#hurricane should’ve been cut

[tomatoluvr69]

Brief check in re: Helene. TLDR I’m alive but my world has been upended and I’ll be off this website for awhile, even if I wanted to we barely have communications in our flood ravaged city. Don’t read this if you have any sort of disaster trauma I guess, I probably should’ve kept this shorter but it kind of got away from me. I may delete/edit later but I don’t really have the capacity for self censorship At the moment, i guess it was good for me to get some of it out stream of consciousness style? Lol idk guess I’m just using my blog as a blog. Anyways I lived bitch

Hi guys, thanks to the couple people who messaged me checking if I was ok, I don’t really have capacity or time to reply to them all, but I’m doing ok all things considered. Basically I live in Western North Carolina and our city has been utterly shattered by flooding after Hurricane Helene. We made it safely to Durham but we are going back tonight with a car full of mutual aid supplies like childrens medicine and chainsaw fuel and cooking oil. I don’t really have the words to describe what I’ve been going through, being cut off from all communications and information for days and have no way to reach your loved ones, to walk through a friend’s house to try to reach their water and food stash and look up at the tree in the ceiling, to stand on a railroad bridge and look down at an entire neighborhood swept away, to know that your family back home hasn’t heard from you in four days and has no way to know if you’re dead. Five people with one degree of separation to me drowned in flash floods, including two children. A college friend had his entire home swept down the river. It’s just all so uncertain. I cry at nothing. Wandering around unscathed Durham and watching people mow their lawns and go to brunch has been a surreal dream and I can’t believe I am going back. But we got some clean underwear, our first shower, and I even got my favorite taqueria order, a torta de lengua and Jesus Christ you can’t imagine how good that tasted

We’ve been without power for 10 days and the water is likely to be out for weeks, the groundwater people are using to drink and bathe may be contaminated by chemicals from manufacturing plants and you just have no way of knowing, and because the city’s water and septic systems were obliterated there is going to be untold amounts of human waste and waste-borne diseases threatening public health, we just don’t know yet. My brain and body have been wracked by it all, there are times when I am somewhere safe and feel mentally calm but note with this weird sense of detachment that my body is trembling. It’s just indescribable to have your city be unrecognizable and underwater, I’m really shaken. Before we got some texting capacity back, if your roommate just failed to come home one night, you had no way to know that she wasn’t killed out there. We will be without drinking water for weeks when all this is over but that’s peanuts compared to the cars you pass by with the search and rescue symbol for “we found a body here” painted on them.

All of which is just to say I’m alive but things are still very bad and I’ll be without reliable communication for the foreseeable future, not to mention no water, and so obviously I’ll be off here awhile. I’ll be back soon enough complaining about mundane inconveniences but frankly it’s difficult to even talk to anyone outside of Helene’s destruction, I’m going to be reeling for a long time. Don’t reblog this because I won’t have the capacity to monitor this post but I guess donate to the Asheville Survival Project if you have the inclination, that’s a way for people like me who are relatively unscathed to get direct needs like formula, insulin, underwear, and shelf stable goods directly into people’s hands who fared worse, without jumping through the impossible hoops of things like FEMA. But I’ll probably be stepping back from mutual aid stuff to support my best friend who is now responsible for arranging the burials of a family of four, including his friend/coworker and her two boys, whose upcoming wedding he was going to will now be their combined funeral date. It’s really insane out here and leaving the stability of Durham with its electricity, grocery stores, toilets, and internet is honestly a bit devastating. But weirdly it will also be a relief to be back in a place where the grimness in your heart is not at odds with your surroundings and you talk to people without preface, with dirty hair and dirty clothes and break down in tears in any given conversation with a stranger, if that makes sense? I also can’t really imagine evacuating cause that’d be incredibly jarring in a different way. It’s so hard to explain. I’m so irritable and angry and numb all the time. I’m yelling at the person who loves me most in the world, so many of the emotional issues I had before this exploded to a boiling point in shocking and unpredictable ways. I go around floating in a daze.

But I’m very, very lucky to be alive and none of my loved ones killed, I just don’t really know what the next few weeks will hold and if, like, cholera is gonna break out, or people I know will die of things like food allergies because they can’t get a new epipen. There’s absolutely no way to convey what this survivor’s guilt is like, of having survived through sheer random luck of the draw. And the things I have seen with my own eyes will never leave me, and the gruesome phone calls I sat with my friend as he received, with the trauma unfolding in waves as the family’s bodies were identified one by one, and all the graphic details we absorbed of the eyewitness account of their panicked attempts to escape the floodwaters before they were swept to TN. I did not witness it but I cannot shake it. I can’t go more than a few minutes before the phrases ring through my head again. And I work at a school and I have no way of finding out if all my students survived, because they are children without their own contact info, until the school is able to contact me with any deaths. That uncertainty is weighing tremendously on my shoulders right now and I can’t believe I’m sitting in a cafe and I still don’t know the extent of the death toll or if the kids I’ve known and worked with every day for so long we’re able to escape their homes.

I guess just keep Western NC in your thoughts, the devastation is going to take years to crawl back from, but also keep paying attention to Gaza, the trauma and devastation there is so much more unimaginable and this has given me a new perspective on what it’s like to watch from afar as people continue their lives while yours is unrecognizable. Idk how much longer I’m gonna have the capacity for mutual aid stuff here but I’m going to try. I may yet decide to evac, but you must understand this is my home and my community, and I want to be here to support my closest friend through this unimaginable loss, and the fact that he is responsible for arranging all four of their burials. Unless the city orders non essential personnel to leave then I will probably stay.

And there are of course moments of levity and fun, especially before we found out about the people, like breaking into a NC state extension agricultural experiment field and stealing some veggies off the vine, or cooking up big giant feasts of whatever we could save from the fridge.

I’ll check back in when I can and if any of you guys also live in southern Appalachia and need to be put in touch with aid I’ll check my DMs here when I can, we can get people out to you with whatever you need. But yeah just keep us in your thoughts I guess, things are still really bad. I’m going back to shop for more mutual aid stuff but then we’re leaving again but I’ll check in when the internet’s back I suppose

Eat a nice hot meal for me, don’t take ice cubes or your shower for granted, and watch something pretentious. xoxoxoxoxox ur favorite natural disaster survivor, tomato lover sixty nine

[miss-celestia13]

Violence

Jake ruminates on his love…

She came into his life with the force of a raging hurricane. A maelstrom of emotion and desire that he’d long refused to allow himself to feel. She was a storm restrained within a human skin, sent to disrupt his carefully crafted life.

There had been no way to refuse her, not that he wanted to. Her violent way of flirting had sealed it.

Being lured by her flashlight Morse Code and held at knifepoint was the most memorable way he’d ever been wooed.

The silver blade had rested against his throat, the small hand holding it unwavering and fearless, and he’d been gone from the moment she said;

“If you value that pretty neck, Jake, I’d stand very still and drop your hands.”

The urge to laugh and throttle her had struck him like a bolt of scarlet lightning.

She wanted him and hunted him down to have him. Shameless, utterly distracting, and so impatiently impulsive, he never knew what to expect next. A glitch in his system he’d been wholly unprepared to encounter.

He’d never felt as alive as he did under the power of her venom eyes that night.

It was as though his heart had shrivelled and died without him noticing. Years of neglect and abuse had rendered it nothing more than a muscle that pumped blood through his veins.

The tiny flame of hope he’d carried in the early days of his exile had guttered long before she appeared.

She was a shot of pure adrenaline that brought him back to life. She gave him a reason to stop running, teaching him how to live and fight for himself.

If she hadn’t decided he deserved better than what he had, he didn’t know where he’d be.

He’d resigned himself to a life of hollow, aching nothingness. Just him and the mocking echo of his racing steps as he sought a new hiding spot.

Never laying down roots, cutting any growth out before it could bloom, and dousing the surrounding earth with salt to ensure he’d remain alone.

It had worked until she dropped into his life like a boulder launched into a still lake. The ripples she’d caused still flowed through him.

Life had been cold before her. Petrified in time and tragic happenstance.

Grief, regret, and spite held him captive for so long, he had been afraid to see who he could be without it grinding him down.

All his would’ve, could’ve, should’ve’s weighed him down. Demons on his back.

Their poison tipped claws had sunk in deep, etching their unspeakable names into his bones, and filling his blood with their lethal dose.

Manon had seen all that, the enshrouding devouring darkness, the glacial waters surrounding him, and laughed in the face of his demons until they ran away screaming.

He once believed he deserved nothing more than the shallow, unmarked grave his pursuers had prepared for him.

Now, those who once hunted him filled that grave.

He thrived while they decayed.

And with her, his world was warm. Scalding in the best times.

They preferred spending time together wearing nothing but skin, accessorized with gooseflesh and sweat, his teeth marks, and the violets his fingers planted on her inner thighs whenever he crawled between them.

She was a fire, an untamed blaze in the dark that kept his brittle heart cozy and safe.

He was her peace and patience after her life of war, death, and self-appointed blame.

She was his, and he was hers.

Everything else was just static on the screen.

————————————-

I shared my MC's thoughts on Jake the other day, but I wrote them for both. It helps me get in their heads to write their stories. In this case, I had to write vows for them, and these helped me get into a romantic mindset. I wanted to share his side, too❤️

Silence - My MC’s thoughts on Jake.

[sundew199]

The way people living in the Northern US are dehumanizing and laughing at people in the south for “not being prepared” or not evacuating from the hurricane is insane.

Appalachia is getting destroyed and they’re not even by the coast. Asheville, North Carolina is cut off from the world, all the bridges leading into town have been washed away. They have no power, no water and no cell service. And yet people up north have the gaul to say “welp, should’ve prepared better.”

I’ll never ever forget the way Texas/Texans were treated durning the freeze in 2021 when the power grid went down and people froze to death and people up north laughed.

The way the south gets dehumanized is fucking insane and I’m tired and angry. No empathy at all from anyone up North

[tom-hunter-summah]

Born in the Wrong Era| pt. 2

pairing: Wally ClarkxGN!Reader

summary: wally and reader finally get to talk. but is it such a good thing?

warnings: mentions of death, reader drives a jeep, one shout and one scream but neither caused the other, mention of hallucinations, use of Y/N. 

word count: 906

a/n: hello,hello! i hope everyone is well 😊 sorry for the delay but good news is chapter three will be out at the end of this week! also this is mainly dialogue. hope yall enjoy!

also thank you to @moonchildicons for letting me use her wally icon for this aesthetic ❤️

pt. 1 

“Wally?”

He holds his hand up to catch his breath. 

“How do you know my name? More importantly; how can you see me?”

You’re too baffled to speak. This boy you’ve known through stories, pictures and tears is here. 

Maybe, You’ve finally cracked under the pressure of life which has led to hallucinations. You squeeze your eyes closed hoping he’ll go away when they open.

He waves a hand in front of your face. “Can you still see me?”

So much for that theory.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

He lets out a sigh of relief before looking slightly offended. “Unfortunately?”

“Yes, Unfortunately.” The moment you check your phone, the bell for 6th period rings. “And I need to get to class.”

You start to walk out the gate but Wally runs in front of you, stopping you in your tracks, again. 

