#however one corner of this mattress has collapsed and i have to sleep with 3 pillows to compensate

[gravehags]

in bed at 7pm with indigestion wyd guys

[aria-i-adagio]

Fourth Try’s Not the Charm

for @autumnofanders Day 3: Kinloch

Wordcount: ~2100 Rating: T

CW: templar abuse, imprisonment, hurt/comfort

Anders didn’t plan his fourth escape from Kinloch Hold. It was a crime of opportunity. About two months after his Harrowing, some of the senior enchanters talked the Greagoir into letting them take the recently harrowed mages outside to teach them some spells that could be used with water - in the water. Supposedly, they could be trusted now. Allowed a bit more leeway.

He wasn't planning on doing anything except enjoying the sun, but once he's mastered a spell that creates an artificial current - intended to propel a boat - well, it only made sense to see if the same spell would work for a human body.

Yes.

And by the grace of Andraste or some other power, no one notices when he takes as deep of a breath as he can manage, ducks under the water, and reemerges a good fifty yards closer to shore.

Anders hides out on an overgrown bank for the rest of the day, then steals some clothes from a line and a handful or two of carrots from the ground in the little village beside the docks, and then he's gone.

It takes them one month and five days to find him in Amaranthine.

Anders is already pretty beat up when they get him back to the Tower. Greagoir is infuriated - angrier than Anders has ever seen him - and orders a public whipping to get his point across. Thirty lashes. Anders tells himself that he’ll live through that... he thinks. After about ten or so, his mind just sort of drops out, floats away, to nowhere in particular. Just somewhere very, very far away. He’s not really conscious again until someone tosses a bucket of salted water across his back, then two knights are hauling him down the steps and dumping him face-first onto a thin mattress.

The next time he’s aware of anything there’s a woman arguing with the guards outside the door.

“Sorry, ma'am, but the Knight-Commander wants him to be an example.”

“He won't make a very good example if he's dead, will he?” A very stern, determined woman. Wynne. Just what he needs. A warm, maternal tongue lashing. “Let me through. I won't do anything other than drive out infection.”

“Let her pass. Drop the dampening wards for her as well.”

The door creaks open. Anders can’t tell if the light in the cell increases. His face is too well hidden in his arms. Wynne touches his bicep and shakes him until he groans and turns his head to the side. “Hi, Mom.”

“You are the damnedest fool I’ve ever met.” Wynne tweaks his ear. “Don't you realize how much trouble you create for the rest of us? How worried some of us were about you?”

“I'm not the problem. If they didn’t -”

She sighs. “I’ve heard all of this from you before. You’re old enough to know better.”

Heat radiates from her hands as they hover over Anders’ back. It’s not a full healing spell, but it will keep the open welts from getting infected. And possibly calm the fever that Anders can tell is running dangerously high. Might get an interesting dream or two out of it to pass the time.

“That’s all I’m allowed to do.” Wynne gathers his hair at the base of his neck and brushes the back of her hand over his temple and cheek. “They're leaving you down here for two months and ten days, Anders.”

“Ah, I'll get caught up on my sleep.”

“Don’t jest. I suggest using the time to pray for some wisdom.” She pats his cheek and stands up. “You're smarter than this. You have a lot to offer if you would just learn to accept reality.”

***

Light. Even the limited light of Kinloch Hold’s entry hall is more than Anders can hand;e after two months and change in the dark. An unsympathetic Templar shoves him toward the door that leads into the library. They’re done taking him apart. If any of the other mages want to bother putting him back together, he’s their problem now.

Karl grabs him almost as soon he staggers into the library and shakes him by the shoulders. “You moron.” Then he leans close and kisses him. “You fucking idiot.”

Anders winces at the contact. A kick in the side is about as much human interaction as he’s experienced in the past... however long. In the dark, time collapses and expands in unpredictable ways.

Dark. His vision goes dark around the edges, and his knees give up.

Karl catches him and pulls Anders’ arm across his shoulder, holding him up. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Anders hadn’t had the time to fully explore the quarters where the mages who had survived the Harrowing but who weren’t yet enchanters slept. The baths off to the side are about the same as the ones in the apprentices’ dorm though. Cast iron tubs with chips in the enamel and a few folding screens to approximate privacy. Hand pumps for water. A drain in the floor for the same.

They’re on the second tub of water, and Anders is beginning to worry about just what Karl used as a bribe to get this much water and time. “I’m going to have to cut these out.” Karl has been trying for what seems like hours now to work loose the mats in Anders’ hair. Or maybe they’ve only been here a few minutes; Anders isn’t sure.

“Go ahead,” he mumbles.

“Maker, baby...” Karl pushes lightly on the back of his head. Anders lets his chin fall forward onto his chest. The sound of metal scraping together grates against his ears as Karl begins snipping clumps out of his hair. Karl is careful, working slowly and pushing his fingers along Anders’ scalp to keep from cutting the skin by mistake. It’ll grow back. Just like skin does.

He rests his elbows on the edge of the tub and lets his fingers dangle in the water. It’s warm, he knows, but he can’t really feel it, any more than he could really feel the rough fabric of a washcloth scrubbing across his skin.

“What are you humming?” Karl is still trimming, maybe trying to even out the length.

“Am I humming?” Anders started singing to himself maybe a week, maybe two, after he was left alone. Then it turned to humming. He doesn’t even think about it now.

Karl leans around him, scoops up a double handful of water, and rinses out his hair. “There we go.” He presses his cheek against Anders, beard prickling against freshly shaven skin. “Let’s get you dried off and dressed. Do you want to try to walk a bit? The garden is still nice.”

Anders can’t find the energy to respond or even to raise his hand and investigate the feeling of short hair. Karl decides for him, guiding him to the kitchens and begging a bowl of soup and a thick chunk of bread from one of the Tranquil cooks. He sits across from Anders, watching as he eats. Anders doesn’t finish the food, his stomach starts to feel tight and painful before he’s even halfway through. He stares at the surface of the thin soup and stirs it absently.

“Can’t eat more? They’ve starved you too.” Karl reaches across the table and touches his face, frowning when Anders reflexively pulls away. “I’ve never seen your cheeks so hollow.”

“Shoulda left the beard then.”

Karl almost smiles. “Let’s try to stretch your legs a bit then.”

Even though the autumn day is overcast, the garden is almost too bright. Anders has to pull up the hood of his robe to shade his eyes before he can bear it, and he isn't able to walk far before he has to sit down on one of the stone benches. So much for running.

The walled garden is busy with mages trying to catch a bit of sun before winter sets in, but everyone except Karl gives him a wide berth. Anders has no complaints, he can barely manage to not cry with delight from hearing other human voices - or to panic because he’s no longer accustomed to hearing the sounds of people interacting with each other and going about their business.

How much he can stand to be touched comes and goes, but after the first several times Anders flinched away, Karl waits for him to initiate anything, not even daring to hold his hand. It’s probably safer for Karl if that remains the case. Anders just creates trouble for anyone who cares about him.

“You should go. They’ll be watching anyone with me.”

“Fuck that. Besides, I’m already marked.”

“I’m sorry, Karl.” Anders slumps against his shoulder, blinking rapidly in a futile attempt to not start crying. Maybe it’s just the light causing his eyes to water.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart.”

“Can we go back inside? I’m tired.” He hadn’t expected to be tired after spending so much time sleeping.

“Yes. If that’s what you want.”

***

Anders’ bed is just as he left it. No one had taken the opportunity to steal a desirable lower bunk tucked into the corner. A sign of respect? Or just Karl zealously guarding it? Who knows?

Anders crawls in and lays down gingerly on the mattress. His back is finally whole as of an hour or two ago when Karl peeled the filthy shirt off him, squeaked in dismay, and healed the one or two remaining welts that had been stubbornly refusing to close up. But Anders has gotten accustomed to moving with care to avoid reopening them. It’ll be some time before he’ll be able to bring himself to move carelessly, freely again.

Anders curls on his side and lays his head down on the large pillow, wrapping his arms around the much smaller one his mother gave him. The threads of the artful needlework are beginning to fade, much like the memory of her face.

Karl shakes out a blanket, drapes it over him, and starts to pull the curtains around the bed.

“No.” All the muscles in Anders’ body tighten, and his right calf spasms painfully. “Stop.”

Karl freezes. His eyes widen then soften with something between pity and pain of his own. Anders reaches out to him. “Will you stay with me? Please. Please don’t leave me alone. And not in the dark.”

Karl sits on the edge of the bed and strokes Anders’ hair. The short length transfers more of the sensation to his scalp, and Anders chokes back the sob that the gentle contact elicits.

“Do you want me to lay down with you?”

Anders nods. His throat is too tight to speak. Karl crawls into bed next to him and pulls the curtains around it partially closed, leaving at least some light streaming in. He folds one arm under his head and continues stroking Anders' hair and cheek.

“I’ve missed you,” Karl whispers.

Three, nearly four months, counting the time Anders was on the run and if in fact, Greagoir had only left him locked up for the time he first named and hadn’t conveniently forgotten about him for a few days or weeks more than promised.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not the problem. It’s this miserable place.”

“Keep talking.” Anders hasn't heard voices that weren't gruff commands in so long. “Please. Anything. Tell me what happened while I was...” His voice trails off.

“Hmm... Amaury finished his thesis. He’s got two apprentices now. One accidentally set a tree in the garden on fire last week. He let the Templars scramble for a minute or two before extinguishing it.”

Anders smiles, even if he can't quite find the strength to laugh.

“Speaking of Templars, two were caught at it in a stairwell the other day, and dear Knight-Captain Maude is furious because she'd been tupping one of them, but she can't say anything of course, because you know Greagoir frowns on cross rank relationships. So that's been a bit fun to watch.”

“Ah, so much honor and self-restraint from our selfless protectors.”

“As always. Let’s see... The Formari were asked to up their production of goods. I guess the Chantry didn’t get enough donations this year, or some Revered Mother wants new drapery for her halls. Pity that increased speed increases mistakes. Exponentially, of course.”

“Of course.” The Tranquil within the Formari might not care about being asked to do more, but the enchanters would find subtle ways to indicate their displeasure.

“Enchanter Ines managed to arrange another research trip, so every mage with any training in botany or herbalism is jockeying for a position. Have you ever seen what happens when a growth spell is cast on a fly trap?”

“Please tell me the overgrown carnivorous plant caught a Templar.” Anders manages a chuckle. “I should ask to go. Ines loves me. Maybe I could take a vow of silence."

"Now, now -” Karl kisses the tip of his nose. “Don't make promises you can’t keep.”

[darknessisafriend]

The world will be ours Part 5

OMG and here we are final chapter as promised I’m so excited to share it with you all <3

ALSO LONG CHAPTER (equivalent to 20 word format pages) SO TAKE YOUR TIME

Link to the previous chapter for the new people :) Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3  ; Part 4

He looked at the sky, the Sun was brighter than he thought, almost blinding him…Maximus had aimed well, but it will not be enough to kill him, he had to survive, for you…and his baby…he still couldn´t believe it, his own flesh and blood…speaking of which...he could feel blood slowly coming out of his wound, thick, warm, damping his hair, tainting his white clothes crimson red…the arena was silent, as if they were shocked he had fallen…he was simply resting, catching his breath…he felt a bit tired now…he wanted to close his eyes and sleep...he managed to turn his head to look at you from afar, so beautiful, pure and…afraid, why were you crying? He wanted you in his arms, dry your tears...he would do anything to feel your skin against his right now...suddenly, he felt strength coming back to his body, as if the gods had wept and gave him their strength to finish the fight so he could have you in his arms once again. He clenched his jaw, as he pushed himself back up, gritting his teeth at the pain in his neck, blood coming in his mouth, his armor felt heavy on his shoulders, he felt slightly dizzy but that won´t stop him, no one will push him away from you, not now that he was finally happy and loved...he finally saw Maximus, he was limping, on the verge of collapsing.  

Slowly Commodus, took one step after another, his eyes never leaving his enemy, until he was finally before him, he wanted this to be other with, without a second thought he pushed his blade into the gladiator´s flesh, he approached his face closer to the man´s.

“Go. Find your wife and son Maximus…” he murmured to the man, all traces of hatred gone to be replaced by respect, Maximus had almost won against the Emperor. The man heavily collapsed on the floor, his eyes closing as he took his last breath.

He was dead, for good now. And Commodus had won, finally showing who he was, the legitimate Emperor of Rome…he lifted his left arm in the air, yes, he was still standing, and the people started to applaud, timidly at first, then Commodus heard people screaming “Commodus the invincible!”, he couldn’t help but smile at this nickname, the crowd was now roaring, calling his name, they loved him in the end.  

Suddenly, from the corner of his eyes, he saw one of the entrances to the battleground open, a silhouette running towards him, his vision was blurry, he squinted his eyes to distinguish who was coming towards him in such hurry; until he recognized you, tears of relief and happiness started to run down his cheeks, he gathered all the strength he had left to walk in your direction and finally heavily collapsed in your arms.  

“I got you, it’s going be okay, you’re going be okay”  you assured him and to yourself at the same time, there was so much blood; tears were running down your cheeks too, you wished his armor wasn´t on him anymore so you could feel his heartbeat, be sure he was alive, he was panting against your collarbone, his blood staining your dress; but you couldn´t care less, right know your priority was to get Commodus out of the bloody sand of the arena.  

“Commodus, my love, you have to keep going.” you told him encouragingly, gently slapping his cheek to keep him conscious, you didn´t want him to lose more blood by crossing the arena, but the senators who doubted him were still watching, like vultures around a wounded animal, if he crosses the arena without falling unconscious he will have earned their respect...as cruel as it was...

He took a few ragged breaths, trying to find strength to lift his head from your shoulder, he gave you a trembling smile, his eyes foggy, at least he was still responding to your calls, that was a good sign. You moved to the side to pass an arm around his waist and put his other hand on your shoulder to support him, one by one he weakly moved his feet under your encouragements, the crowd cheered louder, they were seeing him as demi-god now. The pretorians, even the General saluted him as he walked. Falco and others senators who supported Commodus had entered in the arena to congratulate their emperor.

“Y/N... the Empress will...be in command as I recover...” he ordered as you arrived close to them, some of them looked briefly surprised but then bowed they head respectfully. There were a few meters left until he was away from the look of the People.

“You can do it love, we’re almost there.” you encouraged him once again, tightening your grip around his waist as you felt him stumble. When you finally arrived backstage, Commodus’s legs gave way, he collapsed on the floor, physicians were instantly around him to look at his bleeding wound.

“I won Y/N...d-do you...think father would have been proud?” he asked you with teary eyes and a boyish face as he seized your hand, you knelt next to him, kissing his knuckles fondly.

“He would have been proud of your bravery and proud that you kept your promise to come back to me.” you answered with worried smile, tears in yours eyes; all he ever wanted was to be loved by his own family.

“Good...good...” he repeated feeling relief wash over him. His eyelids felt heavy, his eyes started to flutter until they closed, the grip of his hand on yours disappearing.

“Commodus? Commodus!” you panicked as he laid still, no he couldn’t, not now!  one of the physicians quickly went to check his pulse.  

“He’s alive but he needs care, we need to stitch his wound fast, as soon as we reach the palace...”

“No do it here.” you objected urgently.  

“But...”

“That’s an order, the crowd is gathered outside, we will take too much time to reach the palace.” you interrupted him harshly, there was no time to lose.  

“Very well, my queen.” Answered the physician as he bowed his head respectfully. You didn’t want to let go of your lover’s hand but the doctors needed space to take care of him properly, they took off his armor and opened his shirt, fully revealing the extent of the wound, there was a lot of blood, part of his shirt was soaked in it. You were in shock, your eyes never leaving his bloodied body, how could a human lose so much blood. Lucius came to stand by your side, worried by his uncle state, as for Lucilla, she barely looked at her brother and went in the arena, probably to go see Maximus dead body, you clenched your jaw, she dared to show openly she cares more about a gladiator rather than the Emperor himself.    

“Bring me tepid water and vinegar!” the doctor ordered to a guard nearby, who in return ran to get it in the gladiator's sick room; he quickly came back, giving it to the physician; as he cleaned the wound which was deep in his collarbone, he realized it hadn’t stop bleeding, he looked at the other physician who got up asking for the dagger of the general, who had joined you. You frowned, what did he want to do?! The General looked at you waiting for an answer.

“The wound is bleeding too much, we have to cauterize it!” explained the man urgently, you quickly nodded as you understood, embarrassed that you had briefly thought about such thing. The physician heated the blade in the flames of a lighting fire; soon, the blade became bright red, you winced when you imagined the pain Commodus was going to go through, the doctor took it, approached the Emperor’s body, he lowered down the blade on his skin, generating smoke and the smell of burned flesh, you put your hands on your mouth at this horrible smell, and it worsened, the pain was so intense that Commodus came back to consciousness, screaming, the other physician was holding him so he would hurt himself as he struggled to break free from the pain, Lucius grabbed your waist, burying his head in your dress under the shock, you covered his ears with your hands trying to lessen the sounds of the screams of his uncle; you wanted to run in his arms and appease him but it was for his own good, if he wanted to get through the night.  

As the doctor took off the blade, Commodus’s head collapsed in exhaustion, sweat on his forehead, he was panting exhausted, until he went unconscious once again.

As they made sure bleeding had been stopped, Commodus could be brought back to the imperial palace, the people had assembled along the avenue leading to the palace, chanting his name, what a shame he had to go fight in the arena to be respected...as you arrived at the palace, the doctors still had to stitch the other wound on his arm and prepare medicine to help in his recovery; despite the fact that they encouraged you not to watch this and go rest, you stayed by his side, you won’t leave him, not until you were sure he will be out of danger.

“He is stabilized, there shouldn’t be any complication.” you sighed in relief at those words “however he will need a lot of rest and good care, he has lost an important amount of blood” recommended the physician as he dried his hands on a piece of cloth. You offered them a good amount of gold to thank them for their excellent work, now the physicians of the palace will watch over him. Commodus was placed in your common bedroom, probably the place where he would be the safest and the more at peace to heal.  

You gently sat down on the mattress, afraid that any movement could hurt him or awake him in his very needed sleep. You had asked a servant to bring you a bowl of water and a clean cloth which you damped and gently applied on your husband sweaty forehead, you couldn’t help but be worried for him, it wasn’t a peaceful sleep, he was slightly frowning, in pain, it was as if even sleeping was difficult for his mind and body. Quietly, you moved to the other side of the bed, and lied down, underneath the sheets, fully facing him, you scooted closer to him until your forehead was brushing against his arm, very gently you placed a feather like kiss on his burning hot and freshly stitched wound, your hand went down to caress his forearm, until you reached his hand and entwined your fingers with his. You hoped he could feel you, feel that he was not alone, not abandoned, you will always be by his side until the end.

You didn’t sleep much that night, you always tried to stay awake to make sure he was alright, that he was still breathing. And he did, but he didn’t wake up, it was probably normal, due to his exhaustion but deep down you couldn’t help but think that he might never wake up, it’s something that could happen right? You shook your head chasing away those negative thoughts, the fatigue was probably responsible for this state of mind. You dressed yourself up but didn’t leave the bedroom, something could happen to him while you're gone; but then a servant knocked at your door, you invited them in, he was accompanied by Falco.

“Forgive me for disturbing your vigil my Queen...” he apologized inclining his head. “I am coming on behalf of the Senate to inquire on the state of our Emperor.” he added formerly. You touched your lover's forehead with the back of your hand, it was cool.

“He doesn’t have fever; and he didn’t get any complication, it is a good sign...but he didn’t wake up yet...” you explained on a sad tone blinking away the tears forming in your eyes.

“He is a strong man, he showed it to the entire Empire yesterday...” he said in a way to reassure you, you pinched your lips together, thanking him with a small worried smile.  

“I am also coming for a second reason...the Emperor has given you full command of the Empire, the Senate is requesting your presence, while Commodus is recovering, the Empire has to continue living in order and peacefully.”

“I understand.” you nodded, remembering Commodus order, you suddenly realized what he said and felt pressure build in your chest, you were going to rule the Empire, all by yourself, well there was the Senate but still, it was a great responsibility. So, you asked to your most trusted men to watch over the Emperor; as you started to leave the bedroom, from the corner of your eyes you noticed the small form of Lucius behind a column. Soften by his sudden shyness you smiled at him, he came out of his hide and came to stand in front of you, looking in the direction of the bed where was laying Commodus.

“How is my uncle?” he asked you worried; you caressed his head comfortingly.

“He is still sleeping, he needs a lot of rest.” you answered softly, the young boy lowered his head in disappointment, he was worried and he wanted talk about this epic fight with him  

“I promise you; you will be the first one to know when he wakes up.” you added, his head shot up and he genuinely smiled “you can stay by his side if you want.” you offered, he happily walked to the bedroom, standing next to his uncle. You smiled, he really loved him like a father. You left for the Senate relieved to have another person to look after Commodus and who care about his well-being.

The session with the Senate was surprisingly calmer than you expected, most of the senators were friendly to you and open for dialogue. Thankfully for you, you only had to deal with daily tasks, there was no Empire matter for now, and you appreciated the input of the Senate, it is true that they tend to speak and debate for hours, simply opposing their view on matters, and that was the problem, now that you had heard their point of view, you thanked them for their input and decided what to do.  

“What about the speaker for the assembly? since senator Gracchus betrayed the Empire, we don’t have any.” asked a senator, supported by the voices of his colleagues, they were probably expecting to have Falco, chosen, after all he had been quite close to Commodus since he started. However, to appease the Senate, it was better to give them the choice.

“Well, dear senators, I leave you this decision, vote, and I and Commodus shall respect the voice of the Senate.” you declared, and you were right, they were pleasantly surprised, it will take a few days to elect a speaker; you decided to take your leave, you had to write a letter to tell your parents you were expecting, and then you had another matter to take care of...Lucilla.  

Speaking of which, you found her in front of the imperial bedroom, she wasn’t authorized to get close to Commodus, not until you talked to her. When she noticed you, you motioned for her to follow you for a walk.

“How is Commodus?” she asked, you scoffed ‘as if she cared about his well-being.’

“Don’t tell me you’re worried for him now. You conspired with Gaius and Gracchus...” you retorted, not even looking at her.

“It was for the good of Empire and...”

“Oh yeah? And what good is that?! He did nothing wrong but quicken the process of decision for the Empire...and he’s your brother! If you had supported him, he wouldn’t have ended up in the arena, you wanted him to be killed out of cold blood!” you snapped letting out your anger.

“He killed my father and Maximus’s family!” she hissed in response, ‘touché’ you thought.

“Oh, I know about that...what has happened cannot be changed Lucilla and... I understand why he did it...except perhaps for the gladiator’s family...” you recognized honestly.

“Then you know, he is not a sane man!” you shook your head with a sad smile.

“Before we arrived in Rome, I remembered a loving sister, who would do anything for her little brother. Lucilla, please listen to me when I say that he is changing, with me he is going better, he only wanted to be loved and make his father proud...please I don’t want to lose you, you’re my friend...” you begged her, taking her hands in yours, hoping she would feel your sincerity, despite your anger for her the past weeks, you still remembered her kindness, she stayed silent for a few seconds, until a strangled cry escaped her lips, then tears ran down her cheeks.

“Come here.” you spoke as you took her in your arms, caressing her hair, she was torn apart as you had reminded her the affection she used to have for her brother.

You stayed with her until she calmed down, you had managed to convince her to give him a chance, otherwise you had promised to convince him to exile her and Lucius, where she would live away from him.  

You left her to go back to Commodus, you approached his bed, his sleepy breathing was steady, as if he was only sleeping, peacefully, you found yourself smiling, you were eager for him to wake up and be in his arms, kissing and giggling just like before. As you arrived at the bed you noticed a form curled up next to your husband, it was Lucius, he was sleeping, you smiled, it made you think about the little being growing inside your belly, made with love, Commodus will be such a good father you knew it, and Lucius will be happy to share his life with another child. You asked a servant to get Lucilla to pick up her son, then, you sat down next to the boy, gently nudging his shoulder to wake him up.

“Is it morning already?” he asked groggily as he opened his eyes, you chuckled pushing away the strands of hair he had on his eyes.

“No but you stole my place in the bed.” you joked; he released a playful smile, until it faded to be replaced by a more serious expression.  

“Why does my mom and uncle hate each other now?”  

“They...don’t hate each other, deep down I believe they care about each other, it’s just...”

“Is because of the gladiator?”

“Partly yes.” you admitted, still he was too young to fully understand the truth.

“I liked him, he was a great warrior but uncle is even stronger, and he is my family...I was sc...I prayed he would win against the gladiator, because family is the most important and Rome needs its Emperor.”

“Exactly.” you replied tenderly caressing his cheek, you heard Lucilla’s steps coming closer, she helped Lucius up.

“Sorry...” she apologized, quickly laying her eyes on her for the first time since the fight, a hint of worry seemed to flash through her eyes.

