastic and rot and blood. Instead, she makes do with the little wadge of bandage and thread she keeps in the pocket of her jacket.

Beatrice continues to breathe as Lilith carefully threads her bone needle. There’s a voice in the back of her head spouting stupid facts about the history of needles and sutures, but Lilith hisses at it to shut up before dipping the sharp end of the bone through Beatrice’s flesh. The thread turns red as it passes in and out, but it’s proper surgical suture, so it also tugs the flesh back towards itself. It makes whole.

Distracted by her work, it takes Lilith too long to notice the change in Beatrice’s breathing. She finishes her row of stitches – they’re thick and lumpy and as elegant as she can make them, but there is no ringing in Lilith’s ears to ordain death, so it must be enough.

At a loss for any other implement, Lilith picks up her sword and carefully cuts the thread, leaving a little curl of it to sit against the taut muscle of Beatrice’s stomach. She has, of course, attempted not to notice the ripple of honed, hard muscle that runs the whole length of what necessity has forced Lilith to unearth; the evidence of a life spent fighting.

She has attempted to ignore it.

When Lilith looks up, sword resting on her knees where she’s crouched, balancing effortlessly on her heels, she finds that Beatrice’s eyes are open. Hazy with pain, but alert underneath it all.

A tentative smile flutters across her lips, ‘You saved my life.’

She dumps the sentence at Lilith’s feet like it means something.

Lilith shrugs, ‘I’m a freak, not a monster.’

The freckled skin on Beatrice’s cheeks wrinkles in tandem with her frown, ‘Wh-‘

‘You said you needed my help?’ Lilith interrupts before the question can come out and make everything awkward.

Beatrice’s stomach is still laid bare, covered in fingerprint marks where Lilith has touched her – in every single place Lilith has touched her.

Mercifully, the daughter of Athena lets her question fall away. Her bronze spear shines off of some strange reflection in the volcanic rock.

‘Yes,’ Beatrice says. There’s some depth to the word that Lilith doesn’t look down into, in the same way she doesn’t peer into the waters of the Styx as the ferry glides over it. Some mysteries are not fit for consumption.

‘Alright.’ Lilith nods, ignoring the way that the gold chain on her sword tightens against her hand, like a warm tongue, ‘Tell me what you need.’

[jamiesfootball]

Augusnippets Day 10

Prompt: begging for mercy

cw: implied/referenced offer of prostitution (in a quid pro quo sort of way) (not Rebecca's idea)

Summary:

Rebecca attempts to send Jamie back to Manchester. Jamie attempts to change her mind. (episode coda for s1e06 'Two Aces')

Here on AO3

“Please.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Ms. Welton. With a dismissive turn, she picked up her coat, a clear signal that the discussion was over.

Jamie couldn’t breathe. Stars flickered in the corners of his eyes.

He forced his tone into something casual. “Please. I’ll do anything, yeah? Don’t send me back.”

“I’m afraid it’s out of my hands, Jamie. City called; they’re retracting–“

“Bullshit. They’re already in line to win this season. They don’t need me back. Come on, I- please, Ms. Welton. Just tell me what I did, and I’ll fix it.”

Ms. Welton snorted, a surprisingly harsh and cruel sound that cut across the office like a gunshot.

“There’s nothing to fix! And just to be clear, because you asked, it’s your attitude. Your behaviour since you arrived at this club has been nothing short of abhorrent. You’re rude to your teammates, rude to your manager. The question isn’t what you can do to stay, it’s why I didn’t think to get rid of you sooner!”

“I can score goals.”

“Yet not enough to keep us from sliding down the table. And certainly not enough to make up for the frankly abysmal lack of sportsmanship you display on the field. No, the fact of the matter is that Richmond no longer requires your services–“

“Please.”

“--and not even if you got down on your knees and begged would I change my mind.”

Thump.

Ms. Welton froze with her scarf half-wrapped around her neck. “What are you doing?”

He stayed on his knees.

“Enough of this,” she barked. A shrill noise escaped her throat when he didn’t move. “Get up!”

“I told you,” he said through numb lips. His head was white with staticky panic, the kind that matched the scratchy carpet under his knees.

He steeled his spine, fighting back against the nausea that threatened to rise up.

“Anything,” he swore.  “Anything you want. Anything you ask me to do, I’ll do it—no questions asked. I’ll apologise to Ted. To Sam. To Roy, the old grumpy bastard. I’ll pass the ball. I’ll join the second team. I’ll keep the bench warm for the rest of the season, but I can’t go back. You can’t send me back. Please. Please. There’s got to be something you want. I can be useful, just name your price.”