He laughs. “So we’re just not gonna talk about this?”

“Look, Wally I don’t have time to figure out why my hallucinations chose to manifest in the form of someone I’ve never met, but I really need to get to class.”

You walk through him and that experience is one you don’t necessarily want to relive and it has you running to class. 

You hear Wally yell out after you. “You’re not hallucinating!”

Further into the hurricane, you go. 

Monday- 1:45 pm

You’ve never been happier that you have 8th period free. Stats is already hell to be in, but that thing you saw earlier didn’t make it any better. As soon as you could, you bolted from class to your car. You waited for the lot to clear from parents and students alike before you screamed (windows rolled up of course.) It felt good. It would have felt great if you weren’t started by Mr. Anderson knocking on your window. 

You roll your window down, looking guilty. 

“You alright?” 

You shrug. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

You shake your head no. 

“Understand. Well if you’re going to have a mental breakdown, please do so off school grounds, or at least in the theater room.” He gently taps the hood of your Jeep and briskly walks away.

You laugh to yourself at the ridiculousness of that interaction. 

“What’s so funny?”

Or so you hoped. 

“Jesus can’t a person decompress in peace?! What the hell Wally?”

He holds his hands up in defense.  “Sorry. Look I’ve been trying to get your attention since you stomped off the field but you couldn’t hear me in your very complicated math class–”

You cut him off. “So you thought giving me a heart attack in my car would help me not ignore you?”

He shrugs. “Well at least if you die then we can–” 

You give him a look. “Not helping your case dude. Get out of my car.” 

“Wait Y/N–”

“How do you even know my name?”

“STOP CUTTING ME OFF AND LET ME TALK!”

In the beat of silence that filled the car, you shrink. “Sorry Walls, Please, talk.”

He sighs. “Thank you. And I’m sorry for yelling. Wait, did you just call me Walls?”

You shrug. “Yeah. Bea calls you that all the time so it’s second nature.”

His brows furrow. “Bea? Like my mom Bea?”

You nod your head. “Do you remember Ceceil James?”

Wally nods. 

“She was my grandmother and you know how those two were.”

He laughs. “Wait, were? Did something happen?”

You can barely stop your voice from cracking.  “Walls.”

His face falls and you see tears brim in his eyes. “How?”

“It was a car accident. S-She was alone when…”

Wally’s hands go to cover yours only for them to fall through and give you a chill. 

“Sorry, force of habit. We don’t have to keep talking about Cece by the way. God I’m so stupid I should’ve realized it would hurt to talk about it. I mean she was your grandma for god’s sake and–”

You go to grab his face but you stop right before you would make contact. 

“Sorry. Force of habit.”

He chuckles dryly. “I appreciate the thought. And thank you for getting me out of my head.”

You nod. “Don’t mention it.”

Wally clears his throat before talking. 

“Well that was fun.”

You laugh. “Alright funny boy; what questions do you have?”

Wally thinks for a moment. “I guess my first question is; how’s my mom doing?”

You clear your throat. “Well, she’s Bea. Kind and understanding. Always supportive of her loved one’s dreams.”

You look back at Wally and he’s straight-faced for all of two seconds before he bursts out laughing. 

You can’t help but laugh along. “What’s so funny?”

“I mean my mom is great but understanding isn’t exactly one of her more honed skills.”

Your brows furrow as you realize the dig Wally just made at Bea. “What is that supposed to mean?”

His laughter finally dies down as he notices you’re serious. “She’s a bit insistent is all.”

You give him a pointed look. “You mean stubborn.”

He shrugs. “I guess yeah.”

“Get out.”

“Wait Y/N, I have more questions.”

You send daggers his way. “You should have thought about that before you disrespected Bea.”

Wally goes to speak but you simply hold up your hand. You stay like that for a few moments and he finally leaves your jeep but not before leaving you something to chew on. 

“The Bea you know now isn’t the Bea I knew.”

[blorb-el]

hullo! I read your chapter of your au with the Very Horrible Lex and the Very Baby Kon and the Very Sad Clark and i love it sosososo much! The GOOD ANGST my dood.

I want you to know i’ve been daydreaming abt it. Heck, i was daydreaming WHILE reading it- i mean that’s actually normal for me when i’m invested in smthn, but fr i kept getting distracted by So Many Thoughts and Feelings tm. Took me longer to read than it should’ve but rest assured that’s a positive thing!

i read the fic you based it on, and it was great! But so far im liking yours better >v>

I wanna see the rescue and the recovery! I wanna see it get worse first! I wanna see Clark attempt to raise Kon the best he can in the worst of circumstances! The love and human connection thriving even in the midst of a hurricane of cruelty— it’s so good bestie!

uhh anyway! The point of this ask: I wanna know, how did you come up with the title? “We shall be free; we shall find peace”? oVo?

Thank you!! That's basically how it came about, daydreaming about the fic that inspired it!

So I really love the fanfic tradition of using lowercase AestheticTM song lyrics as titles. Fic is already inherently intertextual, and I think it's fun to add another layer of intertextuality onto that; I named one of my other fics with a lyric mostly because 1. the lyric fits their relationship! and 2. the juxtaposition between Wholesome Radio Pop Lyric and soft d/s xeno tentacle pwp still makes me laugh.

At first the draft was just called 'horrible lex au,' and then I thought about using two other quotes before settling on the title. That's the tl;dr of it all, the rest of this is under a cut for plot spoilers for the overall arc of the entire fic, and also so, so much rambling:

The first title I was thinking about was be sure your heart is brave from Aeschylus' Agamemnon, but that quote is the chorus speaking to Cassandra right before she's about to be killed; her bravery is a heavy burden reaction to the monstrous injustices that have brought her to that point, like Clark and Kon... but then she's brutally murdered. Plus the power dynamic situation is... let's say, very different. It's an extraordinary, immortal line but the narrative arc I've got planned strays too far from the original arc, and in the end I decided I didn't want the shadow of a way better tragedy hanging over my little fanfic.

Chorus: Woman, be sure your heart is brave; you can take much. Cassandra: None but the unhappy ever hear such praise.

The next line I was thinking about went too far in the other direction, taste a morning out there, which is from one of the best 'I Want' songs, Out There from the Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimodo's story of being thought monstrous and being imprisoned and gaslit by a socially powerful manipulator parallels Clark and Kon better than Cassandra's, but in the end the literal line itself doesn't fit right with either Clark or Kon. Clark, at the beginning of the fic, has atrophied to the point where he can only conceive wanting for such things through wanting them for Kon, and Kon, as we'll see soonish, isn't locked up underground the way Clark is. Plus, the fic is... lighter than the Orestia for sure but a hell of a lot grimmer than Disney, lol. I do have it on my writing playlist though.

So in the end I went back to one of my absolute favorite pieces of media ever, Fidelio. We shall be free; we shall find peace is a line from the Prisoner's Chorus in that opera. The solo prisoner that sings the line invites the rest of the prisoners to begin hoping, and from there, despite the sobering reminders of the dangers they face, that they're being watched, the music swells into a yearning for freedom so powerful it's difficult to understand how it passed the censors in 1805.

First solo: Hope whispers softly to me: We shall be free, we shall find peace. Chorus: Oh Heavens! Salvation! What happiness! Oh freedom, freedom, will you return? Second solo: Speak softly! Be on your guard! [The jailer's] eyes and ears are on us.

And then - the head jailer returns, and the prisoners are brought back to reality, forced back into their dark cells at the end of the act. The temporary respite is over.

Farewell, warm sunshine - how quickly you fly from us. Night is fallen upon us, from which no day shall break.

The simple act of hoping is like a breath of fresh air, temporarily alleviating their suffering, but it doesn't materially change their circumstances; it takes a number of outside forces to do that, which will be paralleled in the fic. Love and hope is all they have, and it's not enough, but it does make the torment bearable until Bruce/Leonora uncovers the extent of The Horrors and Diana/Don Fernando can deus ex machina everyone into the sunlight.

All in all, the line is a very succinct summary of the plot. Clark and Kon will be free, and they will find peace, but they have to find out what both of those mean, reclaiming their agency in the process.

oooor at least that's the plan. chapter 2 is about 90% edited and can probably be ready this weekend, I hit a little plot snag in chapter 3-5 so chunks of that are undergoing rewrites, but the good news there is that the rewrites are SO much better than the original draft and there will be some bats showing up earlier than there otherwise would have been. I did uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh kind of lose my job a few days after posting the first part, so updates will be slower than I'd like, especially since I'll have to move to a different state if I get the positions I'm currently applying to 😓

[mable-stitchpunk]

Going Home in a Box: Chapter 72- Teaser

Her box was tipped to assist in getting her up some short steps, with Mike and Fritz swearing and snickering respectively as they got it up onto the stage and rolled it into position. Mike gave a couple knocks to the top of the box, Charlie quietly knocked back, and then listened as their footsteps retreated.

It was almost immediately after that when she heard some thumping in movement back towards the steps of the stage. She had a suspicion what it was, but it was only confirmed when she heard something getting wheeled up beside her. Baby.

“You’ve got this! You’ve GOT this!” Ennard whispered loud enough that she could hear it. Baby gave a near silent hum of agreement- one that Charlie did not hear- and Ennard was off the stage as fast as he had come on.

Baby only waited long enough for the audience to not be as suspicious when she suddenly came to life and then went straight into character. Her voice light and bubbly.

“Hello, everybody! My name’s Ringleader Lizzie and we’re going to be having a singsong in just a moment. I hope you will join me! My, there’s so many happy faces out today!... And so many stars and stripes!” Baby gasped. “It must be… The Fourth of July! I love the Fourth of July! Is there going to be fireworks? Oh, I should’ve brought sparklers- Oops, I’m getting a little off-track.”

Charlie could hear her wheeling her roller skates back and forth to emphasize. “But I’m not celebrating alone today. I’ve brought a friend with me!” She knocked on the top of the box quickly. “Wake up, Sleepyhead.”

That was her cue. Steading herself one last time, Charlie got into character and popped out of her box. Though took care not to lose her flag printed visor and taped on sunglasses in the process, a few Fourth of July themed accessories to replace her too-hot jacket. Baby’s only additional accessories was her plush pig covering her claw and a cluster of red, white, and blue star-studded balloons that had been tied to her back and bobbed in the air above her as she moved.

It was also only now when she caught sight of the Fourth of July celebration in the middle of Hurricane. The parade had been earlier in the day, but the crowd still hung around for the food stalls, carnival games, an oversized bounce house, and the impending fireworks once it got dark. It was still a long way from dark though, with a bright blue sky dotted with clouds stretched above the town. The smell of fresh cut grass and grilling meat hung on the air. It was the perfect summer day for a holiday like this.

 Charlie rose from her box in a stretch, yawning like she had roused from a nap. Baby presented her with a wave.

“Lottie the Puppet, everybody! Give her a round of applause.”

While they clapped, Baby rolled back just a little bit so she would be able to lean forward without bumping heads while they were exchanging banter. Much to Charlie’s relief, she still remembered the lines they had written together even now that she was out of her box and under the gaze of a couple dozen onlookers and whoever decided to pass by in the meantime.