“Don’t worry, he simply cares a lot about Commodus and I appreciate someone caring for him while I’m away.” you responded patting the head of Lucius, she wished you goodnight, and you finally went to bed, snuggled against your lover, your hand on his belly, lulled by his calm breathing.

The next day you offered to organize some honorific funerals for Maximus, Lucilla was very thankful to you for that and Lucius too; after all he was a great gladiator and former general, he deserved some respect. Part of the people who had seen the fight saluted his body as it came out of the arena, paying respect to him and then going back to their occupation. You didn’t go, Lucilla was the representative of the imperial family.

And you were busy with the Senate and as you worked with them days after days, you were convinced that Commodus needed to keep the Senate but simply use it differently, you hoped that he will accept to hear you on this matter. You missed him so much, his voice, his touch, you could only hope he would wake up soon...

“I am pleased to announce you that our wheat stocks are full again, it should be able to cover 2 years of bad harvesting if it were to happen.” you announced to the senators, they clapped pleased that it had finally been resolved.

“We will honor the Emperor for this excellent news and you too my queen.”

“Oh thank you I...”  

“He’s awake!” interrupted you the voice of Lucius, he was out of breath, he had run to get you, your heart stopped at this news.

“The Senate can handle the rest of the matters for today, my queen.” said Falco, you didn’t need to hear it twice and ran alongside with Lucius to the bedroom, he was finally awake! You finally reached the bedroom, almost feeling apprehensive. You came next to him you climbed on the bed, kneeling at your sleeping place, his eyes met yours, they were tired but alive, he seemed so relieved to finally see you, you felt your heart flutter, you would have thrown your arms him if he wasn’t wounded in the neck, you felt your eyes going wet, your hand came up to caress his cheek. Your other hand took the cup of water you had asked for and brought it to you lover’s lips, lifting his head with your other hand to help him drink.

“You’re here” he stated his voice still hoarse with the sleep he had.

“Of course.”

“I thought...” he started but then quickly got back to himself “I can’t think straight without you.” he clarified, seizing your hand, planting millions of fervent kisses on your skin, gods you had missed his touch so much.

“I’ve noticed...” you teased him trying to lighten the mood, but then you couldn’t resist against your true emotions, your smile faded, tears threatening to fall.

“I thought I lost you” you let out, tears rolling down your cheeks, you laid your head on his torso, careful not to touch his healing wounds, you closed your eyes listening to his heartbeat, yes he was alive, his heart was really beating, you felt him move his left arm, ignoring the pain to wrap it around your body, so you could snuggle closer to him now, brushing your cheek against his.  

“I’m sorry.”  he apologized, his voice quavering, tears starting to run down his face too “gods Y/N I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” he repeated over and over as he cried in your neck, desperately grabbing the fabric of your dress. You had been so terrified for him, your happiness could have vanished and who knows what would have happened to you and your baby; now he had realized what terrible thing he had done, he could have lost you, forever...

You stayed in each other arms for hours, any other need was secondary now, your cries calmed down to be replaced by silence, enjoying the other’s peaceful breathing, exchanging some sweet and gentle kisses from moment to moment, staring at his gorgeous green eyes that were full of adoration for you.

“Will you sing something for me?” he murmured hopefully after a while, you smiled in response, and started to sing softly in his ear, it was only for him to hear, it was a lullaby your mother used to sing for you when you had trouble sleeping, Commodus sighed in serenity nuzzling against your cheek, his arm hugging you tighter as he was overwhelmed by your voice; he quickly fell back asleep, exhausted, he still needed to recover, you didn’t move, even if this position wasn’t the most comfortable for you, you wanted to stay wrapped in his arms the whole night, you felt like it was the only way to protect him from the others and from himself...

“Hey don’t do that you’ll hurt yourself” you scolded him as he tried to get out of bed.

The next days weren’t easy for Commodus, he had been authorized by the physicians to sit in bed but nothing more, and it was becoming unbearable to him, he was simply bored when you left to accomplish the imperial duties. He had realized how precious and unique his time was with you, he wanted to spend all his time by your side now that he was loved and respected by the people. Thankfully his nephew spent a lot of time with him, talking about his fight or playing board games with him, it distracted him while waiting for you; Lucilla still didn’t dare to talk to him, especially when you weren’t there, who knows how he will react.  

That is when you decided to take care of the matter, Commodus was simply ignoring her existence, but you knew that inside he was truly heartbroken, you had to do something.

“I think you should give her a chance to redeem herself.” you advised him, soothingly stroking his palm with your thumb, he sighed, angry tears in his eyes.

“Why?”  

“I talked with her and I believe she never realized how much you were suffering...I’m not sure she will ever forgive you for what you did but you can try and if it doesn’t work out then she will be exiled.” you suggested.

“Why not kill her? That's what we do to traitors...”

“Think about the consequences! Lucius would be heartbroken if his uncle killed his mother and you can be sure he will become a bigger problem than Maximus ever was.” you insinuated, Lucius is, unless you give birth to a boy, the legitimate heir to the throne of Rome.  

“I don’t want to lose him...” muttered your lover looking at his hands, Lucius was like a son to him. So, he finally accepted to talk to his sister, you stayed as she came in, you wanted to make sure things would go well.  And it went quite well, they were distant to each other at first until the conversation evolved into an argument but at least they were honest in what they said to each other until it died down. To your surprise, Lucilla came to sit on the edge of the bed, next to her brother, she took his hand, he finally looked at her in the eyes, his eyes wet as he was starting to hope he would get his sister back, the one who would teach him lessons, be there for him when he needed. You hid your smile at this scene, maybe you will be a complete happy family after all.

Still, since the fight in the Coliseum, Commodus had even more nightmares than before, and those were violent. You were woken up by him jerking awake, panting.

“Love what’s wrong?” you asked him, you felt yourself becoming quite awake looking around in case there was someone, but no, he had another nightmare. Slowly you rest your hand on his, he jumped at the contact, probably thinking he was still in his nightmare but the moment he turned his head and met your eyes who were shinning under the glow of the small lamps in the room, he burst into tears, ignoring the pain of his wounds he grabbed you into his arms, burying his head in the crook of your neck, his tears wetting your skin, you caressed the back of his head, reassuring him by whispering tender words into his ear. As he started to calm down, he told you about his nightmare.

“I was in the arena...he had wounded me the same...” he sniffled, tightening his arms around you “but I died...they left me laying in the sand, alone...even Lucilla and... you...didn’t even look at me, you cried for Maximus...” he sobbed, tears coming back.

“Oh Commodus...” was the only thing you could say as you closed your eyes, planting a kiss on his collarbone, you didn’t tell him but you were having similar nightmares since the fight, you understood how terrible it felt, how many times you had woken up in the middle of the night, your hand searching for him and when relieved that he was there, you would place your ear against his torso listening to his steady heartbeat, you often cried as silently as you could, you didn’t want him to feel even more guilty than he already was...

Of course, the following morning, you were sure he wouldn’t let you go away from his arms; he had stayed in your embrace the whole night, and when the morning came, he hadn’t moved. To be honest you didn’t want to move either, and since he woke up, the need to feel him, make love to him was growing inside of you.  So, you decided you wouldn’t leave without doing something this morning, and it could only make him feel better; teasingly you started to plant kisses along his jaw, nibbling his earlobe, then you went to tease the sensitive skin of his neck, you smirked as you felt him wake up, his hand went to caress your back, he hummed please to be waken up this way.

As you kissed his collarbone, your hand went under his tunic to caress his belly, you felt his breathing starting to increase, he let out a needy moan to your great pleasure. He couldn’t engage in any kind of physical activity but you could pleasure him in this way, you wanted him to feel desired, that there was only him you would ever taste....

Your fingers went to play with his now hard nipples, then you slowly went down on his body and placed yourself between his legs, he lifted his head to look at what you were about to do, his eyes were clouded with desire, and the vision of you between his legs hardened his member. You lifted his tunic to plant kisses on his lower belly, then his hips until you were stopped by the underwear where your lover was now feeling compressed, you took off his underwear to let out his erection, you looked at Commodus in the eyes as you took it in your mouth, he threw his head back on the pillow at the sensation, letting out an aching grunt.  

He moaned as you licked the bottom of his length, then his fingers buried deep in your hair as you tongue lick its length to the top to capture him in your mouth once again.

“Y/N... Y/N...” he begged in an aching tone. You were going to give him satisfaction, playing will be for another day, you increased the speed of your mouth on his shaft, your tongue expertly licking the tip while your hand moved up and down around his length. You felt him ark as the orgasm reached him, his seed filled your mouth, tasting like salty honey, you licked your lips and went back up trailing gentle kisses on his body before capturing his mouth in a tender kiss.

“Love you.” you breathed against his lips, he was still panting, he happy sight left his lips, then you straighten up to leave the bed and attend your duties but before you could, he catches you by the arm, making you fall back on him, this time he took the lead, deeply kissing you as if he was still starved for your touch.

“Stay” he pleaded against your mouth with a desperate tone.  

“You know I can’t but I’ll be back as soon as it is finished...” you promised, giving him one last peck on his mouth.  

However, you had more work than planned with the Senate and as you got back you had to talk to him about a less pleasant subject. Fun will have to wait later, unfortunately...

“No.”

“Commodus at least listen to my arguments...”

“Why are suddenly fond of the Senate? Did Lucilla do this?! Or was it a senator?” he accused, watching you warily.

“Of course not! Listen I have been assuming your duties for several days now and it made me realize what a colossal task it was...every single moment I wished I was by your side rather than in the Senate or in you study and you know I enjoy politics but this...it’s too much.” you explained, hoping he would believe you, he sighted, shaking his head in defeat.

“What do you propose then? Give full power to them?” he asked in a tired tone, looking at you in the eyes, it was as if he was hurt by your suggestion.

“Of course not! Don’t be silly! I’m talking about restructuring the duties of the Senate, I think you should leave to them the daily tasks and you could still take those decisions but you don’t have to, all the time I mean; you would have full authority over bigger matters, it would give you a bit of time to breath, no one can handle the whole Empire on its sole shoulders and think about the advantages, the people will still like you, they won’t make the difference between the Senate and you and it will allow us to spend more time together.” you explained truthfully resting your hand on his.  

“I would exclusively handle the matters of the Empire, trade, wars, peace...” he thought, looking ahead of him, deeply thinking, it seemed your idea was starting to make sense in his mind.

“Exactly.”

“I would be recognized for that...and I will be in your arms, watching over you and our child” he finally seemed to realize the benefits of giving up a small part of his power. He turned his head to look at you in the eyes, his hand seizing your chin, the pressure was firm, making you remember the danger he sometimes bared in his mind.

“Kiss me” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes possessive, determined. So, you leaned closer to him, placing your lips on his, you could feel tension radiate off of him, his kiss was authoritative, demanding, he wanted to feel in control, so for once you let him do as he pleased, fully taking possession of your body, still he never hurt you and made sure you were feeling pleasure, pleasure that only him made you fee.

The next days he was finally authorized to leave his bed and resume to his duties, he was truly impatient, he wanted to see how Rome was going, what did the Senate think of him now that he had won? what else could he do to increase the empire’s reach and glory? Although, he didn’t feel the same urgency as before, and it was probably because all of his enemies had fallen, and maybe because he had other things to care about now, you and the child you bared each day was becoming is top priority.

So of course, it felt strange to you, when you didn’t see him the whole day, especially after watching over him for days and nights. Fortunately for you, you could spend time with Lucilla again, you were glad she had accepted to give Commodus a second chance.

You caressed your belly that was slowly was starting to extend to make room for your child, a smile formed on your lips, it felt surreal.

“How do you feel?” she asked you affectionately, serving you a cup to drink.

“Good, really good actually, a bit dizzy sometimes, nothing I can´t handle...I hope everything will go well.” you replied, your head full of questions.

“It will, you are a strong woman and you will be surrounded by the best midwives of Rome, you will deliver a beautiful and healthy baby” she tried to reassure you, resting her hand on yours.

“I will honor Devera and Lucina to have their protection” you decided, you will go as soon as you can to pray.

“And I will too, you’ll see the moment you will lay your eyes on your child; gods I remember with Lucius, it was as if the world around me had disappeared, it was just him and me. My husband would sometimes get jealous at the attention Lucius was getting!” you laughed at her comment, imaging a similar scene with Commodus.

She briefly looked past behind you, you frowned but then thought she had simply been distracted by someone, a servant passing by. Until you jumped as you felt arms close around your waist, you instantly relaxed as you recognized your husband scent as he planted a kiss on your bare shoulder.

“I´ll leave you two to it” teased Lucilla as she playfully grinned at you. You made a face like ‘what is she thinking!?’ She silently chuckled then, left to give you intimacy.  

“I missed you.” Commodus breathed against your ear, his voice sending shivers down your spine, his hands went to caressed the small bump on your belly.

“I missed you too, a lot.” you replied, closing your eyes as you enjoyed his warmth surrounding you, you stayed in his embrace until he gently spun you around to make you look at him, he had a boyish grin on his face.

“I have a surprise for you.” he announced as he slides his hands around your hips  

“Really?” you asked excitedly, you put your arms around his neck, caressing the back of his head, he briefly closed his eyes at the sensation, it always made him melt.  

“Yes, you deserve it” he praised, reopening his eyes to look at you.

“What do you mean? I didn´t do anything special” you asked intrigued at his words.

“You did many things that I will cherish until my last breath...you love me when I thought I never will be loved...” he started; his voice charged with emotion “you made me fall for you, which I admit is not something easy to do” he joked, you giggled “you supported me through so many ordeals, and now you have this child growing inside of you, I never dreamt of such beautiful gift.”

“Our child, I wouldn´t have it if you didn´t help” you teased winking at him, he chuckled tenderly looking at you, gently he cupped your face, and placed his lips on your forehead to giving one of those extremely affectionate kisses of which he had the secret.

“Come, we are going out.” he took a dark cape and put it on his head, he didn’t want to be recognized, and he gave you one too, tonight it will be just the two of you, anonymous in the streets of Rome and no one else to disturb, still you noticed Commodus carried his sword around at his hip, just in case.  

You came out of the palace, saluting the guards as you did so, at the bottom of the stairs was waiting a young man, probably a young legionnaire in training, he was holding the rein of two vigorous stallions. It had been a while since you had ridden a horse, since you left Gallia actually, it’s something you always deeply enjoyed, become one with the animal and gallop freely in the fields was unique.

“Thank you young man, here is for you” said Commodus as he handed two golden coins to the man who seemed happier than ever to be payed so well. You went to face the horse, approaching your hand from his muzzle and resting your hand on it, caressing his head up to his forelock.

“Oh, and we’ll take just this one.” added your husband as he took the rein of the stallion you had been petting. You looked at him surprised.

“What? You thought I was going to let you ride a wild animal in this condition? Tsktsktsk out of question.” he explained, you hid a smirk, he was becoming so protective of you. You went to stand in front of the side of the horse, putting your hands on his back; as for Commodus, he bended to take your left leg and help you up, you finally settled on the animal, you watched as the young man came to help him up.  

“Are you sure you can ride a horse with...” you gestured to the wound on his neck.  

“Yes, it’s much less painful now.” he climbed on the horse, and secured you between his arms, your back resting against his torso, you felt his warm breath caressing the skin of your neck.

“Ready?” he asked, you turned your head to look at him.

“Ready for wha-!” you screamed as he gave a sharp heel kick making the horse instantly gallop, you grabbed the hair of the beautiful animal, laughing openly at the speed you had reached, the swaying motion, the fresh air hitting your face, Commodus was laughing too, he felt free, it was music to your ears, you didn’t hear him laugh this much since those days after your first night together.

The streets were full of life tonight but Commodus took the calmer streets to avoid hitting someone with the horse at full speed for several minutes, until you reach a green area, in the middle of Rome, it was the first time you were seeing this place, it looked so peaceful.

“The temple of Vejovis is in there and it’s a beautiful area to walk...” commented Commodus as he had slowed down the horse, when you had entered the park of the temple, the both of you got off the horse and started to walk towards the temple. The area was magnificent, nature all around a pond was right in front of the temple, you felt Commodus fingers brush against yours, almost timidly as if he was asking the permission to take your hand, so you turned your head to look at him in the eyes and smiled, his eyes lighten up as if he couldn’t believe you still loved him, he locked his fingers with yours, sighting happily.  

The both of you entered the temple, it was lit by several lamps, a statue of Vejovis was in the middle of the structure, surrounded by offerings, you went to kneel in front of the statue, Commodus took a few steps to stop in front of the altar.

“Be well, revered Vesta, Goddess of the flame, may you look favorably upon this rite.” he first said as he ignited the fame of a lamp at the feet of the statue.

“Divine Janus, may you be well, may you look favorably upon me, may this oil find favor with you.”  Commodus took out a small vial of what you assumed to be oil, he had been hiding it under his cape, he put it on the offering's altar,  

He took a step back to kneel next you, his hands resting on his thighs, opened and turned towards the sky, he lowered his head and closed his eyes.

“Noble Vejovis, God of healing, I pray to you, may you look kindly on me. I express to you my gratitude for saving my life, guiding me in my healing process and giving me a chance to be happy and loved and accomplish my duties. I ask your grace and favor that you might protect Y/N, my wife as she bares life in her womb, a good health for her to be in my arms for many years and safe delivery of our baby is all I ask...May you know the sincerity of my request by this wine that I offer, may it find favor with you.” he got back up a placed the wine vial on the altar, then saluted the statue respectfully.

“I am grateful for your hearing and I shall cherish every moment you have granted me.” he finished, he turned to face you, helping you to get back up. You were moved by his words; you cupped his jaw.

“Thank you.” you expressed, he tenderly looked at you as he placed a kiss on the inside of your wrist.  

The both of you continued to walk outside hands in hands, enjoying the silence and peace of the place, you stopped at the bank of the pond, taking off your sandals, you put your feet in the fresh water, Commodus lied down, his head resting on your lap, one foot in the water, he looked at peace as he watched the stars shinning in the sky, your fingers went to lightly trace the contours of his face, his eyebrows, his cheekbones, his smooth and soft cheeks you enjoyed to caress so much, the bridge of his nose, the small scar on his upper lip that made him unique...and his lips, those gorgeous lips that loved your body, he was beautiful and you loved him, so much that it hurt, so much that you were willing to accept the darkest aspects of his mind...

“Something’s troubling you.” stated Commodus, your eyes met his, you had been so absorbed by your thoughts that you didn’t realize he had caught you. You knew there was no point in lying to him, you just didn’t want to ruin the moment.

“I’m not sure we should talk about this right now.” a slight worried frown formed on his face instantly. He straightened up, his head leaving your lap.

“Are you alright? Is it the baby?” he asked frantically scanning your face and body for any sign of pain, the fact that he instantly thought about the two of you made your heart ache at was about to follow.

“No, we’re fine...” he sighs in relief “I was just thinking...about something Maximus told me...” upon hearing the name of the man he killed, he thought he would never his name again, his face grew cold, his face eyeing you warily, if you didn’t know him better you would think he was furious at you, but in fact he was terrified, what were you about to tell him?

“He...told me what you did to his wife and son.” you finally revealed, he froze, it seemed he had stopped breathing, your heart was beating fast, you didn’t know how he would react; he swallowed down, his eyes wet. He avoided your gaze, ashamed and feeling terrible he never told you...

“What didn’t you tell me?” you asked as gently as you could, you had felt hurt that he had hid this from you.

“I guess...I don’t know...” he articulated, he looked lost in his thoughts.

“Why would you order such a terrible act? They were innocents...”

“I don’t know!” he raised his voice, stressed out, he quickly met your eyes feeling bad for shouting at you; he blinked away a few tears, he was breathing fast, panicked.  

“Hey, hey look at me.” you urged as you took his face between your hands, he finally looked at you in the eyes, helpless.

“There is no excuse for what I did, I just...did it because my pride was hurt, I murdered innocent people Y/N” he finally confessed, it was a terrible thing to admit, but nothing can be changed anymore.

“And there’s nothing you can do about it but recognize what you did...” you erased a tear with your thumb, then you brought his face closer to yours to kiss him, a desperate moan escaped his lips, you wanted him to be reassured, you still loved him, and nothing will change that. He separated from you, his hands on your shoulders, looking at you in the eyes.

“How can you still love me?” he asked you desperately.

“I don’t know...but I do and I always will Commodus, as long as you love me in return and are a good, fair Emperor.”

“I promise I will never disappoint you ever again” he swore on a pleading tone, you smiled at his sincere oath.

“While we’re at it anything else you want me to know of?”

“Huh...I love you?” he tried, his brow wrinkling, he had a really cute expression right now, like a child who had just been scolded, wanting to be forgiven and loved, and in return you couldn’t resist, you gave him a quick peck on the tip of his nose.

“Love you too honey...sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin the surprise you made me, it makes me so happy!” you apologized; he released a chuckle.

“No, it’s...it’s my fault. I’m actually glad we are honest with one another...and the night is not over after all, we have all the time to make it up...”

“You don’t have work to do tonight?” you wondered surprised

“Well, it can wait one night” he responded to your great joy as he captured your lips once more, laying you down on the grass to show you how much you meant to him and how insignificant he would become if he lost you.  

When you couldn’t hide your belly anymore announcing a nice and steady pregnancy, after several weeks more;  you and Commodus decided to announce the news to Rome well the news will spread across the city after announcing it to the senators and some nobles who had been invited for the occasion, a great feast had been prepared, nobody knew for now the reason for this celebration, they were talking, laughing and eating.  

“The People will talk about this fight for centuries!” exclaimed a noble excitedly, lifting his cup in the air to honor the Emperor who nodded at him in return. It is true that the fight had generated an excitement among the people that had never been seen before, now your lover was called ‘Commodus the invincible’; some people even compared him to Hercules and represented him on vase or other pieces of arts as such, and Commodus heart swelled at so much love from the people.  

You looked at Commodus in the eyes, he grinned excited, it was time to announce them, he got up of his seat, the room going quite as they waited for his speech.  

“Senators and dear citizens of Rome.  I invited you today for a very special occasion, one that it is very dear to my heart.” he turned his head to meet your eyes, they were full of tenderness.  

“Y/N my love, the Empress of Rome is expecting a child...” the people present started to applaud but Commodus stopped them doing so, silencing them with a gesture of his hand, he wasn’t finished.

“The gods have blessed us as they are giving us a child made with pure love and possibly an heir to guide and protect the Roman Empire...” his eyes never left yours as he spoke, he extended his hand to you, inviting you up, next to him.    

“When I became Emperor, my life was nothing but full of darkness, anger...and tears...but you entered my life, and you became the light in my darkness …" he swallowed down as his emotions rushed inside of him, tears coming into his eyes, he protectively puts his hand on your belly, discretely your thumb stroked his palm reciprocating his feelings.  

“You made me a man, you brought me your clear-sight, you forgave me my sins and you loved me unlike any other...and for that my entire existence will never be enough to express to you how grateful I am...my Empress.” he finished bowing to you with infinite respect.  

As Commodus finished his speech, the guest applauded and cheered to this news, even if Lucilla knew she discretely erased a tear rolling down her cheek, the speech of her brother had truly moved her. As for Lucius he had never paid attention to your belly before or maybe he had just thought you had gotten fat, so he was beyond excited when he heard the news, it’s like he was going to have a little brother or a sister he could spend time with!  

Several months passed and brought you closer to the day when you will be delivering, Commodus wounds healed faster than expected and he recovered his full capacity to train and fight as before. However, each day Commodus was getting more protective of you, to the point that he wouldn’t let you do anything, he would be constantly by your side, which worried you, it reminded you of that time where he wasn’t going well and had ended up in the sand of the Colosseum.  

“Commodus what are you doing?” you questioned him dumbs trucked as you watched him take pieces of food from your plate, he continued to chew the piece of food he had stolen from you.

“What?” he articulated mouthful; he didn’t understand what bothered you.

“Well why are you taking food from my plate?” you insisted

“I have to make sure it’s not poisoned in case our taster is compromised too.” he replied on a casual tone, you blinked a few times not sure you had heard well.

“So... you have someone tasting my food...and you are tasting it too in case the taster wants to kill me...” he swallowed down at your tone, like a child being caught doing bad things.

“Well...”

“Commodus you can’t do that, you...” you took a deep breath to calm yourself, getting mad at him won’t do any good “you are getting paranoid again, don’t you remember what happened last time?” you finished on a gentler tone, resting your hand on his.

“Oh...” he seemed to realize the behavior he had “but what if...I don’t want to lose you and our baby...” he worried, distress in his eyes.

“Everything will go well brother; the people and the whole Empire love you and Y/N, the risk of having someone attempting your lives has never been so low” tried to reassure Lucilla

“And I will protect you!” exclaimed bravely Lucius, lifting his fist in the air, making you release an amused smile.

“Still...” he replied, he didn’t really want to stop.

And he didn’t, he remained overprotective afterwards which often led to you getting mad or crying, apparently it was something pregnant women often had, extreme mood swings. And Commodus would feel terrible for making you feel this way, thankfully Lucilla was always there, she would take him away to let you breathe or encourage him to comfort you.