“This is ridiculous-“

“Is it money? More sponsors? I can woo them for you. Cheryl wasn’t the only one who copped a feel when she slipped me her number. I can have this place swimming in cash. Sponsors, good press, you name it, I’ll- I’ll fucking do it, just tell me what I need to do, please don’t send me back-“

Rebecca’s hand on his face silenced him. She hadn’t turned the lights on when she led him to her office, and the trash can fire felt a million light years away, nothing more than a flickering memory under the cold presence of her stare.

He was suddenly, sickeningly aware of how his position on his knees meant she towered over him like a statue. Her nails brushed against his cheek, light and unintentional, and he struggled to breathe around a sharp edge of panic.

He was going to be sick, he thought hysterically as his spine turned to liquid. He was going to be sick all over her shiny heels, and then what?

He felt small.

Her eyes glimmered with pity, and for a second she wasn’t scary at all. Her scarf sat unfinished in a complicated knot around her neck. Her lips parted unhappily, as if something about Jamie upset her. As if she was beholding something truly awful, low and pitiful, unworthy of the time it would take to put down.

Like she was looking into his soul.

Her expression hardened in decision.

“If I do something for you,” she said hoarsely, cinching her scarf closed with one final tug. “Then you have to do something for me.”

He nodded.

“No questions.”

He nodded, head bobbing along like the figure at the bottom of a rope.

She told him what she wanted. No sooner than she had finished speaking that words of agreement slipped out of his mouth, because he’d already known he’d say yes to whatever she demanded. Everyone had a limit, a price, and hers was so easy that relief swam in his eyes, blurring his vision.

He could’ve cried right there into her skirt if she hadn’t ordered him to stand up already. I’ll send you the details in the morning.

Jamie left her office in a fog, giddy and confused and trembling with a nervous terror that had his hands shaking on his car door. He couldn’t imagine what her angle was, but he didn’t need to. He didn't need to know why to do a good job; he just had to do what he was told.

He was going to do what she’d asked him to do better than she even dreamed, and then she’d never think about sending him home again.

“Help me destroy Coach Lasso.”

He already had ideas.

[leenesomewhatdraws]

Novembmas, Day 20: Pride / Sarcasm/Irony !

The symbol on their hats is supposed to be the autism pride flag

[sylkiddsey]

Prompt: “You’re a bad liar did you know?”

Set during 8.01

Her life kinda feels like one of those times when you’re coming out of anesthesia. You’re awake and aware, but completely out of control over what you say and do.

Plus, it takes a while for everything to feel right again. That’s how it feels to live in Fowerlton with her fiancé.

She feels off, but somehow not at the same time. It’s confusing and she misses 51 so much. She misses her people.

“Slutty or sophisticated?” Stella asks over the grainy video call. Sylvie can barely see her since the loft is so dark and the connection from Indiana to Chicago sucks.

“Always slutty,” Sylvie laughs, sitting up against her headboard. Kyle had a work trip so it’s just her alone in their bedroom. She’s nestled under the scratchy comforter in an old band t-shirt and her not so attractive readers.

(Yes, she needs glasses to read really small print. It’s not something she fesses up to, but it’s Stella so who cares?)

“You’re so right,” her friend agrees, snagging a tight deep blue dress with a high slit off the hanger. “The whole point is to make Kelly drool.”

Severide’s yelling in the background about not being able to find the shirt Stella likes.

“It’s in your closet! Do you need cataracts!”

“I can’t find it!” Severide yells back.

Her friend huffs and leaves the bedroom, taking Sylvie along to stare at the ceiling fixtures as she navigates into the living room.

Sylvie’s thrilled her best friend is finally happy with Severide. Her friend is obsessed with him and it’s good to see them both on the same page.

The way Stella talks about him is absolutely nothing like how she talks about Kyle. He’s a great guy, yes. He’s so kind and giving. In some ways, she thinks he’s perfect for her, but something is missing.

The tension. They just don’t have that. She’s tried and tried to generate some heat, but it’s cold as ice. She imagined herself with a man she wants to jump right then and there.

“Hold your horses! I’m coming!” Stella hollers and Sylvie laughs. Those two will be driving each other crazy in a nursing home one of these days. “Here, talk to Brett, Casey.”

What?

Stella’s glamorous face moves out of view. Did she say she was going to give the FaceTime to Matt?

She looks horrible. She didn’t even fully take her make up off and she put on a few of those pimple patches around a few blemishes.

“How do I…” Matt’s face comes into view, clearly lounging on the couch. He grins a little when he sees her on the screen. “Hey, stranger.”

She covers her face. She’s not super vain, but she’s not sure she wants Casey to witness her before bed look.

“Oh god, Casey. I look ridiculous!” She chuckles behind her hand.

“I doubt that,” he replies. “Come on, you’re really going to hide your face from me?”