“Have a nice nap, Lottie?” Baby asked. She leaned forward and cocked her head cutely.

“It depends. Where are we?” Charlie asked. She looked around and tilted her own head in confusion.

“We’re at-! Umm, I’m not sure. But there’s a lot of people here just dying to meet you!”

“Oh, okay.” Charlie fanned herself with her hand. “Yikes. Did we have to do this on the hottest day of the year?”

“Mm-hm! Besides, you could use a little sun. You’re looking a little pale.”

Charlie looked off stage at the audience.

“But it’s supposed to be sunny! And that’s because… it’s the Fourth of July!”

“Oh, Boom Boom Barbeque Freedom Day?”

“No! Hot Dog and Family Time Day! And the freedom to stuff your face and spend as much time with your family as you can stomach. But not just family, friends too!” Baby turned her attention to and addressed the audience. “Lottie and I are best friends! We go back a long, long way. We’ve known each other since we were babies!”

“In pigtails and onesies, daycare days,” Charlie agreed.

“We spent so much time together. When we were kids, we used to have sleepovers every weekend for the whole summer!”

“We didn’t get much sleep.”

“But we had plenty of fun in the sun!”

“I wasn’t so pale back then.”

“So, we wrote a song about it!” Baby chirped. “And you all are going to be the first ones to hear it!”

“Maestro, hit it!”

[feather-rose]

Move in, with me? Part 1.

.....

Tenten(Nudged him by the elbow as she was sitting next to him, feeling him jump up a bit.): So, what do you say? After Naruto and Hinata’s wedding, wanna move in with me?

Neji(Clears up his throat and scratches the back of his neck, looking a bit nervous, here.): Well, I haven’t thought about it, till you’ve said it now..You know, with the war and all--(Looks away.)

Tenten(Looked a bit worried to hear him say no.); Why? Think it’s too dangerous to move in with me?( Wouldn’t he?)

Neji(Defended himself here as he looked back at her.,): I’ve never said that! And it’s never dangerous to be around with you..(Never it had been, after all she had his back, for the longest time, he could remember.)

Tenten(Felt uncertain): But?

Neji(Still convinced.): No buts here! It’ll be interesting to be and to move in with the person I love and respect the most, here. If you want to know.(He caught up her callosed hands over his.)

Tenten(Blinks up a bit, here with surprise): Love? You mean with me? Neji..

Neji(Nods up at this reply.): I mean it, Tenten. I do love you here and I want to move in with you.

Tenten blushes back at that sentence as Neji released one of his real smiles towards her. As his eyes brightened with happiness. And only to her, here.

Tenten(Chuckles teasingly.): Aww. I do love you too, Neji. And it’s about damn time, you noticied coming, here. You idiot!

Neji softly chuckled here and nodded back to her reply as he pushed himself closer to the kunochi here. And nervous as he seemed to be when he felt his heart beating so fast against his chest, when he had seen her eyes getting closed up and himself leaning over and to kiss her lips--

When an sudden hurricane and tornado had interrupted their almost kiss onto the training ground of the times where Team Gai used to unite, here.

Heck?

Rock Lee(Screaming very loudly.): NEJI!!!

ARGH!!!

The poor couple had broken up their moment away as they’ve held up their shaken breath together when they’ve heard and seen their teamate jumping in, like a spreading up green bird who had been flying far too much with insanity, lately ever since the war had ended.

Poor Neji and Tenten.

Lee(Kept onto screaming and jumping back and forth like a maniac.): Neji! Neji!

Neji(Wondered what was going on with Lee, here, looking confused but annoyed.): Yeah, Lee?

Tenten(Lecturing up or more like she scolded him like she often used to.): What has gotten into you? Trying to give us a heart attack or what?(After all, that idiot had interrumpted an important moment of her own lifetime, and it was to make Neji kiss her, here. But no thanks to Lee.)

Lee( Confided in with a hand onto his closed up his eyes with a confident smile.) : Oh no! Nothing of the sort, Tenten. Oh no! News has been great! Nothing better but amazingly perfect! I can’t even tell how happy I am, today. That I’m about to push myself and do---

Neji(Cut him off, getting a bit irritated, here.): Just spit it out, Lee! (He and Tenten had gotten up onto theirs feet, looking a bit annoyed.)

Lee: Well, I wanted to thank you about something here, Neji..

Neji(Dumbfounded for a second. Since when, Lee had ever thanked him about something?):Me?  About what? What did I do?(He pointed himself, here with question.)

Lee: You came into my dream! And told me what I should’ve had done from day one for Naruto and Hinata’s wedding!! How unyouthfull haven’t I thought about it--

Tenten(Cut him off, annoyed.): Lee, just what’s going on?

Lee: Tenten, believe it or not, but Neji had come up to my dream and had put mind at ease--No, wait, crazily at ease!

Tenten(Rose an eyebrow.): How so?(She didn’t quite wanted to believe whatever crack she had to hear from Lee. Cause whatever crack comes out from Lee, it would be hard for the guy to go back away from his word..)

Neji(Felt his eye twitching up a bit.): Uh? I did that?(Unless, I was into an induced coma and felt my soul traveling around, or so.I wouldn’t remember saying or do anything crazy, here.)

Lee(Puffed himself up as a strong and muscular man would do by testing his muscles up with such confidence and proud of.): Physical strength over endurance! Physical strength over endurance! I couldn’t quite place it together at first, until IT CAME THROUGH MY MIND!!

It just left the couple in such shock as theirs jaws dropped down onto that sentence. While Lee was brightening up with such powerfull confidence and strength.

Why Me? Why Us?

Tenten(Still not trying to buy it, but went along with it, while Neji just stood up into shock.): Which it was?

Lee(Still smiling with confidence due to their shock.): Do an thousand lap over to the hokage’s mountains! And get these weighting ankles bracelets for both of them!( And brought up the proud Gai’s smilling and thumb pose up, much to Neji and Tenten’s defeat, here.)

The heck?

Tenten(Gives an warning glare to her new boyfriend, here) Neji..

Neji(Just sweatdropped back up when his petrified lavender eyes had meet her back, looking uncomfortable as he smiled nervously..): How about moving in today, Tenten?(And then, later, he’d kill Lee.)

[creaturecosmo]

My Mind Is A Hurricane

Rating: Teen

Pairing: Bakugou Katsuki & Ashido Mina

Word Count: 1,015

Tags: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm, Insecurity, Panic Attacks

Summary: Bakugou breaks down after bombing a test, but luckily Mina is there to help.

AO3 Link

Punch after punch flies at the punching bag, sand beginning to leak from a fresh tear on the left side. The sting of the worn fabric against Bakugou’s scraped-up knuckles is more than welcome. It’s a better way to fight against the hurricane of failure and self-destruction wreaking havoc on his brain, rather than going out and picking fights with random extras who would certainly kick his ass. Or snapping at his friends who didn’t do anything besides invite him to hangout after an exam.

A simple exam Bakugou was stupid enough to bomb. Simple equations swirling around him, beating his brain to a pulp. Simple, simple, simple–

It’s easier to just work himself exhausted and not bother dealing with the scrapes and cuts he gets from the exercise. If it gets infected, that’s his own damn fault. He probably deserves it anyway. That’s what he gets for losing his shit on his dad when he called to ask about a “lower than Bakugou average score” on the simple exam. His father had called out of concern, out of worry for his son’s mental health. And Bakugou returned the care with shouts and insults. So typical of him, because God forbid he opens up about how his mind has been chasing him relentlessly for the past month. It’s just impossible for him to talk about how it’s gotten so bad that it keeps him from studying, just leaving him to stare at a textbook begging himself to actually read something.

His wrists started throbbing five songs ago, but the last thing he can handle is stopping and proving his shitty thoughts right about his weakness. So what if they ache like hell in the morning, making him suffer through his classes and training? Serves him right for not listening to his body’s warning signs. He should’ve stopped when his hands started going numb from swinging fists for an hour without a proper break. He should’ve stopped when his shins started shaking from the blows and blew out the first bag. He should’ve stopped when his headache brought fog into his peripheral vision. He should’ve stopped a dozen times, but he didn’t. This is all his fault.

Everything finally boils over when one last furious swing makes the bag give way and tear a huge hole. A raw scream shreds Bakugou’s throat. It echoes off the walls. It brings him to his knees and doubles him over. The concrete floor is unforgiving and he just keeps screaming. Pain rips through his throat and he just keeps screaming. Everything is just too much and the world is just too loud and his brain is just too cruel and he has had enough.

If he screams, maybe he can drown it out.

His headphones find their way off his head and across the room. His nails find their way into his chest. When the screams give way to raspy coughs and empty gagging, he finally gives up on drowning everything out.

The hurricane is still there. It pesters him about how ridiculous and childish he must look. He just wants attention. That’s why he keeps getting pictures of his friends coming in and holding him, telling him everything is going to be okay and the hurricane will fade. He doesn’t deserve happiness, not with how he treats everyone. 

They must hate him by now. They’re only around his volatility because they admire his quirk, they want the status that came with the proximity to power. They think he’s perfect and amazing and already a pro hero that doesn’t have dark thoughts and sinking feelings that threaten to drown him if he doesn’t lash out at everyone he cares about. He doesn’t deserve the love of his parents or the tolerance of his teachers. They all know how weak he really is. They’ve seen him shove down panic attacks during training and just keep fighting until he either wins or gets beaten unconscious. They’ve seen him sneak out of the dorms in tears after waking up from yet another nightmare that he doesn’t know how to handle.

Bakugou Katsuki is pathetic and he just needs to accept it instead of trying so damn hard to live up to the terrifying expectations put on his head. He’s stuck on a pedestal 100 feet off the ground and if he tries to get off, the fall will most certainly kill him. He has to pass this course and become a hero and be number one and save everyone. If he doesn’t, he’s worthless and a waste of time and money. It has to be absolute and unanimous or it won’t mean shit.

Warm hands run through his hair, jarring another chest-rattling sob out of him. They smooth down his ruddy cheeks, carefully guiding his face up. Warmer brown eyes watch him, pulled back with worry. And it makes him furious without the strength to scream for her to get away from him. Instead, he just leans into her hands, succumbing to weakness and raw vulnerability. A quiet coo makes it past the flurry of static in his ears as the girl pulls him up to sit in her lap.

“Mina,” he croaks, hands fisting her hoodie as he hides his shame and relief in her neck. Gentle, undeserved hands run over his legs and back.

“I’ve got you, Bakugou. You’re safe with me.” Her voice is soft and soothing in his ear. Fluffy pink hair brushes against his cheek as she twists her head to kiss his shoulder. “Everything’s going to be okay someday. For now, we’re just going to sit and breathe and wait for this to pass. Because this will pass, I promise.” She takes his trembling hand and places it over her heart, letting her feel the steady beat alongside her slow, even breathing.

The thoughts don’t go away, not completely, but his body relaxes for the first time in a week as he just cries himself dry against her. There’s no rush for him to suck it up, only patience for his pain to be let out.

