#hes probably doing some weird metal poet shit

[squeiky]

Rap is made with poetry the way songs are made to ryhme, so espio and vector are infact intertwined

Espio's writing poetry as vector ryhmes his lines, music's past and present are now equally combined, so if rap is made with poetry the way songs are made to ryhme, what the fuck is charmy singing?

[gloriousmonsters]

what is the new book concept?? (if you don’t mind sharing — but if you do mind it’s ok not to reply)

also what is that font you used btw? is there a full alphabet somewhere and if so would you mind sharing the link? i like that it’s a very understated gothic-looking serif. or very calligraphic looking i guess

sure thing!! with the understanding it's a lot more half-baked than most of the ideas I've been talking about, so i'm going to briefly walk you through the few ideas that went into it before explaining (also briefly) what it is so far, lol. Also, the font is Fondamento - it was one of the fonts available in Photopea (free online photoshop-like) which I used to make the cover, but it looks like it's also on Google Fonts. If you want to know how I did the bronze metallic-ink-ish look for the text I can expound on that as well, btw, or you can just enjoy the font :)

So I've been having a resurgence of my Tempest emotions

(for those who are unfamiliar. i would summarize it, but it would take a long time. just. find a summary and read it with a MASSIVE grain of salt that's labeled 'prospero is an asshole and nobody understands Caliban but tumblr user gloriousmonsters and the poet Robert Browning')

and this time reading it was especially having fun with the parallels between Caliban and Miranda's characters and also thinking about how EXTREMELY weird and screwed up their relationship would have been growing up.

Despite interpretations/stories based on it sometimes having it otherwise, in canon neither of them seem to have ever seen or spoken to Ariel (at least in capacity as A Person You Can Talk to; Caliban is more aware of the spirits Prospero commands in abstract, at least). Aside from Prospero, who is notoriously not good at being present for what he's supposed to be looking after, they are the only human being the other one knows. It's serving twisted Eden vibes. It's serving tmg's 'the last man on earth'. it's serving 'not that Prospero would have encouraged it, but to an extent they must have seen each other as family, right? especially in Miranda's case, considering she grew up her entire life with him. the psuedoincest is off the charts'. Then shit goes bad (in whatever way you want to interpret) and now suddenly they're in a place of seeing each other daily, because Caliban does literally everything around the place, but having an uncrossable rift of mutual hurt and betrayal between them* that has little choice but to curdle and get worse because neither of them can do anything to change their situation. Depending on how lines are assigned, they never speak to each other in the play. And they have nobody else to talk to save for cursing out Prospero (Caliban) or trying to get in two words between Prospero's monologues (Miranda). And then the play events happen and they just part ways because Prospero has decided it, after probably expecting they'd be stuck in this forever. And then the next-to-only person you've ever known is on a different landmass and you're probably never going to see them again. it's So fucked.

Anyway I was revolving all of that with quiet awe in my head, and going 'man, I want to write a fucked up Caliban/Miranda book, but I don't have a non-play plot and I don't want to just write a prequel'

Then I encountered Caliban upon Setebos for the first time, and despite the fact i could still nitpick some things it slaps insanely. Only good Tempest fanfiction. It's a long poem consisting of Caliban theorizing about Setebos--a god his mother supposedly got her witch powers from, but that Caliban knows very little about. He theorizes that Setebos is either indifferent or malignant or both--impossible to predict, driven by whim. The only other divine force is 'the Quiet', an even more inhuman and incomprehensible force that doesn't do anything at all; cosmology is cruel, the world a sandbox under the eye of a god with as many arms as a cuttlefish, capricious and sadistic, whom we can only hope will someday grow decrepit and sleep, which is the closest to it being dead we can pray for--

It was about this point I realized Caliban/Browning was inventing the Lovecraft mythos 50ish years ahead of schedule, and got hit by the lightning bolt of 'PUT ELDRITCH BEINGS IN IT' and, five seconds later 'CALIBAN DESERVES TO BE A MAGICIAN' and five seconds after that 'miranda deserves to break out of being her father's Perfect child, let's set it in the future and kill Prospero off'

So Bitter Heart (taken from a line in the poem, 'Caliban/a bitter heart that bides its time') is conceptually a dual perspective novella/short novel focused on how about nine years after the conclusion of The Tempest, Miranda (unmarried, I'll handwave it; Ferdinand bores me so much sorry dude) finds her father dead and surrounded by rambling half-incomprehensible notes, remnants of a type of magic that's far different from his old ways, and a creeping sense of Wrongness that begins to slowly manifest in distortion, mutation and decay of elements of reality. People search for solutions while Miranda tries to find the source of the bizarre power in her father's notes and what hidden books she can unearth from his study, but she hasn't made it very far before a man comes to Milan at the behest of someone who's decided we should throw magic at the magic problem--a man she's heard rumors of as the hot new 'guy you keep in your court for a bit to show him off at parties because he's learned and also Moorish or something, he has this crazy backstory that's probably fake but is a lot of fun, also he does magic probably' in other cities, but never met.

A man who, when they meet face to face, turns out to be Caliban, who after about a year of 'finally peace and quiet' realized that living completely alone on an island was going to drive him insane and also he still really wanted revenge on Prospero (and had a lot of ambiguous ideas about what he wanted from Miranda) so he scraped together what Prospero had left behind and taught himself magic for the next few years until he could figure out a way off the island. He's extremely annoyed that after that, and after spending more years building himself up and finding his footing in the outside world, Prospero had the nerve to die RIGHT before he showed up, even if he wasn't promised a reward if he can stop people's arms from turning into fishes and shit he'd find out what did it so he can give it a piece of his mind. Miranda understandably never planned for this scenario and has a really hard time knowing what to feel about it, but she and Caliban form a tentative truce in order to try and figure out wtf Prospero was doing before he croaked.

There'll be intercut flashbacks to their past and the time they spent becoming incredibly codependent and eventually tipping into confused romantic attraction and sexual experimentation, which both of them have tried very hard to convince themselves was a bad idea for one reason or another, it clearly wasn't and will never be good for them, etc; and of course in present day they both immediately resume having bitter gothic sexual tension and trying to ignore the instinct that, now they've met each other again, they're the only two real people in a world of dreams and spirits.

Also they have to find the entrance to an eldritch realm and figure out what's coming through and how to stop it, and have a lot of insanely weird and pretentious thoughts/conversations about God and sin and abuse and vengeance/hatred and so on. So that's the mess Bitter Heart is at the moment :P

*ymmv may vary on how justified on either side depending on the situation, obviously

[gothamslostboy]

Hi!! ive always wanted to do a matchmaking request for the lost boys <33

* Physical appearance-

i’ve got wavy blue hair, cut up to my ears, basically brahms hair cut but grown out! i have green/brown eyes, and i have so many beauty marks all over my body. i’m 5’6, and have ear piercing + a septum! i have -5 vision so i need glasses ;-;

* Style-

as of right now i dress like a dad or that one uncle, cargo shorts, over sized tshirt, hawaiian shirts or hoodie, rings and necklaces [lots of thrm] earrings and nose ring!! i always make sure i have cool socks on tho, gotta keep up the style!! i usually carry a canva messenger bag with me. for shoes it’s probably doc martens!

* Favorite food

spinach, pickle flavoured sun flower seeds, ramen, calamari, rice, simple foods mostly

* Gender preference -

any gender works for me! i just tend to lean more towards men <3

* 1-2 hobbies -

i absolutely love crafting, no matter what it is, i want to make stuff! it’s not really a hobbit but i love taxidermy, when i did my first rat i fell in love with it and want to do more, so anything relating to death is a bobbie for me 🫶

* Music tastes-

sad love songs, metal music, fnaf music, french music,, it’s very all over the place right now here are the most listened to songs from me! loosing my mind - dennis domian, atlantis - seafret, ça va - emile bilodeau, we’re not gonna take it - twisted sisters, it’s a little of everything yknoe

* Favorite animal-

i think my favorite animals are between sharks, the stoplight loose jaw fish, frogs, rats and worms!!

* Favorite movie/genre -

For genre it’s horror all the way, but for favorite movies? my favorite movies are the lost boys, scream, labyrinth, 9, ferngully, dead poets society and the last unicorn!

* 1-2 personality traits -

im childish, but gruesome thinking, and i have terrible adhd and can basically remember nothing

* Gender

i have no gender 🫶 but i lean towards male pronouns

* Fandom (max 3) - which movie/tv show

the lost boys please!!

* How many characters?

1. 1 fandom: maximum 2

3. 2-3 fandoms: maximum 3

whoever you see fif

* Zodiac sign

i’m a taurus✋

* 1-2 traits you look for in partner
in a partner i just really want someone who will love me for me, that’s understanding and will get i habe my ups n downs, but also someone who’s down to do stupid stuff when the time comes yknow? i’m a really big person on giving gifts to people, so someone who could possibly match that energy❓

here’s some extra info about me tho

i’m aro-ace! the type of aromatic that’s cupioromantic, and a mostly sex-repulsed asexual. now the sex repulsed part is mostly towards myself, i don’t wanna see other people or myself naked, watchjng sex scenes is less bad, still weird to me tho,, i speak frnech since i learnt it when i was also learning english! so i’m sorry if my spelling is off or there’s mistakes 😭 i have writing issues shsishshs

this is so exciting i hope i gave you enough info!!

Ok before I get into this: YOU ARE SO COOL. YOURE LIKE A COOLER VERSION OF WHO I WANT TO BE. Pickle flavored sunflower seeds are amazing, but I always accidentally eat the shells haha:] don’t worry your spelling is great, also I wish I was taught another language when I was young, my mom hired a Chinese teacher and I remember 1 song, but we stopped when I was 4 (started at 2) and I don’t remember anything else<\\\3

I Ship You With….

Marko! You want someone who also likes giving/receiving gifts? HE IS YOUR MAN!!! Holy shit he’s gonna give you so many gifts you won’t be able to move around your home.

He’s a vampire, so who is he to judge anyone? As long as someone is not a hateful bigot or an asshole, he’ll find a way to vibe. He himself struggles with anger issues, so he understands mental health a bit and does his best. Besides Paul, he’s the boy most likely to do stupid shit with you, mainly bc he enjoys being a gremlin.

Lil personal hc here: Marko is Trans, so when it comes to you not having a gender, it’s the equivalent of someone not having blonde hair to him: he doesn’t care. He’s just happy to have you as a partner

Marko is very used to being around Paul, so ADHD and childish behavior doesn’t bother him, and he’s gonna encourage your gruesome thinking as much as he can.

His favorite things about your style is your hair, socks and piercings, certainly begging to re dye it himself and buying you guys socks. He buys 2 pairs, takes one of each pair, and gives you the remaining two. He loves to do this instead of matching things in the normal way.

He is an artsy dude, focusing mostly on clothes himself. But once you tell him about taxidermy? He’s on his hands and knees asking you to show him how. He obviously knew what it was, just for some reason it never connected in his head that it’s a real thing ppl do.

On dates he takes you to local flee markets/ art shows to get things and make art out of whatever thing inspires you too.

After one of his favorite pigeons passes, he will ask if you could taxidermy it for him and keeps it safely in his room.

[cynthiaandsamus]

Custom Toonami Block Week 92 Rundown

Stone Ocean: Jolyene’s continuing prison life stuff and we do your basic Orange is the New Black stuff about how you have to be a hardass in prison (at least I assume that’s what it’s about idk) so Jolyene poisons a bunch of people with quarter dust crushed by her new Stand which is admittedly pretty badass and she gives another girl down on her luck advice about standing up for herself even though she doesn’t have a punching ghost to back it up and will probably get the shit kicked out of her as soon as she doesn’t have the advantage. Anyway we continue the weird oscillation of badass Jolyene to confused doe-eyed Jolyene when weird Stand shit starts happening with a baseball kid and a blind sniper with a name that’s weird and long and I won’t remember it. Jotaro finally goes to see his daughter and tells her about Stands and shit and then Jolyene gets shot and a card dies and the blind sniper has a weird Metal Gear Solid power and Jolyene protects herself on instinct with her Stand but Jotaro can’t despite his ability literally being stopping time and being unreasonably strong and precise. Stone Ocean (the Stand, not the show) seems to be oddly defensive and works automatically to protect Jolyene more often than other Stands, I’m not sure if it’s because she’s new to Stands and isn’t actively commanding it as much or if it’s a quirk of the Stand itself or if it’s just Araki’s weird writing idk. Anyway a guard is dead and Jotaro and Jolyene are stuck in a room with bullet holes in each of them and a blind sniper using a plastic bag in the wind to hunt them down… yeah this is Jojo alright.

Inuyasha:  Still on the Filler train here like we will be for the forseeable future but I always found this one to be kind of interesting. The Fake Sacred Jewel mini-arc has boring generic villains that are legit reskins of past villains but also brings the series back to the reflections on the nature of the jewel and the human heart that we got back at Sango’s village and I always thought that was a neat thing to double back on. We also get Izumo who stands out in the feudal era by actually having a brain and talking like an emo poet, it’s neat to see him try to break down science and shit despite being in the complete wrong era to even begin to understand it, also he likes birds so I guess he’s a relative of Android 16. This one’s actually a two parter and we end off with a bull demon that has a club full of fake jewels and a lot of bullshit powers but it’s weird because he sounds like dumb muscle but starts waxing poetic about the nature of the jewel and the soul and it’s honestly kind of fucking hilarious.

Yu Yu Hakusho: It’s time for the Yusuke vs Jin fight!! This is probably the one I remember the most form the Dark Tournament since when I was little I kind of only half-watched the Toguro fight since it’s hard to tell people you have to schedule things around a tv show when you’re twelve years old. But yeah this one’s kind of straightforward, not a huge amount to say on it, Jin’s just a supremely likeable guy, dumb irish accent and all, Yusuke’s struggling with the fact he can deflect ranged attacks with wind and can out-maneuver him with flight for melee. His last trick is shooting directly into one of his vortex fists to blow them both up but Jin catches on and so they only both get blown a little up. Jin’s response to this is “What’s worse than one Whirlwind Fist? TWO WHIRLWIND FISTS!” and so Yusuke has to use his ultimate technique: The Spirit Wave… problem being he never actually learned it. It’s one of those deals of “I’ve seen the diagram and practiced all the steps but I’ve never DONE it before” as anyone who works retail can attest, that always happens at the worst time.

Fate Zero: It’s Finale time again and we basically know where this is going, Saber Getsuga Tensho’s the Grail and Gilgamesh and Kirei get drowned in Grail Cummies and become zombies or some shit so they can stick around for the real series. Kiritsugu apparently gets Plot Cancer from the Grail Cummies although that’s never actually stated it just kinda happens, Saber gets trapped in her own personal hell thinking she’s awful while Lancelot gets a voiceover saying she’s great, so glad we got that character arc done, like net zero character development, all those discussions about if Saber was this fantastic leader everyone loved or if she was a foolish child too worried about being an idol to actually let people stand on their own two feet are basically waved off with a shrug. Kiritsugu finds Shirou and is so fucking relieved he only murdered 11,999,999 people today instead of 12,000,000 that Shirou decides to dedicate his entire life to pursuing that high. Rin has a fucked up life and it makes me just wish the story was about her anyway because even her story wasn’t really about her. Also apparently her mom isn’t dead and Kariya just choked her enough to drive her crazy and make her paraplegic which idk the medical info about that but it doesn’t sound right. I think she’s dead by UBW anyway so idk what it matters aside from putting more shit on Baby Rin’s shoulders. Also she gets the thing that makes Dolphin Sex so Shirou can do Unlimited Blade Works which it’s never really explained all that well but it hurts and it sucks so of course they gotta give it to Rin. Also Kiritsugu gets yeeted out of the Einzberns because he fucked up so his daughter’s just gonna live in the castle for a few years until she can summon the hulk and die anticlimactically. Waver’s the only person with a full arc in this story so he decides to go travel the world and become a better person and shit so that’s nice. Kiritsugu’s still like ‘It was a calculated risk but man am I bad at math” and passes his terrible ideas onto Shirou so we can repeat this again with slightly fewer people dying next time so that’s the good end I guess. This immediately kills Kiritsugu and Shirou is just like “I’mma take that as a sign that I should keep doing what I’m doing” after watching this vague misguided poorly thought out attempt to wave a wand and fix everything choke the life out of this man he’s just like “Yeah let’s try it again but with less murder” and there we have it, one full route of Fate done between this and UBW, considering Heaven’s Feel essentially doesn’t exist because it’s not streamed anywhere and Fate has CGI dragons that everyone tells me are terrible, guess I’m onto the side stories next, haven’t decided between Extra and Apocrypha yet I’ll figure that out later this week, hopefully one of these series’ won’t leave me scratching my head at the end.

Bakemonogatari: This episode is really weirdly paced, it’s another one of those “Hitagi and Araragi circletalk for 50-75% of the episode” deals. I mean their circle talk is fun and all but it doesn’t help that everything goes so fast I feel like I’m watching Gilmore Girls in a different language. Basically Araragi fought with his little sisters on mother’s day because his mom likes them better and now he’s pouting about it and Hitagi comes to cheer him up by saying she owes him a favor in the most sexual tension inducing way possible. But yeah they dance around this for a long time but the general gist is Aragagi doesn’t want anything from her because that’s weird and she can’t do things normally anyway. Meanwhile while talking about his problems with gradeschool girls there comes another gradeschool girl with a giant backpack that looks like Birdomon from Digimon got run over by a truck. This is Mayoi and she’s basically like any grade school kid in a show about teenagers ever which means she’s a stubborn brat and Araragi trying to help her ends up accidentally beating the shit out of her which Hitagi hilariously walks in on and gives him this weird scum of the earth look for the rest of the episode. Anyway not much happening plot-wise but they’re gonna go help Maiyo get to where she wants to go for some reason because I guess Araragi just has to put himself into other peoples’ business because he’s that kind of guy and also something about Snails or something.

Sailor Moon Crystal: We continue the season climax from last time and my god does this show drag these out, I much prefer the early-season character development stuff to this thing where they drag out the planet about to be destroyed for three episodes. Dimande’s about to destroy the world by crossing the streams so Sailor Pluto ZA WARUDO’s him but also it kills her because you’re not supposed to do that so why did they give her the power to do it idk. Anyway they get the crystals back from Dimande and Pluto’s death turns Black Lady back into Chibi-Usa because the lesbian feelings of a 900 year old 12 year old are complicated. It also makes her transform into a Sailor Guardian which I kinda forgot she hadn’t done before just because of how common it is to see Sailor Mini Moon in her outfit in art and stuff. But yeah, there’s still a Planet about to Majora’s Mask the whole place and Sailor Moon tries to stop him with her moon beams and then Dimande tries to stop them with his eye beams and then Dimande gets fried and then we’re back to Moon Beams again and Death Phantom turns into Andross from Star Fox 64 and we’re inside the planet talking to a floating head which is pretty final bossy I guess. I just feel like it’d be more interesting to have the villain be a dude, guess we don’t want Sailor Moon just murdering a dude though so it’s better to have her murder amorphous blobs of darkness. There’s even a line where Sailor Moon’s like “I won’t let that shapeless ball of evil do whatever he wants with the Earth!” and I’m like that’s it, that’s the whole show summed up.

Durararax2: We pick up where we last left off with Celty getting decapitated which is kind of funny because apparently the Russian Assassins that were hired to off her so they could abduct the girl she was hired to find and protect didn’t do ANY research into hr aside from being a magical motorcyclist since they see some of her tricks on video but have no idea the other name people call he is “Headless Rider” instead of just Black Rider, like half the people of Ikebukuro could’ve told you decapitating her wouldn’t work. Anyway I like these Russian psychos, one’s basically a dude that’s just shouting questions you type into Google at random and the other’s a stoic walking Wikipedia article so she can answer all of his questions. The girl at the center of all this ironically, a Yakuza heiress with some sort of connection to a disappearing talent agency president maybe, is ironically already at Celty’s place being taken care of by Shinra after she tried and failed hilariously badly to assassination Shizuo. Mikado still has Masaomi’s ominous yet vague warning on the brain but agrees to take Aoba out again since if he doesn’t, Aoba’ll get alone time with Anri and this is still a high school story on some level after all. Celty goes on about how she’s leaving her ordinary life behind and jumping into the extraordinary and I’m just like girl you are a literal dullahan who’s best friends with a possessed sword, a dude that breaks all his bones to be able to throw cars around and several gang leaders, I think we left ordinary behind a while ago. Anyway turns out the Dollars have been supposedly picking fights in another territory and it has the Tiger gang worried so Mikado’s looking into it and also Anri’s about to get home invasion’d again, this is like what the third time?