And things weren’t so bad after all, he was also very affectionate...

“So, how’s our little one today?” he cooed as he propped himself in the bed next to you, caressing you belly, you chuckled at how cute it was, for the past weeks he had taken the habit to talk to your womb. Often you would strip into your underwear to let him kiss the bare skin of your belly.

“Oh love! put your face against my belly it is moving!” you exclaimed in joy as you felt your baby wiggle in your womb, Commodus rested his cheek on your belly and started to laugh in joy as he felt the kicks of your baby, your fingers went to play with his hair as you watched his amazed face, as if the baby knew of his worries and by moving, was telling their father “see dad I’m alive and well and I will meet you soon!”, a happy tear rolled the cheek of your lover.

“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?” he asked excitedly, moving his head to rest his chin on your belly and look at you.

“I don’t know, in any case I will be the happiest mother in the whole empire. Do you have a preference?”

“A boy would give me an heir and I would teach him many things but a girl with your beauty and intelligence would be a blessing too...” he replied his mind imagining of what it would look like.

“I guess we will know soon enough...” you grinned; Commodus peppered your belly with sweet kisses.  

Another thing with your pregnancy is that you felt all different kinds of desires at any time of the day, sometimes you just wanted to eat a very specific kind of food, and the need was so strong that you would wake up your husband in the middle of the night, sleepily he would go to a servant and ask them to bring what you desired, and he would even stay awake, keeping you company until you get back to sleep. He also spoiled you in every way possible, you couldn’t believe how he would do all these things for you, the biggest surprise he had for you was probably when he announced you that he had made your parents come to Rome and as he told you this a messenger had informed him that they would be arriving the very same day and stay until you delivered the baby, your heart had swelled in your chest, it had been almost two years since you had last saw them, so when they arrived, you had ran and jumped in their arms, well you couldn't hug them as close as you wanted too because of your belly but at least they were there. They were relieved that your new life was going well and that you were happy, your mother had been dead worried when she had seen you leave in a poor emotional state, she had feared Commodus was to be a terrible husband that he would even hurt you; well the first weeks with him were...terrifying to be honest but as you had learned to understand each other, despite ups and downs it had become a wonderful and deep relationship.  

“Thank you” you told him as you encircled your arms around his body.  

“Anything for you” he purred against your lips; he finally closed the space between the two of you, as the kiss deepened your tongue entered his mouth, caressing his, his hands went to take off your dress.

“Commodus, what...”

“Let me make you feel good” he breathed against the shell of your ear, you bit your lip at the feeling of his lips against your sensitive skin, it had been so much time since the two of you had shared such intimacy...

One of his hand traveled to down to your body until it reached your underwear, his fingers slipped under the clothe to caress your spot, you gasped, realizing how much you had missed his contact.

“You’re already so ready for me...” he trailed kisses down your body and as he arrived at the level of your hips, slowly he slid the piece of cloth along your legs, his lips brushing against the skin of your thighs until he arrived between your legs and hungrily kissed your spot, and gods you didn’t know how he had gotten so skilled with his tongue; he did those slow up and down movements that made you gasp in anticipation.

“Does that feel good my queen?” he asked you between licks, making sure you were enjoying all of it, your answer was a needy whimper because his mouth had left your body, he chuckled please at your response, and started again still taking his time and it was driving you crazy, this slow yet so pleasurable rhythm, you needed more, your hands found his head and grabbed his hair, encouraging him to go further in his work. Finally, he placed his lips over your most sensitive area, and gently started sucking it, you closed your eyes, pinching your lips together. Then, his tongue ran along your lips in a way that made you shiver and gasp once more. One of his hands came up and parted your lips, allowing his tongue to reach your sensitive, swollen nub again. His tongue increased its pace, making you shudder and cry out in short, shocked bursts. As he flicked his tongue along you, you felt each wave of pleasure as it brought you closer and closer to the edge.

“Co-...Commodus I need you...in me...” you managed to articulate  

“At your service my love...” he smiled making you laugh, you watched him strip down with hungry eyes, his athletic body was such an enjoyable sight and actually liked his scars, he went on top of you however there was a slight problem...your belly was a bit too big and prevented your lover from pleasuring you.  

“Okay let’s try another position...I’m going to lay on my side and you go behind me.” you turned on your side, he settled behind you, his torso was against your back, and you could his hardness against your bottom, he left a couple of kisses on your shoulder as he moved one of your legs to better access your entrance, he groaned against the crook of your neck as he entered you, you wiggled your hips impatient for him to continue.

“Comfortable?” he asked you while kissing the skin of your neck and sliding his arm around your chest.

“Very.” you purred, he hummed in satisfaction while starting his thrusts slowly at first then he got faster and faster, cries of pleasure escaping your mouth until you felt yourself reach climax, he continued to pound into you until he joined you in a long contented moan. The both of you were panting, struggling to catch your breath, this had been so intense due to the months of abstinence, he rested his damp forehead against your shoulder blade, placing lazy and tender kisses from time to time.  

When he finally managed to recover, he moved out of you, making your body tremble in overstimulation, then you turned to face him, entwining your legs with his, you wrapped your arms around his waist to bring him as close to you as you could. His eyes closed, he protectively kissed your forehead, brushing the back of your hands against your cheek, you wore a happy smile. After a bit, he slowly reopened his eyes to bore into yours, his orbs were full of adoration.

“Do you think I’ll be a good father?” he murmured; he was smiling but there was uncertainty in his voice.

“You already are for Rome and Lucius; I don’t see why that would change; you are the most passionate and affectionate man I have ever known; our baby will be blessed to have you as a father...”

“Our baby...” he beamed, his eyes shining with happiness.  

“Yes, our baby” you repeated on the same, tenderly kissing his lips.  

And it didn’t take much time for the baby to arrive. Barely a few weeks after, it started as you were enjoying a walk in the gardens with Lucilla and her son. You had decided to take some fresh air, as you didn’t feel at your best today, you had been feeling more cramps than usual and it wouldn’t go away, so you thought that a little bit of exercise could help ease the pain, but it didn’t really change anything, you tried to listen to Lucilla’s words but you were distracted by the more frequent shots of pain you felt...

“Y/N are you feeling unwell?” asked you Lucilla slightly worried as she saw your expression of mixed worry and pain.  

“I don’t know I... ah!” you gasped suddenly feeling like a pop in your belly and then some sort of liquid coming out, along your legs, what was happening? You looked at Lucilla helpless and terrified, however her face remained calm.

“Lucius go call for the midwives and then run to get your uncle.” she instructed him calmly, then she took your arm, guiding you to the inside of the palace.

“Don’t worry Y/N you’re going to be fine; this is all normal, the same thing happened to me.” she reassured you with an encouraging smile.

“Oh yeah?”  

“Yes, it means the baby is going to come out today.”

“Today!?” you suddenly felt anxious, no you weren’t ready, what if something bad happened during labor or...

“Y/N just relax, everything will go well, women have done this for centuries, your body is prepared for this.” she calmly assured you.

Thankfully the bedroom was close to the gardens, Lucilla and the midwives helped you to lie down on the bed, they kept telling you to relax and breath but it was hard, you were afraid and where was Commodus? Just as you thought about him you heard someone running approaching, then he was here right in front of you, he threw his crown on the nightstand, relief instantly filled your whole being by his presence.  

“Sire, you should wait outside until the childbirth is finished...” started a midwife.

“No, I will stay here with her.” he cut her off, on a tone without appeal, he wanted to be here for you and nothing will make him go away. He sat on the mattress next to you, taking your hand and kissing it fondly, his other arm rested above your head, his thumb stroking your temple. Lucilla squeezed your hand, she had to leave space for the midwives and had to reassure Lucius who was waiting behind the door.  

The midwives lifted your dress up and took off your underwear, you squeezed hard your husband’s hand as the pain was getting stronger. The midwives finally asked you to push, it was the worst pain you had ever felt, you couldn’t help but let out screams of pain, which terrified Commodus.

“What is happening? Why is she in so much pain? Make it stop!” he panicked at your state, he feared to lose you, he had impregnated you and now you were suffering because of him; they quickly told him it was normal and that every women went through this, it didn’t ease his mind though, all he could do was to be here for you, hoping you would survive. You closed your eyes trying to slow down your breathing and push as hard as you could, you could feel the pressure increase at your entrance.

“We are starting to see the head, continue to push” instructed one of the midwives who was waiting between your legs to help you getting out the child. So, you took a deep breath and pushed, again and again.

“You are doing great my love, keep going.” Encouraged Commodus against your ear while kissing your forehead, you clenched your teeth as you felt the head come out, the midwife could finally grab the baby by the shoulders and help to get out the rest of the body, you kept pushing until the baby was out, you head collapsed on the pillow, you were panting, exhausted. Until you heard cries, baby cries, your baby was alive, you felt energy come back to your body, you wanted to see your baby.

“Congratulations, it is a girl.” praised the woman as she finally brought your baby into your arms, you couldn’t believe it was really happening.

“You did it, you were wonderful.” kept saying Commodus his voice trembling with emotion, happy tears started to run down your cheeks as you laid your eyes upon your little girl, all wrapped up in a warm cloth, she had such a beautiful face. Commodus, next to you was silent, absorbed by the sight he had in front of his eyes, all of this it seemed so surreal.  

“Here, hold your daughter.” you encouraged him as you gently handed the baby to her father.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to do something b-…" he started but his fears got away as he carefully took the baby in his arms, she seemed so small in his arms, he watched her amazed at the being he hold. You smiled soften by this beautiful scene, he had only eyes for her now. After a bit, Commodus scooted closer to you, fully laying down on the bed next you, and as if you weren’t happy enough, the baby opened his eyes, laying her eyes upon her parents for the first time, Commodus mouth went agape, happy tears forming in his eyes.

“She has your eyes.” you commented as you caressed her cheek with your index. The two of you admired her for several minutes maybe more, it was as if time had frozen. He gave her back to you so you could start breastfeeding her.  

“What should we name her?” you asked him softly.

“You are the one who carried her, you deserve to take this decision.” he replied with a charming smile.

“What about Julia?” you suggested, a noble and powerful name.  

“Julia it is then.” approved Commodus looking adoringly at the both of you.

“I´m sorry if you wanted a boy” you finally said, even though he had expressed some indifference you knew that having a male heir was extremely important for an Emperor.

“No, no, she´s perfect” he objected covering your face with kisses, relieved that he was fulfilled.

“And we can have another baby, a boy this time, I wouldn´t mind to have kids running around the palace, it would make less dark and sad don´t you think?” he added on a joyful tone.

You raised an eyebrow; you were exhausted so if you could wait before having another one...Commodus seemed to read your mind.

“After you rest of course! When you´ll be ready” you openly laughed at the face he made. Of course, you would be happy to have another child from him. He rested his forehead against yours as the baby had finished eating, covering your naked body with a sheet so you wouldn’t feel cold.

At this moment, you heard Lucilla come in followed by Lucius and your parents. She was truly moved by the event; it was also the first time she was seeing her brother filled with happiness and nothing else in mind.

Lucius was behind Lucilla watching the little baby in your arms with curiosity. You exchanged a look with Commodus.

“Lucius, do you want to hold your niece?” asked Commodus, inviting his nephew to come closer, gently he placed the baby in Lucius arms.  

“Here, put your arm like that to hold her head.” he instructed to the young boy, who seemed equally amazed by your baby.

“We will play together when she will be big enough and can I also teach her to fight? And horse riding?” he eagerly asked, looking at you for your approval.

“We will have to wait a bit of time for that!” laughed Commodus, you joined him, Lucius was already feeling a sense of responsibility for her, you were excited to them growing together and play together.

In the coming hour, the whole city of Rome had been informed of the news, you could hear the noise of the people gathered outside, they wanted to see the imperial baby. When you felt ready to stand up, you dressed yourself nicely with the help of your husband, he put back his crown on his head.

As you approached the balcony, Commodus by your side, and your little Julia in your arms, you could feel the excitement of the people, the Senate had made a corridor to salute you on your way to the balcony, Lucilla, Lucius and your parents were following you closely. The sun was still bright, it was a beautiful day; the moment you and the Emperor appeared at the balcony, the cheers and screams joy of the crowd increased, you had never felt such energy, an endless mass of people were in front of your eyes, calling the name of the Emperor and yours, you managed to release a smile moved by their love. You turned to look at your lover and gently handed him your baby; making sure he was correctly supporting her head he lightly lifted her in the air to show the people who roared and applauded to congratulate you. Commodus, brought her back safely to his chest, lovingly kissing her forehead before handing her back to you.

“You know what this means?” he asked you as he tilted his head towards to crowd, you grinned proudly as you understood.  

“The world will be ours” you answered, a bright future was ahead.  

And this is the end, thank you so much for reading this story and I cannot believe how much love and positive comments I got for it, it’s truly amazing and I am honestly really sad because I want to write so much more with Commodus, so if you`d like something with him fire away! Also, I considered sticking to the movie and kill Commodus that would have been so angsty but then I was like `I have such lovely followers I´m not going to do that to them ´so yeah you´re lucky ;-)

On a happier note if you want some sort of epilogue of Commodus with your baby and being a father, or a scene/ moment you wished you had read in this story, I will also gladly write it <3 and just I will write anything else you´d like with him whatever it is Headcanons, or fluffy one shots or angsty ones I´ll take it !

Commodus harem: @hopelessdisasterr @stellargirlie​ @rosebloodstuffandthangss​ @clowndaddyfleck​ @lyoongx​ @skaravile​ @jaylovesbats @niniita-ah @dreamingmaria​ @sagyunaro​ @just-a-fucking-comedy​ @spaceinvader​ @radio-hoo-ha​ @lady-carnivals-stuff​ @sierraclegane​ @legojorny​ @lemondedeniname @ninathefandomcollector​

[blockwarden]

Civil Defense in the Fallout Series

For better or worse, nuclear warfare has dominated both the American psyche and American media since the dawn of the Cold War. From duck and cover drills to War Games, to fallout shelters and The Day After, we have long looked at the what-ifs of nuclear warfare with an almost violent curiosity—like a train wreck or a plane crash, we simply cannot look away. Although the threat of nuclear war and mutually-assured destruction no longer looms like the spectre of death over our shoulders, we still find ourselves fascinated by it, and our media reflects this. An almost infinite number of books, television shows, movies, and video games have been dedicated, in some part, to the prospect or aftermath of nuclear warfare. Video games especially being a relatively new, mostly immersive medium, have taken the theme of nuclear warfare and ran with it, including Metro 2033, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., DEFCON, Civilization V, Call of Duty, Metal Gear Solid, and Ace Combat Zero, to name just a very small number of them. But no game series is more synonymous with nuclear warfare as the Fallout series.

Although I could personally talk about the Fallout universe, the history, the sociopolitical setting, and the Great War itself for hours on end, the gist of the series is that in a retro-futuristic, alternate timeline world, on October 23, 2077, “Red China,” the Soviet Union, and the United States finally pulled the trigger and engaged in a full-on nuclear war, with bombs falling on most U.S. cities, including Las Vegas, Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The war itself lasted only two hours, but more energy was released in the first moments of the Great War than all the previous human conflicts combined. Entire mountain ranges were created by the sheer tectonic stress caused by the bombs, and the oceans and rivers of the world were contaminated irreversibly by the “relatively low-yield” warheads. In short, the Fallout series is a (somewhat exaggerated) look at the realities of mutually-assured destruction, and a clear representation of all our nuclear fears.

But how realistic is this? How likely is it that if something like the Great War were to happen today would our land and water still be unusable 200 years in the future? In discussing this, we need to first look at the preventative measures taken in the Fallout universe. And this starts with civil defense.

Not much Fallout canon is dedicated to civil defense. Although there are posters from the “Civil Defense Administration” found in-game, most preventative measures in the Fallout series come from Vault-Tec and their vaults. But these vaults were sociological experiments disguised as fallout shelters, and ultimately, Vault-Tec was not actually concerned with the preservation and continuation of the United States post-war. Some vaults were rigged with poisonous gases, some had purposefully faulty blast doors, and some were simply absurd (such as Vault 77, which was populated by 999 puppets and one man.) Since we can’t consider Vault-Tec an agent of emergency preparedness or disaster response, we must turn back towards the aforementioned Civil Defense Administration.

We know from in-game dialogue, terminals, notes, holotapes, and even character backstories that most people in 2077 were expecting a war any day. We can find personal basement shelters in bombed-out neighborhoods, Pulowski personal preservation shelters dotting street corners, and in the beginning of Fallout 4, as the bombs approach Boston, we can hear air raid sirens. We can find government bunkers like the South Boston military checkpoint and the Greenbrier Resort, and although not morally aligned to the concepts of American civil defense, some vaults did manage to provide safety for generations of dwellers. So, we know that some effort was made, and we can assume that these efforts were spear-headed by the Civil Defense Administration. But this is where the similarities between historical American civil defense and Fallout civil defense stop.

Walking around in a Fallout game, you encounter decimated homes and buildings, upturned roads, and irradiated water and soil. Skeletons litter the landscape. The few remaining buildings for the most part lack running water or electricity. There is no trash collection, there are no vehicles, there aren’t even any authorities outside of rag-tag militias capable of curbing the rampant crime across the wasteland. Doctors are few and far-between and mostly self-taught, and pockets of radioactive waste remain in open-air pits. If the Fallout series truly had a Civil Defense Administration, this dangerous, dirty, destroyed world would simply not exist.

Historically, civil defense has focused on both emergency preparedness and disaster response. The civil defense agencies of the United States were comprised of rescue squads, decontamination squads, demolition and clearance crew, auxiliary police officers, auxiliary firefighters, nurses, doctors, road repair crews, utility repair crews, drivers, messengers, radio operators, food and housing corps, chaplains, refuse collection crews, and even gravediggers—all who focused on disaster response and, more importantly, rebuilding. Civil defense was almost singularly-focused on the idea of rebuilding, of piecing the country back together after an emergency, of reestablishing normalcy as quickly as possible.

In Fallout, however, this doesn’t seem to be the case, except for a few exceptions. After the bombs fell, those remaining U.S. Armed Forces members tried their best to maintain order and control, but they quickly succumbed to the radiation and mobs. Then there were the Responders, seen in Fallout 76, who were an organization of police, firefighters, medics, and general volunteers that emerged in 2082 to provide medical assistance, supplies, and survival training to survivors. They were followed by Project Purity in Fallout 3, which was dedicated to decontaminating the water of the Washington D.C. area and providing potable water for survivors, although the project began in 2277, 200 years after the bombs fell. The last exception would be the Mojave Express, a courier service seen in Fallout: New Vegas in 2281. There is also the NCR Sharecropper Farm in Fallout: New Vegas, as well as a pastor in Diamond City in Fallout 4. But this is…it. There is no large-scale, nation-wide effort to rebuild. There are corpses and skeletons left where they fell, there are burnt-out cars left in the middle of the road, there are collapsed bridges and spewing pipelines and ponds so irradiated they’ve birthed new monstrosities like Swan in Fallout 4. There is no governing body, no faction that truly takes the reins, not even a surviving member of congress (technically, there was with the Enclave, but their motivations were selfish and generally fascist.) And this is anathema to the spirit of civil defense.

From a civil defense perspective, the Fallout series is almost insulting. It shows a total lack of law and order, a lack of neighborliness, a lack of effort to hold the world together. It shows tribe mentality, it shows the collapse of society, it shows the end of the world as we know it. This is not what civil defense, fictional or historical, would have strived for. It could be that, as we see in the case of Appalachia in Fallout 76, those who tried to rebuild were wiped out. It could be that, much like historic civil defense, it faced opposition in the form of apathy. Or it could simply be that a partially-recovered world is not nearly as compelling as a game as one where every water purification plant is overrun with Mirelurks and feral ghouls leap at you from the public library.

This is a sentiment echoed by many players of the two latest titles, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. I’ll spare y’all the student game developer rants as much as possible here, but there’s a lot to be said, so hold on. Most players absolutely hated the settlement system in Fallout 4. They despised the Minutemen, Preston Garvey, and protecting innocent farmers from Raiders. They hated having to sacrifice rare parts like gears and screws to build defenses. They hated the radiant quests. In short, they hated rebuilding and recovering. This could be because Bethesda did a pretty ham-fisted job at motivating the player to recruit and rebuild settlements, or it could be because Bethesda kind of forgot that the Fallout series, since its infancy with Interplay, was meant to be post-post­-apocalyptic. It was meant to be a game about a half-restored world. One only needs to look at places like Vault City or Shady Sands or even the New Vegas strip to know this. These were settlements that had rebuilt and moved on from the Great War. Bethesda has effectively abandoned this since acquiring the series, choosing instead to feature wastelands over burgeoning towns. So, while Diamond City and Bunker Hill might have running water, they’re still using oil lamps and sleeping in drafty, scrap wood houses as if the bombs fell just a few weeks ago.

A game where survival is not nearly as hard, where you aren’t grilling rabid dog meat and sleeping on a flea-infested mattress, is just not fun to most players. So, if the Fallout Civil Defense Administration had done a realistic job and cleaned all the literal skeletons out of the closet, Bethesda would have ultimately lost the one thing driving players in Fallout 4: the desire to survive.

This isn’t a condemnation of Bethesda at all—in fact, modeling at Bethesda Austin is kind of my dream job—but it is perhaps a critical look at their failure to use civil defense properly in order to bolster a certain environment, atmosphere, and play style. We simply don’t know, however, how much research and effort Bethesda (or even Interplay or Obsidian) put into civil defense. For all we know, one of their artists was simply inspired by the infamous “Serving you in time of emergency!” poster and didn’t think anything of it. But for a game that essentially trailblazes our pop culture understanding and opinion of nuclear warfare, it’s kind of a shame that civil defense is so overlooked. The Fallout series is almost obligated to get things right, especially when there are people who legitimately think the Vault Boy/Thumbs Up technique is a true way to measure fallout.

(It isn’t. This will get you killed.)

[dat-fandom-losertown]

The Drift Between Us

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Chapter 1: The First Day

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Hank Anderson x Connor and Gavin Reed x RK900 (Ritch)

Genre: Fluff, Action, A bit of Angst, Pacific Rim!AU

Warnings: Referenced death, Swearing (do I need to put this as a warning? Probably not ‘cause it’s Hank we’re talkin’ about, but Ima do it anyway for this chapter lol)

Word Count: 9,563

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Synopsis:

    Ever since Connor was young, all he’s ever wanted was to become a real jaeger Pilot and take down kaijus with his twin brother, Ritch. After several long years of training with their stepmother, Amanda, that dream finally becomes reality. Well, almost. Things are made difficult after the identical twins admit that they refuse to pilot together. Their choices are find other people to partner up with, find a way to work together, or quit before they become official jaeger pilots.

    There’s no way they’re working together, and they aren’t going to throw their entire life away, so it’s option one, then.

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AN: Hello to anyone reading this! A few weeks ago @connorssock​ (this person is really cool and nice btw, would recommend) came up with a really cool Pacific Rim!AU and I just had to write it!! I got their permission to and now here we are! I plan for this to be a long, slow burn fic, and 8,000 words is the average amount of words I usually have for chapters. I’ve written fanfictions before, just not on this blog or for this fandom before! Whelp, I hope you enjoy the first chapter of The Drift Between Us!! <3

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Masterlist <~> Next

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    The first attack happened long before Connor and Ritch were old enough to actually remember anything, but they know that that first kaiju is the reason their parents aren’t around anymore.

    They weren’t the only ones to lose parents and families, obviously, but they took their loss much better than a lot of the other kids in their orphanage. The fact that everything happened so fast and they were just so young helped make it less traumatizing. If the twins hadn’t overheard their caregiver– as she told the young kids to call her instead of “mom”– telling someone what happened to their family, then they would have assumed they were abandoned or simply never had parents to begin with.

    Whenever the twins told anyone this, they would always get sad, pitying looks that were usually followed by “I’m sorry” or something of the like. Connor and Ritch agreed that they hate being pitied for something they don’t remember and had no control over, which is one reason why they stopped talking to the other kids altogether. Either they got pitied, or the other people expected to get pity from them when they “had it harder”, which didn’t make sense to the twins, even at the young age of seven.

    Pity can’t change or fix anything, and everyone at the orphanage obviously no longer has legal guardians anymore for one reason or another. Pain is pain; it shouldn’t be compared or ranked between people. This is one of the other reasons Connor and Ritch stayed away from others. They already had enough on their plate to deal with, they didn’t want to have to worry about other people’s problems and vice versa.

    However, their antisocial behavior ended when a woman by the name of Amanda Stern interviewed them for adoption one day.

    She asked questions like how they acted towards and around each other and others, what their favorite subjects were, and simple, normal questions like that. She didn’t once mention the parents they don’t remember, which, in hindsight, was normal for her, but at the time it was extremely refreshing, just like her lack of pity was too. Then she asked what they thought of jaeger pilots.