[gggoldfinch]

actual footage of me reading your response:

goldfinch rant supremacy🫡

hi yes ma'am now that I'm more well educated, I'd like to order the "ultimate blorbo Darth Maul's backstory" with extra hot sauce (details) and a side of "what makes you love Rogue One above all the other movies?" please and thank you 😁

also will b sure to binge all the movies and then read your fanfic after, I really love your character art for your OC btw! she's so so pretty, and that backstory you gave on her in the post makes me want to read more about her story! ily 🩷

RAAAHHHHAGHAHSJDKDK SHAKING CRYING EVEN HARDER THANK YOU YOU’RE SO WONDERFUL ❤️❤️❤️ ILY

Okay here’s the Ultimate Blorbo Darth Maul Backstory Speedrun: basically he was born to a powerful witch on the planet Dathomir where there’s a lot of segregation (yikes) and interesting tribal dynamics; he gets stolen by Darth Sidious aka Palpatine (because Palpatine is weird rivals with Maul’s mom), and is raised/groomed/ abused to be the perfect assassin & Sith Lord apprentice. Then at 22 years old (tragic, should’ve been at the club), during a battle with Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (who he kills) and Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, he is cut in half at the waist by Kenobi and thrown down a garbage chute. He SURVIVES THIS on sheer willpower and Sith rage alone, and spends the next 12-ish years descending into complete madness and Kenobi-fueled desire for revenge on a far-removed landfill planet. It’s here he builds himself spider legs out of literal trash and scrap and terrorizes the local fauna. A regular old Shelob (LOTR reference ba um tss). Then he’s rescued by his biological brother, Savage Opress (who’d been tasked with this by their manipulative mom), who brings him back to Dathomir to be “healed” by their witch mother. He’s now got a swanky new pair of robo legs, his insanity is “cured”, and he runs around shirtless for the foreseeable future. This takes place during the Clone Wars so lots of Clone Wars stuff goes on in the meanwhile. Eventually Maul and Savage overtake the planet of Mandalore (where the Mandalorians are from) and Maul becomes the Mand’alore (the king basically. Oh and he’s wearing clothes now womp womp). During this time a lot of stuff happens: they create a crime syndicate, Palpatine tries to cast aside and kill Maul (seeing as he’d replaced him twice by this point), Savage is murdered, and eventually after plot conflicts Maul is chased off Mandalore. Then Order 66 happens and the rise of the Empire and, with the rest of the surviving Force-users, he fades away to avoid detection. Here’s where my knowledge gets slightly hazy because the tail end of his story makes me sad and I Don’t Perceive It + I haven’t watched Rebels in its entirety: Maul joins up with the crime syndicate Crimson Dawn and ends up ruling it from the shadows, does this for another decade-ish, then fades into obscurity some time in his late 40s/ early 50s to dodge the still-rampant anti-Force sentiments in the Empire. He resurfaces again to pester this “post-Jedi Order” Force-sensitive kid, Ezra, and seems to have mellowed out greatly since his time as a ruthless Sith Lord (probably due to LITERALLY NEVER CATCHING A BREAK EVER). He confronts his long-time rival and the man who he sees as having ruined his life, Kenobi (he screams and rants and raves about him a lot, it’s pretty entertaining, if sad) one last time on Tatooine, is bested in battle, and kinda gives up and dies. Which is a mood, but yeah. Kenobi, who has been tolerating this guy’s feral insanity and hatred for him for decades, gives him an honorable Jedi funeral and burns his body, and I cry if I think too much about that! 😁 His story is rife with tragedy and violence and I doubt he’s ever happy except in the company of his brother who he fails to save, and he’s never loved or been shown love in canon and it’s heartbreaking because his entire life is a hurricane of abuse and misery and never getting his way and never being loved except by the one person he cares about but can’t save AGHHHHHHJJH

On to why I love Rogue One before I spontaneously combust: visually, it is PHENOMENAL! The characters (though I can’t name a majority of them) are easy to love and root for, and at its core it’s a story about the everyday little people who make big sacrifices along the way. It follows several people on their mission to retrieve the information that holds the plans to destroy the Death Star, to be delivered to the Rebellion, and each and every one of them dies in the process— yes even the main characters. It is a modern tragedy and you know when you start it there’s only one way it can end, and I hate to admit it makes me cry before the opening scene even begins to play. Not even joking, last time i watched I was sobbing at a black screen. Plus Mads Mikkelsen is in it 🫣 It isn’t necessarily my favorite, but that spot is taken by The Phantom Menace, but I def think it’s the most well-done Star Wars movie

And thank you for the lovely compliments, it means so much that you’d be interested in getting into the fandom for my silly fic. That’s genuinely so special to me 🥺❤️❤️❤️

[anthonybialy]

Scientific Method to Madness

A lack of science permits magic.  Who wants to be constrained by natural limits and tedious rigors of experimentation?  Expand your imagination, dull bores.  Fervent worshipers who suspiciously endorse their fealty to the process secretly loathe the precedent of constancy.  Noticing how tendencies repeat is hateful to open-minded zealots dedicated to deducing that whatever’s established doesn’t affect what’s next.

Have you heard who loves science?  Alleged adherents will remind you of their dedication in case you haven’t used the process of sound waves to hear previously.  The biggest preeners are certainly not overcompensating, so stop thinking like a hater.  Psychology is a kind-of science.

Changing the climate of baseless panic would improve the environment.  Stop hyperventilating about weather in order to improve the forecast.  Over half a century of panic has only increased anxiety for panicky types who bafflingly resent civilization.  Doom should’ve come true by now, which mortifies cult leaders who were certain their calculations about the world’s end were accurate.

I must be ignoring how the few parts of the nation that don’t have to wade through the day are too frozen solid to move.  There’s no place free of water being irksome, at least if you get your updates about temperature patterns from noted researchers Greta Thunberg and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The self-parodic blame of every weather condition on human activity isn’t making our world warmer.  The news occasionally covers hurricanes in places where only a troglodytic rube would think they happen naturally like in warm coastal cities.  What next: the northeast endures blizzards?  Blustery snowstorms never happened before the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Our fragile sphere is no longer warming except when it happens to be warm.  A dedicated marketing effort surely reflects a dedication to facts.  Reality just needs a rebrand.  Old-timers remember the quaintness of global cooling that was the hip fright around the time of the initial Earth Day.  Enjoying life inside is no longer hastening the next ice age by having a civilization.

Altering semantics is not the same as changing outcomes, I regret to inform strident liberals.  Climate change ensures the temperature means we’re doomed regardless of whether it goes up or down.  Pray to the weather deities to give us just a few consecutive days of identical temperatures.

Cutting down on energy usage is wise on its own.  Recognizing which Korea uses more electricity shows how going a bit too far doesn’t really help the Earth or those dwelling on it.

The reality of inevitably facing tradeoffs is crucial to grasping complicated concepts like the value of burning fuel to keep from freezing.  Inept conjurers who think government can circumvent drawbacks don’t care for free markets, either, which is why they think they can get rich by printing money instead of working usefully.

Like trying to maintain civilization without keeping power plants purring, discovering that trying to avoid difficulties exacerbates them.  Cruel lessons merely reflect more indifference at human sputtering.

Visionaries do everything they can to stick us back to an age named after a raw material.  Cruel capitalists try to ruin out world by making fuel burning more efficiently, which is in the interest of both businesses and consumers.  The Soviet Union must’ve been an environmental paradise with all that cool planning.

The only way the effort to guilt the world into environmental bliss is if they’re trying to help.  Coal-powered extension cord cars feature batteries that couldn’t cause more pollution to make if they were the product of eco-villains that fought G.I. Joe at the toy line’s regrettable end.  You’ll never guess what powers smugmobiles.  As a hint, it’s not karma.  Emissions must be clean if you only see the plug.

There’s good news about gender confusion, as it’s already been decided.  Something out of our control is oddly comforting for removing an unnecessary choice.  The same very calm and loving people who’d ruin your life for suggesting homosexuality is so acceptable that it’s fine to decide autonomously to made it one’s preference proclaim you’re not the gender you’re born.  They would fire you for pondering the logic if they could only read your thoughts.  We need a law enabling telepathy.

Woke lunatics in lab coats employ a wholesale dedication to quelling debate that they trust is at science’s core.  Stifling debate is the precise opposite, of course.  The most zealous are the ones who make their religion look bad.  Claim it loud enough and it becomes true if you’re interested in how the new experiments proceed.  Thinking the process is ever settled surely respects it.

Shut the hell up unless you want to throw off the conclusion.  Irrational shrieking that is very common amongst scientists is designed to shame heretics who possess the temerity to question official conclusions.  You came within the two-yardstick bubble and are thus doomed to a lifetime of shame.

It’s sadly predictable that the other beliefs of the suspiciously pious are profoundly unscientific.  All a rational case took was seeing what kept happening; there should be a title for the procedure.

By contrast, refusing to perceive causes tremendous pain in actuality.  Solving crime by not making the arrested post cash bail doesn’t quite prevent cities from turning into the opening parts of a Batman movie.  Taxing success means less working toward it.  And health providers don’t care about quality or prices if they know their business is guaranteed.  All of liberalism is unscientific.  Consistency of beliefs that constitutes a pattern.  Naturally, believers don’t notice it.

[etherealtauruss]

i often think about how congratulations was cut from hamilton. but .. it doesn’t make sense lowkey. esp bc the love triangle was emphasized throughout the musical. like hamilton had his say. eliza had her heartbreaking say. so angelica needed to put in her two cents.

[ramenoff]

• 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩 •

Synopsis: Bucky would literally die for you but his ego is bigger than his dick and you wanna shove him out a window. 

Pairing: fuckboy!bucky x AFAB!reader (college au)

Warnings: uH enemies to lovers, no explicit smut (brief, inexplicit mentions), PINING OH MY GOD, unrequited love (on Bucky’s part), language, some specific traits for reader mentioned (nothing like skin, hair or eye colour, more just clothing style and no makeup), Bucky is an idiot lmao.

(1.3k words)

You’re staring at your board like you’ve got a bone to pick with it, determination evident in your brow and a scraped knee to match it. 

Should’ve bought those knee pads. 

You huff out a sigh and push off on your board once more before dipping back down into the bowl and rounding the circumference to get yourself comfortable. Your foot meets the ground to spur on your momentum- it’s a simple trick, and you’ve only been skating for around two weeks at this point but you’ve spent all afternoon trying to nail this move and you refuse to return to your dorm with defeat written all over you. 

You direct yourself to round another lap before allowing the board to take its course up the side of the bowl. You meet the edge and you use the momentum in your hips to let yourself rise up in the air and- holy shit, you’re almost doing it! 

As you meet the edge your body swivels, right hand gripping the board to your feet as your left-

Well, your left hand was supposed to catch you. 

Before you can calculate that the distance was misjudged, you're tumbling down the side of the bowl and biting the pavement. 

“Take it easy there, champ.” 

You’re so ready to castrate him. 

“Eat glass,” you snap, dusting off your cargo shorts and examining your twin wounds on your knees. 