[thedumbguywithaheart43]

BoomLord's weird adventure

Chapter 17 where's the storm?

Twilight and boom Lord both laid back on the bed the question still hung in the air. How do they tell their friends as even they weren't sure how it happened. For now though the two seemed content just laying there leaving the question for later."well it's probably not the best idea to rush it for now I just like to take a bit of time as I'd like to get to know the person who somehow taken my breath away."twilight's worried face disappeared as boom said this a look of interest on her. Who could blame her even though they knew the kind of people they were and much of the base stuff they were still so much mystery and mystery can be quite intriguing. She leaned into one allowing him to embrace her, wrapping his arms around her."okay well tell me about your kind to be honest even when uh."her face filled with a blush 'shit Twilight how do I tell him about my experience with humans."Boom started to chuckle finding it hard not to burst out in complete laughter. Her face was so flustered it was funny to him."Twilight I'm aware of your time as a human beforehand I know many things about you...er.. well that sounded creepier than I wanted it to."He quickly looked away before looking back to her gaze.'Of course he knows' she thought before holding back her own chuckle."okay then well tell me about humans."Boom let out a sigh. Truth be told he was waiting for this question yeah just expected it to happen later on."well humans are a complicated species and it's not always a happy tale when it comes to us."This only made Twilight more curious as she leaned in."humans are some of greatest creatures in the Omniverse and they're also the worst in it. In every world in every Galaxy in every multiverse where there are humans there are war, deaths ,hunger, starvation we commit terrible horrible Acts for the dumbest reasons."twilight's face went blank for a moment."we fight over land over opinions for love and hate.The ones over love can can often be the bloodiest."a distant look entered boom's eyes those Twilight looked up at him with soft eyes."I don't understand how can love it's a wonderful thing create such a terrible act?"her voice was sorrowfull admittedly the conversation was pretty so far."Twilight you'll find many things in our adventures but nothing more powerful than love. Love can be a terrible thing when misused it can lead to rejection obsession and betrayal ultimately that leads to death the bloodiest wars in my history may have started with acts of love. Trust me I've witnessed it first hand."He look down at the beautiful girl in his arms looking like she was about to cry 'Ah shit them what the fuck are you doing!' He took a deep breath determined to give Twilight a more satisfying ending to the question."but Twilight even for the many faults of humans we are capable of great acts together when we put aside our petty differences we have built towers that reach into the sky vehicles that extend into the Stars and relationships stronger than steel."He reached down grabbing her hand intertwining their fingers."and well love can lead to terrible things the best things in life are pointless without it. Without Love there can be no compassion sympathy loyalty and the other elements that you and your friends represent. And it's love that keeps us going In the Blake is of times. One day in the dark when there's no hope no future insight love love is all it takes to make a light."twilight's expressions slowly turned back into a joyful one as she leaned up nuzzling into his chin."you know you wouldn't make bad poet."Boom give out a snort."nah I ain't got the patience for that I'd rather just blow stuff up."the two of them burst out and laughing before embracing each other once more however it was time to face the day.

2 The pair quietly open the door before heading downstairs towards the exit of the castle. It had been a few days since Twilight or boom had spoken to spike mostly Fluttershy and AppleJack were keeping an eye on him bringing him gems and other food. Mostly candy. Once the two actually entered the main courtyard many of the candy citizens took notice of them taking a sigh of relief noticing that it wasn't Pinky. They were sick of having to replace their buildings."man it's so weird being in the Candy Kingdom without peppermint Butler announcing my presence."she turned to look at him with a confused expression one that she had had several times today."okay I've met a lot of candy people but whose peppermint Butler?" Boom shruged." Just the smartest person in the Candy Kingdom next to princess bubblegum sadly he won't be around for a bit he's currently recovering from an incident so I don't think he'll be around much."he decided not telling her about the dark magic would be for the best. The two of them eventually reaching the Cotton Candy Forest where the large form of Spike rested after a little bit of walking. Spike had remained relatively the same with Fluttershy and him playing Tic-Tac-Toe in the dirt. Currently Fluttershy was winning. Spike turned his head noticing the two approaching figures."hey guys what's up!"Spike blurted out in excitement. Twilight giggles going over to hug the giant head of Spike who nuzzled back. Boom can help but smile at this it was truly a sight to see. It's not every day a unicorn person hugs they're Giant dragon surrogate son. But booms of warm feeling quickly faded as another feeling took over. This was a feeling of dread of hatred but it wasn't his own. Boom turned his gaze to the forest we're a lone figure stood in the shadows. If it weren't for his demon eye you never would have spotted it. The figure was at least 7 ft tall dark black robes covered the entire body with a hood obscuring the face. Metal gauntlets were the only thing visible and in its hand was a small black cylinder object. An object boom knew too well. The figure in boom stared at each other for what felt like an eternity well Twilight talked with Spike about last few days their words faded in the background to him. But he had to act he knew exactly what was about to happen but he could only speak."run."Twilight and Spike caught notice of them along with Fluttershy. Twilight was about to say something before boom turned to her."RUN!"he screamed as the figure emerged from The Shadow holding up the cylinder and a blade of red light shot from it lighting up the area in a red glow.

3 the dragon and the two ponies looked at the face of their friend the terror across it and anger. They knew better than to question that face. Two girls quickly hopped on spikes back who took off towards the castle leaving boom with the figure."what's wrong boom didn't you miss me~."the figure mocked seductively in a female voice. Boom didn't respond as he pulled his guns from his satchel pointing them at her."not even slightly you piece of shit."she chuckled she enjoyed the anger coming from him and he knew it. But he couldn't help it it was the person he hated most in this world or any world."fuck you Lily!"boom unleashed six shots from each gun unloading them on her the flashes filling the forest. But she stood there the bullets merely creating Sparks on her as they fell to the ground."oh boomy did you really think your little guns were going to do shit against me?"a devious chuckle came from her her blade raised up in a fighting stance."it really was more about the principle of it."boom joked. The two stared for a minute."well I'm assuming you came here to kill me so why not get the fight over with already it's not like you'll win anyway!"boom fight desperately to keep his anger out of his voice but her presence only fueled it."boomy boomy I did want to kill you but now someone has showed me the right way~. They showed me the best way to get revenge is to make you suffer~."this time a cackle came from her as she raised her hand."but I wasn't quite sure how to go about it but thanks to those cute little friends of yours I now have something to torture you with. You always did have a taste for the Smart ones~."boom's red eye glowed in anger. Lily had just threatened his newfound relationship and it hadn't even been a day yet."if you lay a hand on her on any of them I will hunt you down till the last world falls! Not even palpatine will be able to save you from my wrath!"he roared at the saber welding woman."how will I have the time to torture your friends when you'll be too busy killing them~?"she asked. Boom's face went to one of anger to fear."you wouldn't!"he couldn't see her smile but he could feel it."oh I fucking dare~what's that thing you used to say bada bing bada boom or some shit~."she raised her hand as a stream of lightning left it hitting boom causing his body to fill with electricity. The pain for him was unbearable but it wasn't the pain that caused him to scream."NOOOOOO!"she then lifted boom tossing him towards the Candy Castle and he flew he flew all the way to the castle and right through the walls landing in the center chamber where everyone besides Spike was gathered. And his Golden eye shines one last time before turning red. A dark blood red.

[asgardian--angels]

Recommend some good folk metal music please

:D i never thought i’d see the day when someone actually wants to know more about the music i listen to *cracks knuckles* my time has come

I apologize in advance for this novel. Feel free to skip to the recommended tracks lol.

Most folk metal comes out of northern Europe (Finland, heavily) though you can find it all over the world (Hu Band comes to mind but I mean, it’s on every continent). I am one of those people with like, a small handful of favorite bands that I listen to mercilessly so I am sure that I am only representing a miniscule percentage of what’s available out there. What’s great is that folk metal is much more versatile than many other genres in its sound; the essence of folk metal is simply to 1) utilize traditional (or rather, in the sense of a metal band, non-traditional) instruments such as violin, accordion, brass ensemble, bagpipes, what have you, and 2) have lyrical themes which revolve around regional folklore, mythology, cultural heritage, or place (what I particularly like is a frequent reverence and respect for nature). Other genres of metal (death, black) have the second element but not the first, and tend to incorporate darker overall tones and consistently harsher or lo-fi vocal styles and sounds. Folk metal can be a gateway genre into metal and can often be quite hopepunk (if you will). Because of these criteria, the actual sound of folk metal can range from sea shanties to ‘spooky walk in the midnight woods’ to scathing social commentary to SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SH

Basically you can find a range of styles within the genre that fit what you’re looking for, from those that have an orchestral, ballad feel, to things that border on death metal but have a hurdy-gurdy in there. There’s also a much higher percentage of female-led folk metal bands than other metal genres.

I’ll go through my top picks.

Turisas. These motherfuckers. My boys.

Turisas is based in Finland, but sing primarily in English (with occasional Finnish, a smidge of Greek and Swedish too). Four albums out to date, fifth in progress. Sound is absolutely fucking bonkers god tier shit, if I may say so myself. Every single song sounds like you’ve been transported into an Iliad metal musical. Heavy use of a full orchestra and choir, along with sick violin and accordion solos. Their lyrical themes focus heavily on ancient Greco-Roman and Viking military history - but before you raise any red flags, rest assured they’re liberal as fuck and trust me the tea is scalding when Mathias feels like making a Point about Then and Now. No seriously, I don’t know how to express the beauty and depth of his songwriting - Mathias Nygård is an incredibly talented composer, musician, and songwriter (nay, POET), and an extremely intelligent and down to earth guy. There are plenty of bands that are happy to write Viking songs about pillaging and glorious death in battle and all that (Alestorm comes to mind), those are a dime a dozen. Turisas makes history come to life in a way that transports you back in time and thrusts you into the living breathing world of the past. They deal with the horrors and tragedy of war from both sides, consequences and motivations, fears and pride and loss, home and family, despair and hope. They write songs about people, big and small, and their role in weaving the great tapestry of history. And the best part is that it’s informed - Mathias does his damn research and the tales he tells are rooted in fact. He brings them to life so we can experience what it must have been like for those real living people, with the goal of forcing us to confront our own selves in them. He’s a modern Homer, I shit you not. 

Did I mention there’s a song about pirates that’s actually really complex and nuanced, about how the hypocrisy and vile colonialist deeds of emperors makes them no different than the criminals they persecute?

Or that they do a badass cover of Rasputin?? yeah?????

Anyway enough gushing. Their second and third albums (The Varangian Way, Stand Up And Fight) are consecutive concept albums that follow the story of the Varangian Guard (the legendary Viking battalion that defended Alexander the Great) so the songs are actually chronologically linked to tell this epic tale. It’s a fucking listen, lads. The Varangian Way is probably my favorite album. But all their albums are top notch. 

My favorite songs: End of An Empire (this one comes for 2020 hard), Piece by Piece (AKA die fascists 2k20), Cursed Be Iron, Among Ancestors, Greek Fire, Miklagard Overture (you gotta earn this song tho, it’s the finale)

Good first listen picks/hits: Battle Metal, To Holmgard and Beyond, March of the Varangian Guard, Ten More Miles, One More

Finntroll. These other motherfuckers. My other boys.

Another big name in the Finnish folk metal scene. As you can see, their band revolves both aesthetically and musically around Scandinavian troll folklore. Yall weird elf-fuckers who like the really big ears? Here you go. Look at those ears. They’re good friends with Turisas. Both love their facepaint.

Musical style leans much more towards black and death metal influenced, with a heavier, fuller sound and growling vocals. But it’s an incredibly rich and creative aural tapestry, with layers of masterfully executed sound that’s a real delight to lose yourself in. Use of fiddle, brass, keyboard, accordion, and banjo, and strong folk melodies make their sound unmistakable and unique. They are known for their ‘black humppa’ beat, which basically gives the effect of feeling the primal need to stomp around loudly to their music. It’s great cardio. They also utilize orchestra in some great intro tracks. They know their stuff.

The majority of their songs are sung in Swedish (they do some English cover songs which are FANTASTIC holy SHIT), but don’t let that stop you. The mood and power and emotion of their music transcend language, and you can be sure the lyrics are about either trolls, witches, the dark woods, spirits, or something of that ilk. I think Swedish as a language works very well with this kind of music, and honestly having it in English would lose something. 

They have been around a long time and so have many albums, but I personally have only listened to the last three which feature their current singer, Mathias Lillmåns, whom I adore. Those albums are Nifelvind, Blodsvept, and their recent release Vredesvävd (that i’ve had on repeat since I got it three weeks ago). I’m sure their other ones are great too, I just can’t make a personal recommendation since I haven’t heard them. 

My favorite songs: Galgasång, Tiden Utan Tid, Ylaren, Skogsdotter, Två Ormar, Ett Norrskensdåd, Skövlarens Död

Good first listen picks/hits: Forsen, Under Bergets Rot, Häxbrygd, Trollhammaren (older song), Solsagan

I’ll go through these other ones a little faster, I haven’t heard quite as much from them but I do love them.

Korpiklaani. 

Great, full folk sound, utilizes a lot of folk instruments including some less commonly seen ones like hurdy gurdy. Songs are mostly in Finnish but plenty in English too. Jonne Järvelä has a really unique voice that grows on you, but it’s not for everyone. The band started as Sami folk, and Jonne is trained in Sami yoik singing, which makes an appearance in a few songs. I prefer the Finnish tracks, as a lot of the English ones are drinking songs lmao. But again, really well-executed music with layers of sound that keeps you hooked. I haven’t heard enough of their discography to really recommend enough to cover everything. 

Song picks: Minä Näin Vedessä Neidon, Metsälle, Ämmänhauta, Lempo

Moonsorrow.

Definitely a darker, black-folk band. Probably not a great pick if you aren’t accustomed to black metal - very long tracks (8-15 mins is standard), growling/shrieking vocals, a ‘thinner’ but encompassing wall of sound usual of black metal, but with the benefit of wonderfully entrancing dark folk elements and chants. It’s done really really well. Sung almost entirely in Finnish (apart from cover tracks). Lyrically, focuses on themes of Norse mythology, man vs nature and similar elements. Definitely one of those bands whose music gets you into a zone. I can lose serious time just putting a whole album on and letting my mind wander elsewhere. My favorite album is Jumalten Aika. 

Song picks: Ruttolehto Sis. Päivättömän Päivän Kansa (my fucking FAVORITE), Suden Tunti (well known hit), and also uhh check out their cover of Non Serviam cause it’s a fucking banger

Other bands that I like what I’ve heard but really can’t say much about them, whoops - Tyr (from the Faroe Islands, great stuff, Faroese is a baller language), Ensiferum, Nightwish (female-led).... I’m open to suggestions. Like I said, there are folk metal bands all over the world, and each is intrinsically linked to a sense of place and cultural identity that makes them unique. I’d love to hear about more tbh. 

[phcking-detective]

Happiness is a Jealous Android

The FBI are the British of the law enforcement world, Gavin thinks sourly as he glares at the new addition "consulting" on his goddamn case. Snobby fucking cunts who think their own shit doesn't stink.

He can't do anything but be mad about it either. There's a new virus making androids overheat, and they don't know shit about how it works.

They could if Nines caught an android in the middle of it, but it works so fast, they haven't been able to grab one yet. He could just use whatever program he has meant to hack in and delete another android's code—meant for eradicating deviancy—and delete the virus instead.

"Yes, but just imagine, if the code is—" the fancy FBI computer geek says.

Nines interrupts. "For the fifth time, I cannot."

"But you understand the concept!" FBI geek throws up his hands. "Just apply it to—"

Gavin rolls his eyes. The whole fucking point of Nines is that he can't! He's not ever supposed to have new ideas, and he thinks too literally for that shit anyway.

Nines already told them the most efficient method of overheating an android three days ago, but whatever the virus does, it isn't that. And Nines can't think of anything less efficient—he can barely understand the concept of thinking less efficiently.

So they've brought in a human just smart enough to be stupid for him.

If only someone would tell this asshole that's what his job is. Just be stupid enough to think of something that works through sheer idiot accident—that's human creativity, baby!

When the GJ500 assigned to act as the FBI geek's "tactical support"—glorified bodyguard/babysitter special combo—meets Gavin's eyes and jerks his head toward the back door, Gavin can't get out of the bullpen and into the back alley for a smoke break fast enough.

"Need a light?" Nate asks, already pulling out his own pack.

Gavin's not really sure why an android needs to smoke, but he's also not sure where his ADHD ass has left his own lighter this time, so he nods and leans forward.

One thing he is sure of is how Nate checks him out while sparking the end of his cigarette. He's cruised enough to know that look, android or not.

But he settles back against the opposite nod with only a grunt of thanks. Him and Nines maybe sort of have a thing and they maybe sort of haven't talked about it. Anyway, he's only made the exception about shitting where he eats—or in this case, fucking where he works—because Nines is such an uptight, private, introverted bastard, he knows not even Connor will be able to weasel any details out of him.

"Fucking geniuses, right?" Nate says after lighting his own cigarette.

He gives a surprisingly human scoff, and Gavin can't help but snort back in agreement. He's only gotten used to Nines and Connor—said fucking genius or the android version of those evil gossipy Southern ladies. And all the other androids in the precinct are still too scared of him for anything outside of short sentences, much less small talk.

So he's never really shot the shit with an android before, but hey. Brave new world and all.

"How'd you get stuck babysitting yours?" Gavin asks.

Nate groans. "I was suckered. Fucking …" He gestures with his own lit cigarette. "Bamboozled."

Gavin snickers and maybe checks him out a little too. "Like to see the guy who could bamboozle you."

Nate grins at him. "Well, I guess I have to admit your RK probably could, but outside of that …"

His grin opens wider, revealing sharp canines. Gavin swallows. Nines has them too of course, but they're like, metal sheaths that drop down from his gums to cover his "human" teeth. Very cool, but he only gets to see them on special occasions.

"But yeah." Nate drops the grin and sighs. "Honestly, I'm still kind of new. And I don't have any fucking, deep burning desire to be a free form poet or some shit. I just wanted to do what I'm good at, so the FBI called and I jumped."

Gavin raises his eyebrows. "And they stuck you with a babysitting job?"

Nate wrinkles his face up with clear disgust and disappointment. It's weird as hell. The only other android he's seen built like Nate is Nines, who wouldn't know a facial expression if someone carved a Joker smile into his chassis.

OK, well. Maybe that's not fair. Nines does have both disgust and disappointment on lock, but in a sterile sort of way. Like a scientist observing a failed experiment and Gavin's dick is the unlucky lab rat.

(Not that Gavin or his dick are complaining.)

"What about you?" Nate asks. "Got anything to complain about?"

Gavin huffs out smoke and flicks ash off the end of his cigarette. "Why do you care?"

Nate shrugs. "Maybe I'm just interested in life at the DPD. For no reason. Snow is always whiter on the other side and all."

He barks out a laugh. "It's Detroit. If you see any snow that's still white, that's just cocaine."

Nate snorts too, and the smoke is good, and maybe he could throw the guy a bone. He'd been thinking about a career change himself not too long ago—until he got partnered with Nines, and Fowler started actually noticing when he solved cases, and maybe having Nines help keep him on track meant he blew up less at his coworkers, meant that they stopped hating him so much, meant that he might have a real shot at a promotion now.

"Connor's usually the darling golden boy," he says between drags. "And Hank goes way back with Fowler, so yeah. They get all the good shit."

Nate makes a sympathetic noise.

"Our budget's shit and anytime we catch something really good, guess who swoops in and case steals?"

He gives Nate's FBI jacket a pointed look that totally doesn't involve also checking out his barrel of a chest. What the fuck do they make these military models out of anyway? His porn history?

"Sucks," Nate says. "Doesn't sound too different though. At least you actually get to work cases. The only shit I catch is all coding and hacking, and I'm not built for that any more than you could perform open heart surgery just 'cause you've got one."

"Oof," Gavin says in return.

He gets down to the filter and drops it, stubbing out the small ember with his boot. Nate's cigarette is still going strong, since he doesn't actually need to inhale and hasn't been sucking it down. Gavin's not sure what to do with his hands now, and he's still plenty stressed, so he just takes out another cigarette.

Nate takes his out of his mouth and holds it out. Gavin gratefully presses the end of his new smoke against it to light up again.