    Connor loved them, adored them, aspired to be like the new pilots Hank Anderson and Jeffrey Fowler one day. He had always wanted to be the hero that saved the day so desperately. Connor couldn’t have worded it properly at the time, but he wanted the praise of doing something good and the satisfaction of knowing he saved someone’s family, someone’s home. He even regularly pretended to be a jaeger pilot, ending the imaginary kaijus one by one and stopping the invasions altogether.

    Ritch had a slightly different reaction, but a similar answer. He admired jaeger pilots and found them to be very brave, but he wasn’t obsessed with them like Connor was. He didn’t really want to be a jaeger pilot, but Ritch liked the idea of helping and saving people enough that, if it was necessary to make Connor’s dream come true, he’d train and fight alongside him.

    Then Amanda asked if they were serious about becoming jaeger pilots. She said she could make that happen easily, but it would take work and dedication. It would take years and years of training, but if they did well and listened to her, they could be real jaeger pilots when they grew up. All they had to do was go with her, and she would do it.

    As if Connor could ever turn that down, which meant that Ritch agreed to go along with it too, albeit less enthusiastically.

    She officially became their stepmother soon enough after that day and brought them to her nice, large house away from any coastline, and any immediate threat of the kaijus along with it. The twins started their training the next week after their arrival, only given enough time to get on a proper “early to rise, early to rest” schedule and get used to how Amanda ran the house.

    They trained alongside each other nearly everyday for years. After they mastered the “basics”, Amanda began pairing the brothers against each other in roughly evenly-matched battles of wit and brawn, even though the brothers weren’t inclined to do so. Yet they had to. They had to because the longer they trained, the more Connor’s dream of being a jaeger pilot was slowly becoming Ritch’s dream as well, and they had nothing else to work towards in life by that point, so they put up with her games.

    It was during one of these matches that Amanda forced them into that something between them finally cracked. It was just a splinter in comparison to the big picture, but it was enough to start the collapse of everything. Amanda’s continuous meddling and manipulation didn’t help either, it made everything worse, in fact, but they had to fight through it. They had nothing else beyond becoming jaeger pilots, and Amanda was reminding them of that fact almost daily by that point. They couldn’t give up, and even if they were allowed to, their pride wouldn’t let them.

    Then it happened.

    Connor and Ritch don’t talk about it, even the mention of it is enough to make them recoil. It had ruined nearly everything for the brothers. Yet, not wanting to be thrown out like trash or abandoned like stray dogs, they continued to painfully push through Amanda’s games of both physical and mental kinds. They just had to make it another few months and they’d be well on their way to become official jaeger pilots. It was the only thing they could ever be useful for.

    In the end, Amanda kept her first promise (one of the very few that remained unbroken). They listened to her every order and every suggestion for years. They put everything they had and more on the line for this, just like she said they’d have to back in the orphanage, and now here they are. They survived, and they finally did it. The only problem is they don’t know what to do now that they’re actually here. For so long this day seemed like it would only arrive in dreams or fairy tales, and that might still be the case; they weren’t able to somehow change the forms Amanda filled out for them to be pilots together, and lying on those forms is a legal offense. 

    Finally getting loaded onto the large helicopter with fifteen other young adults, ones that still have that spark of life and innocence in their eyes. Connor and Ritch silently glance at each other. All it takes is one, tiny nod for them to agree that they’ll figure out some kind of plan when they get there. For now, though, they get buckled in for the trip to the Pan Pacific Defense Corps base.

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    Almost all of the other cadets in the large helicopter have been complaining about their backs and necks aching for a long while now, and Connor is very close to telling them off for being children for constantly complaining about something as insignificant as that. However, when he turns his head to ask them to shut up, he just barely manages to catch sight of the edge of a huge, fort-like structure through the tiny window by his head. Reassured that their immature and meaningless complaints will very soon come to an end, Connor shuts his mouth and faces forward once more.

    Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Ritch staring at him with an eyebrow raised, a silent question of what made him change his mind (because of course Ritch knows he was about to make a comment to these people). Connor offers an answer in the form of nodding towards the tiny, reinforced window between him and Ritch. Ritch silently looks out, leans back a bit in attempts to see what Connor had, then smirks. He, too, straightens and relaxes in his chair, his slight smile never quite leaving his face.

    Connor assumes that Ritch is just as excited as he is to sleep in a real bed tonight, or as real as a cheap mattress or cot will be, anyway. It’s been nearly a week of traveling and layovers and such, and they haven’t slept somewhere that wasn’t an uncomfortable chair or the tiled ground in as long, too. The other cadets grumbled about them not getting any real beds while the staff had some the entire time, as well, which is why Connor was almost at his wit’s end just a few seconds ago. If he’s being honest, he still is.

    Their commander finally announces that they’re preparing to land at the PPDC, and to gather what little was allowed to remain unpacked for entertainment. The renewed chattering of the others annoys the twins, who are used to the constant silence of their old home, but it irritates Connor especially. He has always been more introverted and socially awkward than Ritch– much to Amanda’s displeasure– and there has already been a week of non-stop people and talking so far. Connor’s ready to spend some time alone in peace.

    He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to find a partner if he and Ritch are somehow allowed to stay as separate pilots, not if they’re all going to continue being this obnoxious, and especially not if Connor remains just as socially inept. Ritch must see something portrayed on his face because he leans over as much as he can with his harness being the way and speaks up for only the second time during this several-hour flight.

    “They’re still young, let them be children a little longer. I’m sure we would have liked a little more time as well.” Ritch says, ever the patient one.

    Connor sighs defeatedly. “I know we would’ve, but we were kids when we started and they’re grown adults. Besides, they’ve been talking constantly since we met at the airport earlier this week. Shouldn’t they have run out of topics to discuss?” Ritch takes a breath to say something, but Connor dismisses him with a wave, “Yeah yeah, I know. People talk about any and everything when they get along and they’re excited. And that’s okay, I’ve just been wanting some peace and quiet, and they only got louder.”

    Ritch nods sympathetically. “Yeah. We’re almost out of here though.” Connor nods back. Ritch hesitates twice before continuing, “Are you excited? This is your childhood dream coming true right now and you seem bored.”

    “This is only the boot camp. We could still get kicked out.”

    “Do you honestly believe that could happen?” Ritch asks almost sarcastically with a raised eyebrow.

    “Maybe, we still have our issue to deal with,” he looks pointedly at Ritch, who instantly knows what he’s talking about, ”but you never know. And to answer your question, I don’t think it’s hit me yet that I’m actually here. Ask me again in a day or two. Maybe in a week.”

    Ritch huffs a laugh, an actual, genuinely amused huff, “Yes. I feel the same way.”

    That was probably one of the most normal and pleasant conversations they’ve had in at least over a year. It was almost refreshing, if not awkward. Luckily, Connor is saved from over-analyzing their conversation by the helicopter finally landing. The doors open and all of the young adults hastily unbuckle, grab their duffle bags of clothes and supplies, then step out onto the landing pad. It’s a nice, clear day, and all of the trainees group together by the helicopter to listen to what this woman with braided blonde hair– obviously their guide for now– has to say. Well, more like has to yell over the surrounding machinery and wind.

    “Welcome to the Pacific Ocean Defense base! My name is Chloe and I’ll be giving you a brief tour of the place so you know how to get around without being run over or squashed! Got it?” The group nods in unison, a few saying “Yes, ma’am.” She smiles, “Good! Follow close behind me! Don’t want you getting lost on your first day, do we?” She sharply turns around and starts walking, not looking back or waiting for the group to follow.

    Connor and Ritch glance at each other quickly before following close behind Chloe, the rest of the group close behind them. As they walk up to the large, metal doors, they expect to see some kind of common area place behind them, but they instead open to reveal a large, heavy-duty elevator. The elevator is plenty large enough to fit the lot of them plus three, huge, glass containers and another person, who is fussing over the containers of… are those kaiju parts?

    “Excuse me, sir,” Connor tries grabbing the man’s attention, too intrigued to keep his mouth shut like he knows he should.

     The pale man shoots up from what he was doing and looks at the crowd, obviously trying to figure out who called him. Connor asks his question, confident that he’ll get at least a simple “yes or no” in return now.

    “I hope you’re not bothered by me asking, but are those pieces of kaiju?” Connor tilts his head curiously, knowing he doesn’t portray emotions well when he’s tired but wanting to show the man he is genuinely interested in his answer.

    The man’s eyes brighten up immediately, “Yes, yes they are.” He takes off his gloves and fixes the small bun on the back of his head before reaching out a hand to Connor politely. “I’m Elijah Kamski, the head scientist of the kaiju research department.”

    Connor takes his hand firmly and shakes it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Kamski.” Connor hears someone scoff from the other side of the otherwise near silent elevator, followed by a sharp “shh!”.

    The scientist releases from the handshake and drops his hand. “Please, Mr. Kamski will do, if you must. I don’t actually have a Doctorate’s degree, I’m just someone who’s interested in kaijus and happened to get lucky.”

    “It was hardly luck, Elijah.” Chloe jumps in.

    “Ah, well, thank you Chloe. It makes me happy you think that.”

    “Are these parts still functioning? Or just being preserved?” Connor brings the attention back to where it was originally, his curiosity far from quenched.

    Mr. Kamski sighs heavily and turns to the glass containers, “Just preserved, I’m afraid. We weren’t able to get to this kaiju in time to save any of its parts. But we do have some... somewhat functioning specimens down in the lab.”

    Someone in the group, a man with darker skin and a shaved head, speaks up next.

    “Why would we want to keep chunks of kaiju alive? Wouldn’t it be better that they stay dead for good?”

    The blond, fair-skinned man standing next to him answers, “I imagine if they can keep pieces functional long enough to figure out any more weaknesses, it could make our jobs in the future easier, Markus. It’s smart, really.”

    Mr. Kamski practically glows, “You’re absolutely right– uh, what’s your name?” He reaches his hand out to the blonde.

    “Simon, sir.” He shakes Mr. Kamski’s hand once before letting go.

    “Simon.” He turns to Connor, “And I never got yours?”

    “Connor.”

    “These are the new possible recruits for the new jaegers that are being built.” Chloe informs.

    “That explains why I haven’t seen you guys around.”

    The scientist chuckles in a way that makes it seem like he was trying to make it sound awkward, rather than it being a genuinely awkward laugh. Although, that may be just Connor over analyzing things again. He can’t really help it, old habits die hard, especially when they were critical to his comfort of life for so long.

    However, Connor definitely isn’t the only one to notice how the elevator is starting to slow down to their floor. Mr. Kamski puts his gloves back on and stands up straighter again from where he was leaning on the handles to the cart holding one of the large, fluid-filled, canister-type thing. Connor isn’t exactly sure what the containers are called, or what they’re actually made of. Mr. Kamski interrupts his thoughts.

    “Well, normally newcomers aren’t allowed in the lab, but if one of you guys happen to run into me and we’ve both got the time and interest to look at some kaiju organs and muscles, I wouldn’t have a problem showing you around.” His eyes suddenly have a curious, almost pompous glint to them, and his smile shifts minutely with them (though, Connor doubts anyone else notices this besides maybe Ritch. Stupid habits). “It’s always... nice, to find others who are interested in the kind of work I do,” he tilts his head ever-so-slightly, “So don’t be afraid to stop by.”

    “I’ll definitely consider it, Mr. Kamski. Thank you.” Connor, ever the people pleaser, tells the man as the elevator doors open.

    Most of the group politely waves goodbye to Mr. Kamski as they collectively step into the reinforced hall. They’re wide enough to comfortably fit vehicles through and the ceilings are high with pipes running up and down along them. Everywhere he looks is covered in sturdy metal, obviously reinforced and prepared in case a kaiju gets too close.

    They round a corner, and Connor realizes that Chloe has been talking. Yet here he is, still not really listening because he’s internally freaking out and having a painfully silent fanboy moment. Someone wheeling a large cart passes by and Connor can’t stop himself from briefly studying the foreign materials on it with a sense of awe.

    Connor has been waiting for this moment since he was a child. He’s looked up pictures that were leaked on the internet, he studied the backgrounds of the very few interviews held here at the base, he’s watched every documentary he could find on jaegers and their pilots. For a while, it was the only thing that kept him going, just the sheer strength and size of these machines that are so huge and powerful that one person alone can’t control it without risking mental overload and death. He thought he wouldn’t be as shocked as the others since he’s exposed himself to these battle machines as often as he could growing up, but it seems it’s very much the opposite in reality. He’s grown an appreciation for everything here that the others don’t have yet.

    He still isn’t listening to Chloe as she explains what this area is and little facts about the jaegers that he probably already knows. He can already see Crimson Typhoon, piloted by Ms. Chen, her newer partner, and whoever else is available and compatible with them, normally the testy Mr. Reed– if he remembers that brief interview correctly– and it uses a triple arm technique. Apparently it was extremely difficult to get it working and safe enough for pilots to use. To his knowledge, there’s no other jaeger that uses more than two pilots anymore because of it. The next one over is Cherno Alpha. It’s the last mark one jaeger still standing, and is currently the oldest and heaviest jaeger this base has, but its pilots, Mr. Miller and Mr. Wilson, can still pick one hell of a fight in it.

    The group starts turning to go down another hallway and Connor follows automatically, shamelessly looking at the the other jaegers down the enormous warehouse. He only recognizes one more of them, Striker Eureka, the only mark five jaeger in existence. All he knows is that it was decommissioned a day before its official release, but despite how much he searched for why it was shut down, he remains clueless to all else. They did a fantastic job keeping mark five quiet, so it makes sense that its shut down would be sealed up even tighter.

    He can’t wait to see what new technology and designs the architects and construction teams have put together for the possible future pilots. Their teams should be getting mark six and seven jaegers, which seems almost surreal to Connor, that he’s actually here and they’re going to get new and improved jaegers. He wonders if the other jaegers he can see on the other end of the enormous room are the ones they’ll be able to use if they pass training. He sure hopes so; they look fantastic.

    The group slows down and he realizes that he wasn’t listening to Chloe again when she calls his name. He cringes minutely, shameful that he still couldn’t force his mind away from the giant machines, then morphs his face into something he knows is almost unreadable and faces the blonde guide.

    “Yes ma’am?”

    “You’re really that interested in the jaegers?”

    Connor looks away as he answers more timidly, “Yes ma’am. Have been since I was a kid.”

    She pauses at that, putting in another code to another door.

    “Then you’d be able to repeat the guidelines of this particular room? If you’re familiar with all of this already,” she gestures to the vast area around them.

    As a matter of fact, Connor feels like he probably could.

    “May I try?” She waves him on silently, almost sarcastically it seems. “Watch where you’re going at all times, because there are a lot of people and heavy equipment moving about. Don’t meander or wander idly because people have jobs to do and are trying to get places. Don’t bother the pilots unless absolutely necessary because that’s just common courtesy, same goes for workers of any kind. Clear out quickly if a jaeger is being moved to deploy. That’s all I can think of, ma’am.”

    She nods thoughtfully, “If you were listening, you would have also known to just call me Chloe. Ma’am and Miss makes me feel old.”

    Oh. She doesn’t seem entirely mad.

    “Yes, M– er– Chloe”

    She chuckles as she walks through the now open door, and others snicker along. It’s only his first day here and he’s already made a fool of himself. Training is not going to go at all like how he was expecting and hoping. Ritch must see how he deflated because he nudges Connor and leans over to whisper in his direction.

    “I’ll be struggling to call her just Chloe for a while myself.” He straightens up. “Good to know I won’t be alone in this particular endeavor.”

    Connor nods, too surprised that Ritch is talking to him again to verbalize anything.

    The group follows Mi– Chloe, just Chloe, down some hallways and around some turns and bends. She talks about the specifics of what the different departments and areas of the base do and why they’re important, things that aren’t common knowledge for normal people, but have been drilled into Ritch’s and Connor’s heads over the past several years. She moves on to explain who’s in charge, the ranking system, and tips on remembering how to get to where they need to be and avoid where they aren’t allowed. It’s rather dull, but Connor easily pays attention now, giving only a small piece of his awareness to his surroundings.

    Sneakily looking to his left, Connor sees that Ritch is much less twitchy than he is. It’s completely expected, seeing as Connor has always had a stronger need to know his surroundings well, and the fact that what’s happening now has been in Connor’s dreams for so long, while Ritch was just along for the ride for a large part of it. Yet, the fact that he shares a dream with the others here doesn’t help Connor feel sane or like a normal part of the group. He’s long since used to being the outcast by now, but he’s hoping that he will get along with some people, since everyone here has a great interest in being a jaeger pilot (what exactly are they doing here if they don’t?).

    They take one last left turn and are met with what looks like a training room. Chloe has all fifteen of them line up in a neat row along the side wall, rather than muddled up against the back of the room. She then asks the people who did not come with a partner to take a step forward.

    Connor moves only his eyes to glance at Ritch, and catches Ritch doing the same. Without any “telepathic communication”, as Amanda and any others who knew them called it, Ritch takes a confident step forward, and Connor quickly follows. It dully hurts Connor for some reason that Ritch didn’t even seem to think before taking a step, but it’s not like Connor was enthusiastic to try to work with him. It just feels like there’s really no chance in mending their damaged bonds now.

    Connor can feel the confused gazes on his back, and he understands why. It’s obvious they came as a pair, if the fact they haven’t tried to socialize with the others as much as sticking to each other didn’t give it away already– even if it was just because they were both uncomfortable around strangers– then it’s their matching faces and builds. The only way to tell the difference between him and Ritch is their slight, unnatural height difference and the fact Connor prefers to wear grey and darker colors, since it’s harder to get messy and he believes it compliments his figure, while Ritch prefers white and lighter colors because he claims it looks better on him with his light eyes. It, admittedly, does look sophisticated on him in a way that Connor could never quite pull off with his dark eyes.

    Connor is pulled out of his head once again (how many times am I going to zone out today?) by the sounds of footsteps entering the room. The Marshal Jeffrey Fowler himself is walking into the room with an assistant of some kind. She’s holding a clipboard and plenty of relatively thin files. Connor wouldn’t be surprised if those folders held every single thing known about everyone around him. He doesn’t exactly want to know what his says, since all of the information on him and Ritch in there would’ve been given by Amanda or taken through spying.

    Marshal Fowler isn’t quite how Connor imagined him to be, which is to be expected for any type of celebrity really– if he ever counted as a celebrity at all, that is. While Connor remembers him being kind and open and definitely with less of a scowl on his face, Marshal Fowler seems to be sharp edges and angles and Connor can already tell that he won’t hesitate to put people in their places immediately, no matter how new they are or what age the person is. Connor isn’t exactly sure how he feels about this, but he’ll try his best to not step on his toes and avoid being a complete suck-up by accident, Both of those things happen more often than one would think.

    The Marshal stops in front of the two rows of trainees and seems to scrutinize each person and pair. He suddenly clears his throat loudly, as if gathering attention back to himself even though no one was distracted in the first place. Connor doesn’t know why anyone would become distracted right now in the first place, but some people are just plain old idiots.

    “Alright. Let’s get this done and over with. Miss Arlen?”

    The assistant takes a step forward upon hearing her name. Her dark hair is tied back in a neat, short ponytail and her lovely dress compliments her dark skin and figure well. She looks like a respectable, well-put-together woman, someone Connor could probably trust to send a message to Marshal Fowler in the event of an emergency or something of the like.

    “I’m going to call out your names so that if you prefer to go by a separate name, you can tell me now and I can write it down in your file for future reference,” she starts with a smooth voice, “Let’s start with the pairs then, shall we? Markus and Simon Manfred?”

    The two guys who were talking to Mr. Kamski earlier in the elevator call out.

    “Present!” “Here.”

    “Lily and Maveric Hallowitt?” Those two are obviously siblings with how similar their blonde hair and blue eyes are.

    “Here!” “Here.”

    “Joshua Manfred and North Adams?”

    “Present.” North says as the other informs Ms. Arlen that he prefers to be called Josh.

    Ms. Arlen nods an “alright” and writes something down in one of the files quickly, then takes a breath to call out the next group. However, Marshal Fowler interrupts her from doing so with a inquisitive hum.

    “We have a lot of Manfreds in this room. You all siblings?”

    “Not quite, sir,” Josh answers respectfully.

    Markus continues, “Josh is my brother, but Simon is my husband, sir.”

    The marshal nods and makes a noise of interest at that. “How long have you two been together?”

    Simon answers, “We’ve known each other since we were both children, but we married a few months ago.”

    “Well, congratulations. Hope this is the kind of honeymoon you wanted.” His face becomes stone-like again. “Who’s our next group?”

    “Connor and Ritchie Stern?”

    “Present, but I’d like to be called ‘Ritch’ please,” Ms. Arlen nods and scribbles in his file, and Ritch continues, “And I mean no disrespect respect when I say this, but we do not want to pilot as a pair, despite what our stepmother had made us sign up for, sir and ma’am.”

    Marshal Fowler properly glowers at them now. “Why did you let someone other than you make these decisions? Huh? ‘Cause I have a feeling you’re just in a little spat right now and are making rash decisions.”

    “Sir, he’s telling the truth,” Connor pleads timidly, “We had no intention to work as a pair from the start, but we were… forcefully instructed to sign up as a pair by our guardian.”

    “So you lied on the paperwork?”

    This is going bad, we need to just give up and try again at a later date. A much later date.

    “Not exactly, sir. We are just uncomfortable–”

    “Then you two can stay put just the way you are until further notice or else there will be consequences. Got it?”

    Connor drops his head immediately, but Ritch remains tall and proud.

   “Yes sir.” the twins echo at the same time in different tones.

    “Good. Miss Arlen, continue.”

    “Yes sir.”

    She goes on to call out the last pair, Kelly Wright and Leon Arsonilla. Then the singles are called out one by one. Traci Powell, Alex Mace, Melanie Goodwin, Jeremy Bukket, and Rico Salomon. She scribbles anything that needs to be written down on her notepad and in the appropriate file, then nods and takes a step back. Marshal Fowler takes this as his cue to step back into front and center to address the group.

    “As you may or may not already know, this training is extremely hard, and not many people graduate. Most drop out because this was tougher to get through than they thought, and some were required to stop because their bodies and minds couldn’t handle the pressure that’s going to be on you starting tomorrow. Take this as your warning now. If some of you are iffy now–” he pointedly looks in the twins’ direction “–then passing training will be impossible for you.”

    He turns his gaze to the class as a whole and starts slowly pacing again, “Most, if not all of you will not make it through training for one reason or another, so know that I have no real expectations for you lot. Do what you’re gonna do. Leave if you’re gonna leave. I don’t want to have to waste my time and resources on someone who knows they can’t stay to the end.” He stops front and center again, hands behind his back and looking almost bored. “Chloe is going to show you to your bunkers. You all have assigned rooms, pairs will share a room, singles will have a half-room or will be instructed to share temporarily. Dismissed.” He turns and starts walking out of the room.

    Before the marshal even reaches the door, Chloe is herding and leading the group of young adults out. She shows them how to get to their hallway, telling them when the different training sessions, meals, and free time will start for the next few weeks so they aren’t late. As they turn into the hallway where all of the pilots stay, Chloe hands each person a small, folded paper with their names on the outside. Connor opens his up to find his room number and a four digit passcode. Once she finishes handing all of the slips of paper out, she wishes the group good luck then leaves them behind.

    Everyone except Connor begins their hunt for their bunkers. The twin instead takes his time to finally get a good look at the place, now that he isn’t being rushed somewhere like a cattle in a traveling herd. The hallway here looks exactly the same as the first hallway they entered, only less busy and noisy. Connor starts stepping backwards towards where the others headed off to and notices that his boots don’t clang against the ground like he expected. He turns around to properly follow after the group, who are long gone now, and finds Ritch waiting for him with his arms impatiently crossed.

    “Almost done staring at the pipes?” He lifts his eyebrow grumpily.

    Connor lowers his head. “Yes. Sorry.”

    Ritch lets out a harsh “hmph” with a slight scowl and spins around and starts walking without waiting for Connor. The latter hurries after his brother, not so much worried about losing him, but worried that if he doesn’t stick near him he’ll get distracted and lose his sense of time again.

    They quickly and easily find their room. Connor puts in the pin, then Ritch opens the heavy, metal door. The space inside is kind of cramped. There’s more room in here than Connor expected, but it’s still small. Against the wall to the left are bunk beds, and against the wall directly in front of the duo is a desk and plenty of empty wall shelves for whatever they’ll need or want to store or display. They step inside and Connor notices a small bathroom to the right and locker-like closets against the same wall as the door. The center of the room has just enough open space to maybe fit a chair or two and still have room to shuffle around it, but Connor can’t see himself or Ritch wanting more than just the one desk chair in here, so it’s not a concern.