You’ve never understood just what makes James Buchanan Barnes so great. It's clear that he’s a class A douchebag with his stupid blue eyes and ridiculous hair that falls perfectly in place no matter how hungover and disgusting he was. He swears he’s got a big dick but he’s proven that his ego has the advantage, even girls on campus swap stories about one night stands and seven minutes of god knows what when stuffed into a closet together on a dare. Maybe you’re jealous that it isn’t you, or maybe you’re just tired of the pick-me-girl shit that goes on simply for a college fuckboy with precisely two and a half brain cells who has somehow Pavolov’d a swath of young girls to be at his beck and call when he wants a blowjob. Either way, the rest of campus thinks that Bucky is just peachy while you can beg to differ. 

The best part? He wants you bad. 

Your bruised skin and scruffy attitude is refreshing, he’s decided. Not once has he been so threatened by a look but he’d be damned if he didn’t imagine those harsh features softening at his touch. He doesn’t care if it’s behind closed doors, where your back arches and your eyes roll, pleads and prayers dripping off your lips like honey as he plays your body like a finely tuned instrument. Nor if it’s out where everyone can see, a brush at the small of your back, just so you know he’s there. If he could just tuck away that flyaway strand of hair that always hangs in front of your eyes he’d die happy. If he���s lucky he might cup your cheeks and trace your lips with his thumb, trying to memorize the touch in case his body forgets. 

He thinks, if he could have you, that his body would never truly forget it. You’re too extraordinary. You’re extraterrestrial. He swears your beauty is so alien but also earthly and real, unlike anything else he’s ever seen. If God exists, he made the cosmos revolve around you. Bucky sometimes scrunches his nose and grimaces at how cheesy it sounds but he solidly believes that God took inspiration from your eyes and created stars. Your hair is the waterfalls of the world, the clouds in the sky and the leaves on the trees all at once. Your skin is the earth, lush and rich, but blemished from your pursuits. When your eyes narrow and your brow sets, so does the sun. When you breathe the wind wraps him in chilled kisses. He’d like to create a hurricane with you. 

He’s bad at showing it, but he’d give you everything. He’s made fun of you and taunted you out of his own insecurity, but only because he just knows he’d love you better than anyone else. When he teases you about your baggy, ripped clothes it’s because he wishes he could worship the prize that lies beneath them. When he points out your circled eyes and offers to take you makeup shopping it’s because he wants to kiss those dark crescent moons and adore them like the rest of you. He finds any opportunity to poke at your scars and scabs because he yearns to place a band-aid on them and kiss them. 

Champ? He calls you that for two reasons. 

1. He can’t get enough of that face you make when he does. Never has he wanted to drop to his knees to beg and throw you over his shoulder and feel you squirm at the same time. You look like you could commit all sorts of creative crimes when you look at him like that and it makes his heart swell morbidly. 

2. You are a champion- his champion. He wants so desperately to be proud of you, to watch you with adoring eyes and his face in his palms as you put everything surrounding you to shame. Roses? They pale in comparison to your skin’s natural glow. The jaws of death? They snap shut and whimper when you walk- no, skate- by. 

Bucky wants you more than he has ever wanted anything in his life- come to think of it, he hasn’t ever really wanted much in life. He just grazed the median to get into college by a longshot, never exactly cared for a job or any of the girls he dated in the past. Steve and Sam, while being his best friends, Bucky knows they won’t put up with his absolute dogshit behavior forever. But you? He’d change for you. He’d cut his hair or wear a clown suit if you really wanted him to, he would do anything if it meant making that tight line of concentration and grit that is your mouth curve up into a smile. 

What does he do instead? 

“You’re pretty shit at this,” he readjusts his ball cap as he peers down the bowl at you. 

You glare up at him. Your eyes are a myriad of labyrinths. He’s sure he’ll never find his way out of them but you break the gaze and kick up your board. 

“Not as shit as you in bed,” You quip, taking a run up the side of the bowl and making it up this time without trouble. 

Please, just let him hold you.

“Wouldn’t you like to find out.”

Even just for a minute.

“I’d like to keep my pink palace untainted, thank you.” 

You can count if you really can’t stand it. 

“Pink palace? You mean crackhouse.”

Just let him be selfish. He doesn’t deserve it, but hell does he want you. 

“And your junk is close to godliness?” you snort. 

You’re now nearly nose-to-nose. He can smell you- warm vanilla and sandalwood rolling off your body like waves of rugged sweetness and the sharp bite of spearmint gum on your breath. He could kiss you. He could just take you by the back of the neck and finally get that clash of lips, teeth and tongue that have haunted his dreams at night. Or he could guide your chin to his lips with the tips of his fingers, letting anticipation build with the riot of butterflies in his stomach. 

But no. 

“Maybe you’ll get that trick next time, champ,” Bucky claps a hand on your shoulder and is on his way with his heart sinking in his chest.

[queenofbaws]

Good morning! It is just about 9:00 and I just got home from work. So to celebrate can I get some chrashley with 'don't shut me out like this' pretty please with a cherry on top?

Anyways I am now going to bed so goodnight shdkslshdks

Finding out this whole ordeal had been one of Josh’s shitty ideas had cut pretty freaking deep, especially after all the apologies she’d been expected to make over the past year, constantly doubling and redoubling her efforts to look as sorry as pathetic and prostrated as possible - finding out Chris had been willing to kill her not once, but twice, though?

There was no coming back from that.

She thought she should’ve felt bad about...any of it, really, and she knew she probably would tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. But that was for later; now all she knew was the brutal cold of the lodge numbing her down to her bones and her betrayal heating her up like an oil fire, the two meeting in the kind of storm front that brought on hurricanes. The kind that left acres of wreckage in their wake, the kind that killed some people and left others to wish it’d been them instead.

As Chris pounded on the door, face pale with terror, she blew her breath against the glass and slowly traced a heart with the tip of her finger...and by the time she finished, drawing a jagged line to slice right through it, he simply wasn’t there anymore.

six sentence sat(or)sunday!!!

[captainimprobable]

Here’s a very messy first draft of a fic I’m working on! There will be five parts, which I’ll post together on Ao3 once theyre all done.  This is the first part!

I’ll edit this for ao3 but I was too excited about it and wanted to post it here first before I did RIP

~

~

~

There are many things Luz admits she doesn’t understand.  She can’t figure out how cars work, and she’s not so sure about long division.  But, she thinks, as she watches her girlfriend chop up vegetables in the fading light of the setting sun, some things she does understand.  

“How did you get so good at this?” Luz asks, stepping closer to peer over Amity’s shoulder.  Every cut is perfect, each individual piece almost exactly like the one before.  It makes sense.  It is so Amity.

“Don’t get excited,” Amity warns, tipping the vegetables into a pot of boiling water.  “This is all I know how to cook.  I had a chef growing up.”  She blushes brightly, and Luz grins.  Amity blushing has become one of her Top Five Favorite Things, right under Azura and above Hexside.  

Amity herself, of course, is above them all.

“Sorry,” Amity says sheepishly.  “I didn’t mean to sound spoiled or anything, it’s just- my parents don’t cook, and they don’t have time to-”

“Amity.  It’s fine.”  Luz laughs, and Amity’s blush intensifies.  Luz is about to say something about it when Eda bursts into the room with all the subtlety of a hurricane.  “Look what I foooound,” she sings, proudly presenting something extremely dusty and unidentifiable.  Luz and Amity raise their eyebrows in unison.  

“Uh, what is it?” Luz asks.

“It’s a human-” Eda pauses.  “Okay, I’ll admit, I have absolutely no idea what it is.  But it’s cool looking and I like it.” “Another human treasure? Lemme see!”

“Suit yourself,” Eda says, and hands it over.  

The thing is heavier than Luz expected, and she grunts as she puts it down quickly on the kitchen table.

“Dang, Owl Lady, you’ve got strong arms,” she says.  

“I work out,” Eda responds, flexing her muscles.

Amity and Luz look at each other, and then at Eda.  They blink.

“Fine,” Eda says.  “Buzzkills. I don’t work out. You caught me, congratulations.”  She stalks out of the kitchen, muttering something about “dumb kids and their dumb honesty”.

Luz snorts and turns her attention back to the thing on the counter.  “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” she says, and blows the dust off.  Once the cloud clears, the thing begins to take shape, and Luz squeals.  “A record player! With a record on it!  This is amazing! My mom has one of these back home!”

“Record player?” Amity says.  “What does it do?”

Luz grins, always happy to show off her human knowledge.  “I’ll show you,” she says, and sets the pin on the groove of the record.  It’s silent for a moment, but then a slow tune echoes through the room.  There are no words in the song, and Luz has no idea who wrote it, but she’s in awe.

“Wow,” Amity says, echoing Luz’s thoughts.  “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Luz agrees, completely entranced by the melody.  Once the song fades away and the next one starts, she gets an idea.  She regards Amity out of the corner of her eye, gathers her courage, and says “Amity Blight, may I have this dance?”

Surprise flashes across Amity’s face, but she recovers impressively quickly.

“I thought you’d never ask.”  

She reaches out her hand and Luz takes it, gently guiding Amity to the middle of the kitchen.  Amity hesitantly puts her arm around Luz’s waist, pulling her closer, as Luz puts a hand on Amity’s shoulder.  It feels familiar, and when they start swaying around the kitchen, Amity starts to laugh.

“What? What’s so funny? Did I do something?”

“No, no,” Amity says, tightening her hold around Luz’s waist.  “It’s just...this is so different from our first dance together.”

“Our first...oh, you mean Grom!”

Amity takes a step backwards, and Luz follows, trying not to trip over her own feet.  

“Yes I mean Grom!”

They dance in silence for a moment, moonlight shining through the window.  

“Hey,” Luz starts, not sure if she wants the answer to the question she’s about to ask. “Who did you wanna take to Grom, anyway?”

Amity stares blankly at her for a few seconds, and for a moment Luz is worried she said something out of turn.  But then she smiles softly, so softly that Luz’s heart does a funny thing in her chest, and she’s pretty sure that, for a second, she can’t breathe.

“It was you, Luz,” Amity says quietly.  “It was always you.”

Luz stops dancing.  She stops blinking.  She stops breathing.

“Uh, Luz?” Amity says, sounding worried.  “Are you okay?”

Luz blinks, comes back into herself, and says “YOU WERE GOING TO ASK ME TO GROM????”

“Yes? Why is that a surprise? You know I...like you.” Amity blushes again.  They’re still not used to saying these things out loud to each other.  It’s a process.  

This time, Luz blushes too.  “Yeah, but like..that long??? You’ve liked me since Grom???”

“Since before Grom, actually,” Amity admits, looking down at the floor.  “It’s...it’s been a long time.”

Luz’s grip on Amity’s shoulder slackens, then tightens again.”Wow,” she says, breathless.  “Me.  You’ve liked me for months.  You!!!”

Amity giggles.  “Me,” she agrees.  

Luz knows that the smile on her face is sappy, but she can’t help it.  She just likes Amity so much it’s overwhelming sometimes.  

They begin to sway again, and Luz feels like she’s in a trance.  She can’t believe that one person can make her feel this happy.  It’s like magic.

“So,” Amity says, cutting into Luz’s inner monologue, “When was it for you?”

“Huh?”

“When did you start to like me?”  

Amity manages, with what looks like supreme willpower, not to blush this time.  Luz does not manage the same.