"I think they call this buttfucking," Nate says.

Gavin sputters out a surprised laugh. "Yeah, Brits call these a lot worse."

Nate shrugs. "Takes one to know one."

From the way he pulls his cigarette back and wraps his lips around it while maintaining full eye contact, he obviously knows a little something-something himself.

But then he switches to complaining about his partner's annoying little peculiarities—like how the man apparently hates cotton balls with some sort of weird fetishistic passion—and Gavin offers up how Nines refuses to ever end a sentence with a preposition, and it's just regular coworker bitching from there.

Although they do start taking smoke breaks together, at least once a day. It's nice having someone to bitch to, since Nines is so busy doing code shit Gavin can't even comprehend, and Tina's off with her android girlfriend, plus Hank and Connor, for some feel good android-human bonding news special or whatever.

And yeah, they flirt. But Gavin's a slut and Nines already knew that. The one time Nate asked him about getting a "lunch break," Gavin told him he doesn't fuck around on cases. Even if neither of them were any use right now, fucking a coworker is bad enough—Gavin strictly does not fuck at work, or even on lunch breaks if he's in the middle of a big case.

Nate drawled he had an impressive work ethic and left it at that.

And him and Nines still haven't talked about their thing, or how serious it is, or exclusive, or … at all, really. Nines is too busy. So.

It's not a big deal if he just, has a friend or whatever.

***

Gavin leans back against the wall and tries to light his smoke in the face of harsh Detroit winds. It keeps sputtering out. Maybe he should go back inside.

Hank and Connor are back, and that's stealing the spotlight from their case getting solved, but it's not like he had shit to do with that anyway.

He's not sulking about it.

Not FBI-genius-what's-his-face being all smug, or Nines still ignoring him to mind-talk to Connor even though the case is over and they could finally have some time to …

Shit. Hold hands? Gavin mentally sneers at himself. What they had going on before was probably just like, an experiment. Lots of androids trying out sex and dating right now.

Lots of times that he's handing over his heart to someone just looking for—

Tall, broad shoulders step in between him and the wind so the lighter finally sparks and catches long enough for him to light up. He takes a drag and looks up, ready to tell Nines it's about time he—

But it's Nate.

(Stupid.)

"Scene in there a little too much?" Nate asks.

Gavin tips his head back and exhales smoke without answering.

"Got a job offer," he continues. "In New York."

Gavin hums. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Lot nicer than fucking Detroit." Nate pauses. "Could use a partner though."

"What?" Gavin blinks and looks back at him. "Shit man. Like we're gonna run away together?"

Nate laughs. "Not that romantic, no. But you're being fucking wasted here—both as a cop and a, uhh …"

He stops and purposefully takes a long drag of his own cigarette. What the British call them. Like that's clever.

Gavin's the only one allowed to call himself slurs, but he does enjoy being verbally degraded, and this asshole is pushing right up against both of those lines. He's not really sure how mad he is about it, since Nate didn't actually say the word, but he settles for pissed because that's who he is as a person.

"Oh, fuck off," he sneers.

Nate smirks and it suddenly seems mean instead of sexy for the first time. "Like you're getting it any better from your RK? I bet he fucks like the machine he is."

Gavin doesn't deny it. Nines hasn't deviated and he doesn't care when people call him a machine anyway. And none of that is any of this asshole's business.

But Nate keeps going.

"Two weeks and I've never even seen him look at you," he says. "Y'know, look."

He drags his eyes over Gavin's body like he's mapping out all the places he plans to touch. Wants to touch. Nines assesses him, nags at him to eat or sleep or "hydrate" himself. Catalogues every minute detail about his appearance.

Sometimes he'll even look at Gavin like he's going to eat the human alive and analyze every single bite.

But his partner has never checked him out or anything. As far as Gavin knows, it's all mental for him when they fuck around. Just a way for him to have control over something in his life and put some of those interrogation protocols to use that aren't legal now that deviants have rights.

Nate looks like he wants to fuck him raw in this very goddamn alley.

"None of your phcking business," Gavin mutters.

Nate sighs and drops his smoke in the snow. "Oh, Gavin. Fine. We can do this your way."

He thinks that means the android is going to let it go, even though that phrasing is really weird. So he's a dumb idiot who doesn't even have his guard up when Nate passes by him to the door—only to suddenly grab him, turn him around, and shove him up against the brick alley wall.

Gavin slams an elbow back into his ribs on instinct, but that doesn't do shit against a private security android except make his whole arm go numb. He holds back the impulse to slam his head backward into the android's face, because that will hurt his human skull way worse than whatever metal Nate has under the plastic.

He tries to take stock of the situation instead, but then freezes when Nate leverages his taller, bulkier body to press against the whole of his back to keep him pinned.

And grind into his ass.

"Get off," Gavin snarls.

"Yeah, I intend to," Nate replies in casual amusement. "Don't worry, I'll let you come too."

"I'm. Not. Interested!"

Nate leans down to murmur in his ear. "Ah-ah. I've seen your porn history, Gavvy. This is damn near all you watch."

Watch! his brain screams. He watches that shit, might fool around with some forced submission, but only in scenes with his Dom. Which is NINES.

"I'm going to fuck you so good, you won't even remember his dumb little number," Nate croons.

"Well."

"Mm?"

Gavin huffs against the brick, just stalling for time. Or an idea. An idea would be really fucking nice right about now, but all he can think about is how his traitor dick really has gotten interested in this even though he's screaming inside and—

"Good is an adjective. You can't verb an adjective. You need to use the adver—"

Nate grabs a fistful of his hair and slams his face into the wall. He doesn't have any snappy comeback because yeah. That's all the response he needed.

But his hands have scrabbled against the brick wall long enough to find a loose one. Can't have shit in Detroit, much less well-constructed buildings. His skull and fist might not do shit versus the android's face, but a brick to the head should put anyone down.

Right?

"Now. Are you going to be a good b—"

The door to the alley opens, and Hank steps out. Gavin looks sideways at him and opens his mouth, but he chokes on the blood dripping down the back of his throat from his busted up nose and can't say anything.

"We're just having a little fun, Lieutenant," Nate says smoothly. "Nothing he doesn't beg for online."

Gavin's face flushes, and that really doesn't help the bleeding nose problem. Everyone in the precinct knows what he's like. Seen him come in the next morning after a night out with bruises on his throat or wrists. Hell, he'd fucking bragged about it.

"And I'll believe that when I hear him say it." Hank crosses over to them and wedges a thick arm between them. "Back off."

Nate steps back, and Gavin scrambles to get behind Hank, even as he hates himself for it.

"You really don't need to get involved in this," Nate says.

"I think I do."

Nate looks down at Hank's hand, still pushing against his chest. He smiles thinly and grabs the lieutenant's wrist.

"You really …" Nate leverages his arm down the way only a machine could. "Don't."

Hank struggles in the impromptu arm wrestling contest, staring as his hand gets mechanically pushed away. Nate glances down too with a smirk.

Then Hank throws a sudden left hook directly into the android's throat. It's a sucker punch, but there's no use fighting fair against a GJ500. He doesn't need to breathe of course, but his access port is at the back of his neck, with enough delicate little connections right behind his approximation of a windpipe—now crushed—for him to automatically take a step back and raise his hands to protect his throat.

Hank steps forward with him but grabs his hair this time, while also kicking out at his legs. After that, it's just gravity. Head yanked forward, legs knocked backward, and the android's stupid high center of gravity up in his chest and shoulder with all those muscles working against him.

He topples like a child's toy and hits the ground hard. Hank doesn't waste any time in grinding the heel of his shoe down on the back of the android's neck threateningly, and Nate goes still in surrender.

"You good?" he asks Gavin.

"I have a brick."

Gavin half-holds up the brick he'd pulled out of the wall. Oo, wow, great job. In contrast to the voice sneering inside his head though, Hank nods approvingly.

"Nines said your heartrate spiked and asked me to check on you, in case you were just … having fun," Hank explains.

"Which is what I said," Nate speaks with his cheek still pressed into dirty snow-slush.

"People having fun don't pull a goddamn brick out of the wall to beat your face in, asshole," Hank snaps back.

Nate's LED snaps from yellow to red, like maybe he really hadn't thought of that. Like he really preconstructed he was doing Gavin some sort of favor or something.

Nines steps out the back door before anyone can say anything else, Connor peeking out behind him. That's just great. Why not get the whole precinct out here? Everyone can crowd on in and witness this little moment.

Nines's LED goes red too as he looks at Nate on the ground, Hank keeping him down, and then slowly rotates his head to look over at Gavin's busted up face. Gavin drops the brick and spits out another thick wad of blood.

"I did not interfere," Nines says, his voice far more furious than any machine has a right to be. "With your flirting and your … schemes. I would never restrict Gavin's happiness."

Wait, his goddamn what?

"But you hurt him! You touched my human—"

Nines snarls out the claim, and Gavin swears he can feel some sort of shift in barometric pressure, like right before a tornado hits.

"And you. Hurt. Him."

Nate stays on the ground. He lies very still and doesn't say a goddamn word, actually.

Gavin reaches out for Nines. He's not really sure what he's going to say, but the moment he holds out his hand, Nines whirls around, his LED switching from red to yellow. He moves so fast and—and Gavin's dated a lot of shitty people. Really shitty. Nate isn't exactly an anomaly. So he automatically expects Nines to be mad at him.

Instead, Nines takes his hand so tenderly, they could be in a gay historical period piece.

"Yes, darling?" he asks.

Gavin gapes at him. He's still not … not really making a facial expression. His face was literally built differently than Connor's, even if it looks the same at first glance. The most he can manage is a completely neutral look, but with intensely focused eyes, like he's about to glare a tax return out of existence.

So no, Nines has never looked at Gavin the way Nate did.

But that doesn't mean he hasn't looked at him.

With …

… love?

Gavin finally finds his voice. "Hank. Can I go see Sumo?"

"Sure," Hank says easily. "Nines can bring you over, and you two just hang out for a bit."

Yeah, he bitches about Hank and Connor being Fowler's favorites and how Hank still doesn't get in before ten most mornings, but they're a lot better now. Good enough that he'll dog sit again sometimes, or get himself roped into a "family dinner" between Nines and Connor.

But this …

Gavin nods, throat all clenched up again.

"Yes," Nines answers for him. "I will take you to a secure location. Yes?"

All it takes is one more nod, and Nines is whisking him away out of the alley, but not through the station. They walk around the building instead so no one inside can see his face and ask questions, until they reach the parking lot, and then his truck. Nines unlocks it with his mind or something, opens the backdoor, and gently bullies Gavin into sitting down sideways in the backseat with his legs hanging out the door so Nines can fuss over his face.

"S'fine," he tries to protest.

Nines grabs the spare medical kit he keeps under the backseat and lays it in his lap. Gotta have one for all the bar fights he, well. That he used to get into. Sure as fuck can't afford hospital visits.

"I tried … so hard … not to … miscalculate," Nines says, voice overlaid with static.

Gavin tries to hold his face still so his partner can wipe all the blood off. "Mish-cal-coo-ate whah?"

"Jealous partners are bad."

Gavin blinks and stares at him. "Bad."

"It is … abusive."

Gavin opens his mouth and looks around the parking lot, as if the ghosts of all his actually abusive exes are going to show up, point their fingers, and laugh.

He brushes away Nines' fussy hands. "Is that why you've been ignoring me?"

Nines goes from yellow to red again. "No. Not … ignoring. Solving the case. In absence of … social module. Appropriate preconstructions. I … solving the case would make them leave. And I would have you to myself again."

He admits the last part quietly. Gavin feels like he just found out two plus two equals sixty-seven.

"You—at the party though," he insists. "You didn't say shit to me. You just hunkered down in the corner with Con … Connor. Who has a social module."

Nines nods. "Correct. I asked … for advice … to …"

He trails off and flutters his hands around Gavin's face again, then settles on carefully touching his chest, right over his heart. His big blue eyes stare at him like he's the most important person in the world.

Gavin feels his heart lurch up into his throat and pulls Nines closer by the back of his neck before remembering that even without all the blood only half wiped away, he can't kiss with a nose that's not quite broken, but still pretty goddamn close.

"Babe, just tell me," he says instead. "Phck, I have a social module. And I'm the—the relevant party. Your partner. Just fucking ask if you're not sure of something."

Nines looks down.

"The only reason." Gavin stops and swallows hard. "I even—with Nate. Was because we haven't talked about, y'know. Us. So I didn't know if, if you wanted to like, date me. Or if you were just experimenting and stuff."

Nines' whole face crinkles up in a frown. Cyberlife let him keep that expression. All the "scary" ones.

"You are my partner," the android says. "But you are also human. You have needs I cannot—"

"Absolutely the fuck not," Gavin interrupts. "You're mine. I chose you."

Nines looks up and hits him with those blue eyes again. "And are you mine as well?"

"Yeah." Gavin clears his throat. "You uh, might have to remind me though."

Nines decides the best course of action is clearly to drag Gavin closer and growl in his ear. Literally growl, like the giant unstoppable predator he is. Gavin shivers—and maybe whimpers a little—and presses closer.

"I will take you home and keep you safe and never let anyone else ever touch you," Nines says, petting his hair.

Gavin sighs in bliss.

"But you will be happy too," Nines states more quietly. "Yes?"

Gavin nods into his shoulder. Yeah. He's going to be happy. They'll both be happy.

Together.

***

***

this is another commissioned fic! my rates are $10 for 1k / $25 for 3k / or $40 for 5k, and you can also check out my patreon for my main reed900 series here ^^

[sylvanfreckles]

Chemistry

This is entirely and forever the fault of @angelfishofthelord and their “The Genre You Struggle With” challenge.

And thus, I present, a schmoopy, silly, rom-com style epoch of the first meeting of Sam and Sam’s Blurry Wife (from the finale). 

Summary: A coffee shop, a sprig of mistletoe, and a barista who just might be Santa’s little helper...looks like Gabrielle and Sam are learning a little more about Chemistry.

* * *

“Good morning, Professor!”

Gabrielle D'Angelo raised a hand in greeting at Nico, the morning barista at Renegade Coffee. She had to duck a little bit to avoid the excessive use of tinsel around the door, but once inside the warm coffee shop she could almost forgive the sheer ton of glitter and sparkle and twinkle around her.

Almost.

“You certainly went all out,” she commented as Nico set a tall, steaming cup of her usual morning order on the counter. “It's barely December and this place looks like a Hallmark exploded in here.”

“Well, you know,” Nico shrugged. “Gloria went a little nuts. She downsized to an apartment this summer, so we get all the decorations that won't fit in her new place.”

“Uh-huh,” Gabrielle nodded. She couldn't help but notice the row of nutcrackers on top of the display case. They were all in different little service uniforms—like a postman, milkman, garbage collector, teacher. She pointed at them, eyebrows raised. “No barista?”

“Some people have no taste,” Nico replied with a haughty sniff before breaking out in a dimpled smile. “What else can I get you, Professor?”

Gabrielle leaned down to study the pastries in the case. She liked that Nico always called her Professor, even though she wasn't teaching this year. It sounded better than “textbook revisionist”, which was her actual profession. “Cheese danish?”

“Coming up. I'll bring it out to you when it's warm.”

She raised her coffee cup in toast and left a ten-dollar bill on the counter. That would cover the coffee, pastry, first refill, and her tip...for now. If she couldn't get through Dr. Adair's notes on the taxonomy of noble gases she was going to need more than this. Not even Nico's secret whiskey flask could get her through Dr. Adair's notes on the taxonomy of noble gases.

Gabrielle made her way to her favorite booth in the corner and began unloading her rolling laptop case. Well...it wasn't actually a case. More of a plastic milk crate on a portable luggage dolly, with her laptop tucked in to one side. From the crate she unpacked three older chemistry textbooks, a half-dozen manuscripts held together by alligator clips, and a Hello Kitty pencil case that contained the pens and highlighters she'd need (shut up, it was lucky).

“Cheese danish for milady?” Nico offered, as soon as Gabrielle had unloaded and booted up her laptop. She accepted the little plate and absently took a bite from the warm danish, ignoring the fork Nico had placed at her side, and stared at the glowing logo as the computer slowly roused itself.

Her laptop was old, still a relic from her graduate days. She always meant to buy a new one when her tax refund hit every year, but something else came up. Car repairs, a friend's wedding, sewage line backing up into her bathroom...there was never enough money. If she could make the deadline on the textbook revisions, though, she should have enough for a new laptop and a new muffler. No more cable ties and duct tape!

As Gabrielle waited, computer slowly idling its way awake, she caught herself staring at the door, wondering if Hippy Man would appear today.

Hippy Man was...well, she really was supposed to be above these things. But with that hair and the little bit of stubble...hey, a girl could still dream, even if that girl had two doctorates and a Very Important Opportunity. Plus, he was probably taken. Or an asshole. Or both!

Hippy Man didn't come in as often as Gabrielle did, unless he was here the three days a week she let herself sleep past 6am. He didn't have a regular order, Nico and the others didn't know him by name, and he never stayed longer than the time he took to drink his tea of the day.

(She knew he favored Chai because he ordered it at least twice a week, and Nico put a cut little accent on when he called out a Chai latte...that was why she knew it, she wasn't snooping.)

The bell over the door jingled (and jingled...and jingled...looks like Gloria replaced the little shop bell with an entire harness of sleigh bells), and in walked Hippy Man. Well, speak of the devil and he shall appear.

He was in the blue flannel today, which was Gabrielle's favorite. The brown one washed out his complexion, and the yellow one was just a no. Between the flannel and the beanie he looked like some kind of beatnik poet, though the muscles in his forearms and the callouses on his hands spoke more to manual labor.

(She wasn't snooping! She was just...bored.)

“Chai latte today, sir?” Nico asked. Ah, good! Hippy Man was coming in regularly enough to start being recognized.

Hippy Man started back, staring from the board to Nico for a moment. Gabrielle wanted to roll her eyes...maybe this wasn't a small town, but it was a small coffee shop. Come to Renegade Coffee enough times and Nico would learn something about you. It happened. Just go with it.

“Yeah, uh, sounds great,” Hippy Man nodded. “Do you have any of those vegan blueberry muffins?”

“Saved one for you!” Nico replied cheerily. God, he was the best. Gabrielle ducked her head, pretending like she wasn't snooping. (Okay, so she was snooping a little bit.) Obviously Nico had noticed that Hippy Man only drank tea and ate the vegan muffins (ew). Nico had probably figured out the guy's entire backstory based on his morning orders.

The bright tones of the Windows theme alerted Gabrielle to the fact that her laptop had finally booted up. Gabrielle shook herself, crammed the last of her danish in her mouth, and started on the arduous process to getting her dinosaur of a machine to log on to the Renegade Coffee WiFi.

Hippy Guy always waited at the counter for his order, which just added to the weird. Most patrons took a seat, relaxed a little, but not this guy. He stood there, hands shoved in his pockets, bowed forward a little as though to hide his ridiculous height.

(Really, instead of Hippy Man maybe she should have called him The Moose.)

“Here you go, dude,” Nico announced, setting Hippy Man's beverage and muffin on the counter. “Enjoy!”

“Yeah, uh, thanks. You too.”

Gabrielle bit back a snort, covering it up with a sip from her coffee (Renegade's own Double Dark Dark blend, guaranteed the strongest coffee in the tri-county area. Hey, the taxonomy of noble gases wasn't a laughing matter). At least Hippy Man was as human as the rest of them.

She rested an elbow on the table and leaned her chin in her hand to watch Hippy Man blunder through an embarrassed apology/explanation for what he'd just said—even though Nico had heard “you too” so many times he didn't even react anymore—while she waiting for the little spinny thing to connect her to the internet. Dr. Adair had probably sent three more emails, each one trying to decide between “the order to which we assign these elements” and “to which order we assign these elements”.

In the corner of her eye she saw her screen go white and leaned back to look at it.

No connection.

Gabrielle frowned and tapped the WiFi icon again.

More spinning. She took a minute to straighten the manuscripts—Dr. Russel's additions to the chapters on heavy metals were probably the best she'd seen yet, especially considering Dr. Russel had her own proofreader and hadn't demanded to revise her entry dozens of times, like Dr. Adair.

The screen flashed white again. No connection.

“Hey, Nico?” Gabrielle called. She noticed Hippy Guy frowning at his phone, but ignored him for the moment (which was difficult). “Is the WiFi down?”

Nico poked his head out of the back, towel draped over his shoulder. “Sorry, Professor. It was acting up last night...guess it's still out there. Gloria said she'd call it in when she gets here.”