    Ritch wastes no time in unpacking his things into one of the locker-closets. Connor follows his lead and starts putting their bathroom supplies away. By the time an hour has passed, Connor is standing on the chair in his comfy clothes to position his old kaiju and jaeger figurines on the very top shelf, and Ritch is laying down on the bottom bunk (“Good luck getting up there when you’re exhausted beyond belief,” he said when Connor claimed the top bunk) with a book open on his chest. All of their books are on the second to top shelf, leaving the bottom two completely open and clean for whatever they’re going to need to store in the near future.

    Connor finishes messing with his figurines and hops down from the chair, pushing it in behind him as he makes his way to bed. He’s in the process of climbing up onto it (a slightly complicated task only because the bed is a bit smaller than a twin and has no obvious ladder) when someone knocks on the door. Ritch lowers his historical fiction book and looks at the door curiously, but makes no move to actually get up and answer it.

    “Fine then, guess I’ll get it.” Connor indignantly grumbles, hopping back down to the ground.

    “You’re the one who’s already up.” Ritch responds in a bored tone.

    With an angry sigh, Connor skips looking through the peeper hole and opens the door. Markus, Simon, Josh, and North are all standing with polite smiles and relaxed postures. Connor gives a smile back, suddenly aware that he still had a scowl on his face.

    “Hey guys, what brings you here?”

    “Hi Connor,” Markus greets pleasantly, “We were wondering if you would like to join us to the cafeteria?”

    “Dinner isn’t starting for another thirty minutes. What do you guys plan to do?” Ritch is suddenly standing right behind Connor.

    “Ritch.” Connor hisses.

    This is the first time he’s been asked to do something with the others. Yes, they were annoying the shit out of him earlier, but they aren’t bad people. Just very… lively, friendly. Connor doesn’t want to lose this chance on not being the outcast for once in his life. Stupid Connor and his stupid, puppy-like eagerness to please people and and to be liked.

    “I’m just saying, Connor. Besides, weren’t you complaining–”

    “Sure guys! I’ll come along!” Connor interrupts Ritch before he can finish that sentence. It earns him a glare from Ritch. “Just let me get some real clothes and shoes on! I’ll be just a moment.”

    He rushes to shut the door, afraid that Ritch will let something else spill that could ruin his chances of getting along with the others. He hastily pulls off his clothes, then a t-shirt on before Ritch says anything from where he’s standing by the door, very annoyed.

    “You’ve been annoyed with them all day.”

    “That doesn’t mean they’re bad people.”

    “You just want everyone to like you.”

    “Is there a problem with that?” Connor pauses in putting his second sock on.

    “There can be.”

    Connor groans and puts the sock on, then starts putting his left boot on.

    “Don’t give me that, Connor. We both know how you are with new people. You let yourself be used and don’t know when to draw the lines! Then you wonder why people use and get tired of you!”

    Connor starts strapping his belt on with practiced precision, “I don’t see how that’s your any of your concern, Ritch.”

    “Legally, we are partners.” Connor reaches for the door, but Ritch grabs his wrist. “You make a fool of yourself, you make a fool out of both of us. Amanda isn’t here to fix things this time, and she certainly can’t get us back in here if we get ourselves kicked out because you mentioned the wrong thing.” He lets go and steps back. “This is your dream career, Connor, remember that.” He turns and plops himself on the bed, the rustle of papers giving away that he’s gone back to reading.

    “Sorry for the wait, guys,” Connor smiles and pulls the door shut. “Ritch just had some… concerns. But everything’s okay now. By the way, what are we doing until dinner?”

    “We’re just going to stroll around, get used to the place.” Josh smiles politely.

    “Ah.” he nods

    “Do you wear anything other than that uniform?” North points to his outfit.

    “Uh...”

    Connor freezes and looks down at himself, with his dark grey t-shirt tucked into his lighter-grey cargo pants, his pants tucked into his black boots and held up by a black belt. It’s the same outfit he’s been wearing pretty much every day for the past decade, now. He looks back up at the others and notices their t-shirts with patterns, designs, and colors and jeans with simple tennis shoes. Hell, North is wearing leggings and sandals. Connor doesn’t think he’s ever worn sandals before in his life. They ruin posture, foot structure, and knee and hip joints if worn too often, and provide no coverage for people’s feet, so he hasn’t ever thought about wearing them. Yet, here he is, thinking about how it’s probably kind of strange that he hasn’t now that he really can’t wear them anymore.

    “North–” Josh starts to reprimand, but Connor doesn’t let him finish.

    “I guess not. I haven’t really thought about it until now I guess, but I haven’t really worn other types of clothing for the past several years.” Connor notes the genuine, innocent curiosity in his voice that he didn’t mean to let slip. He meant it to sound more sarcastic so they wouldn’t worry, dang it.

    He guesses North notices too because she sounds sincere when she asks her next question once they’ve started walking.

    “Several years? You’ve just been wearing boots and cargo pants everywhere for years?”

    Connor turns his head to North, “Yes, unless there was a social gathering we– Ritch and I, I mean– were required to attend.” He faces forward again, “In those cases we usually wore suits.”

    Out of the corner of his eye, Connor can see Markus lean forward to try to make eye contact with him, so he turns his head again. How do people handle talking to large groups like this? What if someone doesn’t get to speak because the others are too busy chatting away? His thoughts get back on track and in the present as Markus speaks.

    “Were these ‘social gatherings’ a normal occurrence for you growing up?”

    “Kind of?”

    “Kind of?” Simon repeats as a question of “what do you mean?”

    “Well, Amanda would have parties and gatherings often enough, but we usually weren’t allowed to attend since there was wine and other alcohol involved, so on those nights we stayed outside and trained in the dark.”

    “Training before you were legally allowed to have alcohol? Exactly how old are you?” Josh inquires.

    “We’ll be turning 23 in a couple of weeks.” 

    North’s eyes widen, “Woah, what the hell? You’re so young!”

    “Am I? How old are all of you?” Connor doesn’t know how successful he was in covering his slowly-growing anxiety at being the odd one out before getting a chance to fit in.

    Markus answers, “I’m 28, Simon’s 27, Josh and North are both 26.”

    “I’m turning 27 in two and a half months!” Josh proudly declares.

    Connor desperately wants to ask if that’s the average age for trainees to be, but is, quite frankly, afraid of what the answer will be. Therefore, he states an observation instead so there isn’t a noticeable gap while he tries to think something else up.

    “You guys are very close in age.”

    “Yea,” Simon nods, “I was in the same elementary class as Markus, and Josh was in the same class as North, and Markus and Josh are brothers so we all met up.”

    “Best friends ever since.” Markus smiles.

    “How long have you been training for, then?” North jumps into the conversation expectantly.

    Connor doesn’t really want to think about this, let alone talk about it with strangers who have been annoying him all week. It’s not their fault, and they’re really nice people, Connor just isn’t used to being around so many others for such an extended time. The fact that he hasn’t had any proper down time isn’t exactly helping his social aptitude, either. Maybe he should have listened to Ritch earlier, but he just wants things to be different this time.

   “Uh, well... How long have you guys been training?”

   “For about a year.” Markus answers easily.

    Oh.

    Something must show on his face because Simon asks how long he’s been training again, except this time he asks it in a way that seems more sympathetic and concerned. His tone catches Connor completely off guard. He doesn’t know what to do when people start treating him like more than some kind of dog or machine that’s eager to please, despite that being exactly what he wants. Those kinds of moments were few and far between before he got here. Now, it’s only been a week that he’s seen these strangers, and he hasn’t even talked with them properly before now, but they already seem to regard him as one of their acquaintances.

    And this exact moment is what Ritch meant when he told Connor to watch himself, isn’t it?

    Well, now Connor can’t exactly dodge the question any further, can he? Since Simon seems so genuinely interested. That, and there’s been a few, solid seconds of silence since the question was asked. He’d seem like an extreme freak to not answer such a simple question.

    “Uh–”

    Were all of those years of training and forcing ourselves on really for nothing? Was that Amanda’s deranged way of entertainment all this time? What if they’re the ones that are being too lax and won’t make it through because of that? But if we were meant to do heavy training before now, why would we have these months of official “training” on top of that? Did Ritch and I really have to push ourselves so hard? What if–

    “Connor?” Markus’ voice interrupts his anxiety.

    Stop it Connor! You’re starting to look like a freak! Don’t you want friends?

    “I think it’s been just over ten years now?”

    “Ten years?!” all four of them blurt out with varying levels of concern and bewilderment.

    Just stop talking Connor, you stupid fucking idiot! You need to give normal responses! Normal!

    “Yeah, it might’ve been a bit overkill, now that I think about it. But there’s no changing the past, right?” Connor sounds so awkward, but he doesn’t know how to make it stop. “Guess that’s just life.”

    “You were twelve when you started training?”

    “Uh– No. I– We were closer to ten? But I’m– We’re not bothered by it–”

    “Did you even get a childhood? Or was that spent–”

    “North.” Josh swats her arm.

    “What?”

    “I’m sorry about her,” Markus apologizes, “She can be a bit abrasive sometimes.”

    Connor wrings his hands together, “That’s alright. Isn’t everyone at times?”

    He definitely should have listened to Ritch back in their bunker.

    “I mean, I guess, but not as often as North.”

    “Hey!”

    Their playful bickering continues as they wander the halls, and they must pick up on Connor’s discomfort from before because they don’t ask any questions about him or his past anymore. There are times where he feels like he is intruding on their time together, kind of like the fifth wheel, but that’s how it always is when a group of friends try to accept a new member, right? That, and Connor also isn’t super into being a part of large groups anyway (anything larger than three people is a large group for him, though, so...).

    “Hey there, trainees!” a woman with tan skin and black hair calls out– jaeger pilot Tina Chen, “You’re heading to the cafeteria, yea?”

    “Yes ma’am.” Simon answers respectfully.

    “Just Tina will do. I’m on my way there myself. I can show you which tables have been claimed by who when we get there,” she smiles nicely, “C’mon. Let’s go get some grub!”

    They make it to the food court area, and Tina shows them which tables they should be welcome to sit at, and which ones they should avoid at least for now. There’s two tables she points out– the one closest to the door that’s completely empty and a partially full one towards the back of the room– that she says are completely off limits until further notice. When Markus asks why, she explains that she and her little group sit there, and two people in her friend group are known for being very easily agitated, so it’d be better for them to just stay away. She then goes on to say that the table by the door is just one that no one wants to sit at.

    Connor’s aware that there’s a warning in the way she says it, but he elects to ignore it. That specific table sounds like the perfect place to take a well-needed break from people and their accidentally invasive questions. He can just get up and leave when whoever sits there normally arrives.

    So Connor gets his food, and silently thanks whatever higher power there may or may not be when the group of four move to sit at a table in the center of the room without asking Connor where he’s going or if he wants to join them. He sits down on the farthest end of the barren table, noticing how clean it looks compared to the other tables. Connor idly wonders if it’s cursed or something. Even if it was, Connor would still sit here, considering he’s pretty sure he’s already been cursed to some degree–

    “Who the fuck are you?”

    Connor whips his head to the source of the gruff voice and is met with the Hank Anderson. Sure, his hair is grey and shoulder length rather than the neatly trimmed blonde it was before, and he’s definitely gained quite a few pounds, but there’s no mistaking that this is the person who inspired Connor to become a jaeger pilot those years ago. Which means this is the same Hank Anderson that retired due to unknown reasons. Why would he still be here if he isn’t a pilot anymore?

    “My name is Connor and I’m a new trainee–”

    “Yea yea, whatever, I don’t actually care. What I do care about is why the fuck you’re hanging around my table. You don’t look like you need anythin’.” The older man crosses his arms angrily, the smell of alcohol wafts from him, and Connor can just tell it’s not the expensive, celebratory kind that Amanda was known for providing.

    Connor doesn’t know what happened to make him slip like this during the past several years– because he’s pretty damn sure that the Hank Anderson from ten years ago was not this bitter and vulgar– but he has a pressing feeling that it’s probably the same reason he decided to retire from being a pilot. And while Connor wants to know what happened, he also has personal experience with people asking well-meaning but invasive and mildly to majorly triggering questions. Therefore, Connor doesn’t mention recognizing him, and makes a mental note to never ask him personal questions and such.

    Connor lowers his head just a bit, but doesn’t break eye contact with Mr. Anderson. It’s the perfect picture of being genuinely guilty and apologetic, according to Amanda’s and Ritch’s reactions to this posture. Anything to let him know that Connor really didn’t mean to intrude on his valuable personal time.

    “I wanted a break from all of the people and was told that this table was always empty and off limits.” Connor shifts, already grabbing his tray to move and eat in the hallway or against the wall or something. He’d prefer that embarrassment over having to deal with anyone else today.

    Mr. Anderson sighs heavily, then throws up his arms as a sign of “fuck it”. “Fuckin’ hell. Can’t deny a man some fuckin’ peace and quiet now can I?” He harshly points at Connor as he continues, “Just don’t think you can start botherin’ me or some shit just ‘cause I let you sit here today, got it newbie?”

    “Yes sir.”

    “And knock it off with the ‘sir’ already. I ain’t your boss.”

    Before Connor can even reply, the very-likely-drunk man stumbles off to the line for food. Connor catches some strangers’ eye from the table behind him and quickly turns to sit properly on the bench. Unlike before, Connor keeps his head and eyes down and doesn’t look up from his plate, despite the stares he can feel dragging along his back. This was the exact opposite of what he wanted by sitting at this table. He didn’t know what he expected, though– actually, he did.

    He expected that because people appeared to be completely ignoring the table itself, he was hoping he would be ignored along with it, but that is absolutely not the case. It’s only his first day here and yet he’s gotten himself on bad terms with the marshal, made multiple people think he’s some kind of pity-fest freak, and probably already managed to get himself a reputation of sitting at Hank Anderson’s table even though it’s very clear that no one is welcome. He’s probably going to be labeled as the “problem child” (or would it be “problem man”?) by the end of tomorrow if he hasn’t already, and anything he does is automatically applied to Ritch as well, considering they have the same face.

    Ritch is going to be pissed.

    “Would you stop with the fork thing, kid?” Mr Anderson’s voice snaps, “Fuck’s sake.”

    “I’m sorry.” Connor responds automatically upon hearing Mr. Anderson’s irritation. He isn’t even sure when he returned or how long he’s been sitting there.

    Connor has learned over the years that it’s always best to apologize first. It makes people easier to talk to and negotiate with. That, and rarely ever just say “sorry”, as that can too easily be mistaken for sarcasm or insincerity, but also don’t use the phrase “I’m sorry” too often, or people will come to believe that he’s rarely meant it genuinely. “I’m sorry”, “I apologize”, “My bad”, and “Forgive me” are the basic ones– the equivalent of the root of a word, one could say– and if it’s anything more serious, Connor uses “I sincerely apologise”, “I’m very sorry”, “I am so very sorry”, “Please forgive me”, “It’s my fault”, or a combination or repetition of any of these phrases.

    Stupid Connor and his stupid habits. Except this is one of the few habits he wouldn’t call stupid, since this one generally helps fix something or lessens the blow after he really was an idiot.

    Connor suddenly realizes that he hasn’t touched his food since Mr. Anderson confronted him earlier. Connor takes one more bite, but doesn’t try to force any more down. Amanda isn’t around and neither is Ritch (not that he’d really do anything, hopefully), so surely he can leave food on his plate, right?

    Wrong. He needs the calories if he’s going to continue working and training hard. He really doesn’t want to pass out mid-fight again; it never ends well for one reason or another when he does. Therefore, with a cringe, Connor forces himself to take another bite and chews slowly, as if the food will simply disappear in his mouth if he chews it long enough.

    “What the fuck’s got you in a twist?” the familiar gruff voice asks from the other end of the table. Connor notes that he sounds somewhat annoyed, if not a tad curious.

    Connor can fix that, probably, since he is the reason for his irritation. He straightens his posture and gets ready to get up and leave, despite there still being food on his plate. He ignores the rush of bad feelings he gets for not finishing.

    “Nothing that should bother me, if I’m to be a jaeger pilot.” Connor makes to get up and bid the older man farewell when said man speaks up suddenly.

    “What do you mean, ‘nothing that should bother you’? Are pilots not people?”

     A quick glance over at him shows that Hank has his eyebrows furrowed and his arms crossed in a defensive manner. Why does everything Connor does to try to placate people here always backfire? Is something wrong with him? Well, more wrong than he already knows, anyway?

    “I meant no offense or harm by that. It’s just been a long week for me even though it would be tame for a real pilot.” Hank opens his mouth to say something, but Connor cuts him off, “Ah– I’ve talked too much again. I’ll go ahead and get out of your hair. I apologize.”

    Connor gets up from the bench then promptly throws his tray out before his mind can force him to stay and somehow finish it. Connor takes a quick glance around the cafeteria area, noting with something weighing his chest down that everyone else in the room is in comfortable clothes or official uniforms except for Ritch, but he doesn’t seem too bothered with that fact with how he’s seems to be getting along with Simon and the others. He spins around to head out of the crowded area and go back to his room to reset after today and sleep. As he passes Mr. Anderson, who’s been staring at him like he’s trying to solve a difficult puzzle, Connor decides he might as well properly say goodbye, so he doesn’t come off as just plain rude by walking past Mr. Anderson as if he doesn’t exist.

    “Thank you for putting up with me today, Mr. Anderson, I hope your evening gets better.” after I ruined your peaceful dinner, Connor finishes in his head.

    Connor doesn’t see how Mr. Anderson tenses up upon hearing his name, because he never told Connor his name and he hasn’t met anyone who has recognized him in years because he’s fallen so far down. Connor doesn’t see because he's already hastily making his way back to his bunker, where he can’t possibly screw anything else up unless he’s still awake when Ritch gets back to their room. That doesn’t happen, however, because as soon as Connor gets inside, changes into sleeping clothes (because he was always told “pajamas” were for children), and gets himself tucked into his tiny bed, he’s out like a light.

•◊•◊•◊•◊•

Masterlist <~> Next

•◊•◊•◊•◊•

A/N: I hope you didn’t hate this chapter! This chapter is in Connor’s POV, I know, and I promise Reed900 will come soon, just not for a couple of chapters, ya dig? Gotta raise the anticipation (I hope)! Next chapter will likely be a mixture of Ritch’s POV and Hank’s. Maybe a bit of Connor too? I haven’t decided yet. Anyway, Ima go and stop procrastination housework Lol. Thank you anyone for reading!! Ciao! <33

[starlightwrites]

Okay what about 47 and 73 for that prompt mashup?

Hi @becausestories! Sorry it took me a bit to finish this!

For the Fanfiction Trope Mash-up!

Not A Date

It was a perfectday—sun shining, cool breezes rolling lazily through the parks, and the sky wasa perfect, spotless blue, so bright it almost didn’t look real. The whole nineyards, like something out of a postcard. They were walking side-by-side throughthe wastes, on their way to check out a territory east of Fizztop when thethought struck her and forced a laugh.

They were on adate.

Not aparticularly good date, but they were hitting the benchmarks, so far as shecould tell.

(Continued after the cut!)

Sunny skies?Check.

Quiet stroll?Check.

Picnic lunch?Check, if cram and tinned apples counted.

All she neededwas a dress and some pearls and they could have been headed for the town parkto sit side-by-side in front of a duck pond. Just laughing away, sitting on thecommunity green amidst moms and their strollers, kids and their soccer balls,old men feeding geese. Gage on a proper date. Ha.

She snorted and theman in question glanced over out the corner of his eye. If he knew what she wasthinking, he’d snap at her that this wasn’t a date. Grumble something about allthe work they had to do or swear about the Disciples or something like that.His brow would furrow and his good eye would narrow. Gage didn’t seem to likeher goofy distractions, and he certainly wouldn’t tolerate that one.

So, of course,she had to needle him.

“You know,Gage,” she said. “I was reading this article in Live and Love about pre-war outings.”

“Yeah?”

“In particular,there was this one ritual where people would go out on nice days and eat mealstogether. They called it a date.”

If both eyescould have rolled, they’d have rolled right the hell out of his head. Adjustinghis pack on his shoulder and speeding up a bit, he groused “don’t you havebetter things to do?”

“Right now? Whilewe’re on a date?”

“We ain’t on adate.”

“I dunno, Gage.Seems a bit like we’re on a date.”

“We ain’t on adate, Princess.”

“Whatever yousay, dear.” She skipped up closer and looped her arm through his with a heartysmile. When he shrugged her off, she could have sworn she saw an answering grintug at the corner of his mouth.

She was halfwayto formulating a snappy response when the Geiger counter on her Pip clicked tolife. Gage stopped mid-step and glanced back. She pulled up the screen, butultimately, all she really needed to do was look straight up at the quilt ofthick dark clouds settling overhead so fast it was like night had fallen all atonce.

And just likethat, the perfect weather was gone.

Radstorms werestill new. She was getting used to most things, but something about the airturning green was just plain unnatural. The way the gusts were sharp, almostviolent, and she half-expected some upstart girl and her little dog to park afarmhouse on her head. As if she’d ever had a doubt she wasn’t in Kansasanymore.

A hand wrappedaround her arm and jerked her back down to earth and towards a hazy shape inthe gathering murk. It was one of those old rusted-red trucks that peoplebragged about using to move mattresses. The kind that always seemed to looklike it was on death’s door, even back before the apocalypse. With the radstormgearing up, however, it would have to do. She pried open the door and clamberedin as Gage thrust her forward. He practically crushed her when he followed and slammedthe door behind them. Crank window. It was hard not to giggle, watching himfrantically roll the window up to keep out the dust.

Gage collapsed,his armor propping him forward at a weird angle. Corinne shifted her ruck ontothe floor and adjusted herself on the bench seat.

“This isn’tgoing to do much, Boss.”

“It’s betterthan being out there.”

Cori glanced outthe windshield to where the wind pounded down on the ground, crashing into thedust like a wave breaking on the shore. At least all the windows in the oldtruck were still in one piece.

Gage shifted andthen finally tried to fight his chest piece off over his head. Problem was, hewas tall enough that his head was already brushing the roof of the car as itwas. Cori let him struggle for a second before he stopped and made eye-contact,glaring.

“A little help?”

“You seem to bedoing great on your own.”

“Corinne.”

His arms weretrapped in the metal cage he’d seen fit to wear over his ratty tank tops andthere was nothing funnier than watching her big scary bodyguard trapped withinthe confines of his own armor. Sure, she could unlatch it. But there wassomething deeply satisfying about “always-thinks-ahead” Gage having forgottenthat cars have roofs.

“Listen,” hegrumbled, probably realizing that she wasn’t in a hurry to assist. “Ifsomething comes along and has the same thought we did about hiding in thisfuckin’ thing, you’ll want me to be able to use my arms.”

She looked backout at the storm and decided that was fair. Her fingers worked at the metallatches on the side of his armor she could reach and, once his arms were free,he finished the job, dumped his armor onto the floor, and leaned back againstthe seat.

Well. They hadtime. Corinne unpacked the two cans of cram and a tin of apples and set them onthe dash so she could root around for forks.

“Fuckin’ radstorm.Hope it passes before I start puking.”

“With our luck,we’ll have to finish out our date in this car.”

If he could havejumped out of the truck without irradiating himself beyond saving, he wouldhave left her there. She laughed and curled up with her boots braced on eitherside of the steering wheel and a spoon in-hand. Close enough.

“Picnic lunch?”She offered the can his way after taking a scoop for herself. Cram wasninety-percent salt and one percent processed ham, but it was better thannothing. Gage made a face but accepted regardless.

“Still not adate, Boss.”

“I don’t knowabout that.” She reached over and took another bite, almost elbowing him in theprocess. “Seems pretty cozy.”

“You’ve got somelow standards, then.”

“Got me there.”

They finisheddinner and even picked at the apples, but the storm didn’t seem to be lettingup. Gage rolled his head back and cracked his knuckles.

“Think we’ll bestuck here till morning?”

It had beenmidday when they set out, but in her experience, Radstorms lasted anywhere froma few minutes to a few hours, and if it got dark…well. She wasn’t big on theidea of stumbling around at night if she could avoid it.

“Who knows?”

“You’re probablyright,” he sighed as he stretched out, hands behind his head.

Cori opened thedoor for a split second to dump the tins out so they weren’t just sitting inthe cabin. It was silly; not like she was hell-bent on keeping this busted oldtruck neat and tidy, but still, she’d rather not sleep on trash if she couldavoid it. Gage made a face but didn’t offer reproach.

“Well,” shesaid, locking the door firmly. “This will be one of the longest dates I’ve everbeen on.”

“Still not adate.”

“And overnight,too. What kind of woman must you think I am?”

“The kind with abig fuckin’ mouth.”

She curled herlegs up to her chest so she could swivel in the small space. Her knee hit thehorn and nearly startled both of them out of their skin, but she squirmed untilshe could lay down, feet propped up on the window and head on Gage’s lap. He adjusted,sitting up so straight she could have used his spine like a ruler. One hand bracedon the seat next to him and then jumped up like he’d just realized her hair waspoisonous and he shouldn’t be anywhere near it. But then, when he couldn’t setit back on his lap, he seemed at a loss. He scratched his chest thoughtfullyand then set his hand back on the seat, right back where he’d started. Shecould have turned her head and kissed his forearm, and oh boy, if this freaked him out, that would sendhim scrambling.