“O-oh,” Luz says, thinking back to all the times she made a fool of herself in front of Amity before they’d started dating.  “I don’t know? I mean, I realized it that time you saved my life, but I think I’ve probably liked you for a lot longer than that. Maybe even before Grom.”

“Which time?”

“What?”

“Which time?  I save your life a lot,” Amity smirks.  Luz rolls her eyes.  “Okay, fair,” she says.  “But I mean that time at your parents’ presentation.  Right after you...when you called me “my Luz.”

“Oh, no, you heard that?” Amity looks extremely embarrassed as she leans forward and hides her face in Luz’s shoulder.  Luz tries not to smell her hair.  She fails.

“Of course I heard that!” She says when she’s done.  “You practically screamed it out loud to a room full of strangers!”

“I did, didn’t I? Wow, I was so obvious!”

Luz rubs the back of her neck sheepishly.  “I didn’t notice.”

“What??? How???” Amity asks, picking her head up to look Luz in the eye.  “I was a complete mess in front of you for months! What did you think was happening?”

Luz shrugs.  “I just thought you were cute, that’s all.  In hindsight, though, maybe I should’ve picked up some context clues.”

Amity snorts.  “It’s okay.  You being oblivious saved me a ton of embarrassment.  Until I kissed you on the cheek.  That..uh….that was not planned.”

Luz can’t stop the smile that takes over her face.  She remembers that day well.  She was so focused on finding Phillip’s diary entries and also not making a fool of herself in front of Amity, that she was taken completely by surprise when Amity kissed her.  She’s pretty sure she literally fell to the floor afterwards, overwhelmed with the fact that Amity had just kissed her and suddenly realizing that maybe, just maybe, her crush liked her too.  

“Well I’m glad you did,” she says gently, twirling Amity around once, twice, three times.  “I think it’s time for me to return the favor.”

“What do you-”

Before she can think about it long enough to stop herself, Luz leans in and kisses Amity on the cheek.  

The world freezes.  

Amity looks at her, and she looks at Amity, and Luz’s eyes are so wide, and Amity’s mouth is hanging slightly open, and suddenly Luz is completely, entirely unsure of herself.  Her confidence is gone, and suddenly she can hear the ghost of laughter and “Ew, why would anyone want her?” And she realizes she’s made a horrible mistake.  

“U-um sorry I-” She stutters, but can’t get a sentence out, until finally she manages “I’m gonna leave now.”

She backs up slowly until her back hits the door, and is about to turn the handle when Amity says “Luz, this is your house.”

“Drat,” Luz says, slapping a hand to her face.  “You’re right.”

Amity giggles, hand covering her mouth to stifle her laughter.  She’s bright red but so is Luz, and suddenly Luz is laughing too.

They laugh together for what seems like hours, until finally they manage to subdue themselves, tears in both their eyes.

“Hey,” Amity says softly, once the giggles have stopped.  “Come here.”

Luz complies, stepping around the table and over Ghost, who has an unidentifiable animal in her mouth.  When she finally reaches Amity, she finds herself pulled into a bone crushing hug.  Startled but pleased, she squeezes back, marvelling at the fact that she has the most perfect girl in the world in her arms.  

“Look,” Amity says, still wrapped up in the hug.  “I know we’re both new at this, and it’s kind of scary, but you don’t have to run away every time you kiss me on the cheek or something.  You have nothing to be afraid of, okay? You’re my girlfriend, and I’m not gonna stop liking you.”

Luz sniffles a little and squeezes harder.  “You don’t...you don’t think I’m too much?”

“Luz,” Amity says.  “I could never get enough of you.”  

They stand there like that, swaying slightly in the single stripe of moonlight that comes through the window.  When they part, it’s with a sigh, and a silent promise that they’ll come together again.  

“Thanks,” Luz says, eyes rimmed red.  “You’re a pretty awesome girlfriend.”

Amity smiles.  “I know.” 

Then she shrugs shyly.  “And if you ever want to kiss me again...I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Noted,” Luz says weakly.  She thinks her knees might give out, actually.

When it’s time for Amity to go, Luz walks her to the door, like the gentleman she is.  “Goodnight,” she says, trying to ignore Hooty loudly digesting a mouse.  She doesn’t want to think about where his stomach even is.

“Goodnight,” Amity says.

They smile dumbly at each other, neither wanting to be the first one to leave.  But Amity needs to get home, and the night is moving quickly, so they reluctantly part ways.  Amity turns to wave at Luz when she reaches the end of the Owl House’s property, and Luz waves back, stars in her eyes and a breathless wonder at the fact that this girl, this amazing, brilliant, perfect girl, is hers.  

There are many things Luz doesn’t understand.  

But this, what she and Amity have, the bond she feels growing stronger and stronger every day they spend together; this she does understand.

She closes the door.  She doesn’t know what tomorrow will bring, but she knows that as long as she has Amity by her side, everything will be okay.

[pftones3482]

Sometimes Stupid

Commission for @randomfandomfan from one of their many prompts they gave me. Took forever bc of work and life and also???? Now I have a cat??? So that's fun. But this was fun to write. Read it here on AO3

Set post TLO and pre HOO (and a little bit post HOO). Under a cut for length.

~~

Contrary to popular belief, Leo Valdez was not stupid.

He was an idiot, at times – for instance, maybe running away from his seventh (fifteenth? He’d really lost track at this point) foster home wasn’t the best decision he could have made, especially given that it was the middle of summer and oh, also, hurricane season. And okay, maybe he should’ve taken more with him than a single change of clothes, a box of Ritz crackers, a pocketknife, and a water bottle that had definitely seen better days, but he was in a rush, okay?

But he wasn’t stupid.

When he ran away from his foster homes, Leo tended to stay away from people where he could. And if he had to be around them, he cleaned up, smiled brightly, “Yes ma’am”ed and “Yes’sir”ed to an obnoxious point, and lied his pants off. People were less likely to call the police on a Hispanic kid if they thought he was just a darling little angel waiting for mom at the grocery store, and the last thing he needed was the cops in his business.

Not that it hadn’t happened, of course. He’d dealt with cops of all kinds – nice cops, bad cops, black cops, white cops (WAY too many of those, in his opinion), the occasional cop who would speak Spanish with him, cops who were just there to write a report and move on with their days – cops.

He tried to stay away from them.

Which meant sticking to beaches and forests, lakes and campgrounds, middle of nowhere places with no people for miles. Leo was good at disappearing. Hiding.

But there were always times when he needed an adult. When he needed to hitchhike, or when he needed food to the point of near passing out. Once for serious medical attention. There was a system to what adults you could trust.

Never cops. You could never trust the cops, no matter what naïve white parents thought. Leo had been in cuffs enough to know that was false.

You also couldn’t usually trust priests. They meant well, sure, but they always ended up calling the authorities in the end. That, or they tried to convert Leo to Catholicism, and while one of those encounters had ended with a swiped bottle of watered-down red wine and a night that made him vow to never drink again, he wasn’t trying to contact the church.

(THAT night, Leo would say he had been stupid. He could admit that)

Homeless people were usually okay. While a lot of them were very suspicious of everyone, almost every homeless person he’d ever met would point him in the direction of food, water, free showers, free clothes, or a library (his saving grace during the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter). The times when he came across gay homeless people were when he felt safest – they especially never pressed him about his background. Ironic, really, that he felt safer with strangers on the street than his foster homes.

Moms were sometimes okay. Especially if they were Hispanic, or black, or just anything but white. They, at least, wouldn’t call the cops on him. But they were also hit or miss – sometimes they helped in way of a meal, or a new bottle of water. One mom even took him to the store and got him new socks and underwear (he had cried that night). But other moms rushed him away from their precious babies. Some moms called him ungrateful for the “space he had.”

Dads were a never. Leo never went to men if he could help it, even if they had children with them. He didn’t trust them as far as he could throw them, and that wasn’t very far.

But it was hurricane season. And he was on the coast. And it was downpouring, and he was starving, and the only people he had seen for miles were a white couple, a man and a woman, standing on the porch of a somewhat rundown shack that Leo would’ve probably thought was abandoned if he hadn’t seen them there.

The man was tall, peppered hair that was shifting more to salt, with a rough beard and a pair of glasses perched on his nose. The woman at his side was short, probably Leo’s height, with dark curly hair and vibrantly blue eyes. It was streaked with gray, but she was, admittedly, a very pretty woman. Something about her smile put Leo at ease.

He clutched his backpack tighter in his fist and stumbled over the sand towards the shack, ankles rolling uncomfortably on the wet ground. He was sure he looked atrocious, sure that the moment they spotted him, they’d shriek and cuss him out and lock the door.

But then he coughed, hard, his shoulders shaking, and the woman whipped her head around. He watched her eyes widen, watched her tug at the man’s sleeve, and then she was bolting – barefoot, Leo noticed – down the steps and over to him.

He flinched when she wrapped an arm over his shoulders, jolting out of her grip more from habit than anything else. She froze, holding both hands up and relaxing her stance. “Hey, honey. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Somewhere deep down, Leo’s brain was scoffing at the patronizing words. But on the surface, he focused on the words, and then sharpened his eyes onto the man as he approached, phone in hand. “I-I c-can’t-”

The woman looked back, down at the phone, and her shoulders stiffened. “Paul, put the phone away, please.”

Her voice held an intonation that Leo couldn’t decipher, but the man – Paul – instantly shut the phone off and pocketed it. The moment it was gone, Leo let his shoulders loosen, and he looked at the woman anxiously. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I-I just…”

“Hey.”

Her arm was more cautious this time, sliding around Leo’s shoulders with a pace that would let him move if he wanted. He didn’t, just let it happen, and then the woman was easing him over the sticky sand and up the steps of the shack, Paul close behind them. He stopped at the door, pushing back hard against the woman’s guiding grip. “I don’t want to ruin your house,” he managed.

The woman’s laugh was…well, to be perfectly honest, it made Leo feel warm. Like she could never hurt him.

Those are usually the most dangerous people, his mind tried to reason with him.

“Sweetheart, it’s just a rental cabin. Besides, I’ve had far worse than a little sand and water on my floors before.”

Before he could wonder at that sentence, she opened the door and nudged him inside. The second that Paul closed the door, the sound of the wind died down and the chill in the air evaporated. Leo realized he was shivering.

The woman’s hands were warm on his cheeks. “My name is Sally, hon. You are-?”

He usually gave a fake name, but – “Leo, ma’am.”

“Don’t you ma’am me,” she scoffed, her voice easy as she helped Leo to the couch. “I’m not that old, am I Paul?”

Paul put his hands up. “I abstain from answering.”

Sally scoffed and pressed a cool hand on Leo’s forehead. “Can I take your backpack, sweetheart?”

Something like panic flared in Leo’s chest, and Sally must have seen it, because she pulled her hand back and held it up. “I’m not moving it far, I just want Paul to dry everything out for you, okay?”

Fingers shaking, Leo shrugged off his bag – the one he’d been carrying for nearly three states – and passed it over to her. She took it like it was a priceless artifact, and handed it to Paul with more tenderness than Leo had ever seen given to an inanimate object. “I think my son might have left some clothes here while he was with us last week,” she said, voice soft. “He’s a little older than you, so some things might be big, but is it okay if we give you some of his clothes while we dry out yours?”