Gabrielle sunk down in her chair, biting her lip and staring blankly at her computer. She could always pull up the emails on her phone, she supposed. The textbook itself was in a shared online file so she wouldn't be able to work on that until the WiFi was fixed...but she could go through the manuscripts and make notes by hand. With a heavy sigh she slapped her laptop shut and tugged the first stack of paper over.

Oh shit. Hippy Man was watching her.

Gabrielle bent forward over the table, letting her dark hair fall forward like a curtain to cut him off from view. Sure, he was cute and all, but she didn't really want to get into this with him now.

Hippy Man was standing up.

Don't come over, don't come over, don't come over....

Hippy Man was walking over.

Dammit.

“Hi, I'm Sam,” Hippy Man said, holding his hand out.

Gabrielle blew out a sigh and accepted the gesture. “Gabrielle.”

Apparently that was enough for Hippy Man—Sam—and he pulled out the chair opposite. “So, you're a professor?”

“I'm not teaching at the moment,” Gabrielle hedged. Sam was looking at the books on her table, actually touching one of the old textbooks to turn it so he could see the spine. His eyebrows shot up.

Oh god. Here it comes. She could see the headline now...Local Himbo Knows More About Chemistry Than Distinguished Textbook Revisionist.

“You teach chemistry?” Sam asked.

“I'm...working on the textbook,” Gabrielle said. She braced herself for it. Every time she met a guy—at least the tall, ruggedly handsome, flannel-wearing, beatnik-poet-looking ones—they were always intimidated by her work. Or they broke it down to something less (no, it wasn't the same as his mom putting together the family newsletter...yes, she did have a degree in chemistry...no, that didn't mean she could break bad or whatever, and no, she didn't know how to make meth!).

“That's incredible!” Sam said. He actually had the textbook open, caressing the table of contents. “I think I used this edition my sophomore year—is this the one you're revising?”

Gabrielle stared at him. “Well...we're about three versions ahead, but we're going back to that edition for the section on Amphoterism, Peterson really didn't do it justice even if he did have tenure at the time.”

Sam's eyebrows had shot up even higher, almost into his beanie. Gabrielle had to laugh at herself. “Sorry, shop talk.”

“It's okay,” Sam gently closed the textbook and placed it back on the stack reverently. “I see you in here a lot, you just always seem so busy. I didn't want to disturb you.”

Gabrielle shrugged. She had a lot of work to do. Coming out to Renegade Coffee to do it just felt better than working at home, with nothing but her beta fish to distract her. “And how about you, chai-tea-and-vegan-muffin-man? What do you do when you're not telling Nico to enjoy his meal?”

Sam blushed and stared down at the cup in his hands. God, he was cute, up this close. He even had dimples. “It's just a reflex,” he said defensively. She giggled—actually giggled, like an idiot in a rom-com. Instead of making Sam blush even harder, he peered up at her through his bangs and unleashed a devastating smile.

“So?” Gabrielle insisted. “What do you do?”

“This and that,” Sam shrugged. “Mostly pest removal.”

“Yeah?” she took a sip of her coffee. It was almost cold now...this was the point she usually drank the rest of it in one long shot, but she decided to savor it this time. Nico had snuck in a pump of peppermint flavor, and while she would normally beat him with edition three of A Modern Approach to Chemistry she was willing to forgive him this time. It was almost Christmas. “So, like, mice and roaches and stuff?”

Sam gave a halfhearted shrug. “More...specialized.”

Gabrielle felt her own eyebrows rise. “Specialized pest removal? What, like...coyotes in the crawlspace?”

He held up a hand, forefinger and thumb about a centimeter apart. “Almost. It's...complicated. I'm kind of doing it on the side, taking some time off to deal with...personal stuff.”

Shit, Gabrielle could understand that. When her widowed father had gotten remarried she'd taken almost a year to work with a pharmaceutical company in Canada. She loved her new step-father, sure, but it was hard to see anyone else in her mother's place.

Nico stopped by the table, a fresh coffee in one hand and a hot tea in the other. “On the house,” he explained. “Gloria will be in in about twenty minutes, she said she already called the internet guys.”

“Thanks, Nico,” Gabrielle smiled. She threw back the rest of her coffee in one long pull and set the empty cup to one side before tugging the new, hot cup close.

Nico was staring at her. Well, he was staring from her to Sam and back again.

“What?” Gabrielle demanded.

He pointedly looked up.

For the first time, Gabrielle noticed there was mistletoe hanging from the light fixture above her head.

“Nico!” Gabrielle moaned.

“Oh, sorry, I didn't...see that,” Sam protested. He tried to scoot his chair back but Nico had stuck a foot behind it.

“Either you kiss her or I kiss you, big fella,” Nico said, winking.

Face burning with embarrassment, Gabrielle looked over in time to see Sam give a helpless shrug. He shuffled sideways into the booth next to her and gently caught her chin with one hand.

“Merry Christmas, Gabrielle,” he whispered, leaning down to press his lips to hers.

Her stomach did a little flip, which had nothing to do with the coffee she'd just down, and she found herself unconsciously leaning toward him when he pulled back.

Gabrielle blinked, staring up at the man who was now sitting beside her. “What was that?”

Nico snatched up her empty cups and gave her a wink. “That, my dear Professor, was Chemistry.”

* * *

The challenge:

-Must not deviate into your usual preferred genre of writing (I normally write hurt/comfort, action, and suspense, so this was romance/rom-com)

-Must be written in third-person (done!)

-For added difficulty, add an essential original character (pick between Gabrielle as the OFC version of Sam’s Blurry Wife or Nico the barista as Santa’s little helper)

-Use less than ten tags (not including character/relationship tags) (is “chemistry words” a tag? I looked them up)

-For extra added difficulty write for a ship you hate (Sam/SBW is one I hate if SBW isn’t Eileen...but I named her Gabrielle because I also hate Sabriel)

[hanramm156]

Rammstein Family Game: Get to know me! (Warning: a long ramble)

I’m honored to be tagged by @cherrisplace​ and @momoredcrow​. ^^ It’s been a pleasure to read other people’s Rammstein memories and opinions, so here comes mine as well. Writing is one of those rare things that keep me sane during this crazy season, so I apologize this being super long. More rambling is probably coming when everything’s cancelled and I have nothing else to do.

Rules: There are no rules. Tag whoever you want. Don’t tag yourself. Tag yourself. You don’t have to answer all the questions. Do what you please. Have fun.

Created by: @vapor-stein

1. I’m curious: when did you discover Rammstein?

2004 properly, but I might have heard Du hast or other popular songs even earlier.

2. Tell me your story. How did you discover them?

As said, it was 2004 and I was watching some random Finnish music show. Back in the days, I watched a lot of music videos from the tv and recorded my favorite ones to VHS. One evening Rammstein’s Amerika came from the show and I was like “??? What on earth is this??? Sounds interesting…”. I wasn’t into metal music back then (I mostly listened to indiepop and alternative rock), but for whatever reason, I got hooked instantly to this German band’s dark, eerie sound. It was refreshing to hear something else than English and the video was also thrilling.

Rammstein had intruded my mind already, but the final straw was when I saw the Mein Teil video. I liked both the song and the video A LOT - so much that I even felt kinda “dirty” for liking something this dark. A 14-year-old me was constantly asking from myself that: “am I even allowed to like this kind of stuff this much?”. The backstory for the song was creepy, but so mesmerizing – like I had been introduced to the darkest corners of human mind: yes, this kind of stuff happens, and we shouldn’t close our eyes from it. So next, the only thing I could do was to buy Reise, reise album, listen to it on loop and sketch my German notebook full of Rammstein lyrics. Here’s a proof:

I have so many stories about my relationship to Rammstein that I might have to write them all down now when there’s a lot of time.

3. Favourite song?

This topic would be worth a novel itself, but here are some of my favorites:

Asche zu Asche – So badass, gives me such an energy every time – plus, not to forget the burning microphones and SILVER REESH!

Bück dich – Yes, it’s a horrible story once again in this song, but I can’t help but to admit that the song is freaking catchy and in a weird way, hot. Also, there’s a funny backstory when I was in 9th grade and we almost performed this song in our official graduation party with my boyfriend and a bunch of our friends (maybe good that the idea was abandoned in the end…). We had a vague clue what the song was about, but we just thought it was funny – also, our German teacher dressed always in leather and loved Rammstein (she played us Bestrafe mich during one class and I’ll always remember the awkward atmosphere) so we were thinking to dedicate the song to her for as our goodbye. XDD Seriously, why I have been so weird for all my life…

Sehnsucht – In most of the pop songs, longing is described by tender words and soft lyrics, but not in Rammstein’s case. I’ve had this weird feeling of “longing” all my life that I can’t describe properly. It’s kind of an inner emptiness, only arts and music can help to deal with it when it hits. I think Sehnsucht describes so realistically what is longing about in reality: it’s this angry pressure in your heart which you want to get out of your chest but can’t. In the end, you just want to scream your lungs out.

Mein Herz brennt – Powerful song that always gives me goosebumps. I can’t even explain why. Maybe the fact that “tough” men being emotional is my soft spot and Rammstein hits that spot hard.

Links 2-3-4 – I have always been kind of a rebel and I feel like when everyone else is going to the “right” I have to go to the left, to the unknown. My heart is longing for adventure, for the paths the others are not going. I dunno, but this is such a powerful song for me. When I hear it, I always just want to jump around. In Tampere concert I went totally nuts when Links started as the second song, lol. From that moment I felt like I was back home with my boys.

Mein Teil – No need for further explanations anymore.

Los – The harmonica solo!!! The dropped c tuning and the acoustic sounds!! I love it.

Amour – My favorite R+ ballad. I confess that I listen to this and think about the lyrics when I’m in the mood for writing something painfully romantic.

Weit weg – There’s this painful longing once again that always resonates to me. I listened this to a lot after the “after blues” of Ratina concert.

Tattoo – A song that I didn’t care about so much at first, but for whatever reason, it’s almost my favorite from the new album nowadays. It’s catchy as hell and I like the “rattling” guitar riffs.

4. Least favourite song? Come on. I know you have one.

Feuer frei – Too much Vin Diesel vibes. I also get a picture of drunken, middle-aged Finnish guys on a R+ gig who don’t care about to band, but just want to have a party of their life and get drunk, far away from their wives. (No offense to anyone, but as music is almost like a religion to me, I can’t help but to have a bit of disrespect for kind of people who just “consume” music.)

Pussy – Both musically and lyrically, so bad, but I get the point the guys tried to give with this nonsense.

5. Favourite album? & 6. Least favourite album? aka. I ramble about all the albums.

Tough one… as the rules were vague, I decided to have a short opinion about each of the albums.

Herzeleid – Summary: a bunch of guys, born and raised in DDR, are tired of everything so they get together and play aggressive songs - you can almost smell the testosterone miles away while you are listening to this album. I have to admit that I love this album even though it’s not musically super creative. It’s just raw men with raw feelings – and I have to say, it works for me.

Sehnsucht – I was creeped out of the album art as a teenager, lol. But yeah, musically improved from the former one and there are some classic songs that make Rammstein as they are nowadays. I listen to this often when I’m driving.

Mutter – The album that they had the most struggles with if I have understood correctly. The pain can be heard through the songs and it’s so honest and raw. I lost my friend in 2004 tragically and this album was one of the things that kept me sane back then. Especially the beginning of the album (MHB, Links, Sonne) hits me hard in the guts.

Reise, reise – The album that started all this hype in me, so it has a special place in my heart. I also liked how they tried something different to their usual sounds in this one, like orchestral and acoustic songs.

Rosenrot – To be honest, this album has always left me a bit “cold”, so I cannot even make a real opinion of it. There are some good moments though, like Mann gegen Mann that really speaks to me.

Untitled: This has been on the loop since last August and I was honestly surprised how good the album was. I hadn’t listened to Rammstein for a while, but when I got this album to my hands after the concert, holy shit it hit me. I like hearing the path the guys have gone: their new music is much more mature than the first angry albums. Also, I love Till’s poetry in this one, like Was ich liebe and Weit weg.

I think I answered the question #7 already, so I’ll skip to #8.

8. Unpopular opinion about a member? A scandal? Anything?

Even though I appreciate Till as an artist and a poet, I don’t find his appearance attractive. You can throw rotten tomatoes at me now, but this is just my opinion, no means to offend anyone. Maybe the reason is that my taste for men tends to go for androgynous side, so I am not drawn towards very masculine men.

I’m not interested in Lindemann project and I don’t like their music so much, but the tour looked entertaining though. I bet all the people who attended had a lot of fun.

How Richard pronounces English is extremely sexy to my ear, even though it clearly sounds like a German guy trying to sound American - still, it’s like honey to my ears. Stupid man who makes my knees weak with everything he does.

I hate to admit that I don’t like Ohne dich so much. I don’t know why. :(

9. Have you ever seen them live? Tell me what you felt.

Three times this far! Oh man, I could talk about for hours how the concerts have made me feel, but I try to be reasonable now.

Ruisrock, Turku, 2005 – My first time seeing them live – and going to a festival without any adult supervision, so it was a special experience overall – and they blew my mind. It was raining and thundering and we were completely soaked with my friends, but it was worth it!

Bonus for everyone who managed to read this far: teenage me waiting for Rammstein to start playing, looking so badass with my denim jacket and R+ logo drawn with eyeliner. :D

Hartwall Arena, Helsinki, 2012: We went to the show together with my boyfriend to celebrate Valentine’s day and holy shiiiiit it was awesome. Hands down one of the best evenings of my life. I was so hooked to Rammstein afterward that when we were at my bf’s family’s cottage, his brother had to tell me to stop blasting Herzeleid all the time in the kitchen. :’D

Ratina Stadium, Tampere, 2019: Aka. byebye my life, say hello to fics, listening to the band all over again, stupid memes and all the content this fandom creates. I fell in love again with Rammstein during this concert.

I have tickets for Düsseldorf and Tallinn, but now I can only wait and stress that will Corona ruin everything. In that case, I’ll weep alone and write fics about the tour 2020 that ended up never happening.

10. Do you play any instruments? If you do can you play any song by them?

Yeah, I play guitar and piano but nowadays I mostly sing. Rammstein songs are super easy to play with guitar and I recently learnt to play Tattoo and Sex. Have been practicing Engle on piano as well. Some songs I like to sing are Deutschland, Tattoo and Engel. The “speaking” parts are difficult though. ^^;

I’m not sure who I could tag to this who hasn’t done it already, but I’ll try my luck: @ah-its-too-much​ @soronya​ @einemelodie​ @xiaolianhuax​ @so-darya-darya​ @maximaembra​ @kvidasjuklingur​

[jq37]

May we have a recap, please? :)

**spoilers for panic at the art show and home for the holidays**

OK people. I actually don’t have a ton of commentary on these two so I’m gonna try and keep it (relatively) short and sweet [Edit from Future Me: Failed Step 1].

Also, iirc, this is the week Dropout starts streaming new Fantasy High eps on Wednesdays which is very dope and I am very excited for. I probably won’t do full on recaps like I do for normal eps because, lbr, I don’t strictly have the time to be recapping these eps at all and it’s pure stubbornness that keeps me from making wiser time management decisions. But, rest assured, if I have an Opinion, you will hear it whether you want to or not. 

Anyway, on with the show. 

Last recap, I mentioned that this ep was giving me Aelwen house party vibes and now it reminds me of that ep in another way: Everyone rolled like TRASH almost the entire ep. It was so frustrating! They barely got any hits in until like halfway through the ep.

(Aw man, I just realized I’m gonna have to remember which spelling of Aelwen is correct again now that FH is coming back.)

I love how Murph is immediately like, “I need to make sure my wife doesn’t die during this fight avenging her fictional husband.”

Isabella also has Aelwen’s trick of poofing around the battlefield which is annoying as hell (ha) for the group.

Siobhan hilariously casts fear on Priya just to be spiteful. I thought she was doing it to help the evac process but no. It was a purely spiteful action. Bless. 

When Kug turns into an ape he, of course, turns into *the* NY ape, King Kong. 

“I roll a nat 20 on an epic shit.”

When Brennan was describing Kingston’s spectral New Yorker Guardians I was already thinking about that one part of Spiderman 2 (the OG Toby Mac version) and then he straight up said, “You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us,” and I lost it.

“Deny the stairs the pleasure of my feet.” Emily is a poet.

I want to know what makes a pigeon spicy more than anything. 

The fact that Brennan killed Ox AGAIN and then immediately looked into the camera and let the audience know the dog was fine because he clearly Oracle stared into the future between eps and saw the entire internet sharpening their pitchforks  was so funny. 

About midway through the ep, Pete tries and fails to send Isabella back to hell and Isabella starts monologing about her plans and connection with Robert Moses (she stole the list from Santa and is/was gonna marry Moses apparently). I wonder if Brennan was like, “These players are for sure gonna murder her without getting any useful info out of her unless she goes full Bond Villain right now.”

And, proving my point, Emily immediately does 56 points of damage, royally f-ing Isabella up. 

This is a really civilian heavy fight which feels weird in a way the FH fights never did. Like, these aren’t even civilians who live in an adventuring town in a fantasy world. These are just normal ass civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Pete fails a wild magic roll after failing to teleport into the building and then gets a choice of getting really strong (which prob would have let him bust down the door) or to teleport in (which is what he does and exactly what he wanted). Very clutch when the dice rolls play into the story like that.

Kingston lightning bolts Isabella’s hair off which is just malicious but also totally called for.

On her next turn, Sophie gets hurt on purpose to get low enough to activate her ring, lets her hair burn for long enough to shorten it to a cute bob, insults Isabella, then knocks her tf out. 

I love that Emily took one of her teeth (a seemingly crazy move) and when called out by Lou was like, “It’s a link to Robert Moses” (a completely reasonable answer). That’s the Axford one-two punch.  

I didn’t mention it before but, Willie the golem is here, first immobile but then brought back by Misty. Post fight, he says he was somehow brought here by one of the evil factions of the city and says they’ll talk about it later. Also, Misty makes out with him (DON’T KINKSHAME HER).

With a high insight roll, Kingston is able to deduce that the group was ambushed (though not by Priya) and that their victory was a really important one for the fate of the city. 

(Sidenote: The amount that Pete is Over Priya in this ep is so funny.)

Back at Wally’s (which is where Kug is now staying) Wally has gotten Kug a dog bed to sleep in and fancy charcuterie cheese because he and Ricky are the only pure-hearted people in NYC. 

At the same time, Pete and Kingston have a very sweet heart to heart and then settle down at Kingston’s place to chill and listen to jazz. Idk how else we expected this to resolve, considering this is a Brennan Lee Mulligan DM’d show where the sacred pillars are Teamwork, Friendship, Communication, and Making up an NPC on the Fly Because One of Your PC’s Decided to do an Insane Thing. 

Next up is the Christmas ep and Brennan, Emily, and Zac are in sweaters for the occasion. 

Well,actually it’s the 21st and Emily immediately clocks that that’s the solstice. 

Are cookies the good carb?/Absolutely not. But have fun with your life. (I love Ricky’s soft jock energy.)

“I run deliveries,” Pete says to Kingston’s parents, not technically lying but also not being completely truthful. Misty would be proud. 

Going over to Misty, it seems pretty clear at this point (and it’s confirmed in the promo for next ep) that Misty’s fairy business is some kind of de-aging/reincarnation for herself. I wonder how many of these she’s done so far. She said she’s been around for, what? 200, 300 years? Assuming she’s been doing then reincarnations at about 65-70 years old and she reincarnates to around 25? Maybe 6 times? Idk. Just spitballing. 

Saucer of milk to keep the faeries from stealing her (non-existing) children. Faerie lore is wild y'all. 

Did you take another level of warlock?/Yeah bitch.

The fact that since Sophie has joined a monastery, she’s only taken Warlock levels and no Monk levels is very funny from a story perspective. It’s like, she finally comes to this sacred place to be trained to her full potential and she’s just spending what should be her sparring time playing with her cat in exchange for spells. Wild. 

Emily’s cat-like, self-satisfied grin when Brennan is like, “So you just jerry-rigged yourself clairvoyance powers, huh?” is so good. 

And she did it on the fly because Emily Axford is winning D&D. There are no points but she’s winning.

So, uh, Emily does, two things, very in character right after the other:

Thing number one: She send her unseen servant to spy on her family. Her dad seems hardline, “F, Dale. Whatever. Family first. She needs to get over it.” On the other side of the spectrum is her mom who is very upset about the whole affair with her siblings falling in the middle. 