“Well. You’vedone it, Gage. You’ve bored your date to sleep.” Her eyes trained up on hisface, the sharp jut of his chin, the shadow of his stubble, the planes of hischest. All sharp edges—Gage was one-hundred-percent sharp edges, with some scruffthrown in for looks. She’d cuddled herself up against the sheer rock face of anindomitable cliff, and wasn’t it just like her to wrap up in arms that wouldn’thug back. Funny.

That thought wasbitter coffee on the back of her tongue, and it wasn’t even fair. She hadbetter things to be bitter about anyways, so she stuffed it down and grinned.

“Look at you. Sostiff! Well, stay up if you want, but I’m going to get some shut-eye. Wake meif you want to swap out for watch.”

Corinne rolledonto her side, her head still cushioned on his thigh. She was starting to driftwhen she felt a light tough, a hand brushing over the point of her elbow andlanding on her forearm, a warm weight against her skin. Overhead, Gage relaxedback into his seat. He squeezed her forearm and she felt him exhale, tautness inhis stomach easing.

Not a date. Nota bad way to spend the afternoon, either.

[lhugbereth]

KP- I'm crying omg, Ignis almost fighting the stranger in his bed 😂 I imagine Noctis is adamant that he's too comfy to leave and says he has nowhere to go anyways because SOME asshole named GLADIO kicked him out. Ignis softens a tiny bit but is still reluctant to let Noct stay, tho he looks harmless enough he supposes, just too sassy for his own good. Cue awkward bed sharing maybe? ;) Bonus: Ignis stretching out before bed and noct pretends to be asleep but he's watching like ?! DAMN! I'M GAY!

I’m sorry this has taken so long, but at last it’s time for a side-Ignoct catch up post!! These two are almost as bad as Promptio when it comes to being totally obvious-slash-oblivious about their mutual crushing. So I hope you enjoy this post featuring flexible Iggy and Noct’s Big Gay Awakening :3 

(idk where this gif is from but it’s too appropriate not to use...?????)

Noct appreciates the view under the cut! v v v 

[The night of the Grand Prix in Altissia]

- Noctis has never been in love. He’s had flings, sure, mostly when he was in school and none of them serious. Nothing that lasted longer than a single semester. Before that, it was mostly him avoiding the people who only saw him for his name and his father’s money. At twenty, he’s already pretty sure things like love and dating just...aren’t for him.

- Which is why he doesn’t get Gladio. Like, at all. Flying both of them across the continent just to watch Prompto skate? Noct doesn’t think he could ever feel that strongly about someone else. He really, really doesn’t get it.

- So when Gladio tells him after the competition not to wait up, Noct rolls his eyes and makes his way to their hotel all alone. He takes the scenic route, admiring the city streets lit up at night and ordering a gelato from a vendor. But even the area near the canal is filled with couples enjoying the romantic atmosphere. Noct sighs, tosses his empty cup in a trash bin, and continues on his way.

- If he’s expecting Gladio back at all, it certainly isn’t an hour later and with Prompto attached to his hip. They burst into the room in a flurry of laughter and kisses, almost ignoring Noct’s presence until he clears his throat from the other bed.

- “Oh. Hey, Noct. Uh, this is Prompto -”

- “Nice to meet you!” The blonde smiles, waves, but looks a little embarrassed as he puts a half-inch distance between him and Gladio.

- Noct rolls his eyes again. He’s doing that a lot recently. “Yeah, hi. Are you guys gonna...need the room?”

- Gladio’s mouth twitches. He looks at Prompto, back to Noct, down at his feet. Next to him, the blonde flushes as he reaches into his coat pocket. “Um. You can have the key to my hotel room if you -”

- Noct is already moving. He says nothing as he snatches the card key out of Prompto’s fingers and starts down the hall toward the elevators. Behind him, the sound of the door closing follows him all the way to the lobby.

- Luckily for him, Prompto’s hotel is only a block away - a five-star kinda place called the Leville. The room is on the tenth floor, and invitingly empty with one large bed in the center. The skater’s bags are against the far wall - he seems to travel with enough stuff for two people, at least - and there’s a spa-style tub in the bathroom. Noct considers it for a moment before his exhaustion gets the better of him and he collapses on the bed without even getting undressed.

- He’s asleep when the door opens. A figure enters quietly, stops in the doorway to watch him. He doesn’t notice when the figure approaches, or even when a gentle hand reaches out to touch his shoulder. In fact, he doesn’t wake up until that same hand shakes him hard enough to knock him nearly off the edge of the mattress and onto the floor.

- Noct bolts up. There’s a man standing over him - a stunningly beautiful man, his groggy mind supplies - looking about as confused as he is and somehow even angrier. Before Noct can stop himself the words are tumbling out of his mouth. “Who the fuck’re you?!”

- Silence. That probably wasn’t the wisest choice of words if the other man’s harsh green glare is any indication, but it’s too late to take them back now. Noct waits, tense with nerves, until at last the silence is broken by the most elegant Tenebraen accent he’s ever heard. “Is that how you usually greet someone whose bed you’ve sequestered?”

- It takes a moment before the words sink in. By then, Noct has already started babbling about how Gladio kicked him out and Prompto gave him the key and he doesn’t know who this guy thinks he is but this is his room now and --

- The man cuts him off with a sigh. “I should have suspected those two. What did you say your name was?”

- “Nocti -- Noct. Just Noct.”

- Gods, this man has spectacular eyebrows. “Well, just Noct. I suppose kicking you out now would only make me as bad as them. You can stay, but forgive me for asking for the use of my bed?” Noct blushes. He actually fucking blushes at the thought of his beautiful man falling asleep next to him, this stranger who hasn’t even bothered to give his name. It isn’t until he slides over to make room that he realizes the man is gesturing to the chair in the corner. Oh. Oh.

- He’s certainly slept in less comfortable positions, but he can’t help feeling all of this is Gladio’s fault. If it weren’t for him and his stupid crush, Noct thinks, he would still be back home in his own room, with his own bed and his video games. He wouldn’t be curled up in a worn armchair with a thin blanket tucked around his shoulders, simultaneously trying to fall back asleep and keep watching the show across the room. He thinks the man must be a skater like Prompto because damn he’s flexible - stretching on the floor at the foot of the bed, one leg straight out behind him and the other in front, his body pressed flat against it as his fingers curl around his heel. Then a smooth transition into a side split, his sleep pants leaving little to the imagination when he twists and arcs his back. Noctis wonders if the man knows how good he looks. If perhaps he’s doing this on purpose to torture him, as if Gladio and Prompto hadn’t done enough. Either way, it isn’t fair - and it makes his cramped position in the chair even less comfortable (although perhaps trying to hide his boner in the bed would have been worse)

- He swears he’s never going to forgive Gladio for any of this.

[The next morning]

- Ignis finds his guest still sleeping when he gets out of the shower in the morning. While he dresses, he finds himself studying the young man curled up under his sheet in the chair. He appears to be no older than Prompto, around nineteen or twenty. Attractive (he tries to ignore that). A student, perhaps? Although he claimed the night before to be an acquaintance of Gladio’s, he certainly doesn’t strike Ignis as having the build of a hockey player. He does, however, seem like someone who has secrets.

- If there’s one thing Ignis hates, it’s not knowing something.

- He slips out of the room as quietly as he can, but the mystery continues to eat at him all morning. Even after he checks out at the front desk (hoping Noct will find his way home before he’s carted off with the linens), Ignis can’t seem to reign in his thoughts. Why, for example, wouldn’t Noct give him his full name? What was it he was hiding? And why had he looked so disappointed when he’d been kicked out of the bed? Ignis chalks his curiosity up to the strangeness of the whole situation, and tries his best not to mention the young man in front of Prompto once they arrive at the airport.

[Several days later:]

- “Oh, hey! Gladio says he can make it after all!” Prompto’s looking at his phone again, for at least the dozenth time since Ignis first told him to put it away and concentrate. At this point, he can only give up trying and plop down next to the blonde on the mat.

- “Wonderful. As if you weren’t already distracted enough this evening.”

- Prompto smiles and pats his knee. “He’s bringing you coffee to make up for it.”

- “Well, I suppose that’s something.”

- What Prompto fails to mention is that Gladio isn’t coming alone. He’s dragged his friend with him again, and the moment Noct walks through the door carrying a bag of take-out lattes, Ignis loses the capacity for rational thought. Everything he’s been trying to ignore since Altissia (those deep blue eyes, that perpetual hint of something tugging at the corners of Noct’s mouth, the inexplicable obsession/attraction he’s felt toward the kid) come back in full force.  And still Ignis knows next to nothing about him!

- He doesn’t realize he’s been staring until Noct shifts uncomfortably and reaches in the bag to pull out one of the steaming hot coffees. “Nice t’see you again. Gladio said you, uh, like double shots?”

- “Oh. Yes, I do. Thank you. Er - “ Reaching out for the gift, he can’t help but notice the “name” scrawled across the side of the cup in black marker. “‘Specs’?”

- Noct flushes as his eyes somehow grow ever more beautiful. “O-oh. I didn’t…. I mean, you never told me your name, and Gladio said I should...ask you myself….” (Nearby, Gladio is grinning and whispering something in Prompto’s ear until the blonde’s mirth grows to match) “U-um, I hope you don’t hate it. T-the nickname, I mean. It’s ‘cause of your glasses, y’know, and - “

- “Ignis.” He clears his throat when Noct blushes again. “My name is Ignis Scientia. I apologize for my apparent lapse in manners when we met in Altissia.”

- “Yeah, um, me too.” (Gladio and Prompto are, if possible, being more obnoxious than before. Prompto’s actually filming this with his phone while Gladio shoots him the thumbs up from over Ignis’ shoulder). “I’m Noctis. But Noct is fine.” And now Ignis is smiling at him - it’s subtle, more in the way his eyes soften than the barely-visible curve of his lips - but Noct thinks it’s completely unfair how gorgeous he looks when he does it.

- “Thank you for the coffee, Noct.” Ignis takes a sip (is it wrong to be jealous of a plastic cup lid??) and gestures for him to have a seat next to Gladio on the mat. Noctis watches for over an hour in awe, unable to tear his eyes off Ignis while he limbers up, runs Prompto through their basic drills, and eventually demonstrates a new beam technique that shows off both his flawless flexibility and his impressive upper body strength.

- Halfway through, Gladio leans in and with a knowing grin, tells him to pick his jaw up off the floor.

[thedargonden]

[7] UNINVITED GUEST

October 19th, XX19

6:00 PM

As the pink sunset shines into the loungeroom, Orie sits at the loungeroom dining table behind the sofa, right next to the front window.

Her left arm is still broken, but that's not stopping her from sloppily attempting to eat cheesecake with a fork in her RIGHT hand.

ORIE: "Gah! Why is this so difficult!!!"

She carefully positions her fork over the end of the slice and as slowly as she can, moves downward into the cheesecake.

She succeeds, going through the graham cracker crust on the bottom. But when she tries to pull the bit of cheesecake up, her unbalanced fork holding sent the whole fork and cheesecake bit to the floor.

ORIE: "Nooooooo!"

;I enchant this cheesecake to feed itself to me, right this instant!;

In response, the cheesecake slice lifts up into the air quickly and crams itself down Orie's mouth.

ORIE: "MOOOHH!!!! FSHTAHPH ITH!!!!!!"

She quickly gets up, almost collapsing, being unbalanced on 3 limbs. She limps over to the refrigerator past the sofa and around the corner to the hallway door.

Orie opens the fridge door, then opens and pours a can of root beer down her throat to help get the cheesecake down and also taking big gulps.

After a moment she coughs and collapses to the floor, finally able to swallow the whole slice of cheesecake.

ORIE: "Alright. Honestly, I deserved that."

Her voice is more raspy and breathy now, probably because she had to swallow a whole slice of cheesecake.

Phoenix emerges from the hallway and turns to her left to look around the corner at Orie.

PHOENIX: "Woah, what happened in here?"

Orie coughs again.

ORIE: "Tried enchanting a slice of cheesecake to feed itself to me."

PHOENIX: "Sweet Myrka, Orie, how do you keep finding ways for your sorcery to almost kill you? Weren't you taught anything about your magic?"

ORIE: "No, not really... I had been raised by an idnagol. Not a myrkur. Idnagols don't know that much when it comes to how myrkuran sorcery works. All they know is that it does."

PHOENIX: "What about your parent who WAS a myrkur?"

ORIE: "What do you mean?"

PHOENIX: "I mean, uh. Of course one of your parents was a Myrkur. You look like an Idnagol, but you also have Myrkuran sorcery. You got that from your family, right?"

ORIE: "I don't understand..."

PHOENIX: "Who raised you? Your hatchparent? Your guardparent?"

ORIE: "Hatchparent? ...Guardparent....?"

Orie stares at Phoenix, completely lost on what she's saying.

PHOENIX: "OH MY GOD, Orie! Had no one taught you about this?"

ORIE: "Not exactly... I know the words, but... I don't really know what they mean."

PHOENIX: "Oh my god. Do I really have to give the talk to a fully grown dragon?"

ORIE: "The talk?"

Phoenix sighs.

PHOENIX: "Fine. Okay, so. We as a species are different from most other life. Most other life need a 'female' and 'male' to reproduce...

However, we're not so much like that, as all of us typically have both uhhhh... parts for reproduction."

ORIE: "Uhm... so what does... this... have to do with hatchparents and guardparents?"

Phoenix begins to blush a little bit.

PHOENIX: "SHUT UP! I'M GETTING TO IT!"

ORIE: "Alright..."

PHOENIX: "Anyway, to cut it short and not get into any... awkward bits... when a dragon lays the egg, they are called the hatchparent. Whereas the other one in the... relationship is the guardparent.

Hatchparents tend to care more directly for the egg itself, hence they're called the hatchparent. Guardparents tend to be less closely protective of the egg, but more so the whole family unit.

Though this doesn't describe ALL cases. Sometimes the guardparent can be more protective of the egg itself, and the hatchparent more protective of the family, but the way I described first is the typical relationship."

ORIE: "Huh... So, do you have a hatchparent or guardparent?"

PHOENIX: "Well... no... unless you count... nevermind."

Phoenix squints her eyes and shakes her head.

PHOENIX: "Anyway, who were you raised by?"

ORIE: "Well, I was raised by-"

A knock interrupts the two dragons as they look toward the door frame where the knock was. Behind the door frame stands a shortish pine green looking old dragon. Her long lime green and curly mane waves in the wind. Her white horns show mysterious markings etched into them, almost as if they were in a different language. She holds a dark bag over her right shoulder and near her wing.

TAFLA: "Hellooooo! Am I disturbing you two?"

Orie smiles wide as she sees this dragon and jumps up, limping toward her and she clears her throat from all cheesecake residue leftover.

ORIE: "TALFA!!!!"

TAFLA: "Come now, Orie! You know it's 'Taf-la' and not 'Tal-fa!'"

ORIE: "I know, I'm teasing!"

Orie goes in for a hug with Tafla, but avoiding using her left arm for the hug.

TAFLA: "Orie! What happened to your arm??"

ORIE: "Oh... myrkuran sorcery... as usual..."

Tafla sighs and lets Orie go.

TAFLA: "I told you to be careful with that magic."

Phoenix thinks of saying "So did I, Orie" but she doesn't want to be rude in front of a new dragon.

TAFLA: "Oh, if only your hatchparent were here. He's a-"

ORIE: "Yeah, I know he's a healing sorcerer, Tafla. You've told me every time I got Injured."

Phoenix goes up to Tafla and holds her right hand out for a handshake.

PHOENIX: "Hi, Tafla? I'm Phoenix. So, you're Orie's... hatchparent?"

TAFLA: "Well, of course. I'm her adoptive hatchparent. Her caretaker, if you will."

PHOENIX: "Oh, whatever happened to her biological hatchparent?"

Tafla’s expression widens and she quiets to a whisper.

TAFLA: "Uh... ehehehh... well... they... they’re still alive, if that's what you're asking... but..."

Tafla gets close to Phoenix's ear and shoots a small look at Orie with her white eyes as if to ask her to not read her mind. Orie nods and looks away.

TAFLA: "I don't want to upset Orie by bringing this up around her... let's just say for now that her hatchparent gave her to me to keep her safe, and her guardparent is uhm..."

PHOENIX: "No need for the rest, I know her."

TAFLA: "How do you know Perseus?"

Phoenix seems to flinch at the sound of that name.

PHOENIX: "I... uh... well... she is the myrkuran queen... and I am a myrkur."

Phoenix feels the beginning of an anxiety attack coming on.

TAFLA: "Oh, you really ARE a myrkur! I thought it was my eyesight already going bad or you were an idnagol shapeshifted as a myrkur. Orie's hatchparent used to-"

Tafla looks over at Orie, who's now staring at the two.

TAFLA: "Oh... sorry, I shouldn't talk about that right now.."

PHOENIX: "Yeah... probably not..."

ORIE: "So... Tafla, what brings you to the den?"

TAFLA: "I couldn't miss your first hatchday on your own, Orie!"

ORIE: "Oh yeah! That's in only a couple of days, right?"

TAFLA: "Actually it's in 6 days!"

Phoenix looks away toward the hallway and closes her eyes.

ORIE: "How long are you staying?"

TAFLA: "Hrm... how long do you want me to stay?"

ORIE: "However long you want!"

TAFLA: "Well, in that case, I'll stay here until the 31st!"

ORIE: "Oke! That sounds good! I'm so glad you're visiting, Talfa"

TAFLA: "Oh, since I'm going to be here for a while, I'm glad I brought my trusty dimensional bag with my runestone equipment!"

Phoenix looks back toward Tafla, but not directly at her.

PHOENIX: "You're a runic sorcerer?"

TAFLA: "Of course. Didn't you see the markings on my horns?"

She points to her horns.

PHOENIX: "Sorry, I'm not familiar with idnagol magic."

TAFLA: "Oh, Orie, I've got some presents for your hatchday! But they're only for your HATCHDAY. You better not look in my mind or in the future to see what they are, otherwise you'd spoil the surprise!"

ORIE: "Well, duh!"

Phoenix starts to feel tears forming as she slinks away from Tafla and Orie and starts into the hallway.

ORIE: "I love surprises, why would I spoil HATCHDAY surpri- Hey wait Phoenix, where are you going?"

Phoenix ignores Orie and continues into the hallway.

ORIE: "Sorry, one second Tafla. Phoenix!"

Orie walks toward the hall doorway and peeks her head in.

ORIE: "Phoenix? Are you okay?"

Phoenix ignores her again, and walks into her room, tears dripping from her snout.

ORIE: "Phoenix..."

Orie steps back toward Tafla and sighs.

TAFLA: "Is she... always like that?"

ORIE: "Well, a lot of the time, yeah. I think something happened before we met that messed her up mentally, really badly. Now she tends to take her anger and sadness out on me. We're friends though, so it's okay."

TAFLA: "That's not friendship. That's just mean. She shouldn't do that to you even if she's suffering..."

ORIE: "No, it's not like that. I know there's good in her, she just has a hard shell she hides behind. I'm trying to help her break out of that shell, and I think I'm doing well so far."

TAFLA: "I know you mean well, Orie. I really do. But I wish you wouldn't let others do that to you, no matter if you KNOW they don't mean it with your mind reading."

ORIE: "I know... but Phoenix is different. I know she cares a lot about me. I want to just show her a friendly face and that I care for her, flaws and all."

Tafla sighs and closes her eyes for a moment.

TAFLA: "Alright... I trust she isn't as mean as you say..."

She puts her hand on Orie's chest.

TAFLA: "I just want to make sure you take care of yourself first, Orie... okay?"

ORIE: "Yes ma'am."

Tafla and Orie hug each other again, and afterward, Orie talks about setting up an air mattress in the loungeroom.

While Tafla gets settled into the den, Phoenix lays in her room bawling her eyes out on her mattress while Arakados and the laptop are nowhere to be seen.

Phoenix doesn't feel safe around herself right now.

She puts her claws around her neck for a moment and then shakes her head, pulling them away from her neck and around a pillow.

PHOENIX: "N... no..."

She hugs the pillow close to her body and continues crying silently, for if Orie heard, she'd probably come in.

After a couple moments of being silent, through a broken voice, Phoenix casts a spell.

PHOENIX: ;I enchant myself to not be conscious for... 10 hours.;

Suddenly, Phoenix's body goes limp and her crying fades a bit.

Her grip on the pillow fades and she sleeps through tears for the rest of the night.

[myuntoldstory]

[Harry Potter] A Lifetime in Days | 10

Also Available: FF.net and AO3.

First | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

I did not realise that it’s been a year since my last update. To the people waiting on this: I am so terribly sorry for my lateness. Sadly, my situation has not changed since my last blog update. Still trying and all that. Having difficulties, of course, but... you know. Still trying. I’m actually happy to be able to update. It’s a bit of a look up.

Anyway, on to the thing!

Hope you enjoy.

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Mary Macdonald/Sirius Black

Warning: N/A

Word Count: 3, 109

Catastrophe (Perhaps)

(With Animal Ears)

It was an ordinary Sunday.

Remus crossed his arms and looked around. The common room was packed, as usual. Students of different years had gathered in their respective groups, enjoying time together. On the couches sat a gaggle of first years poring over some book whilst talking animatedly with each other. The sixth years had spread out in a big circle on the floor, engaged in serious conversation. Studying like mad were the fifth years who had overtaken the desks underneath the noticeboards. A group of varying years sat by the fireplace playing a few rounds of exploding snap. Those were the big groups. The rest were smaller—participating in various games, discussions, or whatever else. Together they all made a loud, but not entirely unpleasant cacophony of sounds.

“Pete’s taking a while,” Sirius commented.

“Only fifteen minutes,” Remus replied, catching Sirius’ wide eyes.

“Fifteen minutes too long—day’s getting away from us.”

“Right.” James peeled himself off the wall. “I’ll fetch him.”

“Please do, darling.” Sirius puckered his lips at James and earned a playful slap on the face.

Remus’ attention returned to the common room as James made his way back to the dorms. The first years had grown so loud that they nearly drowned the rest of the din. He watched them, curious and wary. The book they passed around seemed to be a spell book, if their jubilant wand-waving was any indication; flowers, coloured bubbles, and other pretty things materialised in the air at every swish and flick.

“Oomph!”

“Bugger—sorry!”

Remus glanced at the commotion. Scattered on the floor were some textbooks and scrolls. Attempting to retrieve them was Mary Macdonald, her face a mixture of apologetic and impatient. Being no help at all was Sirius, who waved off her attempts with a too happy grin as he gathered her things himself. Mary gave up, straightening with a soft ‘thank you’. As Remus continued to watch the unfolding scene he noticed his friend’s grin vanishing upon retrieving the last book. Sirius paused for a second before picking it up, reading the title closely as he rose.

“The Mind and Amortentia?” he asked teasingly, placing the books in Mary’s waiting arms. “Got your eye on some bloke, have you?”

“No,” she scoffed, rearranging the books. “Of course not—”

“It’s that Hufflepuff Fenwick, isn’t it?”

“Black—”

“I do believe love potions are forbidden in Hogwarts—”

“Oh, stop it!” Mary whacked on Sirius on the head with a scroll, making him laugh. Though she looked irate, Remus didn’t miss the way her mouth thinned as though she tried to suppress a smile. “This is for Slughorn’s essay!”

“Really?”

“Yes!” she hit him again. Remus’ brows rose. Didn’t he hear something about how hitting was a good sign in flirting? Was that what’s happening right now? “For the final assignment. Decided to go with that question on the effect of potions on the user’s psyche.”

“Right.” Sirius’ grin returned. “That’s, erm, good—for you, I mean,” he hurried to add. “Haven’t even thought about the bloody thing.”

“Well, it’s not due for another month.”

“True.”

The two were quick to sink into their own world. The common room noise drowned their voices as they talked to each other—or no, that was the first years being loud again. Remus looked to the children again and saw that their spell-making had escalated. They no longer conjured pretty things; instead, some now sported different coloured hair, a few had burnt eyebrows, and a couple had grown moustaches. They didn’t seem too worried about their change in appearance. Not for Remus. Alarm bells blared in his head and he made his way towards them. “Oi, you lot—”

One of the children pointed their wand at their friend and yelled at incantation too loudly and eagerly, cutting off Remus’ reprimand. A burst of yellow light erupted from the wand.

But it didn’t hit the child.

Instead, the light sped past their ear, hit the wall, and ricocheted off it. Now it was surging towards Mary and Sirius. Remus rushed back to them, pulling his wand from his pocket. “Proteg—”

“MARY!” Sirius cried as the light hit her. Mary collapsed with a sharp cry. The books fell out of her hands again and clattered beside her. The common room fell silent.

Remus froze.