Leo swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Um. Yeah.”

She stood up and left with Paul, giving Leo a moment to be alone and take in the cabin around him.

It was old, but obviously well taken care of, with weathered planks of wood gracing the walls and the floor. He was in the living room, full of mismatched couches and chairs and a bookshelf stacked full of books and games. He didn’t see a TV in sight, but he wasn’t expecting to find one. He stood shakily, suddenly very aware of how wet he was getting the couch, and wrapped his arms around himself as he explored the rest of the main room.

The kitchen was small and cramped, but he could smell something full of tomatoes and spices in the oven that made his tastebuds water. He didn’t dare look for fear of getting caught, so he stepped away and into the tiny dining area. There was sand on the floor, spread thin and fine, and it was such a small thing, but it made Leo relax even more – Sally meant it when she said she didn’t care about him ruining her floors.

But she and Paul had been gone for a while, and Leo wasn’t stupid, okay? It didn’t matter how well intentioned someone was, they always thought they knew better, and if they were gone too long, it meant they were trying to decide for him. So he crept towards the hallway they’d vanished to, praying that he didn’t step on a squeaky board. Old homes always had them in the most inconvenient places.

“-not answering?” he picked up Paul’s voice saying.

“No,” Sally said, a sigh in her voice. “He did say he and Annabeth were on a date, but I didn’t expect them to be in Paris of all places. How did they even-?”

“Can you get ahold of Chiron?”

Not the police, then, Leo reasoned, unless they knew an officer by that name. He leaned a little closer.

“No – I try not to call the camp unless I need to. Phone lines and all that, you know?”

Paul huffed. “I know. And Rachel is at art camp, right?”

“Yup,” Sally said, and Leo heard a sound like a blowing raspberry. “He clearly isn’t aware of anything, Paul. He’s terrified.”

“Probably a runaway,” Paul hummed, and Leo flinched at the damning statement. “Met a couple kids like that teaching.”

He looked like a teacher. You couldn’t trust most teachers either, Leo had learned. They were just like priests. Tried their best, but they always inevitably called someone.

“What did you do? Who did you call?” Sally asked, and Leo stiffened. Here it comes, his brain taunted.

“No one,” Paul said.

Leo blinked, taking a slight step back. What?

“Kids don’t run away for no reason, Sal. Especially not kids like him. Perce taught me that. I mean, maybe in my early days of teaching, I might have called the authorities, but ever since this summer I…how could I risk that? Even before then, I mean…the stories I’ve heard from some of these kids I’ve talked to. We don’t know anything about him. If he ran away, all this way, in this weather? It was bad, love.”

Leo’s throat ached.

He’d never, the whole time he’d been in foster care, ever heard an adult admit that they were wrong to call the authorities on him. Never heard an adult take his perspective into account, especially without even knowing him. Never had an adult admit that his life could be anything other than ideal.

He took another step back and oh shit, there it was, the cursed piece of wood in every old house to ever exist. He cussed under his breath and ducked his head as Sally stepped into the hallway. He refused to look up at her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You were just gone for a while a-and I thought you might be calling someone.”

No verbal response. Instead, a soft bundle of fabric was pressed into Leo’s hands. He startled, gripping onto the clothing, and looked up at Sally and Paul with wide eyes. Paul shook his head. “We’re not calling anyone, son. Not if you don’t want us to. But we do ask that you get cleaned up, before you catch pneumonia.”

Sally tilted her head towards the door across the hall. “Let me know when you’re done, I’ll toss your clothes in the dryer. Paul was just finishing up dinner when you came along. Do you like lasagna?”

Leo’s mouth watered at the thought of eating any kind of food that wasn’t stale crackers and canned tuna. “Yes ma’am.”

“What’d I say about that ma’am nonsense?” Sally scolded.

Leo ducked his head, trying to press down the tears. “Yes, miss,” he chuckled.

Sally laughed as Paul headed for the kitchen. “It’s a start, love.”

~~

Sally’s son’s clothes were soft, well loved. They smelled like sea water and lavender detergent, and though the t-shirt was a gaudy orange with letters so faded that Leo couldn’t read them, he sank into the fabric with a sigh. Sally had also passed him a pair of sweatpants, and Leo hoped that her son wouldn’t be mad if he ever found out that some random foster kid had borrowed them.

If he was anything like Sally, though, Leo had the feeling he’d like him.

His hair was still wet, but this time from a shower, and Leo couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten to stand under an actual stream of hot water without people literally timing him to make sure he didn’t take too long. He stood in front of the mirror, sighing a little at how skinny he’d gotten. He’d always been small – being skinny only made him more of a punching bag for the bigger foster kids. His hair, untamed from weeks of running, hung in his eyes, and he wondered briefly if Sally might have a hair tie he could borrow.

He left the bathroom and crept into the dining room, where Sally was setting the table and Paul was pulling one of the most beautiful lasagnas he’d ever seen out of the oven.

“-texted me, said they’d be back tomorrow morning. He offered to come back sooner,” Sally was saying as Leo stood in the doorway, “but I know he and ‘beth haven’t really gotten to go on any non-monstrous dates recently.”

She blinked when she saw him standing there, and her smile softened into something warm and inviting. “Come on, hon. Paul was just getting dinner out.”

Maybe it was the malnourishment, or Paul’s cooking skills, or Leo’s exhaustion, or a combination of the three, but Leo had never tasted such good Italian food in his life. He downed one, two, three pieces and a full salad before he finally slowed down. To his relief, neither Paul nor Sally gave him any grief about how many pieces he took. Honestly, he thought he watched Paul actively make his slices bigger than theirs.

They’d clearly been talking about their son when he came in the room. This guy was in Paris, on a date with his girlfriend, and he was coming back tomorrow. Leo wondered just how rich this family was – the dad was a teacher, but Sally hadn’t said what she did, and Leo was a little afraid to ask.

When Paul brought out a pie for dessert, Leo almost cried. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any dessert fancier than a stolen Ding Dong from a corner store. Paul definitely gave him a larger slice than them, and as he ate it, Sally poked at her own pie.

“Leo, we’re not going to pry,” she started, gentle. “Your story is yours, and I know how tricky it can be to share yourself and your past with new people.”

The sad smile Paul shot her didn’t go unnoticed by Leo, and he internally bristled at the thought that this wonderful mom in front of him could understand anything about how he felt, because that meant that she’d gone through shit she didn’t deserve. He said nothing, though, just nodded.

Sally eyed her pie thoughtfully, stabbing a blackberry that had escaped the crust. “But I feel like…well, I feel as though my son especially can relate to how you’re feeling, or at least some of it. If you’d be willing to wait for him to come home, maybe we can figure some things out together.”

Leo felt lost. He’d been lost a lot before, but this was the first time it was mental and not physical. “What?”

Sally looked up, seeming to realize that she’d baffled him. “I mean…”

She looked at Paul, and Leo looked between the two of them, tightening his grip on his fork. They were having a silent conversation. Leo hated when adults did that. “You mean you want to wait until I’m asleep so you can call the cops o-or foster services or-or just wait until your son gets back so he can tell me to get out.”

He shoved his chair back from the table, tears prickling at his eyes. Every time. Every time. He always got his hopes up, always thought he’d found the perfect people, people who got it, and every fucking time, he-

Hands settled on his shoulders, and he ripped away, scowling at Sally. Her eyes were sad, and Leo felt an unwelcome stab of guilt in his chest. “That is not what we were suggesting, ever, honey. I would never call foster services, first of all. They’re atrocious, especially for kids of color.”

Leo jolted back. He’d never had a white woman actively acknowledge his race so bluntly before – it was usually partnered with some demeaning comment about “his kind” of people. He eyed Sally warily.

She lowered her hands, keeping them on her hips where he could see them. “Second, I’d never call the police either. You’re not a problem, and my son has had enough unfortunate encounters with them for me to…distrust them severely, to say the least.”

Her son had-?

“I just…we know a place. Where you would genuinely be safe, hon. No foster homes, no cops, with people who get it.”

She was lying. She had to be lying, no matter what Leo’s heart said. But she wasn’t going to let this go, and he knew it. So he sighed, fidgeted with his fingers. He wished he had something to build. “Okay. I’ll wait for your son to get home.”

Sally relaxed, and Leo gave her a thin smile.

He helped her and Paul clean up the kitchen, put away the leftover lasagna. Sat with them and did a puzzle, played a game of Clue with them. Fixed their radio for them, much to their surprise, and then watched with a small smile on his face as Paul and Sally danced around the living room together. They tried to get him to join, but he’d never been much of a dancer, so he declined.

They bid him goodnight around 11, and he shut the door of their son’s room, let the hours tick on.

At three am, he got up, changed back into his own clothes, left the borrowed ones folded neatly on the foot of the bed. He took a flashlight from the bedside table and slid it into his backpack, stepped out of the bedroom and avoided the squeaky floorboard.

The tool kit from fixing the radio was still on the coffee table, and he picked it up with only the slightest feelings of guilt. Went through the cabinets and pulled out sleeves of crackers, a box of granola, eyed the leftover lasagna with a sad gaze. He found a roll of toilet paper under the sink, a bottle of hand sanitizer in a junk drawer.

He paused by the game of Clue, left out on the table from their match, and let his fingers trace over it sadly. His gut screamed at him to leave. His heart screamed at him to stay. He wasn’t stupid.

Leo had always trusted his gut.

He pocketed the candlestick piece and turned for the door, flinching the second his eyes landed on Sally.

Her hair was done up in a braid, her pajamas wrinkled, and the moon shining through the window reflected the sadness in her eyes. Leo opened his mouth, but couldn’t find it in him to speak – the lump was back.

She stepped forward and he shut his eyes, expecting a lecture. Instead, her hand cupped his cheek. Her other hand pressed into his, and he gasped as he felt the telltale touch of money in his fingers. He looked down at the wad of cash – he couldn’t see how much it was, but he knew that he didn’t deserve it. He looked up at her, panicking. “I can’t-”

“Stay, I know,” she whispered, and that wasn’t what he’d been planning to say, and he knew that she knew that. “I understand, Leo. I understand, sweetie.”

The sob slipped out before he could stop it, and Sally’s eyes softened. She bent at the hip, pressing a soft kiss to his curls. “When you end up meeting my son,” she murmured, “come visit, okay?”

Leo had no idea what that meant, but he nodded, if only to appease her. “I’m sorry,” he croaked.

She squeezed his shoulder. “Nothing to be sorry for, honey. Be safe.”

Sally watched him go, watched him shut the door behind him, and he looked down at the money in his hands with a choked feeling in his chest. It was more than he’d held in his entire life. He couldn’t take it, but he knew she’d be upset if he didn’t. And if there was one thing Leo refused to do, it was make Sally more upset than he already had.

So he pocketed it and, with an aching heart, stepped off the porch of the cabin. The storm from earlier had died down, and, fingers tight on his backpack straps, he started making his way up the beach.

~~

Percy was bouncing up and down at the entrance to Camp Half Blood, fingers curled around Annabeth’s hand. “Do I look okay?” he asked for probably the thousandth time that morning.