The second thing she does, very casually I might add, is have her unseen servant BURN DOWN HER HOUSE SO SHE CAN COMMIT INSURANCE FRAUD.

EMILY

Everyone loses their minds and rightfully so. What a wild-ass swing that no one could have seen coming. I love it. 

“I look in my backpack which is now my home[…]" 

I almost forgot that Ricky was a fire fighter who would not abide that nonsense until Brennan decided to cut to him. 

Ricky just dolphin swims across the Hudson in 2.5 mins to go put out the fire that Sophie set. Amazing. 

Ally mocking Emily/Sophie: Truthfully, I don’t know what happened.

"I love John McClane, because he loves his wife.” WALLY

Wally: Oh we’re gonna tell a lie on Christmas.

“This is what winning looks like.”

I would really like to know what trace stuff what on the drugs Pete got from 7 but Ally rolled too low to figure it out.

“I disassociate fully." 

Well it took him a long ass time but glad to have Pete on the selling drugs to kids is bad train. Choo-choo, dude. 

7 saying you can hack in real life in reference to his AK-47 has the same energy as Hardison using the word hack in literally any semi-weird episode of Leverage. 

SOCIAL MEDIA IS VOLUNTARY PANOPTICON

So Kug goes with Wally to David’s house disguised as a dog and, despite that, blurts out that he’s his dad immediately. Well, he tries to. The Umbral Arcana stops him, unfortunately. 

"I lick my son’s face.” KUUUUG. 

Sophie showing up with a raw goose and hellish rebuking it is so metal and it’s a shame no one got to appreciate it. 

Me when Sophie’s Mom changes into black top in solidarity for Sophie’s mourning: F EVERY OTHER NON-SOPHIE BICICLETA. I RESPECT YOU. 

Kingston is hustling very hard to get his man Pete a job which is a very Kingston move. That’s how guys like that show affection. 

Didn’t mention it before but Kingston’s parents and Mom specifically adopting Pete is very cute. 

Sidenote: Idk what 7 was talking about Pete trying to stay low profile. He wears a cowboy hat (now a ZEBRA STRIPED one, courtesy of Kingston). I think the subtlety train has sailed my guy. 

Esther shows up at the firehouse, carrying presents for her mom and grandma and looking for Ricky. The says that she’s kinda dealing with something and it feels good to be around him (beat) magically speaking. Sure. I’m gonna keep my Hercules soundtrack on hand just in case anyway. 

I think Ricky is the only person who, with no pretense, could give his crush a sexy calendar featuring him.

Anyway, turns out Esther’s mom and grandma are the furies of Tompkins Square and she’s fated to join them or something. 

Esther causally: I defy you, I defy the prophecy.

The fury thing would explain why Esther’s mom would have cursed Kug. They are famously magical punishers.  

Ricky is a magically certified Good Boy but we been knew.

Zac’s restraint to respect Esther’s personal boundaries in lieu of getting a lore drop to stay true to Ricky’s character is amazing. Mad props.

So we slide over to Misty’s Christmas party which Stephen Sondhein is attending and him having a character card kinda killed me. 

There’s a post on tumblr somewhere about playing faerie  incapability for impoliteness against a vampires need to be invited in and that’s what I thought about when Moses and his vamp friends showed up at Misty’s house.

Robert tries to talk Misty into striking a deal with him for protection from Titania. She’s very much not having it.  

“You know Robert, I love a comedy and I love a farce. I’d like to remind you of who it is that started this and it’s not me and it’s not my friends but I can assure you Robert Moses that we will be the ones to end it if you do not. Do you understand me?” Damn. That’s a mic drop from Misty. 

[As I’m editing this, I’m realizing I somehow lost a BIG chunk of text. I’m not gonna write it all up again but the Cliffnotes are as follows:

Between the Solstice and Christmas, the gang goes Grand Central Station to see the clockwork gnomes that live there because trouble is apparently afoot. Some size changing nonsense happens and Pete shoots a dog (with mini bullets, the dog is fine). Lou is enchanted even though Kingston is not (a common theme with him). Ally and Emily are on the same nonsense wavelength (as usual). 

There are dope magical dragon trains under Grand Central Station that go to the shadow realm which is a place I’d like to know about. Kingston has never seen these trains before even though you’d really think he would have.  

Murph says Gnome Rights which is wild if you know what Naddpod is like. 

Anyway, the high priestess of the gnomes passed out the other day and they figure out it was due to pixie magic which is suspicious. They also know they pixies have access to a “time stone” which leads me to believe that it’s Brennan and not Aguefort who thinks that Chronomancy is the most powerful magic of all. 

Sophie and Jackson go to Dale’s grave on Christmas. Jackson explains that the Order of the Concrete Fist is basically a literal school of hard knocks. A counterbalance to all the reach for the stars dreaminess that comes with NYC.

Dale was their chosen one who was supposed to stop the monastery from falling when some unspecified badness crossed over to this side, but when he went to the place where he was supposed to get guidance, there was no one there (clearly tying in to what Dale said to Sophie last time they talked. I wonder what she needs to get to the top of? Empire State maybe?).

Watching Murph watching Emily, his real life spouse, play at grief for her fictional husband and do some truly insane things is so funny because you can clearly see him thinking, “I am married to this woman,” which, in fairness, is probably the main thing he’s thinking when he’s playing D&D with Emily.

I’m probably missing something but that’s all I remember. Back to post-Christmas!]

So it’s opening night at Misty’s show and, somehow, Ricky’s first show ever. 

I love that Don Confetti is there because of Siobhan’s offhanded comment for a handful of eps ago about him being a supporter of the arts.

Anyway, everything is going great until the second act when Titania busts in through the mirror which is *not* is storage as Misty requested but on stage. It’s a theater fight, y'all! And not the West Side Story kind although if that doesn’t come up I will be very surprised. 

“Let’s kill Titania!” –Misty in the promo

Just going straight to 11, huh Misty?

See y'all then!

[etlunainmorte]

🖤 I See My Future Before Me 🖤

***

XXXI

***

Держи меня близко, крепко

Заклятие явилось твое

Это и есть la vie en rose.

Когда Ты целуешь меня

Полные вздоха небеса

Сквозь веки я вижу la vie en rose.

Если крепко прижмешь меня

К сердцу, явлюсь я вне мира

Там, где розы разцветают,

Где ангелы с тобой поют,

Где каждый день слова полны любви

Я жду сердца твоего и души

Сделай это и жизнь всегда будет

La vie en rose.

Где каждый день слова полны любви

Я жду сердца твоего и души

Сделай это и жизнь всегда будет

La vie en rose.

V woke up to the sound of Natasha's voice singing the Russian version of La Vie En Rose, and realized she was nowhere near him. He closed his eyes, rubbing them and trying to rid the sleep off them, and opened them once more, seeing the same unit he was staying at for almost two weeks.

Of course, (Y/N) hasn't been found yet, and they have, in fact, searched through all the places they could think of where she might be. They contacted Morrison, Trish, Lady, and Dante to join the search but, to no avail. He even worked both Cassandra and Andromeda to their bone to produce a vision, any kind at all, that could tell them where she went. But, they just couldn't trace her despite the fact that she was their former master. Even Griffon, who she was contracted with, announced one day that the markings on his skin that connected him to her vanished. He saw this, therefore proving that the familiar was not telling a lie.

It was like she disappeared off the face of the earth with no traces left, whatsoever.

He did have a vision, of an unknown person visiting her and taking her away.

But, who was this person? He has never seen them before.

Scratching the back of his head, he sat up from the sofa he was sleeping at, stood, and decided to go to the bathroom to wash his face. But, he was not even two steps in when his feet collided against something solid on the ground. He looked down at it and noticed the Yamato on the floor next to his feet.

Finally remembering that he used the weapon to go to different places in search of her, he picked it up and placed it on the table next to his metal cane.

Will he search for her today? Definitely.

But, where? He has searched practically everywhere.

With a deep sigh, V turned and finally decided to go to the -

He slowly looked back and took a good long look at the Yamato on the table. He strode towards it and effortlessly grabbed it. He unsheathed it and sheathed it once more.

Maybe. Just, maybe,...

V walked towards an empty space, unsheathed the Yamato, and effortlessly ripped a portal in mid air. He sheathed the weapon and walked towards the portal, hoping the vision he saw earlier would help him with his search,...

*

As she was hopelessly browsing through a language manual she just bought, she almost bumped into a person rushing towards the plaza.

"I'm sorry!" She apologized but, she was ignored, most probably because the person didn't understand her.

Which led her to think that she was, yet again, in another non - English speaking country.

She buried her nose on the pages of the manual with a map in it, wondering where Andromeda brought her this time,...

... then, she felt it. A pair of sharp eyes looking at her from a distance. She looked up from her manual and turned, noticing a lone painter on the pavement busily brushing away on his large canvas. She curiously looked at him, and a few moments later, he looked up at her.

Noticing that he was finally seen, he shyly looked down on his work and continued working like nothing happened.

She shook her head and smirked as she put a hand on her hip. Then, she simply walked towards him and saw, in utter surprise, what he was working on. It was a painting of her. Well, it was a work in progress but, it was definitely good!

"That looks awesome." And she was saying the truth.

"Ti ringrazio, ma ho ancora molto da imparare." The painter replied.

Her eyebrows furrowed as she browsed through her manual once more, trying her very best to know what language he just spoke. The painter noticed this and laughed, his beautiful voice ringing all over her head.

"I only know a bit of English, so I hope you could understand me." The painter told her.

(Y/N) breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing English on his lips and introduced herself. "Am I glad to hear that. My name is (Y/N). And you are?"

The painter smiled once more, the dimple on his cheek showing. "Molto piacere di conoscerti (Y/N), il mio nome e Cagliostro e sono un artista. As you can see."

"Oh, ah," she mumbled, scratching the back of her head in confusion. "Nice to meet you, ah,..."

"Cagliostro."

"Cagliostro! Yes,..."

*

"Hey, stop right there!"

V heard that familiar voice as he arrived at the place. Then, all of a sudden, a little boy, about seven, ran towards him and hid behind him.

"I said,... FUCKING STOP RIGHT THERE!"

The poet looked up and saw Nero, wearing what looked like a white, frilly apron over his red shirt and ripped jeans, running towards him with all four of his arms ( both flesh and translucent wings ) raised above his head in anger. The little boy behind him clutched at his pants, clearly frightened of Nero.

"I think you're scaring the boy too much." V uttered as Nero's eyes widened upon seeing him.

The young Devil Hunter lowered his arms, a smile slowly creeping up his lips. "Ha! You have no idea how naughty that boy gets!"

"And how so?"

"Like that."

V turned just in time to see the little boy putting a caterpillar on the pocket of his pants, and when he noticed that he was finally seen, he gave him a wide, toothy smile. Then, he ran back to the little house where Nero just came from, the caterpillar still on his hands.

"See?" Nero told him.

"I could see that. Yes." The poet answered.

An awkward silence filled the air around them, and when Nero spoke once more, V felt his nerves tense.

It was actually the first time he properly spoke with Nero knowing that he's his son. And he, the long lost father.

"Would you like to come into the house?" Nero offered.

V cleared his throat and answered, "Gladly."

The awkward poet found himself sitting in one of the wooden chairs in the simple kitchen a few moments later surrounded by three little children who were very curious as to his sudden presence in the house.

"Why are your eyes green?" A little girl asked him as she stood on her little toes to take a closer look at V's eyes.

"Are you old?" The boy with the caterpillar questioned. "Because you have white hair!"

"Is your mother not feeding you well? You look so skinny!" The third child questioned as she poked V's arms.

"Alright, kids! Try not to terrorize that man and play somewhere else." Nero boomed as he entered the room.

"But, Nero!"

"You heard me! Now, go!"

The three children whined as they left V alone and went outside to play, finally giving him some privacy with Nero.

The young Devil Hunter sat down across V and noticed the wilting camellias in the lone flower vase in the middle of the table. "Whoa, that needs to be changed." He grimaced, then turned to V. "So, how's it going? Hope Nico's not annoying you."

"No, she's not." V answered.

"Oh."

There was that awkward silence once more. God, how could he explain everything that happened since the last fifteenth of May?!

"Nero, I - " V stuttered until Nero held up his hands to stop him from talking.

"I know. You don't need to explain. Dante told me everything."

Of course, Dante did. "I see."

The son hummed as he leaned an elbow against the wooden table. "So, have you seen her? (Y/N)?"

And that too? "No. Not yet."

"Oh, that's too bad. You know, Kyrie really wants to meet her personally. To have some girl talk, you know what I'm saying."

"Indeed."

"Hmm."

As Nero noticed the ever growing bags under V's eyes, he mustered all his courage to finally confront him regarding that one thing that occurred in Red Grave when they were still working together to bring down the Dreadnought.

And so, with difficulty in breathing, Nero cleared his throat and went on. "About what happened two weeks ago. In Red Grave, during the Dreadnought operation,..."

V noticed the change in Nero's tone and caught on with what's probably going to happen next. "Yes,... ?"

Nero's eyebrows furrowed as his lips clearly formed a thin line. He didn't know how to start the conversation, and now, he was actually trembling from his knee down to his feet. "Did you,... umm,... how do I say this?"

V watched his son as he grabbed fistfuls of his hair and started pulling on them like he really was having difficulty opening up to him. He took pity upon the youth and smirked at him. "Go on." He urged.

"Okay." Nero breathed as he tried to calm down. "Do you,... umm,... did you,... ah,... ? Shit! Did you really love (Y/N)? Hey, I know the question is weird but, I - "

"I love her. And I still do." V answered truthfully.

"Okay. Forgive me for being an asshole for asking this but, why did you make things so fucking complicated? I mean, I know you're being manipulated and all but, you should have, at least, reciprocated when you still had the chance. Come on, man! You were so obvious as daylight back then! And I could still remember Nico and I have told you to confess but, you didn't. Well, she did but, look what happened to her."

"Forgive me." That's all I could say. "I do not have the right to say anything else other than forgive me."

"Well," Nero answered as he scratched the back of his head. "... there's no point in that now, is there?"

"... there isn't."

Nero sighed as he leaned an elbow against the table once more. "I asked her this the last time we met. I said, so, you still love him? V? And do you know what she said? She told me, after all this time,..."

"Yes."

Both father and son turned as they saw Kyrie enter the room. She was holding some fresh pink camellia flowers that she, then, put in the flower vase in exchange for the old, wilted ones.

"Nero has told that story to me many times already." Kyrie told V as she arranged the fragile flowers. "It's too bad that I didn't get to meet her."

"Kyrie, you're making the man feel even more guilty." Nero told her as he lovingly watched her take away the wilted flowers.

"And you did so first." The lovely woman candidly answered.

"Yeah. Right. Oh, umm, Kyrie, I'd like you to meet, umm,..."

"You can just call me V." The poet introduced himself as he held out a hand in front of her. "Nero's father."

Nero's little gesture of scratching his temple while shyly hiding his flustered face didn't go unnoticed by both the poet and the woman. Kyrie smiled as she took V's on her own. "My name is Kyrie. It's so nice to finally meet you. Oh and, the children gave me this. They told me it's for you because you looked sad." Kyrie said as she took out a single piece of paper from her pocket.

"Thank you." V unfolded the paper and saw a charming illustration of a family in it. Of a father, a mother, and their two children. All four of them were standing right next to a house, the huge, yellow sun smiling down at them.

Then, V was plunged into that vision once more,...

*

"Cagliostro?" (Y/N) called as she saw the multiple paintings of her in the wall of the painter's house.

Over the years, the man never stopped capturing her image on his own canvas, and over those ten years she has known him, his paintings of her gradually became more and more accurate as he improved with the craft he's passionate with.

But, now, she must say goodbye to Cagliostro. For as of late, some people were beginning to notice the lack of changes within her physical form.

Like Alicia, who mysteriously pushed her away from her life, they were now suspecting something about her. And they should, for she was not entirely herself for the last ten years.

In fact, she was no longer herself the moment she let those entities possess her body for this mission she's trying to fulfill over those said years since escaping the Pale Ones.

"Cagliostro?!" She called once more and was utterly surprised to see him emerging from his room bearing a bouquet of pink camellias.

She felt her stomach drop on the floor and her heart twist in pain as she saw him walk towards her with that look on his face.

"Cagliostro, I - "

"(Y/N)," the painter began. "... durante tutto questo tempo il mio cuore era votato all'arte e alla pittura, e i miei esercizi e miglioramenti erano i miei baci e carezze per lei, pensavo che sarebbe stata l'unica cosa che avrei amato per tutta la mia vita ma ora ho realizzato che ho qualcun'altro da amare, qualcuno a cui voglio dare tutto il mio amore così come quello che ho verso l'arte, se non di più,... quella persona se tu (Y/N)."

She felt her eyes sting the moment Cagliostro knelt down before her, offering her the lovely bouquet. "No, please. Don't do this,..."

"(Y/N), I want to be with you for the rest of my life. My heart is yours. Please, say you'll be mine."

She gulped and nervously pushed the bouquet away. "S - sei licenziat - to."

Cagliostro looked at her in confusion upon hearing the broken Italian she just uttered. "I'm fired?"

(Y/N)'s eyebrows shot up her hairline at what he told her. She quickly took the Italian language manual from her pocket, browsed through it in panic, and confirmed that Sei Licenziato does, indeed, mean You're Fired in English."

She winced in total embarrassment, and as she took hold of the painter's calloused hands, looking at him straight in the eye, she spoke, "Umm, listen. The reason I'm travelling a lot is because I've been searching for someone. A man."

"Do you,... love him?" It took her a moment before she could answer, and when she finally did, she could not bear to see the look of disappointment in the painter's eyes. "I do. Yes."

Cagliostro smiled, his expression giving her an unexplainable kind of ache on the chest, then stood.

"Then, I hope you would be happy with the man you truly love. He doesn't know how fortunate he is to have you."

And with those final words, the painter sadly walked away from her life,...

*

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?!"

"Yes!"

"Oh, my God! I'm gonna be a father!" Nero proclaimed. He went towards V and shook him on the shoulders, finally snapping him off his reverie. "You hear that, V? Kyrie is pregnant! I'm gonna be a father!"

"... what?" The poet mumbled, not quite catching yet on which parts of their conversation he missed due to the sudden visions of (Y/N)'s past that flashed through his mind without a warning.

"Come on, man! You know what this means! You're gonna be a grandfather!"

Me? A grandfather? "Well, I,..."

The happy couple eagerly looked at him, waiting for his answer. He smiled at the two of them and held out a hand, but not to shake theirs. A blinding kind of light flashed from his open palm, and seconds later, the Yamato materialized right on his hand.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Nero spoke as he shielded Kyrie. He was alarmed of V's sudden movement and it was perfectly understandable. Who could really blame him?

"Then, it's time I return this to you." V declared as he handed the weapon to Nero.

"Wait, are you sure about that? The Yamato belongs to you!"

"It did. And now, I'm passing it onto you. Protect your family at all cost using this. Believe me, I insist." And V was being truthful. It was the vision he saw earlier, after all.

Now, whether this could really help him with his search for (Y/N) still remained a mystery. He just saw himself giving the Yamato back to Nero, and nothing else.

But, somehow, him giving his most prized possession to his son felt good to him. It felt like a huge thorn was suddenly pulled out from his chest and allowed him to breath more freely. It helped his body feel lighter, like a huge burden was finally removed from his shoulders.

So, yes. Vision or no, V decided it was the right thing to do.

And Nero? He cautiously took the Yamato from V's hand as he looked suspiciously at him. V smirked as he practically shoved the weapon to his son's hand. He, then, took his metal cane, which was leaning against one of the chairs, and was about to leave when Nero called his attention.

"Hey!"

V turned just in time to see Nero giving him the middle finger. Kyrie saw this and practically whacked him on the back of his head.

"Ouch! Why did you do that for?!"

"Because you're being rude to your father!"

"That was for those times he abandoned me as a kid! And this," Nero uttered as he went closer to V and embraced him tightly, his action surprising the poor poet. "... this is for acknowledging me as your son. Thank you for everything, father."

As much as V hated to admit it, he felt a lump suddenly growing in his throat. And as V felt his eyes sting, his arms automatically went around his son, wrapping him in an embrace that finally let his, and Nero's, tears fall down.