“Mary.” Sirius knelt beside her, his back to Remus, and sat her up. He cradled her head against his chest. Gently, he shook her. “Mary. Mary—Remus, she’s not waking up.”

Murmurs filled the room as the students began to move from their respective perches. Remus hurried to Sirius’ side as the crowd started to gather. Upon reaching Sirius he stopped, shock washing over him. His jaw dropped at what his saw, eyes widening in disbelief.

Cat ears the size of a toddler’s hands were attached on either side of Mary’s head. On the floor, resting alongside the length of her legs was a tail. The… new appendages were covered in soft looking fur—actual fur, the same colour as her hair. However, there were some tufts inside the ears that were flecked in white; the tip of her tail looked like it had been dipped in white ink.

“Uhm…” Remus exhaled faintly. Mary’s ears twitched as if in response to him and he promptly shut his mouth.

“What happened?”

Remus looked over his shoulder and saw James had returned with Peter in tow. “The first years were playing about,” he said, gazing past James and seeing the responsible group watching the scene with the crowd. They all had expressions of horror on their faces. “Have a chat with them, will you?”

James followed Remus’ gaze and nodded. He took Peter with him as they approached the children. His usually friendly face was solemn, befitting that of a Head Boy. He led the group away to a secluded corner, gathered them in front of him before initiating the conversation. Remus turned his attention back to Remus and watched him stand up, carrying Mary in his arms.

“Come on,” Sirius said to him, walking through the circle and making his way to the portrait.

***

“Twelve hours.”

“That long?”

Remus stood at the foot of the bed, sympathy filling him at Mary’s crestfallen expression. He had his fair share of random animal parts attaching to his body, with friends like his. Some were on accident, some deliberate, but they were all clever so he never had trouble with it—mostly inside jokes and teasing, but of course the Marauders were pricks as well as intelligent.

Unfortunately for the poor girl, Sirius was being much of the former. Instead of emulating empathy like a normal human being, he was watching her tail with intense concentration. Occasionally, he’d try to catch the tip, but Mary seemed to have acquired some sixth sense and evaded his fingers every time. At the moment Remus didn’t who acted like a cat more: Mary or Sirius.

“Accidental magic takes time, Miss Macdonald.” Madame Pomfrey handed Mary a potion bottle. It was the fifth one she had to take. The glass was dark, making the contents within hard to discern. Once Mary downed the contents, she took the bottle back and handed Mary another. “It’s not too severe. Thank Merlin for first years. In the hands of a mature witch or wizard this could take a month or two to fix.”

“Small comforts,” Mary sighed before drinking.

“You’ll be just fine,” Remus smiled after she grimaced.

“This is the last.” Pomfrey pressed the final bottle in Mary’s palm. “Sleeping draught for the first six hours. I will check on you when you wake and give you the second dose.”

“Okay.”

“Mr. Lupin,” Pomfrey caught his eye. She inclined her head and he followed her as she stepped away from the bed. “I have a task for you.”

Remus nodded, but remained silent.

“If you can locate any of Miss Macdonald’s dearest possessions and bring them here I’ll be much obliged.”

“Of course… may I ask why?”

Pomfrey regarded him and sighed. “The transfiguration is not complete. However it still imbues a small amount of animal instinct within the afflicted. If left untreated they will indulge in these instincts.” Pomfrey idly arranged the potions on the tray in a straight line. “Most of the remedies suppress the worst of the instincts so it’s never more than finding a familiar place to rest. Obviously, sending her back is out of the question.”

“I understand.”

“Well, at the very least her recovery will be smoother—”

“WILL YOU QUIT IT!?”

There was a clatter of glass. A hiss of pain. Remus turned to the bed and took in the scene. Mary looked irate; her ears were pulled back tight, tail thrashing at the mattress. Sirius, meanwhile, was massaging with forehead. While he tried to figure exactly what his friend did this time around, he noticed Mary’s furious expression softening.

“Oh, what have I done?” she said faintly.

“Sorry,” Sirius said, wincing, “sorry, shouldn’t have done that.”

“No,” she agreed, but her eyes were now gentle. Slowly, her ears straightened and her tail returned to swinging calmly by her calves. “Come here.” She reached out and took his arm, pulling him closer. She ran over her fingers over his forehead, ears flattening again as she clucked her tongue. “It’s red—oh, I’m sorry.”

Sirius smiled. He took Mary’s wrist and held onto her hand. “It’s fine—just a bottle.”

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t pull away. “Lucky for you.”

“Enough! Miss Macdonald needs her rest!” Pomfrey rushed forward and shooed Sirius away so she could tuck Mary into bed. Once Mary was comfortable she turned to Sirius again and examined his head. “Skin irritation, a small bump.” She waved her wand and the inflamed spot disappeared. She gathered the rest of the supplies and equipment on the tray and with a wave of her wand sent them floating to her office. “Now go, both of you, and leave the poor lady be.”

“Oh, I’ll ask her about her things,” Remus hurried to say. “It won’t take long.”

Pomfrey nodded reluctantly. “One minute.”

“Can’t help yourself, can you?” Remus muttered to Sirius as the matron walked away.

“Can’t resist a cute tail like that,” he winked at Mary.

“Dumb curiosity more like,” she quipped. His grin dropped.

“How are you feeling?” Remus said.

“Oh, I’m well—considering,” she chuckled and then yawned. “Tired, though.”

“No doubt,” he smiled, “Pomfrey’s asked me to bring some of your things to make you comfortable. Anything you want?”

“My blanket… Lily should know it.” She yawned again.

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Stuffed panda… dad gave me…” she sighed, eyes closing. When she opened them again, she glanced at Sirius. “You smell nice, you know that?”

“Do I?” Sirius drawled, smiling.

“Mmm. Like… lemons… grapefruit… limes, maybe.”

Remus’ brows knitted together. Mary’s eyes closed again. She continued to mumble, but the words were so slurred they were incoherent. He frowned and glanced at Sirius, whose smile was an amused kind of baffled. He threw Remus a playful glance before looking back at Mary.

“Oranges,” he corrected her.

“Oranges?” she repeated, nodding as if it made absolute sense, “yes… oranges…”

“Come on,” Remus said, looking at Sirius. “Sleep tight, Mary.”

“Rest well, yeah?” Sirius said, stroking back her hair.

“Mmm… yes… thanks…”

The two walked out of the infirmary. For a while they remained silent. Remus was so focused on what he had to do that if he hadn’t glanced idly at Sirius he wouldn’t have noticed the widest and happiest grin stuck on his mate’s face. He might as well have cat ears and a tail himself. The sight was so bizarre that Remus couldn’t stop staring until Sirius noticed and met his gaze.

“So,” he drawled, “Macdonald with cat ears.”

“Yeah…” Remus said slowly, a wary feeling crawling up his spine.

“She looks adorable with them, hey?”

“I… suppose.”

“Really should’ve touched them, hey?”

Sirius was slapped for the second time that day.

***

Despite the mishap that morning, Remus and the boys did end up doing a few things. First and foremost, they indulged themselves in laughing at Sirius’ behaviour in the face of Mary’s accident. After that they discussed plans for Remus’ upcoming full moon. Some of the enchantments in the Marauder’s Map needed revision so they spent a good couple of hours over that. The rest of their time was spent discussing the latest news on the Daily Prophet, which James had brought with him. It was a vicious cycle with them when it came to the war—the topic was morbid, but they couldn’t help saying the same words, criticising the same people. In the end, always, all they managed to achieve was reaffirming the decision they’ve already made.

By the time the four separated it was late afternoon. McGonagall had called on James for some Head Boy duties. Meanwhile, Peter wanted to get ahead with his remedial potion essays. Remus and Sirius decided to relax in the dorm and meet up with the others again at dinner. They were heading for the common room, idly discussing the features that could be added in Sirius’ motorcycle. When they jumped out of the portrait hole, it seemed that the noise level had not changed since that morning. However, the moment they stepped into the common room it stopped altogether.

“We’re being stared at,” Remus remarked after one cursory look across the room.

“Taken with our devilish good looks, no doubt,” Sirius quipped, combing through his hair.

“Seriously.”

“Yes, Moony, I too have noticed the stares and it is very strange indeed.” Sirius turned to the students and barked: “Oi, we’re busy minding our business and so should you be!”

They jumped at his sharp voice and scrambled back to their respective activities. Sirius grinned at Remus triumphantly and he rolled his eyes in response. They ascended the staircase and reached the seventh year boys’ dorm. However, just as they reached the door it opened with a whistling whoosh, startling the two.

“I told you berks the show’s over—oh, Merlin. It’s you two.”

The voice belonged to Frank Longbottom. He looked irate—understandable considering how much of a mess he looked. His hair was a tangled mess, sticking up in different directions. There were a few tears on his shirt and about four or five welts marked his cheeks and neck.

“The hell happened to you?” Sirius laughed.

Frank threw up his hands and stepped aside. Remus’ jaw dropped.

“What… the fuck?” Sirius breathed.

The dorm was a mess. Parchment, quills, scrolls, spilled inkpots, books, and feathers littered the floor. However, most of the chaos seemed to focus on Sirius’ area. His trunk was open and tipped over—clothes, school items, quidditch paraphernalia, and muggle junk spilled out of it. The bedside tables have been messed with; the drawers had been detached and were sitting on the floor. The only thing that seemed to have fared better was the bed. The sheets had been pulled from the mattress; the blankets bundled on the floor along with the pillows. In the middle of the bed, surrounded by clothes, was a person curled into a tight ball. Remus stepped towards the bed, eyes drawn to the cat ears and tail…

“Merlin, Mary,” Sirius said. He sped past Remus and knelt by the bed. He took her hand and squeezed gently.

“What happened?” Remus asked Frank.

“Well,” he huffed, “I was here minding my own business. All of a sudden, Mary burst through looking all mad. Lily was chasing after her.”

“Huh,” Remus intoned. His gaze flicked back to the couple and watched as Sirius began to pet Mary’s hair. “Where’s she now?”

“Off to get Pomfrey.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, it was… something,” Frank said. “After Mary came she started sniffing around the room—beds and everything. She got quite taken with Sirius’ things.”

“Right.” Remus continued to watch. Sirius continued to pet Mary’s hair; the tips of his fingers grazed the backs of her ears with every pass. Ever so slightly, she pushed her head into his palm.

“Yeah. She was restless for a bit… pawing at his things and that. Lucky Lily was a genius and figured out what Mary needed—had no problems raiding Sirius’ trunk.”

“She what?” Sirius barked, glaring at Frank.

“Oi,” Remus hissed after Mary groaned.

“Did it with pleasure too,” Frank added unapologetically.

“That explains the mess, I suppo—oh,” Remus breathed as realisation hit him like a bludger to the head. “I see.”

“Do you? Because I don’t.”

Finally, Remus glanced at Frank. “She did this to you, then?”

Frank rubbed his face and nodded. “Never coming within ten feet of that lady’s nails ever again.”

“Well… now that’s all calmed down I guess we ought to just wait for Pomfrey.” Remus approached the bed. Nothing’s changed, but it didn’t truly strike him until now how much of a cat Mary resembled, from the way her body curled to the gentle manner in which she automatically pushed into Sirius’ hand. Lily’s cat did the same thing when petted.

“Her ears are stupid soft,” Sirius said.

“Developed a fetish now, have you?” Remus said dryly.

“You shut your mouth, Lupin.”

“Hey,” Mary’s voice croaked. Her tail thumped loudly and rapidly on the mattress. “You lot are too loud.”

“Hey!” Sirius whispered with a sigh of relief. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah… it’s nice here,” she yawned, stretching, “I could sleep all day.”

“On Sirius’ bed?” Frank blurted incredulously. “Really?”

“Mmm.” Mary breathed deeply. “Smells all homely like… lemons… grapefruits… limes maybe?” her brows furrowed as she sniffed. “What is this?”

Remus crossed his arms and bit his lips to keep himself from laughing. When Sirius shot him a bewildered look he shook his head and shrugged, quite happy not to help. Though he and Sirius were close they were not that close—at least not enough for him to verify the dubious odour of Sirius’s bed. Anyway, this was too precious to interfere.

“Uh…” Sirius said, turning back to Mary, “oranges?”

“That’s right!” Mary exclaimed. “Oranges! Oranges… oranges…” suddenly she sat up, ears stiff and tail frozen in a straight line. “Oranges!?”

“Yeah—”

In all the years he’s lived Remus had never seen anyone’s face go beet red so fast. He’d never seen anyone scarper in such high speeds either. Before his mind could even register what had happened, Mary’s light footsteps were pattering down the stairs, the mess she left behind and the dumbfounded boys the only trace of her presence left in the dorm.

[gyeommine]

“Cherished” (Rap Monster  x Reader)

“I just want to ask you friendly, if you can do another Rapmonster scenario for me, where you too are good friends and you ask him all of a sudden to cuddle with you? Please make it really fluffy, thank you soo much and have a good day♥~”

Name: “Cherished”

Character: Rap Monster // Kim Namjoon (BTS)

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 1,194

(shoot me in the foot i am so in love w him)

“Oh no, we're not together – we're just friends!” is a sentence you heard yourself repeat every day. It was true, you and Namjoon were practically joint at the hip. You were in the same class, you ate lunch together, hung out together and always saw each other. You were just best friends. He always said the exact same thing. Both of you had separate groups of friends as well; both groups encourage you guys to get together and just see what happens. You had pondered it, what it would be like to date your best friend Kim Namjoon. Every time, however, you just shook your head in dismissal. You were close, but being in a relationship with him wouldn't seem right. Kissing him wouldn't be right and to call him your boyfriend, just wouldn't seem right. He had pondered it as well. His eyes would often linger on you, trying to figure out whether it would actually work or not. Each time he would draw to the same conclusion: it just wouldn't be the same. You would never want to ruin the closeness you both cherished.

Unlike most guys, he was sensitive. He could tell when something was wrong, and knew exactly what to do and how. His eyebrows furrowed upon scanning his phone. He was expecting a flurry of messages from you talking about the new episode of your favourite show. His lower lip stuck out in confusion to see there were absolutely no messages from you. He quickly sent a message first, to try and start conversation. He placed his phone down beside the studying he was about to begin. He rested his cheek on his fist, pushing his lips into a funny expression as he anxiously waited a response. 10 minutes passed. He was laid back into his office chair, idly swaying from side to side as his eyes were trained on the dormant phone. Every time it vibrated he perked up, only to discover it was some Twitter notification he didn't care for. Then he found himself scanning every inch of his brain: what could possibly be the cause of a lack of reply? He placed his head in his hand, scrunching up his nose as he tried to think. He wasn't good with girls per say, so he had to figure out what it could be. “This must have happened before,” he mumbled to himself. Then he recalled. He didn't even pause to think before grabbing his essentials, almost stumbling on everything in the room.

He could practically walk to your house in his sleep; he'd been there so many times. It was unlike him, he had didn't have time to stop and take in the sights of Spring. In general, he loved to be outside and walking always cleared his head. This was for a different reason. When he reached your house, he gingerly creaked the door open. He quickly slipped his shoes off before creeping up the stairs. Your door was slightly ajar. From the minuscule gap, he saw you hunched over your desk. Both of your hands were deeply rooted in your hair, messing the strands and causing them to disarray at funny angles. The desk was heaped with millions of types of books, on top of notepads and numerous items of stationery. But through it all, he heard a gentle sob.

“(Y/N)?” he called out softly, cradling the door handle in his large palm. He didn't want to make a noise, almost as if to not frighten a mouse. Your head snapped around quickly. You cleared your throat, wiping away any stray tears with your fingers. “Joon? I didn't hear you come in sorry,” you mumbled a weak apology. You forced a smile. He shook his head. The floorboards creaked under your best friend's feet as he went and sat on your bed. “You didn't look at your phone, I was worried is everything okay?” he had to use every morsel of energy to ensure he didn't rush his words. The last thing he wanted to do was to make you any worse. “Oh, sorry Joon it's just I was-” your lips hung on the final word. You didn't want to say it, instead letting your gaze bore into the piles of studying you had strewn before you. He tilted his head questioningly, leaning in to to try and coax out of you the ending of the sentence. You crumbled. Your head sunk to the desk, your forearms shielding you from both Namjoon's sight and the unending piles of stress. “I don't know anymore, what's the point,” you said meekly. Tears stung at the corners of your eyes. Namjoon's eyes widened. The words were harsh. He needed a couple of seconds merely just to process what you had said. “Don't say that,” he rebutted gently.

You reared your head to meet his ebony eyes. The dim light of your desk lamp shadowed half your face but reflected off the tears gradually staining your cheeks. His heart sunk. “Is it the studying?” he inquired. You sniffed and nodded. “If you'd have asked I would have helped you,” he replied. His voice was stern, but the deep tone soothed it. “I didn't want to bother you Joon, you have so much-” “What? No! You wouldn't be bothering me at all!” he interrupted. You could see in his face that he was hurt. You hadn't told your best friend any of it when it had eating away at you for weeks. You exhaled. A sense of relief sauntered over you upon getting things off your chest. You pulled yourself out of your desk chair, slipped past Namjoon and collapsed onto your bed. His eyes never left you for a moment. The mattress sunk as you let the sheets embrace you.

“Joon?” you then asked after a brief silence. He hummed in response, shifting to look at you. “I know we're completely friend zoned so don't take this in a weird way,” you continued. Your voice was still a little hoarse from crying. He raised his brow a little. “But cuddle me,” you finished bluntly. It wasn't like you guys hadn't hugged before. Your eyes remained bolted at the ceiling. His posture stiffened. “Uh, yeah sure,” he uttered. He was internally kicking himself for sounding so awkward. Yet, he wanted to do anything to make you feel better. He inched closer, swinging his legs across. You nuzzled your head into his side as he laid his arm out for you. It felt so natural. You could feel the steady rate of his heartbeat, the smell of his cologne that intoxicated your senses. You curled further into his side, enjoying the warmth that his arms gave you. He stole a glance. He couldn't help but smile seeing as you looked so small and innocent in his arms. Despite being friends with you for years, he had never seen this side to you. He had never noticed the natural way in which your hair curls or the shape of your jaw. He was content. You looked up, meeting the gaze of your best friend.

“Thank you.”

I don’t think I say enough how much I love best friend!kim namjoon. I have a friend similar whom for years everybody has told us to date. But, we have such a great friendship that it would be throwing it away. Hope you enjoy this one lads!! <3

[withasideofeggsy]

Hwarang :: Ban Ryu x reader :: Part 3

Part 3! Sorry for the wait! Starting from today I will work on a fic for our lovely King! (Don’t worry I will also update this fic since so many of you have enjoyed reading this series!) So please look forward to that as well! Thank you for reading and I sincerely hope that you enjoy this chapter! Sorry for any inaccuracies that doesn’t match up to the real plot of the story. :)

Ps. Please tell me if I’m the only person that cackles like no tomorrow when Ban Ryu is in the shower. Like his little messy bun got my rolling. It’s so funny and cute LOLOL.

Part 1 Part 2

My head hurts.

 I roll over in my mattress groaning in pain, my head really hurts. Pressing my cold hands against my forehead I sigh at the little relief provided. What even happened yesterday night? Forcing my heavy eyes open just a crack the blinding light made them shut immediately. “God…” I hiss under my breath while turning over onto my side. I scrunch up my face at the unfamiliar material enveloping me, it felt so smooth almost as if I was wrapped up in silk. I rub at the material between my thumb and index finger…wait this is silk. I shot up from bed to look down at expensive material that draped around my body. “What happened yesterday?!?” I whine untying the robe quickly, “I wouldn’t do that, you are naked under.” I freeze in my actions holding the fabric closed around my chest, “You jerk what happened?” He sighs, “So early in the morning and you are already picking a fight that you can’t possibly win.” It’s too early to deal with his attitude I thought visibly rolling my eyes at him, “I suggest you change and give back my clothes before the others wake up,” he indifferently says before getting up himself. I raise my brows standing up as well, “Wait your clothes? T-This silk…” “Is mine, so hurry and change before you dirty it. God knows you can never repay me back for it if you get it stained.” I open and close my mouth in confusion and ultimately at a loss of words, how many drinks did I have yesterday? After quickly changing I bundle up the expensive silk robe and whipped it at Ban Ryu’s face, “Whoops, sorry my hand slipped.”

 With a smug grin I turned to open the sliding door, but someone beat me to it from the other side. “WAKE UP YOU LAZY RATS!” A large man yelled directly at my face causing me to stumble backwards in shock while wiping away his spit that splattered all over my face. I quickly dodge out of the way and into the hallway as I watch from a distance as my roommates got aggressively man handled out of bed. I let out a snicker at Soo Ho’s high-pitched scream paired with excessive arm flailing when he thought that they were under attack. Once everyone was cramped in the hallway I bite my lip, daring to look up at Ban Ryu, before I could reflect on what happened yesterday night we were herded like cows into the practice grounds. Squinting at the bright sun it took awhile before my eyes could focus on a very angry Wi Hwa standing in front of us. The elder clears his throat before lecturing us with a booming voice, “Going out to Okta and returning late and tired the next day, fighting among each other when you are supposed to be working as a team! I have had enough of your behaviour! From today onwards no one leaves the grounds without permission. And if I catch any one of you failing to follow that rule you will be kicked out of Hwarang, understood? Dismissed!”

 -

 Today’s schedule was fully packed with back-to-back physical training and house chores. The morning wasn’t too bad as simple tasks like laundry and cleaning was done, however the dull throb in the back of my head made simple tasks like that hard to focus on. It was funny to watch the amount of difficulty that was expressed among the majority of the Hwarang from just doing simple housework. Never in my life have I heard so much whining coming from grown men.

 After all the chores were done the real training began. Placed in front of me were nine cups of alcohol, very strong alcohol, I thought as I smelt its pungent aroma. The orders were to drink all nine cups and to practice sword fighting while under influence. The logic behind it was to “Prepare us for any situation” although it really seemed like an excuse to see us embarrass ourselves or get seriously injured. With shaking hands I reach for the first cup, here it goes, I thought knocking it back into my throat. I instantly gagged at the strong substance, it burned exponentially compared to the ones I drank yesterday. Wait, drank yesterday? The alcohol triggered my thoughts from the previous night that I couldn’t for the life of me remember what happened. While sipping on the fifth cup I recalled my coziness with Ban Ryu, oh my goodness…I cuddled with… “JERK FACE!!!” I splutter causing all the liquid to spray out of my mouth and onto the lucky person in front of me. With the cup still in hand I look up with widened eyes to only meet with the said man’s stoic face. Loud drunken laughter was erupted among the men who witnessed me accidently insulting Ban Ryu in front of all the Hwarang and elders and to top it off, spitting on him for good measure after it. It was a mess. A huge pulsing vein was prominent on his forehead, I swear I could hear its throbbing as I stared at him. He squeezes his eyes shut while the corner of his lips twitch in annoyance. “Please don’t kill me!” I scream throwing my ceramic cup at him out of fear. Before the cup could hit the floor and shatter he roughly grabs the front of my hanbok, pulling me towards him. “You will pay for this,” he lowly growls before letting go and turning back to finish his drinks, never failing to slam down each cup with increasing force. “I’m dead…” I chant chugging down the last few cups before collapsing onto the floor, “I’m dead.”

 I started crying on the floor before sword fighting was even started. A seemingly sober Ji Dwi slips a sheathed sword into my hands and I hug the object close to my body before resuming to crying and rocking back and forth. I don’t know how long I stayed like that but fighting already started among the Hwarang. There was only one rule, no unsheathing your sword, other than that you can basically smash your opponent’s face in with the dull object. No matter how much I enjoyed sword fighting the alcohol didn’t allow me to move, with a swimming vision and heavy eyes I continued to snooze until some brave or very dumb person tries to attack me in my sleep. My nap didn’t last very long to my dismay, being awoken by someone kicking my feet. With closed eyes I roll onto my side and mumble a quick, “go away” but it wasn’t very effective. Wi Hwa pulls me up by the back of my hanbok and practically throws me into the war zone, aka the field filled with drunkards waving their swords in the air before tripping over their own two feet and wiping themselves out. I whine, extremely upset from being woken up for this mess. Using my sword as a walking stick I made my way across the chaotic field, hoping to find a further place to sleep away from Wi Hwa’s hawk like vision. Luckily majority of the Hwarang ignored me walking in the middle of their fights, even though I was extremely tipsy I could probably beat their heads in still. I found a shaded spot not too far and I continued to make my way towards it, only stopping when a dull object smacked into my chest with a hollow thud noise. “Whoa,” I stumble backwards, finally getting my footing steady I follow the sword back to its welder, the notorious grumpy man. “You have a price to pay,” he states with a straight face and I nod up at him, “Okay, I’ll beat you up as payment.” Despite Ban Ryu’s roll eye he lets out a soft chuckle and taps his sword under my chin teasingly, “I’ve seen you hold your alcohol I highly doubt you can.” I pout childishly, even though I’m tipsy I can still be stubborn as ever, I’m not going to be shoved around by him today. Gripping the sword in my left hand I lunge towards the tall jerk before faking a swing and catching the sword with my right hand. I grin catching him off guard before delivering a hard blow into his ribs with the blunt of my sheathed sword, “Tadahh!”