Yes. She’s protecting this false narrative she’s created that she has good eyesight and never forgets to comb her hair.

“Trust me, you don’t want to see this Sylvie Brett.”

“Try me.”

Ugh, he’s just so smooth.

Oh no. No. She’s engaged. She’s marrying Kyle which is what Casey wants for her. She buried her stupid budding feelings for him months ago.

She’d hide her face all night, but that also means she can’t see his. She’s not sure that’s worth it.

“Fine. Fine,” she mutters. “No laughing.”

“I swear.”

She moves her hands away from the work in progress that’s going on with her face. Now that she can see her phone too, Casey looks ridiculously good in an objective way.

He’s tanner and even the pixelated version of him quickens her heart rate. Her Fitbit physically alerts her about it.

Kyle doesn’t do that to her.

“You look adorable,” he compliments. “I like the glasses. Whether you believe me or not, I like the natural Brett.”

Kyle suggested she put on a little more foundation before meeting his parents. Granted, he didn’t out right say that because he’s too nice, but he implied it by suggesting she should wear more.

Here’s Casey, telling her he prefers the most unattractive version of herself.

It doesn’t mean anything. She’s just losing her mind.

“I think you have bad eye sight.”

“Says the one in glasses.”

She laughs a little too hard at that which makes him chuckle too. She’s missed this lightness. Fowerlton feels heavy.

Matt shakes his head with a little laugh once she’s done giggling. “It’s weird without you here Brett. Really weird.”

It’s weird in Fowerlton too.

She shifts in bed, cuddling into the overly fluffy pillow Kyle picked out. “It’s weird without you guys too.”

His gaze softens a little and she sees a hint of sadness grace his face. “How’s your arm?”

She knows he blames himself for what happened. He doesn’t have to admit it for her to know. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders.

She wishes she could reach through the phone and comfort him, but it’s probably best she can’t. The last thing she should find herself doing is touching Casey.

“It’s perfectly healed,” she murmurs, suddenly super tired. Lately, she’s been quite the insomniac, but it’s like all she’s needed was Matt’s voice and his kind eyes to fully realize how tired she is. “How are you doing?”

He reads the sleepiness right off which isn’t hard since she keeps letting her eyes flutter closed. “I’m doing okay.”

She hums, eyes closed. Her brain paints this image where she’s not alone in her fiancé’s bed. She’s in the loft on the couch with her head on Matt’s shoulder.

She doesn’t correct her stupid brain out of sheer exhaustion.

“Sylvie?” He asks.

She nods, replying on auto pilot. “Yeah?”

“You’re clearly tired.”

“No, I’m not,” she protests, forcing her eyelids open. She doesn’t want to fall asleep but there is something so calming about Matt.

He chuckles. “You’re a bad liar did you know?”

She is a bad liar. She knows she is but she’s too content right now to defend his assumption.

She can hear Stella’s enthusiastic voice on the other end edging closer. She’s asking something about which heels she should wear, but Matt tells her to quiet down.

She hears small murmurs and creaking leather. It almost feels like she’s right back in Chicago with her eyes shut.

“Goodnight, Sylvie,” Matt whispers and then the call disconnects. She cracks one eye open to plug in her phone and then curls up to sleep.

She misses Chicago.

[castieltrash1]

12 days of rothmas

ok here's the plan, my fellow freaks. starting dec 12th i will be posting a little tim roth thing every day leading up to xmas! ex. "having a snowball fight with them" + various tim roth characters. some will be xmas themed since i personally celebrate, but others will just be winter core or vaguely holiday-ish... yay! ❄️

with that being said, i have a list below that i would appreciate u all checking out! it shows which characters i will be including and which ones i'm willing to include if anyone is interested in seeing them (LOL)

if you are interested in seeing any of the non-confirmed characters, please send an ask or reply to this post with which one and i will make sure they're added!

if one of your faves isn't written below, that means i haven't seen the movie/show they're in, so pls lmk what it is and i will watch it before rothmas begins!

confirmed characters:

freddy "mr. orange" newandyke (reservoir dogs) cal lightman (lie to me) philip chaney (captives) ted the bellhop (four rooms) joshua shapira (little odessa) guildenstern (rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead)

+ david (resurrection), colin (meantime), gerbino de ratta (virgin territory,) and oswaldo mobray (the hateful eight) have been added!

possible characters i could see some of u wanting added:

pumpkin (pulp fiction) james wayland (deceiver) victor (even money) gerbino de ratta (virgin territory) added!

i will be shocked if any of u guys actually want one of the characters below but i will write them if u so please hehe:

charles ferry (everyone says i love you) oswaldo mobray (the hateful eight) added! david (resurrection) added!