And as Kyrie watched the tender scene between father and son, her eyes widened all of a sudden as she remembered something. She ran towards her and Nero's shared bedroom, took something from a drawer, and went back to the kitchen. And as she put the thing on V's hand, the poet gave her a confused look.

"It's a plane ticket. To Corsica Island." Kyrie said. "We could never use it because we can't just leave the children here. So, you can have it."

"Thank you." V uttered, his voice raw and hoarse with emotion.

"No. Thank you." Kyrie told him as she embraced V. "You're gonna find her soon. Believe me."

V was still looking at Kyrie's simple gift with pride when he arrived back at the apartment later that evening.

"Ya look like ye're in a good mood." Nico told him as she placed her backpack on the table near (Y/N)'s stuff.

"I' am. Yes."

"Good for ya, then." Nico reached for something in her bag and produced a strange looking thing from it. "Here, I'll give this to ya. (Y/N) and I filmed this during the Dreadnought operation."

A,.. movie? Like what (Y/N) loves? "What kind of movie is this?" V inquired as he looked at the dvd suspiciously.

The freckled woman suddenly became nervous as she started sweating on the forehead. "Ah, ah, ah,... you just have to watch it, ya know?! See for yourself!"

"Let's have a movie marathon, V!" Griffon suggested as he pointed at (Y/N)'s mountain of movie collections near the television. Even Shadow was already eagerly waiting for it as she sat on the floor, clutching the Elmo plushie that Nico gave her to stop her from crying.

You're gonna find her soon. Believe me.

"What's the harm in doing it?" V answered in agreement to Griffon's suggestion.

"Alright! Gonna leave ya three now. Don't leave the television open." Nico said as she grabbed her bag and left the apartment.

***

🖤 Special thanks again to @vergils-daughter for the Russian translation of La Vie En Rose. 🖤

🖤 And to my lovely Italian friend Daarxen for providing Cagliostro and his Italian dialogue. 🖤

🖤 And, of course, to @harlot-of-oblivion for helping me get some secret messages across using the beautiful Language of The Flowers. 🖤

🖤 @la-vita , @beyond-the-mirror , @brattyvitale , @capsule-cosplay , @yepps , @gothghoulfiend , @lessy86 , @ceruleanworld , @micaelagua , @ehrzeth , @diabeticsugarush , @boundbysoul , @simmy-ships , @heaven-on-a-landslide , and @krazy06 . 🖤

***

Later during the early hours of dawn, Griffon was already bawling his eyes out from the last movie they watched. Shadow was already asleep on the sofa, and V? Let's just say that he got emotional all over again.

Titanic? Moulin Rouge? The Fault In Our Stars? The Time Traveler's Wife?

Heck! All of those movies depicted a lover dying from different sorts of causes!

"Can we watch somethin' else, V?" The demonic familiar asked as he wiped his own tears and blew his nose for the ndth time on a tissue. "Mah eyes are swollen here! Doesn't she own a comedy?!"

V searched through piles of dvd until he remembered about the mystery dvd that Nico gave him. Said she and (Y/N) filmed this, themselves.

"How about this?" He said as he fed it to the player.

A few moments later, (Y/N) came into view on the television wearing what looked like an unflattering pair of overalls that were several sizes too big for her.

“Is this it?” (Y/N) asked as she distastefully looked down at her outfit.

“Pretty much, yeah.” Nico answered in the background. "Hey, uh, I need you to move farther away.”

“Like this?”

“Honey, I mean, further, further away. I don’t want to get disintegrated!”

“Fine,…”

"Wait a second here, I remember that day!" Griffon erupted as he pointed at the screen. "Hey, V?"

“Okay! I need you to transform on the count of three!”

“Alright!”

“Whenever you’re ready!”

"Hey, uhh, V,...?"

“I’ am!”

“Alright, then! ONE, TWO, THREE!”

After watching that certain video, V's eyes remained wide open until the next morning, his over - active imagination getting the better of him,...

... and of his carefully restrained desires,...

He who desires but act not breeds pestilence, indeed.

***

🖤🖤🖤

***

[rinusagitora]

The love, lead, and the undead.

Fandom: Monster Prom

Characters: Vicky Schmidt, Damien LaVey, Vera Oberlin, Oz, Zoe

Pairings: Brian/Damien/Vicky, Oz/Zoe, platonic Vicky/Vera

Words: 2.7k

Summary: Canon divergent. Chapter 1/7. WARNINGS--- smut;  Vicky has a lot on her plate between robberies and her love for Damien. Even though they're successful, problems from the past and present stand between them.

Vicky held his throat and pinned him to his plush mattress as she rode him. Brian, behind her, jabbed Damien’s prostate. Between the lack of air and sexual stimulation, Damien’s eyes were crossed and he was right on the edge of ecstasy.

---

When Damien woke up, he reached for Vicky, because his dream was amazing and her hip was flush against his and her butt was great and she smelled like an awesome, fruity perfume that he wanted to bury his nose in.

He opened his eyes to his arms around his poofy body pillow and he felt stupid and dejected and he kind of wanted to cry.

Instead, Damien made way to the bathroom, where he buried his feelings in his morning routine. He texted Scott about that afternoon's football meet. If he couldn't have Vicky, he could at least check out Brian's ass and daydream about the one party where they drank too much and made out.

Stan was in the kitchen with a mug full of disgustingly domestic hot chocolate.

"Where's Dad?" Damien asked.

"He’s showering. There's bacon and toast left over for you," Stan replied. "You look like you slept like shit."

"I was having a good dream, and then I woke up and realized it was a dream."

"I'm sorry. That's disappointing. If it helps, I dreamt Lucien helicoptered his dick at the Aquinos."

Damien broke into a grin. "That's a pretty sweet dream," he said. "I'm off now. See you later."

"Have a good day."

On campus, Damien lounged in the library and perused his hundreds of selfies with Vicky and Brian. Brian didn't smile a lot. It was still as gorgeous as Vicky's.

Beyond a bookshelf, Leonard's voice struck his ear like an icepick.

"God, this chick is an ugly, fake whore! She actually got this producer to agree to one of her hot takes on Makido the Giant. I swear. These SJWs are ruining all the good television shows."

Damien was not in the mood to listen to that neckbeard’s drivel, so he hopped over the shelf and landed in front of Leonard.

"Makido is my friend's favorite show, y'know," he snarled with a guttural, fiery edge. Damien grabbed Leonard by his neck and dragged him to the bathroom. Makido was a great excuse to beat out his anxiety.

---

Vicky loved a lot of boys. Like, a lot. Scott, Brian, Oz, Liam, Blobert, Cal. She loved them all. When they talked to her, the attention went straight to wherever made her feel like she was fucking invincible. It came to be that her infinite source of love focused on Damien as of recent, her most hot-headed classmate and friend, and for more than one week like the rest of her phases of attraction seemed to last.

Of course she gravitated towards him. He was all kinds of crazy like she was: the happy kind of crazy that felt like drums punched her chest, or that first second after she snort a ton of coke.

Damien held Leonard by the back of his head in one of the toilets. As much as Vicky loathed that obnoxious, holier-than-thou, nonsensical neckbeard, and as much as she enjoyed seeing him helplessly gurgle, Damien's heart didn't seem as invested into Leonard's torment as he usually was. No jeers, no curse words, just a lame, dejected sigh. It concerned Vicky.

"You look frustrated," Vicky, loyal captain of the generally disliked naval vessel the S.S. Obvious, remarked. "What's on your mind?"

Damien's eyes were so golden. A poet of ancient Greece would describe them as pure ore. "Nothing," he grumbled. He pulled Leonard out of the can and threw him out of the stall. "Scram, freak. You're no fun anymore.”

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"No. That was a blatant lie. I'm not sure why I did that."

Vicky reminded herself to trust her gut in the future. Things were always as they seemed when it came to Damien.

"I'm just… love is metal, man. Like, it's pretty badass to trust someone enough to be vulnerable around them.”

"Is… is philosophy making you upset?" she asked.

"No. But there's this girl I really like. Like, I like her more than anyone I have before. I feel like I'm on fire when I'm with her and the second she's out of sight I snuff out. She'll smile and I'll lose my breath. I like her more every day. This morning, and I'll kill you if you fucking laugh at this, but this morning I woke up and I was looking for her because I had a dream we were together. My chest felt like it would collapse when I realized it wasn't real."

Oh.

Vicky's chest felt like it collapsed too. He talked about that woman like Vicky was just one of the guys. Like she hadn't had Damien's back for a year, like she didn't adore all his adventures.

Yet as much as it hurt, Vicky only wanted to make Damien happy.

"Why haven't you told her yet?"

Damien's head fell into his hands. "'Cause I like this guy too, Vicky, and I want them both. It's gonna break her heart and I’ll lose both of them. This isn’t some kind of passing fancy. This isn’t me wanting a three-way. I adore both of them.”

"There are people like you," Vicky said, people like her who liked lots of boys. She’d stay with him, even if she didn’t like his other partner. “You should give it a shot.”

"I don't think I can. If I can't have them, even as friends, I’m not sure I could take it.”

Vicky held his hands. “Damien, you’re better than this,” she croaked. “You’ve never been so reserved. I hate seeing you like this. Please… tell me how I can help.”

“It’s…” Damien stared, his chest rattled. “I have to go.”

He pushed past Vicky. She collided with the locking mechanism, but she hardly felt it, because her chest hurt so much. Damien didn’t love her, he couldn’t tell her who he loved, he couldn’t even tell her why he couldn’t tell why he refused to tell her.

---

Oz wasn’t used to the weird couple walk Zoe adored. Not that he didn’t like it, because he did. Zoe fit underneath this shoulder like a puzzle piece and it was so fucking adorable, and she held his hip like it was glued there. But Oz was clumsy, and Fear wanted in on the action so he tripped over their excited bubbling. Zoe thought it was funny, at least.

“Y’know, I need to ask Damien something. Let’s sit with him.”

“Okay.”

Just before they sat down, Vicky rushed past them with a tray in hand and tears in her eyes.

“Wow, I’ve never seen Vicky act like this,” Zoe commented. “You guys are friends, right? What’s going on with her?”

Damien snapped his fork in half. “Not your fucking business, you nosy freak.”

“That’s Damien-speak for he does know and it’s probably his fault,” Oz whispered in one of Zoe’s ears.

“Dammit Oz, fuck off! If Vicky didn’t tell you, she sure as hell doesn’t want you knowing.”

“We’re her friends too, though,” Oz retorted. “You’re our friend too.”

Damien grit his teeth. “I fucked up, okay? I like this girl and I can’t tell her, and she tried to help me this morning, but I’m too big of a fucking bitch to let her know it’s her and it’s not her fault that I’m a fucking coward.”

“Oh my goood!” Zoe gasped. “You do like Vicky! I swore you were into Brian, though! What changed? Oh my god, is this a love triangle? Are you stuck between two lovers?”

“Can you fucking act semi normal for once in your motherfucking life!”

Fuck, Zoe was perceptive. “Zoe… let’s be more sensitive about this,” Oz said as Damien beat his head against the table.

“I like them both, okay? And I don’t want to choose, and I don’t want to hurt or lose any of them. I just gonna to keep this to myself.”

“Damien, did you tell Vicky you like her and Brian and you don’t want to choose? Or have you made these decisions on your own?” Oz asked. Mortals and their drama was both fascinating and obnoxious.

“... no.”

“Seriously consider it. You don’t know what she is okay with. Are you content living in safety and security? Or do you want to live vivaciously, even if your partners don’t end up being Brian and Vicky?”

“Okay,” Damien replied. “I will. Thank you.”

---

The school day wasn’t even halfway over when Vicky decided to go home. Vera's sleek, absurdly shiny limo pulled up to the sidewalk next to her.

"Get in, bitch," Vera said from the interior.

"I'm surprised you didn't poison me," Vicky said as she climbed inside.

"I’ve come to the conclusion you're more effective as my partner in crime when you're not foaming at the mouth. You look like you need a drink, though. Scotch?"

"Single malt," Vicky replied. "Fill the glass off and keep the bottle out."

"Sweet flaming baby Satan, what's up with you?"

"Damien. He likes another girl and it's not me, and he refuses to tell me who it is, and refuses more tell me why he can't tell me. Since these problems totally matter, I'd very much like to drink away the memory of today."

Vicky grimaced as Vera gave her a look of unbridled disgust. "Sorry, I'll keep it to myself."

"No. That was mostly for Damien." Vera massaged her sinuses. "You people are hopeless. Y'know, if I cared more about social graces, I wouldn't tell you this, but that girl Damien was talking about is you, Vicky. He's just too much of a pussy ass bitch to fess up to it. God knows he buries his feelings under his stupid sense of masculinity."

Vicky wanted to cry. All her work to get into his circle, all her effort to get him to realize how wonderful she was, had paid off.

But why in god’s good name was he so scared to tell her that he liked her? She didn’t care if he liked her and someone else.

Nonetheless, Vicky said, "Thanks. I don't wanna think about this right now, though."

"Why don't we rob a bank then? That always seems to put you in a good mood."

"Somehow I knew you had ulterior motives," Vicky said as she caught a ski mask and sweats Vera threw at her.

---

Seventeen hours later and about seventeen grand heavier, Vicky returned to campus with more pep in her step.

Part of her felt bad that Vera told her about something as private as Damien's feelings. Surely, there had to be a reason he hadn't told her. But she wanted to put an end to their charade so if Damien refused to tell her about his feelings for her, she would, and if he still refused to tell her, so be it. There were there fish in the sea.

If Vera's information was wrong, though, and Damien didn't return Vicky's feelings, their friendship would suffer. Collateral damage.

Vicky found Damien asleep in the shallow woods behind campus. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "Damien, you're gonna kill your back sleeping up there!" He wasn't a fucking puma, or… whatever tree-dwelling cat was more apt for the analog she needed.

Did pumas even sleep in trees?

Damien flew upright upon disruption, and less than gracefully slammed his head into a thick branch above him. He cursed, lost his balance as he braced himself, and fell to the ground. Vicky yelped and ran to check on him.

"Fuck, I'm so sorry, Damien. Are you okay?"

"No. Holy shit, that hurt," Damien groaned. He curled up into a ball and held his forehead. "Fuck, why do I do this shit?"

"Sh-should I get you some ice? God, that's gonna swell like a bitch."

"Ice? Fuck no!" Damien snapped. "God, just… fuck….”

"Let's go to the nurse's office." Vicky reached to help Damien to his feet. He scrambled away like she burned him.

"I'm fine!" he snapped. Vicky's eyes watered. "Just… stop, okay? Worse has happened!"

Vicky's hands fell into her lap. She was a stupid little girl. "Sorry. I'll… see you around." She picked up her backpack and ran before Damien could reach her.

She tumbled helplessly into the bathroom. She slammed the stall door behind her, dropped her bag (with a very expensive laptop inside) on the linoleum, and she didn't even cover her mouth as she bawled. Vicky gave a whole new meaning to ugly crying. When she cried, the stitched skin on her face scrunched up and she had to push it into place when she finished, she never failed to hyperventilate so her face was always puffy, and whenever she cried, her snot always dripped down her face like her mother was Niagara fucking Falls.

When she heard a knock at her stall, Vicky covered her mouth (as if that would do anything) and hoped they'd pass.

"Bitch, it's me, open up," Vera said from beyond her stall.

Vicky unlocked her stall and let Vera inside.

"Sorry, not at my best right now," Vicky said.

"What the hell is going on? You're crying in here, and Damien reached a new record for amount of people he's beat the shit out of today and it’s only lunchtime. Already get into a lover's quarrel? He’s not telling me shit."

She shook her head. "No. He was sleeping in a tree, and I woke him up, and he hit his head and fell, and he got really mad at me."

Vera's hair bristled. "What a dumbass, cunt-blowing, son of a bitch."

Vicky was pulled to her feet and dragged behind Vera. She only narrowly managed to catch her backpack. Vera ignored Vicky's protests. She wanted to be seen when she fixed her face slippage, and she had to wipe her nose on her sleeve which was fucking gross. They were ignored though, because Vera's rage was palpable. Her snake-hair incessantly hissed and bared their teeth at passersby.

In the cafeteria, Vera unkindly slammed Vicky into a seat across from Damien and Scott. Until Damien saw her, he only half-heartedly picked at his food. When his eyes met her's, though, it felt like Vicky was kicked square in the gut because he dropped his fork and looked like she kicked him instead.

"Oh no, Vicky, what's wrong?" Scott cried. "Are you sad? Will balls help? Balls help me feel better when I’m sad."

The tension of Vera's death stare made Damien sweat visibly. "It’s nothing you need to worry about, Scott. Damien knows what he did," Vera said. "We're gonna sit here until he fixes it."

"Vera, it's fine. Damien and I can work this out."

Scott gasped. If he wasn't so stupid, Vicky would've guessed Scott deliberately rubbed salt in Damien’s wounds. "Oh my God, Damien made you cry? Dude, that's not cool. She's like your best friend. You don't make your friends cry! That’s not what good friends do."

"Scott, just, shut up for a minute!" Damien barked.

"Well, what do you have to say?" Vera said.

Vicky was caught between her loyalty to Damien and her own, awful, vindictive pleasure as Vera ripped him a filthy new asshole. She bashfully sat back and stared back at Damien.

"I'm sorry about this morning. I've been on edge lately. It kind of just boiled over and I took it out on you. That wasn't right. I mean, I don't give a shit about right and wrong, but your feelings… your feelings matter to me."

"And?" Vera said.

Damien's face glowed with… embarrassment, or something along those lines. "I really like you, Vicky. Yesterday, when we were in the bathroom, I was trying to tell you that, but I couldn't get it out. That's kind of why I've been so pent up lately. I keep trying to tell you and I keep chickening out."

Vicky's heart just about popped out of her chest and tap danced for them. Instead, she lunged across the table and squeezed Damien so hard his back cracked.

Damien didn’t seem to mind. He crushed her in his own embrace as he crushed her lips against her. Scott howled with excitement and drew the attention of their classmates. There was applause from their friends. Vicky was embarrassed, but it was buried under the noise of her own giddy. Not even lasagna smeared on her sweater was enough to put a damper on her mood because the only thing that could take her out of that moment would have been wedding bells.

[achaoticeternal]

Parts To A Whole // Richie Tozier

Summary: love has a weird way of finding people. Richie Tozier has never felt truly loved or cared for. Behind the jokes and his smirk, he’s hurt, he’s broken. And even if the shattered pieces of him cut me, i’m going to help him feel whole again.

Part 1

Characters: Richie x reader, Bill Denbrough, Stan Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak, Mike Hanson (mentioned), Beverly Marsh (mentioned), Ben Hanscom (mentioned)

A/N: the introduction to my new series!!! Yay!!! Hopefully this won't completely bore you since it's jut an introduction but I hope you enjoy :)

Warnings: light cussing

The Losers Club is aged up 16/17

•••••

Something my brother and I both shared in common is that we both were observers. Of course Stan much more preferred to observe birds while I leaned more towards observing people and their behaviors. I could almost read people's minds just by looking at their face, at least that’s what my dear friend Eddie believed.

However, there’s one person I have never figured out, never truly been able to read correctly. And this person so happened to be in my brother’s and I’s friend group, the losers club.

Richie Tozier; a man (or more like man child) who was always prepared with inappropriate comments and his signature smirk. Most people assumed him to just be a plain surface level self. But I knew Richie wasn’t just some simple minded kid since the first day Stan, Bill, Eddie, and myself met Richie in third grade. Richie had depth, but no one seemed to really notice that because Richie never presented himself in that manner. So I became good friends with Richie in order to see who he truly was when he no longer had jokes to tell and when he was weak.

Yet over the year, i watched how the Losers Club had matured and members had come and gone. I saw the behavior of Stan turn him into my now sarcastic and strong minded twin brother. I noticed how Eddie began to go against his mother’s will and how a girl never seemed to catch his eye like some boys did. I observed Bill’s acceptance of his brother's death and how he became a lovable young man and his stutter slowly began to leave. And for myself, I dropped my whole goody-two-shoes act I put on for other people and began to enjoy things I truly enjoyed, which helped me attract friends (and sometimes a boy) who liked me for me. But Richie never seemed to grow out of his dirty jokes and charming smirk. No, the only sense in which Richie had changed was dropping the Hawaiian shirts and thick rimmed glass in exchange for band tees and slim, metal framed glasses.

Richie also began to attract a lot of attention from girls and other groups besides the losers club. Yet no matter how popular he became, he made sure to remain friends with who remained in our group of friends; Bill, Mike, Eddie, Stan, myself, and Richie. Beverly was now in Portland while Ben seemed to be constantly moving from what the postcards he sent would reveal.