 What I didn’t expect next was the hard throb I felt in my cheekbone as Ban Ryu accidently threw a fist into my face as he fell forwards from my attack. “Oof,” I yelp falling along with him. His heavy weight pins me beneath him as I struggle to push him off. I could feel the heightened emotions I got from the alcohol as I struggled to keep my tears in. I sniffle holding my throbbing cheek, “You were nicer yesterday.” He looks deeply into my eyes, I couldn’t tell what he was feeling at the moment. “You were drunk out of your mind yesterday. I had to watch over you like some baby because I promised to help you keep your secret.” I nod at his words and it made perfect sense, I didn’t realize I spoke what I thought in my head, “I thought you liked me…” Oh I said it out loud. I look up to see his reaction but it wasn’t what I expected, “Yesterday didn’t mean anything, nor will my help come without a price.” He says flatly before getting me up and retrieving his sword. I didn’t bother to get up as I lay there thinking about his confession, I really didn’t expect that or maybe that wasn’t something I wanted to hear. I nod at nothing in particular before closing my eyes trying my hardest to keep the stinging hot tears at bay. “Don’t cry you baby,” I quietly scold myself while clenching my eyes and jaw.

 I don’t know how much time has passed but the sun was setting by the time everyone started to sober up from the hectic drunk sword fighting “training”. From the ground I didn’t realize that Ah Ro and her friend, Soo Yeon entered the Hwarang home. I guess practice got a little too rough with some of the other members that they needed medical attention. I really hope the elders would learn from this and don’t plan anymore of these ridiculous training practices ever again. A familiar warm hand was placed on top of my forehead causing my eyes to flutter open, “Hey Ah Ro.” She looks down at me with a pout, “Don’t ‘hey’ me! Can’t you try a little bit harder to not get hurt!” I shrug at her lecturing before touching my tender cheek causing me to flinch, “Ow he got me good.” Ah Ro tut and clicks her tongue a few times before she pulls me up onto my feet. I cry out in pain from my added headache as she quickly pulls me along, each step causing a throb to shoot up to my brain. “We need to put some ointment on that now before it swells up more,” she explains seating me beside her medical kit. I nod in agreement as she rummages through her kit while I observe the other Hwarang. It seems like most of them sobered up and were walking around aching, or they were knocked out on the ground sound asleep like a giant baby. “Okay stay still,” Ah Ro orders leaning in to apply some really pungent smelling ointment. Before I could comply I spot Ban Ryu with Soo Yeon, Soo Ho’s younger sister. What really irritated me was that he was smiling sweetly at her, no attitude or sarcasm included. He really did mean it when he said he didn’t have any feelings towards me, how naïve of me. Clenching my fist and jaw I couldn’t stay still, I was angry. Maybe I was so upset that the only way I could cope with it was to turn it into anger, at least I wouldn’t cry and embarrass myself further more. Before the ointment could be spread on my face I got up and headed back to my room despite Ah Ro shouting for me to come back.

 “Dumb, idiot, stupid…” I chant through clenched teeth. I’m so mad, I thought throwing a punch into the wooden frame of Ban Ryu and Soo Ho’s shared bunk bed. I kept on throwing punches at the poor innocent wood with increasing strength until the skin on my knuckles split open. Taking a deep breath I watch as the blood dribbles down my fingers and onto the ground, it was calming, almost therapeutic. I felt better getting out my pent up rage but now with the fire gone I felt incredibly defeated. I wanted nothing but to take a long hot relaxing bath however that wasn’t possible, being paranoid that someone would walk in when I’m mid bathing so I quickly cleaned by myself up which helped clear my mind dramatically. Now in a better state of mind I was ready to join the Hwarang back outside. I sat on the stairs in a more secluded area of the palace, watching Ban Ryu and Soo Yeon from afar. I surprised myself at my new reaction to their interaction. As I watched him from here I could see how happy he genuinely was around her, I could never have that effect on him. I could feel my cheeks flush when I heard his laugh at something she said, finally understanding my feelings I nod and get up to tend to the horses. Might as well be productive and get my mind off things, even if it meant doing chores. I finally understood now, I really liked him. Even if he is grumpy, rude, and stuck up he managed to burrow himself deep into my heart for some damned reason. But after seeing him so happy with the company of Soo Yeon I couldn’t possibly be mad anymore. When you like someone you just want to see them smile and if Soo Yeon is the one to put that smile on his face then I won’t intrude. No matter how much the sinking feeling I felt in my heart was uncomfortable and hard to bear I would do it, that’s what you do when you like someone right? You put them first regardless of your own selfish feelings. Even though I knew what the right thing to do was I couldn’t help the hot tears that spilled over. “Ah dumb girl,” I chided myself with a smile. I rub my eyes with the sleeve of my hanbok trying very hard to stifle my sobbing but it was difficult, it hurt so bad. I walked to the corner of the horse stable where a large stack of hay was sat. I’ll just cry pathetically here where no one can hear or see me. Curling up into a ball I cry into the prickly straw, thinking about all the possible reasons why my favourite grumpy flowering knight didn’t reciprocate my feelings towards him. “Maybe because I’m ugly, or stupid. He always calls me stupid. I’m of no class, basically a lowly peasant who worked day and night jobs to get by. I chose a life as a Hwarang so I would have a place to call home. I have no manners, no family, and too stubborn for my own good picking fights that I know I would lose. Wow I really am a poor excuse of a human,” rolling over onto my back I look up to the wooden ceiling, “UGHHHH!” I sit up tapping my index finger on my chin, “If only brother Gun Chul was here he could give me advice. Or beat up stupid Ban Ryu. But he had to go die and leave me here all by myself!” I scream ripping at the stack of hay aggressively. I couldn’t help but smile remembering his passing, even though it was the worst day of my life his last words to me were something, “I hate it here so I’m glad I’m finally leaving, just a bit sad that I’ll have to leave your side though. We haven’t been separated since you were born but know that I will always be watching you, so don’t do anything stupid or you’ll give me a headache even when I’m in heaven…or burning in the depths of hell hahaha.” I laugh shaking my head remembering his stupid parting words. Maybe it was time I paid him a visit, I could probably sneak out tonight seeing that everyone would be exhausted from training today. Even though rules were implemented today I could careless, as long as I didn’t get caught I wouldn’t get in any trouble.

 It was nightfall everyone was sound asleep in the shared bedroom. I look around counting each member in their rightful beds before quickly stripping out of my clothes and putting on a simple dark long sleeve robe. I quickly grabbed the flats I hid under my mattress and slipped them onto my feet. Making my way towards the door I peep my head into the halls, making sure it was empty before readying myself to bound down towards the palace exit with as much stealth as I could possibly muster up. Taking in a large breath I lunged forward, with great difficultly as something or someone yanked me back by the belt around my waist. I stifle I scream by holding a hand to my mouth before slowly looking up. “Where do you think you’re going?” Ban Ryu whispers lowly near my ears, “You’re going to get us all in trouble.” I clench my jaw, great this is what I really needed now, “I’m not going to get caught, I’ll be fast.” It was dark in the room so I couldn’t really make out much but I saw the shine in his dark eyes from the moonlight that managed to seep through the paper walls. “I asked, where are you going?” I push him off of me before turning to face him properly, “It’s nothing for you to worry about.” “I didn’t ask for you to assure me. I’m asking where you are going,” he flatly states with crossed arms. “Why do you even care so much?” I ask visibly getting irritated for my now soiled plan. Ban Ryu sighs, “I don’t care.” I sarcastically let out a laugh, “You have a funny way of showing that you don’t care. Just…leave me alone alright?” “You know I can’t do that.” “Ban Ryu can you just-” I didn’t realize I started raising my voice until he places a calloused hand over my mouth, “Come,” he orders pulling me into the halls and into the bathhouse.

 I shake my head pacing in a small circle, “I don’t understand you!” He grabs my wrist successfully stopping me in my tracks, “W-What?” I ask quietly looking into his gentle gaze extinguishing the fire in my body. “What’s wrong?” he asks still holding my wrist tightly in his large hand as his thumb rubbed soothing circles into the back of my hand. “What do you mean what’s wrong?” I ask squinting up at him. “You aren’t acting like yourself,” he simply states. Watching him carefully I could see the concern he had in his eyes even though it was obvious that he tried really hard to conceal it. “Maybe you just don’t know me,” I say quietly looking down at his warm hand that held me in place. He didn’t say anything to my surprise, I felt bad for saying what I did considering how much it affected him for some reason. “I’m sorry,” I apologize reaching up with my free hand to place on top of his, “I didn’t mean for it to come out so rude. I guess I’m in a bad mood.” He nods pulling both of his hands back to his sides. I fiddle with the knot on my robe before looking up at the tall man before me, “I just…wanted to go see my brother that’s all.” He nods, “Let’s go then.” I raise an eyebrow at him, “What?” He rolls his eyes, “Can’t you listen for once instead of making me repeat myself every time.” I giggle at his irritation, “I can’t help it if you surprise me each time you open your mouth. Are you going to yell at me? Call me mean names? Or be uncharacteristically sweet?” Ban Ryu closes his eyes with a sigh as if he’s regretting the offer he made seconds ago, “Come on let’s go before we both get caught.” We walk back into the halls and before he could slip back into our room to get quickly changed I grabbed onto his sleeve, “Um can you get me the hairpin I hid under my pillow?” He raised a questioning brow looking down at me, “I-I need it,” I explained which he nodded without further questioning.

 -

 I held onto the sleeve of his hanbok as I pulled him along the quiet streets of Silla. I wanted to hold his hand but I didn’t have the nerve to and if I did it would make holding my feelings for him even harder. Just thinking about holding his warm hand made blood rush to my cheeks, “Almost there,” I smile back at him. He followed me into the outskirts of the capital but he didn’t question it even though with his wandering eyes I could tell that he was curious of where I was taking him. I drag him into the cemetery and raised by arms up gesturing to the dark open field, “Tadah!” He raised a brow and continued to follow me as I walked towards the spot that was marked with a few small stones, “Here’s the real Gun Chul.” I present pointing at the stones. Ban Ryu watches me carefully with a questioning look, “I didn’t expect this,” he bluntly states and I smile. “He got sick a few months ago,” I explained with a nod taking a seat in the grass. Ban Ryu lowers himself and sits closely beside me, “I’m sorry for your loss.” I laugh ducking my head to look up at his face, “That’s strange, I didn’t expect to hear you apologize ever.” He softly smiles taking out my hairpin from his bosom and twirling it between his index finger and thumb. “He gave me that,” I explained reaching out and touching the intricate carves on the wood, “We were really poor but…before he passed he got me this to remember him.” Ban Ryu nods keeping silent as if gesturing me to continue about my life’s story, “Um…he didn’t really need to though. I would never forget about him.” I look up at Ban Ryu as his fingers glided over mine, “How could you be so positive about all this? You’re still smiling.” I hum pulling my hand back, somewhat reluctantly, “He hated it here, and I guess he was happy to leave so if he’s happy then I’m happy.” Ban Ryu raises his hand and I was prepared for a smack on the forehead for having such dumb logic but instead he placed his hand on the back of my head and combed his fingers through my hair. I stayed silent as he pulled my long hair into a bun, gently threading the wooden hairpin into it. “Your logic is dumb,” he says flatly causing me to laugh. “What was your reason for joining the Hwarang?” he asks softly as his fingers trailed down my neck before he places his hand back into his lap. “Haha…this is even more dumb,” I confess scratching my cheek embarrassed, “Well…the thing is…we were broke. We worked day and night to make enough to get by. He overworked and his body finally decided to give up. And by myself I couldn’t make enough to keep our home and get medical treatment done for him. So we became homeless but Ah Ro’s family was very nice and allowed us stay with them. However when my brother didn’t get better and passed I didn’t want to burden them any longer… So I looked for a new home and the Hwarang gave me that.” I didn’t even realize that tears were running down my face by the time I finished telling him my story, “Sorry I didn’t mean to cry,” I sniffle as he wiped at my cheeks with his sleeve. “What’s your name?” He inquires next causing me to smile, “I like how you ask for my deep back story before asking for my name.” Ban Ryu softly laughs, “I didn’t know if your name was worth remembering until now.” I puff out my cheeks in mock offense shoving him with my shoulder, “My name is (Y/n).” He nods with a gentle smile, “Thanks for telling me that (Y/n).” I scrunch up my nose at his reply, “Oh geez, you’re scaring me with your kindness please stop!” He scoffs making a 360 back to himself. There was a comfortable silence that enveloped us, “Ban Ryu?” Hearing his name he looks at me giving his full undivided attention before I continued, “I feel the same about my brother to you.” The man raises his eyebrow not following my words, so I continued, “If you’re happy then so am I.” The confusion stayed on his features, “What do you mean?” I smile with a soft laugh, “I like you, a lot. But you are happiest beside Soo Yeon so I will be happy for you both.”    

 Ban Ryu’s point of view

I didn’t comprehend what she was getting at. I liked (Y/n) more than any girl I’ve ever met, I even showed her how comfortable I was around her by being myself. I should tell her that I didn’t like Soo Yeon as anything more than a friend with mutual interests like giving Soo Ho a hard time, but I couldn’t bring myself to confess my feelings to her. She looks up at me with tear brimmed eyes but her smile never quivered on her perfect face, “I just…ask one thing of you Ban Ryu…we need to stop having these interactions. When you are like this…being so nice to me I can’t handle it knowing that our feelings aren’t mutual. It’s selfish of me to ask you that but it hurts too much knowing that you aren’t someone that I can call mine.” My chest tightens as I watch her smile waver with tears streaming down her face uncontrollably, it was worse than that time she got drunk. “You talk too much.” (Y/n) laughs with tears still streaming down her cheeks, “It’s okay though. I enjoy listening to you talking about nonsense.” She looks up with pouty lips and I couldn’t help but reach out and pinch her cheeks. “You are dumb aren’t you?” Before she could protest like she usually did I slide my hand from her cheek to the back of her head before gently pulling her forwards. “Just kiss me (Y/n).” My eyes flutter closed as her soft warm lips met mine, we barely made contact before she pulls back and buries her extremely hot flushed face into my neck. I chuckle at her shyness after her whole confident love confession. She snuggles closely to me as I wrap my arms tightly around her body, pulling her into my lap. (Y/n) timidly lets go of the front of my hanbok and slides her arms around my neck, holding me tightly. “I messed up can I try again?” “Do whatever you want,” I mumble feeling the heat radiating across my cheeks. “Okay I will!” She exclaims excitedly squishing my cheeks with both hands. (Y/n) stops amidst leaning in to flash me the brightest grin I’ve ever seen, “You’re cute,” she giggles before continuing to press her lips firmly against mine. Unlike our first kiss it was much more confident, filled with passion as her soft lips moulded with mine. She smiles into the kiss before pulling away, I hear a soft “wow” leave her plump lips as she throws her arms around me giving me the tightest hug she could muster up. “I’m happiest with you,” I quietly confess but nonetheless she heard as she tightened her hold around me.

 We walk hand in hand back to the Hwarang house. The night had gotten more chilly but it was bearable since any slight contact I had with the (c/h) made my heart beat as if I ran for miles. I couldn’t help the small smile that tugged on my lips when I catch her in my peripheral vision with the beaming smile on her face that appeared when she sneaked glances at me. She yawns while rubbing at her swollen eyes from all her previous crying. I couldn’t believe this idiot thought that I liked someone else other than her, and wasted her tears on me too. Even though I hate unnecessary crying I admit she was adorable that she cared about me enough to shed her tears for me. Although I hope in the future she would only cry out of happiness. “You must be tired from all that crying you big baby,” I tease treading my fingers through her soft silky locks. She looks up with lidded eyes with a genuine pout, “I’m too sleepy to come up with something witty to say.” I chuckle at her forwardness and squatted, gesturing for her to get on my back. Her usual self would be too stubborn to take my offer in carrying her but she was too tired to care as she obediently jumped onto my back. (Y/n) wrapped her arms around my neck as she buried her face into my shoulder and quickly drifted to sleep.

 I was surprised that we made it back into our rooms without being caught. Then again, we would know in the morning for sure if extra chores were given to us for sneaking out. I gently lower her into her bed and she loudly groans, a brief moment of panic floods through me hoping none of our roommates would stir at the sound.

 Normal point of view

I groan as I lost all warmth from my soft cushion when it became cold and stiff. My eyes flutter open, it took a while for them to adjust in the dark but I made out the figure before me to be Ban Ryu thanks to the small sliver of moonlight that seeped through the walls. “Stay…” I mumble as my hands reached out to grab his. He sighs but he slips into my bed nonetheless, holding me close into his chest. “I’ll stay until you fall sleep,” he says as his lips brush against my forehead. “Then I won’t ever fall asleep,” I simply state cuddling into his body, feeling his warmth spread through me once again my eyes started to feel heavy. I feel the rumble in his chest as he chuckles quietly, “Don’t be silly.” Ban Ryu combs his long fingers though my hair and removes the wooden hairpin from my bun creating loose ringlets to fall around my face. He slides the hairpin back underneath my pillow before resuming to brush the hair away from my face, soothing me into a peaceful sleep. “Good night…my princess.”

 “I’m a peasant,” I correct half unconscious. “And you are annoying, shut up and sleep (Y/n).”

[heavenlysleep]

Things to Consider When Buying Bunk Beds

With the arrival of a third child quickly arriving, my husband and I needed to figure out sleeping arrangements in our small three bedroom apartment.  Our twin daughters had been sleeping on their crib mattresses on the floor of their bedroom for months.  We wanted to use one of the crib mattresses for our newborn son’s crib and not have to buy a third crib mattress.

So, we thought about possible solutions.  We could have bought two toddler beds or twin beds.  We could have bought one full or queen-sized mattress for them to share.  We could just have our new baby sleep in the pack n’ play for a long time.

Or we could get a bunk bed for our 2.5 year old twins, which would provide each one with their own bed and save space in their small bedroom.

We thought about the advantages of a bunk bed:

1. Two beds.  Each of our girls will still have their own bed to sleep on, giving them their own space.

2. More space.  Bunked beds means more room in their small bedroom.  It allows us to actually store toys in their bedroom.  Two twin beds would leave about two feet of walking space between their beds.  One full or queen bed would have taken up most of their room as well.  Now our kids can keep toys in their room and we can have less toys downstairs!

3. If someone has an accident or gets sick in the middle of the night you don’t have to wake them both up to change the sheets (like you would if they shared a bed).

4. When the time comes, the bunk beds can be separated into two twin beds.

5. They can be a ton of fun for little kids to play on.

The disadvantages of bunk beds are:

1. Safety concerns:  Kids can fall off the ladder when climbing up or down.  They could fall off the bottom or top bunk if they aren’t being careful enough.  They can crack their head or body part on the wood or metal rails.  If the bunks don’t have a ton of space between them, the bottom child could crack their head on the bottom of the top bunk.  Also, will the slats or boards support your bouncing child enough so that the mattress doesn’t fall through?  Will the bunk bed be stable enough?

2. Making the beds.  Not as easy when you can barely reach the top bunk, or have to climb on top of the bed to make it.

3. The child on top can likely reach the ceiling, light, fan, curtains or whatever else might be higher up in their room.

4. In the middle of the night whoever is on top can’t see the ladder very well and can’t get down by themselves (though I may see this more as an advantage right now).  Also, it’s not super fun to make your tired body climb down a ladder first thing in the morning.

5. Tucking the child on top in may not be very easy if the bunk bed is very high.  Or giving them their goodnight hugs and kisses.

We figured that the advantages for us and our situation far outweighed the disadvantages and were determined to find as safe and as comfortable a bunk as possible.

Here are some of the things to consider or look for when buying a bunk bed:

1. Can they separate into two beds?  We wanted ones that could, which pretty much ruled out most of the metal framed bunks.  We like that bunks that could separate gave us flexibility in the future as our children aged and as our living situation changed.  However, not all separable bunks are made equal. One may look very different than the other when divided, which may or may not matter to you.

2. How much space is between the bunks?  This one was more important to me than to my husband.  I didn’t want my kids to outgrow these bunks in just a few years because their heads were touching the bottom of the top bunk (or because they were kicking the bottom of the top bunk).  I also thought it would be very nice if an adult (mom or dad) could sit on the bottom bunk without stooping or hunching over and cracking their heads.  Maybe this won’t be as important to you, but it is something to consider.

3. How high will the top bunk be in your space?  Do you have low ceilings?  Or a ceiling fan?  Because then you might want to consider how tall this bunk bed will be.

4. To trundle or not to trundle?  This style of bed seems to be fairly popular right now as we saw several at various stores we looked at.  However, since we are planning on using both of the beds every single day, the trundle didn’t seem to make sense.  The purpose, for us, of getting a bunked bed was so we’d save floor space.  Having to pull out a bed seemed to defeat that very important aspect.  Trundle beds seem like a great option for a guest bedroom or occasional use.

5. What type of ladder or stairs will the bunk bed have?  Since our kids are still very young (under three), we ideally wanted a ladder that came out from the bunk bed or stairs that had storage drawers in them so they could climb up and down safely.  Some bunks you have to climb up on one of the ends.  Will that affect where you have to place your bunk bed?  Will the ladder or stairs take up too much space in the room?  Is the ladder removable? Are the rungs of the ladder too far apart or the initial one too far off the ground?  All important things to consider. I don’t think we could’ve easily fit stairs or a slanted ladder into our kids’ room.

6. How high do the rails come?  Is there only one rail above the mattress?  Or two?  Or three?  Do the rails cover the entire front or back or ends?  On both top and bottom or just one?  We definitely wanted high rails for our very young children to ensure it would be as safe as possible.

7. How stable will the bunk bed be?  Whenever we went to look at bunk beds in the stores, my husband was especially adamant about having to put the bed through a “shake test.”  How much did the bunk bed rock?  Part of the reasoning is that kids are hard on furniture.  They will jump and bounce and yank and rock that bed, so the more it allows for that, the sooner the bed may “die” or fall apart or collapse.  To gauge whether we thought a bed was fairly stable, we looked at how thick the corner pieces of the bed frame were as well as how it was assembled together and the materials used.

8. Aesthetics.  Do you like how the bed looks?  Is the wood sanded and polished nice and smooth?  Or is the wood gritty feeling?  Do the drawers (if applicable) slide nicely in and out?  Do you like the color of the wood or metal?  Do you like how the bunks look when separated?  If you like DIY projects then these may not be as important to you, but if you don’t want to have to worry about these things, it is important to consider.

9. Storage space.  Does the bunk come with extra storage space? Is there room under the bottom bunk for things?  Are there drawers in the staircase?  Does the bunk come with a desk or shelves attached?  If you are looking into a loft bed these things are probably much more important to you.  But, remember the space you plan on putting the bunk bed or loft in. Will there be enough room around it to access the shelves or desk or drawers provided?

10. Cost.  We are, like most people, always looking for a great deal.  And you’d be surprised how quickly the price of bunk beds can escalate, but also how unstable and unsafe the cheapest (~$150) new bunk beds can feel.  My suggestion is always to shop around.  Figure out what features are most important to you of the nine points I listed above.  Safety of course should be a top concern, so the materials and construction of the bed should be among your top priorities.  Do you feel more comfortable with a metal framed bed?  Or do you really prefer wood?  Also, when thinking about cost, remember that you will still need to buy mattresses and sheets and perhaps even bunkie boards.  We looked around at bunk beds at various stores to solidify what we and our children liked and were able to climb up on and to compare cost.  We also looked in the local newspapers classifieds and on craigslist.org.

We ended up buying our bunk bed gently used off of craigslist for only $200. Here’s the bed we ended up purchasing (without the bedding on) set up in our daughter’s bedroom.

This bunk bed pretty much takes up a large majority of the small bedroom, but it has allowed us more space on the opposite side of the room for a rocking chair, a fan, and a bin of toys:

Our girls absolutely LOVE their bunk beds.  We prepped them for weeks ahead of time before we actually purchased them.  We talked about who would be sleeping where, and let them pick out their own bedding.  Today they pulled me into their bedroom to show me their bunk bed, four days after they’ve already been set up.  They show off how they are able to climb the stairs. Both of them love climbing onto the top bunk and playing up there, even if sometimes one of my daughters gets a little scared and wants help going up or down.

We love that the top bunk has such high rails, partially because we purchased only 6″ mattresses.  But, it’s like a mini crib again for our girls!  So far no one has even come close to flipping over the rails.  We’ve had a couple tumbles on the stairs, but nothing major.

I hope that this list helps you in your search for the perfect bunk beds for your family.  Leave me a comment with anything else I may have forgotten to mention as something to consider.  How have you saved space in your home with twins?  

Article and image source: http://hdydi.com/2013/03/16/things-to-consider-when-buying-bunk-beds/