[sysig]

Gotta sweep up all this Dust (Patreon)

[philtstone]

ok im forcing myself to sit down in a cafe this afternoon and write some of these prompts let’s manifest that it happens

[airanke]

AbiTou-ber begins tomorrow <3

(This is a personal list that I made for my own use!! I'm posting it so that you guys know what's coming <333)

[mitochondria-larson]

Oh yeah, I'm back at it!

At a slow pace, but hey, I'm still making stuff!

Here's a fanart of Mike and Jeremy's cat from @demonicchicken1121's fnaf au!

(based off this prompt and a fragment of this other one of theirs!)

[spellsparkler]

9!

9: Catastrophic weather

The world is breaking apart.

It isn’t, probably; this is probably normal, up here, where the streets don’t need lighting and half the space is just endless emptiness. This is probably normal, the cavern-roof-that-isn’t cracking into pieces, the sounds of it like rock sloughing off into the oil-black ocean, the wet. The smell, too, like nothing they’ve smelled before – green-soft as the grass under their feet, which doesn’t actually look as green as everyone said it would, but then everything’s much darker and shattering-to-pieces-er than anyone said, too – and the cold, and the dark that’s a different sort of dark, and the wet, plastering their hair to their forehead in a sticky-smooth way like they’ve just gone swimming. And there’s more water. And there’s more water. And Yrre stands, fresh out the Underdark, on some sort of slope that they can’t quite make out because it’s not nearly so light as everyone said it would be, what must be grass crinkling under their boots, smelling soft and airy and spring green. And they’re drenched to the skin, which doesn’t bode well for their pack.

And there – again – the world splits open with a vicious light like nothing they’ve seen before. Breath catches, air-bright and still-stiff, in their throat, and then they’re almost knocked down, and the whole world rumbles, and they’re a little bit afraid for their life. When they try to kick-start their breathing again they suck water up their nose and start coughing. Their clothes are dragging. Hair, pearl-grey and shorn short, spatters itself as best it can across their face. Again, they’re sent staggering back a few steps, nearly tripping over their feet in the pockmarked dirt. Their feet are almost dry in their rothé-leather boots.

Yrre is not silly, nor are they a child; they’ve prepared for this, for weeks, months, but it’s all so much – another white-bright crackle, another peal of sound, and every time their breath turns brittle and hollow. Maybe terror, maybe awe, maybe excitement, hot and quick in their veins. They keep gasping, which means they keep sucking in water – and they have prepared, they have, but damn it all, no-one told them it would be so wet.

But they have prepared. When next they’re sent stumbling, they know that it’s wind – a bluster, a gale, rather stronger than they ever imagined it because it always sounded so tame. Air is oft-stagnant, down below; Yrre had imagined a more vigorous version of the drafts that cast themselves coolly across the under-seas, and this is not that. This is a bit like being hit in the face with a hand that’s larger than your entire body. It’s like the air that wraps around the world is vibrant and alive and really, really wants Yrre to sit down. Their waterlogged clothes are flapping with the force of it. They still can’t catch their breath.

And as the water pelts down, they know that it’s rain; distinctly uncomfortable, and very cold, and a common phenomenon, they understand, crucial to the overland earth and kind of frozenly unpleasant. And the rain comes from the sky – which is such a strange word, so sibilant – which can’t be seen right now, in the dark, but which Yrre knows is supposed to be about as blue as blue can get, except sometimes, when it’s orange or purple or black with the white dots of stars. It sounds indecisive. They like it.

And when it all cracks in two, the soft, swollen patterns of the clouds illuminated, the grass of the strange sodden hillside they stand on momentarily lit in cold glow – they know that’s lightning, they’ve seen it before, except no they haven’t, clearly. Every spark-spell they’ve ever seen must have been utter shit because they thought it was striking and interesting and had fascinating potential for use that people didn’t seem to consider but none of it was anything like this, crawling out of a burrow-hole in the sodden earth to find the whole fabled new world crackling to pieces, drenching you in vicious rain, catching glimpses only when the sky splits with clear light. The hair on their neck stands on end. Their heart stumbles in time with the thunder’s rolling. Nothing has ever been like this – the abstract shapes, the frozen cold, the quivering of the wind-blown air like it’s caught up in anticipation. The wind whips hair out or their face. For a moment, Yrre feels swallowed up by the sensation; the world is gilded in frost and silver. They want to peel the dark-hidden sky away and get to the place where the lightning comes from.

It’s called a storm, Yrre remembers. They don’t have them, down below. They whisper the word, quiet on rain-drenched lips, swallowed up by the freezing noise of it all. They think they love it. All their stuff is definitely dripping wet by now.

Lightning cracks again, sharp and fierce and bitter-bright, and Yrre laughs, joyous and breathy. Something sparks in their gut. They know they’ll stay in the storm until it weathers them to ash.