So now here we all were, Friday morning at Derry high school sitting at a lunch table while waiting for the first period bell to ring. Bill and Stan sat on one side of the table while Eddie and I opted for the other side and we chatted away about our weekend plans and waiting for Richie to arrive. Bill mentioned doing movie night tonight at his place and watching Nightmare on Elm Street.

“Or we could watch Dead Poets Society?” Eddie suggested

I nodded in agreement and opening my mouth to speak until someone beat me to it, “No way, Eds. No one wants to watch boys talk about their feelings for two hours.”

“Excuse me, Richie. But Dead Poets Society is the second best film in the history of the world in my book,” I looked over at where he stood at the end of the table where Richie stood wearing a Van Halen shirt, a red flannel, jeans, and white Nikes.

“Of course you would think that, Uris. You’re a girl, and girls like that kind of sappy shit. That’s probably why your favorite movie is The Breakfast Club,” he chuckled as the rest of the group rolled their eyes at our bickering.

“Actually, Tozier, my favorite movie is Jurassic Park and you would have known that if you came to movie night at my house three weeks ago instead of standing us up for a date with Rachel Moss who you dumped two days later,” I stated quite matter-of-factly while the other boys stifled their laughter.

“C’mon, babe, I-” and before he could finish whatever he was going to say, the bell had rung signaling it was time to get to class.

“See you l-later guys,” Bill said before leave with Eddie to go to 1st period art. Stan then made his leave to head to Psychology leaving Richie and I to walk to our shared American Lit class.

I quickly stalked off while Richie ran after me, “(Y/N), I’m super sorry about not coming after I promised I would. I can come over on Sunday after you get home from the Synagogue and we can watch Jurassic Park 1 and 2 while we study.”

“Fine, Tozier, I forgive you I guess,” I teased and lightly punched his arm.

We made light conversation as we made our class when Andrew Knight walked up to me, “Hey (Y/N), if you not doing anything this weekend, would you like to go out to the diner with me for a date?”

“Actually, she’s got plans this weekend, maybe next time, Knight,” Richie spoke up and grabbed my hand before pulling me away.

“What the hell, Rich?” I said pulling my hand away, “What wrongs with me accepting a date?”

“Are you shitting me? You have plans this weekend and Knight isn't good enough for you, Stan wouldn't approve,” he replied shortly.

“Whatever, Tozier, you cost me a date so now you have to get me ice cream in the way to Bill’s tonight,” I light-hearted shoved him so that he wouldn't notice the light pink on my cheeks. Richie genuinely cared about me which added to the list of things about him that caught me off guard.

“Fine, fine,” he said as we entered our class and took our respective seats.

[decimatoroflight]

Book of Darkness: Chapter 3

Decimator of Light: Book of Darkness Chapter 3: Old Sketches

             It only took half an hour for the three of them to be sitting together on the floor in Kazuko’s bedroom. It was considerably more organized than Cin’s; the bed was made, the desk was neat, all the books were on the shelves organized alphabetically and by subject, and the walls were covered with posters of K-rock stars, papers with witty quotes, Asian weapons, and action-movie characters. There was a large stereo sitting in a corner connected to the computer, and in the other corner was a large chest filled with various metal parts, wires, and computer chips that Kazuko used to build battle-bots or fix computers.

             Cin was leaning against the wall, and Mark was beside him, flushed and still panting after jogging back from his house; he must have really booked it. Kazuko sat in front of them, her eyes narrowed at Cin. He had refused to begin talking until their blond friend was in the room with them.

             “So,” Mark finally broke the cold silence, still breathless and wiping some sweat from his forehead. His eyes shifted to the friend next to him. He had noticed Cin shaking in his car on the way there, but had known better than to press him on the matter until the three were together. “What’d we miss?”

             “Today...” Cin paused. He’d spent the last hour playing over everything that had happened that day in his head, thinking about what he’d say, how he’d phrase everything. But now that he was there with Mark and Kazuko in the same room, he suddenly found himself at a loss for words. “Today’s been really off,” he finally managed, attempting to organize all his thoughts into something more coherent. He had no idea how to explain everything without sounding utterly insane.

             “No! Really?” The one girl in the room gasped with sarcastic horror, putting a hand over her heart. “Because, you know. People get shanked all the time, especially you. Same old, same old,” the sarcasm faded into a glare that cut into Cin, demanding he get to the point.

             “More happened,” Cin continued, his eyes darting momentarily to Mark. The blond didn’t look confused in the slightest, which meant that Kazuko had already informed him of that day’s adventure at the diner. He was relieved that he didn’t have to explain that part, but it still left a lot for him to say. “After I dropped you off, Kazuko.”

             Cin finally managed to tell his friends of the rest of day’s happenings, starting with almost being hit by the truck and ending with almost cracking his skull open on his own weights. He mentioned the strange white circle he’d seen in the mirror as well, hoping one of them might have had some logical explanation for it. The two listened to him, expressions shifting between shocked and concerned, and when Cin finished, Mark locked his jaw with a look of deep suspicion.

             “It can’t all just be accidents. It doesn’t make sense.”

             “What else can it be, though?” Kazuko sighed as she leaned back against her bed. She looked annoyed, but she wasn’t nearly as concerned as Mark was. “That truck driver obviously wasn’t aiming for him, the girl in the restaurant was bawling after she stabbed him-”

             “The circle,” Cin blurted out, looking between the two of them. He could tell from Mark’s expression that he and Kazuko had been on the brink of starting an argument, and he didn’t want that, not before they worked together to help him figure out that that strange, white-hot circle had been. “That’s what’s bugging me the most. I’m not the type of person that just sees things, or believes in weird things like that, but I know I saw it. I do.”

             “Probably your lamp,” Kazuko shrugged without missing a beat. “You said the lights flickered, right? It was probably a bright flash before it faded out and then back to normal. Electrical surge or something. Not a big deal – especially considering the fact that any light leaves you blind as a bat, Luna,” her tone clearly suggested that she had permanently ended that discussion. But Mark didn’t look convinced.

             “I don’t know,” the blond admitted, looking away with a guilty expression.

             “What?” She snapped at the mere idea of him contradicting her.

             “I...it just seems familiar to me,” Mark couldn’t word it properly, any better than Cin had. “I don’t know why. I just feel like something like that’s happened to me before or that I’ve seen something like that before. Something’s familiar. With the white circle.”

             “I feel like I saw it before, too!” Cin cried, glad that he wasn’t the only one feeling unsure about Kazuko’s justification. “That’s what bugged me the most, it’s like I just saw it somewhere, somewhere not long ago.”

             “Well, if it’s just some white circle, duh,” Kazuko rolled her eyes.

             “What?” Both boys turned towards their friend. She stared at them for a second in disbelief, but when their wide, awaiting expressions didn’t change, she heaved a deep sigh.

             “Are you two serious? He’s been drawing frikken circles in his sketchbook since he could hold a pencil! He’s probably drawn a thousand in there and another million on his homework! Getting a deja vu feeling because of one isn’t exactly some big movie twist.”

             “Wait...You mean the eyes?” Mark muttered, mulling the thought over. But, be quickly saw the connection as well and a look of realization came over his face. “Cin, I think she’s right. I think that may be where I remember it from.”

             “No,” Cin said firmly. “It...it was like them, but it definitely wasn’t one I’ve ever drawn before. The ones I sketch are from my dreams, and they’ve always got color to them. Half of them are pure black, and the other half of pink or green or something random. This was just white. I’ve never seen a white one before.” That wasn’t entirely true, but Cin didn’t want to go into details with his two friends, not at the moment. Instead, all the talk about his sketches made him slowly realize another possible explanation for the white circle. “Wait. Maybe...I was dreaming?” He looked between his friends, who both paused to consider the idea.

             “That makes the most sense, actually,” Kazuko agreed. “You daydream too much as it is, and you lost a good hunk of blood today. You probably passed out standing up and had a night terror. Or you hit your head on your car and don’t remember,” she frowned with more serious concern. “Shit, maybe we do need to go to the hospital...”

             The mention of the hospital had Cin tensing suddenly, though he wasn’t too sure why.

             “Hold on, hold on. That still doesn’t explain the other things, though,” Mark didn’t look convinced, and Cin was able to breathe again thanks to the change of subject.

             “And what explanation is there? There’s a group of people trying to assassinate Luna?” Kazuko lifted an eyebrow at him. “Don’t sound crazy.”

             “It’s just as crazy to pretend all that could be coincidence,” Mark cut back, glaring slightly at Kazuko.

             “I-I don’t know,” Cin said, cutting in to prevent an argument again. “I mean...I hate to say this, but maybe Kazuko’s right, maybe I’m overreacting.” He felt his face burn slightly with shame, especially when he saw the look of disbelief on the blond boy’s face. “I mean, everyone has an off day, right? That girl tripped, the guy in the truck was half-asleep-”

             “But you’ve never been hurt before!” Mark argued. “Ever, in your life!”

             “So I was long overdue, right?” Cin tried to laugh, as though it was a joke, but he kept his eyes to the right, away from Marks’ gaze. “It’s more unnatural that things like this haven’t happened to me. Well, smaller things, anyway. I know, it’s a big deal to be stabbed and almost run over in the same day, but if I’m okay, maybe I just got you two to panic for nothing? Sorry, guys.”

             Cin finally looked at his two friends after he finished. Kazuko obviously agreed with him, but Mark looked as though he’d been struck across the face.

“Exactly,” Kazuko nodded, giving Mark a look to suggest he drop it. “And it’s getting kind of late. How about we watch a movie or something and sleep?”

             “Whatever,” Mark muttered in a defeated tone, standing up, but making sure not to look either one in the eye. “I’m going to go change; my clothes’re sweaty.”

             As Cin watched his friend head to the bathroom, he couldn’t help feeling as though he’d betrayed his best friend. Mark had always been the one who thought outside the box, the one who thought mind could defeat matter, who kept open to the possibility of things that science couldn’t explain. He was the poet, the one who wrote about the impossible becoming possible. Kazuko was a technological person who always wanted to see things logically, how they systematically got from point A to point B. And though Cin was an artist, a painter, he painted only what was in his dreams, and he recognized them to be just that – dreams and nothing more. Even worse, and though he didn’t like to admit it, he was a little lazy, and would prefer that the explanations to things be as simple as possible. Especially, for some reason, right now. Cin needed whatever the easiest explanation was, the one where this was all the smallest deal. He knew Mark couldn’t be okay with an explanation like that given everything that had happened, but Cin simply needed it to be true.

             “He’ll be okay,” Kazuko ensured him, seeing the guilt consuming Cin’s face. “Come on, you probably have to change, too.”

             “Yeah,” Cin shifted to his knees and crouched in front of his bag, fishing out some comfortable clothes. But after a moment of looking his own pajamas over, he remembered about a gift that Kazuko had gotten recently. And an idea popped into Cin’s head -- one he couldn’t resist, not with all the negative feelings that had just filled the room. They needed something light-hearted, especially for Mark. Giving Kazuko a rather wicked smirk, Cin leaned towards her and muttered, “You know what’d help him forget faster, though?”

             Kazuko’s cheeks turned pink. She knew exactly what he was talking about. “Shut up, you jerk.”

             “Ten bucks says he’ll start feeling all awkward,” Cin continued, nonetheless, knowing Kazuko couldn’t resist a dare.

             “They’re sticky and uncomfortable and the only reason my aunt gave them to me is because she heard I can’t get a boyfriend, and that I went to school in my pajamas one time. My dad would kill me if I actually ever wore them. Besides, Mark’ll just laugh.”

             “So?” Cin lifted his eyebrow in challenge.

             Kazuko crossed her arms over her chest, glaring and pouting deeply at the boy in front of her. He smiled back, very cocky, not faltering despite the distrust in her eyes. After several seconds of silent staring, the girl gave a deep nod as though accepting a risky business deal.

             “Fine! I’ll take your bet. Get your money ready,” she walked over to her closet, rummaging through her things until she found a set of silken pajamas. She stuck her tongue out at the boy before she leaving for the bathroom, giving Cin the chance to switch clothing in privacy and snicker at her reaction. When Cin was changed, Mark entered the room behind him in a pair of sweatpants and a large shirt. The blond looked around the room quickly before asking slowly,

             “And Kazuko’s...?”

             “Changing, too,” Cin answered with a small shrug. “What movie we going to watch?”

             “Anything with fighting and no mention of anything involving classes, colleges, or anything even mildly pertaining to them,” Mark sighed as he sat down.

             “So a nice, old Yazuka movie?” Cin asked, looking at the options Kazuko had available. Her father had brought back dozens of sets of subtitled movies from his father’s house, and the group had been slowly going through all of them, one at a time, in pure fascination since.

             “Oh, hell yes,” Mark grinned widely. “Nothing like mindless violence and a good bro-mance. I love watching that stuff, here.”

             “Maybe you should show up more, then?” Cin feigned an innocent tone, looking to the side innocently. “If you like the movies so much, I mean. You can just jog here and-”

             “Oh, yeah, sure,” Mark rolled his eyes before putting on a large, painfully-fake smile as he attempted to predict what that situation would sound like. “‘Hi, Kazuko! I know you told me never to come here without Cin, ever, but I did it anyway in spite of you!’” His gaze shifted suddenly to his own left arm. “‘Oh, look, and now my arm’s suddenly broken. What an unprecedented development!’” With the performance over, Mark dropped the smile. “I’m enough that much of a stalker. What’s wrong with you?”

             “You’re not a stalker!” Cin stared at him in disbelief. “She follows you around. She shows up at your track practices. You haven’t followed her anywhere since she stole that megaphone to tell you to leave her alone.”

             “Ah, freshman year,” Mark sighed wistfully at the memory. “What nice memories.”

             “Freshman year?” Kazuko’s voice suddenly interjected behind the two boys. “That year sucked, you’re a liar.” The two boys chuckled at her comment and the girl stepped into the room. Mark’s laughter was instantly caught in his throat when he saw her.

             Kazuko never wore anything fewer than three sizes too large, but the pajamas that Cin had dared her to wear were a little tight. The bottom part was nothing more than a pair of black, silk shorts and the shirt was a small black, high-collar shirt with a red outline that showed an inch or two of her midriff. She’d let her hair down from her usual braid and let her chin-long bangs frame her smug and giddy expression.

             “What!?” She barked at Mark, unable to hide a smirk, though she was trying to sound intimidating.

             “N-nothing!” He yelped, snapping out of his trance, and quickly turned away. He tried using a hand to cover his face in a vain attempt to hide how quickly his face was turning red. “I...I’m going to go make us something to eat,” he mumbled awkwardly and darted out of the room, allowing Cin to finally burst into laughter.

             “Ten bucks,” Cin said, holding his hand out and Kazuko instantly slapped two fives into it. The money had been in her hand the entire time.

             “Worth it,” she said simply, eyeing the door through which Mark had escaped like a scared rabbit from a cage. After a second of thought, she added, “Think he’ll freak out more if I lean on him while we’re watching the movie?”

             “If by ‘freak out more’ you mean ‘explode’, then yes,” Cin nodded wholeheartedly.

             “Nice,” with her expression still smug, she left the room to follow after Mark in the kitchen.

             Cin’s smile faded the instant Kazuko was gone. He had been trying to get the two to leave the room, at least for a few minutes, since they’d mentioned the white circle, and although he felt guilty for taking advantage of Mark’s feelings in such a way, the nagging in his stomach was bothering him considerably more. Cin had technically lied about never seeing white eyes in his dreams, but he wanted to check something before admitting anything to either of his friends. His dreams were hard to talk about – they had often felt so real when he was young that he’d embarrassed himself many times, insisting they had actually happened. To this day, Cin had difficulty even bringing up anything other than a vague, ‘Oh, yeah, I dreamed them,’ whenever Mark of Kazuko asked what he was drawing.

             Cin hurriedly dug through his bag until he found the sketchbook he’d been talking about minutes before. He flipped to the end of his sketchbook, where he had the figures of two people drawn roughly in pencil. The person on the left of the picture was a middle-aged woman who was wearing a small crown and a warm smile. Her hair was in a tight bun, and her wise, perfectly black eyes stared back at him from the paper like Cin had just done some something very endearing. But the man next to her, with his long hair tied back, stubble speckled all over his chin, white lab coat, and two scars over his left eye, had pure white eyes. There was a small, gray ring that separated what may have been the iris from the rest of the man’s eye, but where was no pupil or any other pigment to speak of. It was definitely the white circle Mark and Kazuko had thought about; it was the only white eye Cin ever drew. No one else in his dreams had eyes like that.

             But the eyes of the man in the picture had never frightened Cin before. These white eyes were kind, warm, welcoming, just like the black eyes of the woman, and it was that inherent kindness kept Cin from mentioning this picture, this person, to his friends. The two people on the paper constantly appeared in Cin’s dreams, and he knew them quite well by now. The woman loved flowers and birds, as well as sitting back and sipping tea while waiting for something to finish at its own pace. She was placid and kind, always able to calm down those around her with sweet words and a charming laugh. The man, on the other hand, was light-hearted but very impatient. He had a fascination with mushrooms and fish and was constantly hopping around, trying different experiments, postulating different hypotheses, never able to sit still. The only time Cin ever saw the man sitting without fidgeting was when he drank tea with the woman.

             Cin didn’t know where these two people came from or what they meant to his subconscious, but he felt close to them. Cin had never seen the man in his dreams do anything unjust; he was always helping others and his face, his eyes told of that. The orb that had stared at Cin from his mirror had been cold and cruel; it had made him scared to even breathe. There was simply no way that the two white circles had any connection to each other, despite being the same color. Cin was sure of it.

             The teen stuffed the sketchbook back into his bag, positive that he had withheld the information for a good reason, and then walked to the clean, marble kitchen to see Mark frying some sausages alone and muttering angrily to himself, his cheeks still a little pink.

             “...only when he’s here! Making sure to show off, right after she knows she got into college, as far away from me as she can get-”

             “Hey, yo, right here,” Cin waved his hand a bit to get Mark’s attention before he heard anything more. Cin was unable to suppress a small grin when his friend jumped so violently that he almost sent the food into the air.

             “Cin!!” His whole face burned with shame. “Er, Cin, I was...and-”

             “Don’t worry about it,” Cin brushed it off and leaned against the counter beside the blond. He continued speaking before his friend could manage to stammer something more coherent. “But she didn’t dress up for me. She never dresses up around me. And I think you know by now that, although I think she’s great and all, you know she’s like a sister to me,” Cin shrugged at the thought, sighing as though it was his fault for being unable to see past the fear of physical pain. “Besides, she seems more like a poetry-loving type to me.”

             Mark’s eyes lowered in apologetically as his face darkened even further. After a moment, his green eyes lifted, and he and Cin shared a smile, both aware that there were no hard feelings.

             “I wish,” Mark finally admitted, bowing his head in defeat. He just groaned hopelessly, slamming the spatula onto the counter. “Sorry! I know you hate it when I start thinking she wants you. It’s kind of hard not to, though. I mean, she’s...her arms! She’s showing her arms! Did you know she has arms? And legs! I didn’t even remember she HAD legs, anymore! And I haven’t seen her hair down since that basketball game FOUR years ago!”

             “How very creepy of you to remember that,” Cin pointed out before continuing. “But, I’ve seen all that way less than you have. And pay attention a lot less to it. I see her arms and stuff, and I see the muscle underneath and flinch in fear. You see it, and you like it because you’re a masochist or whatever’s wrong with you. And she knows this in her tricksy little head,” Cin tapped his temple, before asking, “So, who do you think she’s dressing up for?”

             Mark was quiet for a moment, knowing in the logical part of his mind that what his friend said made perfect sense. He stayed quiet, watching Cin pick the spatula up to flip the sausages onto their uncooked sides.

             “If it’s for me, it’s to mess with my brain,” Mark finally decided on, but then he paused, his eyes widening as though having an epiphany. “But then again, do I really mind?” The blond looked up, asking his brain that question out loud. After a moment, he gave a small laugh, his jealousy obviously gone.

             Cin rolled his eyes at the comment, but then jerked in pain as a bit of oil hit his arm. He gave a sharp hiss, dropping the spatula to the ground, splattering the clean floor with several droplets of residual oil. It wasn’t the most horrible pain, but it was beyond surprising for Cin.

             Mark frowned and pushed his friend towards the kitchen door. “No offense, but I think I’ll finish up. Don’t need all the oil spilling on you or something ‘by coincidence,’” The last part was accompanied by air quotes. “Go sit with Kazuko, I’ll be there in a sec.”

             “Good idea,” Cin chuckled, but as he turned to leave, his smile vanished and eyes looked to the small, circular burn already forming on his arm. Yet another thing that had never happened to him before. But now wasn’t the time to dwell on it. Now he was with his friends. He was safe. There was no need to think about his problems, he told himself.

             Cin walked towards the living room to spend the night watching a movie with his two best friends, taking no notice to his shadow behind him. If he had, he could have noticed a circle of light appearing on the left side of his shadow’s face, a white circle staring up at him from where there should have been nothing but darkness.

[evdarcy]

An Unusual Hero C8S3

Please remember, this is unedited and unfinished, but will hopefully fill in the holes that were left and answer some questions without leaving too many others. HOWEVER I will answer all and any questions if you want to leave me a comment.

Next update - Friday 21/05/2021

‘C’mere,’ Sarah said as he stopped in the doorway. She waved eagerly at him. She was clearly excited by whatever she had in mind, but the enthusiasm wasn’t helping him. He felt his heart rate speed up, his breathing getting shallower, quicker, as his eyes roamed over the table. She’d set out a stylist’s set; combs, the useless clippers, a tub of something, a water bottle with one of those spraying things on top Claude was always using on him, and scissors…

Sharp, pointy scissors.

‘C’mon, while your hair’s still damp.’ He heard her patting the dining chair she stood behind with far too much energy, but his eyes were glued on the silver blades. They glistened in the sunlight that fell through the window behind Sarah, and he realised these were brand new, still freshly sharpened, and knew exactly how much they could hurt—

‘I’ve done this before,’ Sarah said, frowning at him from across the room. ‘If that’s what you’re worried about.’

He swallowed and nodded his head minutely, finally acknowledging her.

‘Really?’

Sarah nodded and offered him a gentle smile. ‘My eldest sister taught me. I’m better with clippers, but I promise I can use scissors too—never given anyone a Van Gogh yet!’

He couldn’t help the snort of laughter that bubbled through his nose and lips. He rubbed his damp palms on his trousers, building up his courage. ‘Okay then,’ he finally said. ‘Just give me a second.’

He ducked back into the bedroom and turned his face heavenward as he tried to gather himself together. He could do this, Sarah hadn’t hurt him in any way since they’d run.

Yeah for all of two days, his mind tried to unhelpfully remind him as he heard Sarah moving things around; the scrape of a chair on the floor, the scratch of metal over the wood of the table as she moved her accessories into whatever formation she wanted. She grunted and huffed, swearing under her breath, and Luc swore he heard a thud of something heavy hitting the floor.

It might have only been two days—and today wasn’t even over!—and yesterday might have seen them running for their lives, but never once had she looked at him with anything even mildly resembling contempt.

But that was exactly how it started with Linda, his mind sneered.

He shook his head, recalling how he’d felt that morning, watching Sarah sashay her way across the store towards him. How she’d distracted him completely from acting out the role he’d made for himself. He’d been hypnotised by the sway of her hips, had wanted to grab them and hold them against him. For years he’d backed away from any roles that would have seen him engage in such contact, he’d had his pick of starring with some of the most beautiful and talented actresses in the world and he’d turned them all down so he’d never lose sight of what monsters women could be. He’d point-blank refused to do a love story arc on Destiny for the same reason.

Now, a pair of eyes the colour of the ocean and lips as plump as— Wait, what was plump? Turkeys? Pillows? Luc shook his head. He wasn’t a poet, and there was certainly a reason he was in front of the camera and not writing behind it. Her lips were down right pornographic. All pouty and lush. Every time she looked his way he had a hard time not staring at them. From licking his own as he thought of how they’d feel pressed against his.

And now he knew exactly how her body felt against his. How soft and supple her pert, round ass was in his hand, how he’d like to get both hands on it, hold it as she rode him into—

He growled at himself as he rubbed his hand over his mouth and chin, before sliding down his neck—

The smooth skin jarred him, reminding him of why he was here, what the haircut meant. Shit.

He’d already made a choice to run with Sarah. To listen to her and leave everyone behind based solely on what she told him. But that had been when his body was being fuelled by adrenaline, when he had the weird thrill of escaping death pushing him forward. Now he had to decide did he really trust Sarah?

It wasn’t a question most people thought about when getting their haircut, but to him, it was almost a matter of life and death…

He took a deep breath, trying to centre himself again.

He could do this. He was thirty-four, not a child, he didn’t need to be scared of someone chopping his locks. Especially when said someone had already saved his life once and was merely trying to do it again.

That was a key point. Regardless of Sarah’s motivations, she ran hadn’t left him behind to fend for himself when she so easily could have. Also, she’d not forced him to join her, hadn’t twisted his arm and dragged him into the car. She’d given him the choice.

He dropped his hands to his side, took another deep breath and headed back into the living space with a smile on his face. Some fucking actor he was—he could feel how false it was.

‘So,’ he said, as Sarah looked up at him. His eyes did a double take of the room, halting the words in his mouth as he took everything in.

She’d moved the chair into the sitting-room part of the open planned room, putting it on top of one of the furniture dust sheets and had heaved the massive mirror from above the fireplace from its screws—shit, she was strong! She’d settled the silver framed glass against the stone fixture along its shorter side so he’d be able to see exactly what she was doing, without impeding her ability to cut.

‘So?’ she said, standing upright from her crouched position beside the chair. She tossed the dustpan’s brush she’d been using to clean the plastic seat on to the floor next to her feet before planting her hands firmly on those shapely hips. ‘Ready?’

‘Whose?’ he asked quietly, diverting his gaze to the chair to stop the sudden desire to march over to her and replace her hands with his own.

‘Pardon?’

‘Whose hair? You said you’d cut hair before, whose was it?’

‘Oh,’ Sarah said slowly. He felt her eyes on him as he slowly made his way towards her. ‘It was—’ She swallowed hard, making him glance up at her. Her lovely peachy face had drained of all colour making his brows rise in question. ‘Jimmy’s,’ she whispered.

‘Who’s Jimmy?’

She licked her lips. ‘My fiance.’

He watched as she turned away and busied herself with grabbing the side table by the sofa and settling it next to where she’d be standing behind the chair. Her hands moved the instruments again, unnecessarily, and Luc knew she didn’t want to talk about it, knew it was something he shouldn’t continue with, but he couldn’t help it. This woman was a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, encased in a what the fuck! He’d been sure she’d been sleeping with the agent The Demon had executed yesterday, but he thought his name was David, not Jimmy.

‘You’re engaged?’ he asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. He took his seat and watched in the mirror as she gathered her tools from the table and brought them over. Her step seemed a little slower, a little more hesitant now.

‘Not any more. He thinks I’m dead, remember. Everyone does. My parents, my sisters, friends, acquaintances, everyone who knew me on Facebook, everyone who followed me on Tumlbr… You get the picture.’

Luc turned his head to face her properly and she stopped mid-step when she saw him watching. ‘My funeral was very nice,’ she added before she continued setting up. His brow instantly folded into a map of wrinkles.

‘How the hell do you know that? Don’t tell me you went to your own funeral?’

He turned back in his seat, but almost fell from it when she said, ‘No, they recorded it for me.’

‘What the fuck?’ He gaped at her in the mirror. ‘Who does that?’

She shrugged her shoulders as she fiddled with the comb in her hands, playing with the teeth, watching as they flexed back and forth under her touch. It was the most vulnerable she’d been so far.

‘It was part of the process of giving up my life,’ she finally told him. ‘Seeing that everyone had said goodbye to me helped me acknowledge that my life, as it had been, was over.’

Luc watched as a myriad of emotions washed over her face—sadness, worry, longing—before she wiped them all away and raised her eyes to meet his in the mirror. How the hell did she do that?

‘Did you ever scalp Jimmy?’ he asked, trying to move the topic on. She snorted and he counted that as a win.

‘No, my sister’s a top stylist at some fancy salon in London. Gets paid a stupid amount of money to cut and style the hair of the rich and famous—bloody mugs. I mean they pay—’ She bit her lip as she realised what she’d said.

He chuckled. ‘It’s okay. I do pay far too much for what it is really. People could probably buy food for a week for what I pay Claude.’

‘I reckon you’d find it would more likely be a month.’

He jumped slightly as Sarah’s fingers touched the top of his hair; she glanced at him in the mirror again, before continuing on. She ran her fingers through his locks as she assessed it, pulling it this way and that as Claude often did. Her nails lightly dragged over his scalp and he couldn’t help the shudder that ran through him at the gentle touch and felt his eyes flutter closed as she gently began massaging his head and neck. He had to stop himself from turning limp as she kneaded a particular spot at the top of his neck.

God, that was good!

‘Your natural colour is showing a lot,’ Sarah murmured. He hummed his agreement as he sank further into the bliss her fingers were inducing, almost purring in pleasure. It had been so long since anyone had touched him so gently, so delicately. The pressure and stress seemed to just melt from him as Sarah’s fingers continued their work, dipping behind his ears and rubbing at just the right spot…

He sighed contentedly as she moved back to his neck, kneading down his spine with her knuckle, wiping away any desire he had to ever move again.

‘Want me to do your shoulders too?’ Sarah asked and he found himself nodding without thinking. If just his head and neck felt this good, his shoulders would feel—

He sat upright, his shoulder straightening, and pulled out of Sarah’s touch as she tried to reach under his t-shirt. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, a tremor of fear in his hushed voice.

‘I was just going to— It’s easier to do it directly to skin than through—’

‘No.’ He pulled the neck of the T-shirt higher, back over his shoulders, and flung the towel he’d dried his hair with around his neck again to put an end to the matter completely. ‘I changed my mind; just cut my hair.’

‘Okay,’ she replied. He heard the unsure tone in the single word, but was grateful she didn’t ask any further questions. He watched as she picked up the comb and ran it through his locks, before she finally took the silvery scissors in hand. He closed his eyes as she lowered them to his hair—

Snip, snip, snip. Pause, brush of the comb. Snip, snip, snip. Pause, brush… The same routine over and over as she pulled his hair this way then that as she cut in the style she envisaged for him. He wasn’t actually sure he was okay with losing his long hair. Sure he was approaching his mid-thirties and a shorter cut would probably be more suited to the roles he’d start getting considered for soon, but he’d maintained it for so long… The beard too.

God, what if it was a mess? What if he didn’t look that much different? What if he didn’t suit short hair any more? Lars would kill him!

He shook his head at the thought, earning him a displeased mew from Sarah. She tutted and brushed his hair harder as if that could fix whatever little error he’d caused and carried on. A few minutes later she finally said, ‘Okay, nearly there.’

He took a deep, shuddering breath as she moved around the room. He heard a bag rustling before she uttered a triumphant ah-ha! And counted her steps back to him. The pop of a pot being unscrewed for the first time, the air escaping with the initial break of the seal before the lid unwound its way from the container made him jump a little. He heard her put it on the table just a moment before her fingers were back in his hair, pulling his much shorter but still thick locks this way then that as she styled it into what he was sure was going to be some ultra-trendy young style.

He ground his teeth at the thought. He wasn’t in his twenties any longer. He didn’t want to look as he had back then on the covers of Teen Dream and Sweetness.

‘There,’ she finally declared, dropping her hands away from him. ‘All done.’

He had no excuse now, no reason not to look. With dread deep in his gut he slowly opened his eyes to meet his reflection’s gaze.

He blinked in surprise. She’d actually done a good job. Long on top and shorter at the sides, but not too short, no scalp peeking through. It ever so slightly swept from left to right, but generally spiked up throughout the top in a fake I-just-got-out-of-bed style. He didn’t look anything like he had back in his break-out days. His hair was back to it’s original golden-brown; all the blond dye gone. It framed his face well, ensuring that he still looked filled out rather than slender, and he had to admit that the longer hair and the beard had made him look years older than he actually was. This made him look a good five years younger. A lot fresher. If he were auditioning again, this would be perfect—versatile, almost a blank slate.

Perhaps that’s what this was; a second chance. A shot at reinventing himself, starting his life over. He was mesmerised by the difference as he turned this way and that, and felt Sarah’s eyes watching him for a moment before she began to tidy up the evidence of their activity.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his eyes flickering up to hers before darting back to look at his hair. ‘You’ve done a great job. I shouldn’t have doubted you.’

Sarah paused her tidying and met his eyes in the mirror; a luscious green forest meeting tropical waters. She studied him, puckering her lips as if she were going to say something, but she hesitated and instead shook her head and told him, ‘You’re welcome.’

She carefully took the towel from his shoulders—he noticed she didn’t touch him—and shook it out, letting the hair fall to meet the rest on the dust sheet.

‘I’m going for a shower now,’ she told him, before grabbing the fabric roll she’d put the stylist set in. Luc watched her as she left the room, her body stiff and he wondered for a brief moment what it would be like to let her touch his skin, to allow her to massage away the scars Linda had left.

He shook his head of the thought; Linda had cut far too deep for far too long…

Any questions, please drop them in the comments. Next update on Friday!

[youcantfiremebecauseiquit]

theguitardiary said: I love finding new music! Especially when you’re not expecting it. We seem to have similar tastes in music! Who do you listen to now in this modern age? There’s only a handful of bands I like but I’m convinced there’s more out there. They’re just not as well known.

Yes, it seems so!  :)

Hmm, i don’t like that much of modern bands, if saying modern we mean completely new bands with young people being around for a couple of years. I’m aware that i probably don’t search enough, but these days i don’t even know where to look for bands, 2000-2009 days were much easier in this case.  Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes i look at new trendy bands and just can’t treat them seriously, for example i take one look at this Youngblud guy and i don’t have to listen to him to know he’s just another variation of 5 seconds of summer or 21 pilots or Imagine Dragons shit. “New British rock poet” lol, i just can’t. Or Pale Waves, they dress like tumblr goths so you expect goth music, but they play watery pop and the girl says she wants to be like Taylor Swift and Avril Lavigne. I listened to Avril Lavigne in elementary school, but ever since i found lots of actual punk/rock artists and it’s not like it’s the best thing under the earth (anyone remembers times when Avril Lavigne was the biggest faux pas in rock circles?). It’s just some weird trend with people my age/younger becoming some “punk rock/indie queens” with edgy mall goth looks, and of course press falls all over itself in praises and calling them new punk rock princesses and whatnot, and it turns out they don’t listen to classic stuff, they all actually listened to Taylor Swift and want to be Avril Lavigne, each and everyone. This or hair metal bands.  I’m not saying it’s neccesarily a crime, but it’s such a common thing, you can see how they compile clothes or videos or even straight up stylize their own songs after “Let Go” or “Under My Skin”. I’m all for nostalgia, but “imitation is the highest form of flattery” saying isn’t an explanation, all that flattery mostly ends up as clowning and copying rather than a wink to your influences. What’s with all that recent acceptance for copying and ripping off older artists? We reached the point where the world is obsessing over old cringe tumblr aesthetics sold as “new wave”, with skinwalking this rock star or another. Everybody claps and grins as if they haven’t seen it all somewhere else before. And then we have horrors like Starcrawler ripping off Katie Jane Garside look and everyone being fine with it. Develop some sort of personality, make up a new one if you dont’ have it, stop ripping off your teenagehood idols, ffs.

*End of a massive modern bands rant*  

For the record, I’m sure there are some good independent bands, but i honestly don’t know where to find them and i admit i’m very picky. 

Forever Still - at first they may look like a “throwaway Arch Enemy opera metal lady + a bunch of black-wearing random guys” type of band, but thankfully it’s not the case. Maja Shining has an actual personality and a pretty voice. They’re from Denmark, they play alt rock with melodic vocals, mainly a cross between calmer ballads and more metal songs, people compared them to Evanescence because of a trained vocals singer and emotional lyrics, but to me they’ve developed a thing of their own. They use elements of metal, but they actually have memorable riffs and melodies. There’s also a lot of piano in their music and on “Breathe In Colors” (and live shows) they use theremin, which is rarely used instrument in rock. 

 This band is very impressive, i followed them since their independent days, they eventually were signed by Nuclear Blast but they literally did everything themselves, from cover art to music videos to producing their music. The bass player  was apparently an apprentice of Metallica producer/engineer, don’t remember which one though, and you can hear it, i believe they were recording stuff at home but their early songs were top notch in production. It’s funny how their first EPs and first album were self released and sold through internet and yet they sounded like a major label band! And they could literally go on without signing anyone cause they got fans and were selling CDs and merch themselves, but Nuclear Blast got interested in them and they got signed. For a modern day band, they’re doing pretty well which is impressive especially considering everything they achieved, they did it themselves. I think 15 years ago they would be bigger, blame rock’s role in mainstream, or lack thereof. If it was 2003, they would be MTV’s favourites probably. They take care about even small things and i’d say a part of the success is how they’re all in contact with fans instead of playing big rock stars. They toured with Lacuna Coil, Children of Bodom, etc. 

Also CONCEPT ALBUMS! They do concept albums. First album “Tied Down” was more emotion driven with ups and downs of a sort, calm and aggressive points, the newest one is much heavier and electronic. “Tied Down” is about depressed person going through some shit and then idk letting go of toxic stuff, “Breathe In Colors” album is much cooler to me, cause it’s darker and heavier and has that electronic cathastrophic decay feeling, i’d say it’s their “Blade Runner” record (i’d say the cover and “Breathe In Colors” video are direct references), especially since they said they were inspired by “Blade Runner” and “Akira”. It’s been released in 2019 and it’s cool, cause i really missed that sort of element in music, the “social fear of the future”/”digital era emptiness” kind of cyberpunk stuff that was in before turn of the century.

I’d say to listen/watch  Miss Madness ,  Scars , Break The Glass   Rewind  Breathe In Colors

Bandcamp: https://foreverstill.bandcamp.com/

Destructive Daisy - that’s an all-girl grunge band from my country, Poland. Unfortunaly they no longer exist i think, they stopped posting/playing apparently... They were a big hype awhile back, cause they were the only grunge girl band in Poland (at least that we knew of), they’ve got some attention after they released EP and they even supported Mudhoney at their Poland show in 2013 or so. Then they recorded Ophelia’s Dreams album in 2016 and vanished. That’s a shame, cause althought i wasn’t so crazy about them at the time, they’ve got some nice songs and they had those L7 / 7 Year Bitch kinda grunge girl vibes and people looked up to them expecting some next move, but i guess everyone expected too much from them and they played for fun without big plans, idk.  

I’d recommend Destructive Daisy EP. Haven’t listen to their stuff in a few years tbh.

Bandcamp: https://destructivedaisy.bandcamp.com/

Hmm, i only listened to select songs from Le Butcherettes and never cared enough to follow their new records, I like this video:

But I like that weird crossover the chick (Teri Gender Bender? I think that was her name) did with... Melvins. I’m a simple man, I see Melvins, i click.  The band’s Crystal Fairy and it’s been a bit of surprise to me. I don’t know if they tour/plan anything more, i suppose it’s a one-off project from 2017. But the album is dope. It’s very Melvins though, don’t know how much of guitar work is done by Teri, to me it’s 100% Melvins and she probably wrote lyrics and melodies, but i don’t know. “Crystal Fairy”, “Sweet Self” however sounds to me like Teri composition. Hard to tell, cause to me both bands have some “twisted blues” quality, it’s just Melvins are heavier. It’s basically Melvins led by a female. If anyone ever wondered how it’s like to have female-fronted Melvins, this is it. 

https://crystalfairy.bandcamp.com/ 

I like Evanescence and Linkin Park, but that’s not exactly “modern” anymore, haha. When you know for example “In The End” song is 20 years old... crazy. Most surprising band i listen to is maybe Sum 41. All the older bands and punks hated them a lot before and call it pop punk, and yes, they had a few irritating happy boys songs, but they’ve got some darker “punk-metal” albums. They had the best guitar skills of those pop punk bands from 00′s, added a good deal of metal (”Chuck”) and piano (”Screaming Bloody Murder”) at some point, but they’re totally fine if someone likes that fast melodic punk like Green Day or NOFX. 

Maybe also White Lung, i don’t know all of their albums and listen to it more casually, but it’s female fronted and they’ve got that various layered guitars sound. 

Ok that’s it, if i were to tell you in person, i’d probably say 3 words, but in writing i always end up writing long essays :p 

If anyone else following this blog has any recommendations of new bands, of course you can send me in ask!