Piper rolled her eyes. “Percy, it’s your mom. She doesn’t care what you look like.”

Percy shot her a mock glare. “I haven’t seen her in over a year, McClean, sue me.”

“You look fine, Perce,” Annabeth laughed, kissing his cheek. “She’s gonna mostly care that you’re alive.”

“Okay but this tattoo-”

“Sorry, you vanished on me for over a year, crossed the globe, and you got a TATTOO?” came a very scolding, very obviously Mom Voice, and Leo snickered, turning to see who was about to absolutely whoop Percy’s ass.

And he stumbled on his own feet, lips parting as Sally (Sally Jackson, his unhelpful brain mocked) appeared at the top of the hill. Her hair was a little grayer than it had been when Leo met her, her hips a little wider, but her smile was the same, her laugh as Percy launched himself at her the same peal of delight Leo remembered on his toughest nights, and when she caught his eye over Percy’s shoulder, her smile only widened.

Okay, so sometimes Leo Valdez was kind of stupid.

[party-gilmore]

...well, I managed to get to literally JUST BARELY before the actual smut starts, so please enjoy this unbetaed 2k word teaser prologue of "demi/grayace Parker doesn't feel like she's Enough for Eliot without Hardison around, so he sets the record straight."

Set during The Hurricane Job, because who gives a damn if the ep is even OUT yet, am i right? XD

“Room 236.”

“What was that?” Eliot hums. His voice is muffled beneath the heavy, sopping weight of his jacket as he tugs the damn thing over his head. His shirt peels off right along with it, so he just shucks the whole shebang in the generic direction of his luggage. He’ll have plenty of time to see to it properly tomorrow - the storm will have them trapped at least another day. With a groan, he stretches out his bad shoulder. It’s not quite dislocated again, but it’s not quite right either. Two nimble hands sneak up from behind and flit their way over the shoulder blade, one bracing against the wet neck of his white tank top while the other presses swift and hard on the joint - and ‘pop’ goes the weasel.

Eliot flashes Parker a pained but soft smile through the old dresser mirror, but it falters when he catches her eyes peeking over his shoulder. There’s a look in them he isn’t familiar with, but doesn’t think he likes.

“Park-” he starts to turn around, but she manhandles him back away from her and shoves her hand into the back pocket of his jeans. No small feat tonight, they way the rain has soaked and damn near suction cupped them to his ass. “H-hey, woah, alright there darlin’, slow it down a bit,’ he chuckles, reaching back to feel for her, but she’s already hopping back and flashing a small, colorful rectangle at him.

“Room 236,” she repeats, flipping it around her fingers like a coin. Eliot frowns. They’re in room 225, just down the hall. They’d found what the crooked cops were after with time to spare, so there was nowhere left to search. Why then, would he still have a room key for-

Oh. He reaches back and pats the offending rear pocket, flushing as he remembers Marshall Shipp’s parting flirtatious wink and accompanying gentle smack on the ass as they’d parted ways a half hour ago. He hasn’t exactly been… discouraging her interest. It's felt good that women are still interested in him even as he’s put a few more miles on, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the attention - especially from someone as 'his type' as Maria.

Well, what used to be his type, at least.

He shoots a sheepish, apologetic grin at Parker. Maria’s ‘interest’ was quickly becoming ‘intent,’ and now Eliot needed to find a way to nip that in the bud sooner rather than later.

“Damn, I should’ve noticed the reverse lift,” Eliot clears his throat, toying with the edge of the pocket absentmindedly. “She must’ve slipped it to me after we completed the radio broadcast. I was uh, distracted by our success I guess.”

“Bet that’s not all she’d like to slip you,” Parker’s voice takes on a bit more of a playful tone for a moment. Cheeky, teasing. It feels like solid ground.

“Hey now,” Eliot teases back, starting to undo his belt, slow and deliberate, as he begins toeing out of his boots. “I can’t help that I still ‘got it,’ darlin’. I can think of a couple folks I know offhand that might like to, uh… 'slip me a little something' right now, 'specially since I'm properly alone with one of 'em for the first time since-” The only problem is, he forgot how damn difficult these boots are to get off on a good day, let alone when soaked through with salt water. Swearing under his breath, he abandons his attempt at being suave to sit at the end of the bed and fumble with the ties. He should know better than try to look cool for either of his partners nowadays. It never works out quite right, and he’s starting to get to the age where he doesn’t even see the use of that kind of posturing anymore himself. They’ve seen him at his worst already - mentally, physically, emotionally - so what would be the point, really? On top of that, he may make a fuss about his ‘cool points’ in front of Breanna, but he knows Hardison’s sneaky ‘dorkification’ process he's been slowly contaminating Eliot with over the last decade is almost complete. He's still drawing the line at DnD, but he doubts that'll last much-

“...or, if you wanted, you could go let her slip it to you.”

Eliot is too caught up in his own head to really register the suggestion at first. He's busy ruminating on how differently his younger self would be handling this whole situation - all smooth moves and hot edges, shucking off clothing with a kind of casual grace.

‘Yeah, those days have long passed,’ he thinks, hunched over and fighting the waterlogged leather of his boots with fumbling, aching fingers. He gets the first one yanked off his foot less than gracefully, wincing at his ankle’s unsubtle protest, before what Parker said finally processes.

Slowly, he sets his singular boot the side and shifts enough to face her. Parker’s tone didn’t hold any bitterness or bite, just nervousness and a bit of resignation. She isn’t looking at him, but out the window, arms wrapped tight around her midsection in a way he hasn’t seen her do in a while. She bounces restlessly on her heels. There’s a clear energy inside her looking to get out. The thunder rumbles lowly through the suddenly silent room, murmuring a warning through the curling reverberation in Eliot’s gut.

He starts out gentle. Easy.

“...now why would I wanna go an’ do somethin’ like that?” Sometimes it’s easiest to bring things to Parker head on, and she’ll respond in her usual stark, frank manner. Just lay it all right out in the open to be picked apart. This isn’t one of those times. Eliot can read that much in every restless tap, every rapid twitch of her eyes to some place else in the room, any place that isn’t him.

“She’s your type, isn’t she?” Parker’s voice is a higher register than it should be, but not quite into her panicking zone yet. That’s a start. “She’s badass, sexy… passionate.”

Eliot notices her leaning heavy on that last word, and frowns.

“So are you, Parker.”

“Not in the same way!” She turns a bit, still looking outside, but her arms unwrap from herself to gesture between them. “Not the same way you and Hardison are!”

It’s quiet for another beat. The white noise of the hissing rain against the window settles into the room with a steady, thrumming tension. Eliot doesn’t jump to demanding clarification like he might’ve done a decade ago, doesn’t snap and tell her to stop beating around the bush. He’s learned that Parker tucks away all the information he needs to understand in every phrase, no matter how inane or incongruent it may seem. So Eliot holds his tongue and chews on the words for a while.

“Me and Hardison, huh?” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and rubs his jaw in a performance of pensiveness. The movement draws Parker's attention and she finally looks over to him, following the back and forth of his fingers. He presses on, carefully. “Thought we were talkin’ bout me and the marshall. What’s Alec got to do with this?”

“Because he isn’t here!” Parker breaks, not enough to falter or crumble but enough to say what's on her mind before she can overthink it. "He isn't here and it's different! I can feel it! I'm not-" she fumbles her words for a minute, just waving between them again. "-all passionate about the whole sex thing like he is!"

There's that word again. Eliot knows where to go from here, at least. It's all about that word. He stands up, albeit a little awkwardly with one foot still in an inch high boot.

"Sure it's fun and I like it sometimes, but not like you two do! Alec balanced me out, could give you what you needed! I'm not… by myself, I'm not enough for… for y-..." Parker cuts herself before she can grow any more manic, bunching her face up and looking away again like she does when trying to stave off any waterworks before they can start.

Eliot can see her closing up again as her words fail her, but that's alright. What needed to get out made it out. He can take it from here. He hobbles over in his awkward, single-socked gait until he's close enough to take her shoulders in hand, but he doesn't pull her in for the hug. Not yet.

"Now I want you to listen to me, and listen good." Eliot makes sure his tone is firm, but gentle. Parker responds the way he'd hoped - still not looking, tilting her head down, but leaning toward him. Into his space. Receptive, and ready to hear him. "Yeah, it feels different. That's cause you and me? Are different from me and Alec. We're always gonna be. 'That makes us, us,' remember? Just like that's different from you and Alec. It's all part of 'us,' yeah, but it's… we got our own thing, Parker. And sure, we might like it best when it's all three of us, just because we love him so, so much, yeah?"

He lifts one hand from her shoulder and tucks a bit of hair back behind her ear, giving her a chance to respond if she wants. Parker murmurs a quiet "yeah," and steps in a little closer. Eliot tugs her in the rest of the way now, assured that she's open to the touch. She pillows her chin on the shoulder she fixed, and Eliot lays a light kiss to the outside of her ear before continuing in a lower voice.

"So… we miss him, when he's not here, and we don't have the 'all three of us' thing right now. That doesn't make our thing, the you and me thing, any less good. It doesn't- Parker, you're so much more than just enough for me. You're who I need... especially when we don't have Hardison. Don't ever doubt that."

"I'll try," Parker turns her head and mutters it into the crook of Eliot's neck, and he loves her all the more for it. It's better than any empty promise of 'I won't,' because he knows the honesty of it. Knows it's not just an empty platitude of 'I'll do it,' but the vulnerable admission of 'I want to, but don't know if I can.'

"That's all I ask, darlin'."

Because it is. That's all Eliot ever asks of her. To try. Never demands that she change, never insists she should be thinking of herself differently or more kindly than she does. Just that she tries to.

"Now. About this whole 'passion' thing," Eliot sighs, pulling back so he can do that thing he does to Hardison that Parker loves to watch him squirm under, but likes it a lot less when it's turned on her. That thing where he ducks his neck and tilts his head and looks up at her through his hair with that serious, intimate look that makes her want to run because he for sure can see all of her secrets like this but also want to sink deep into that comforting gaze and never leave it. "I don't know where you got this idea that you're not passionate from, but-"

"Yeah, but it's not-!"

"The same?" Eliot cuts off her half-hearted attempt at argument. "Course it's not the 'same' as us, Parker! You aren't us. So, you… you don't lose yourself in it the same way me and Hardison do, okay? Him and me, how we get high off each other, the way we act... so you don't do that. That's fine! That’s only one type of passion, darlin'. You can't tell me,” he lets his hands skim down Parker’s arms until they meet her own palms. “That the way you focus so damn hard on taking us apart - taking me apart…”

Eliot brings Parker’s hands to his hips, and her fingers start to fidget with the hem of his shirt. Anchoring herself with the ribbed texture of the tank. Starting to explore up his stomach the way Eliot knows that Parker knows he likes. She’d ferreted that one out of him ages before they’d even thought up this whole ‘you and we makes three’ train. He lets his voice go a little breathy, a little raspy, makes sure she notices how she's affecting him. “-the way you always know exactly how to do it, piece by piece, single-mindedly pulling me apart like a damn puzzle, Park… you can’t tell me that ain’t some kind of passion.”

“Yeah, but that’s just the same way I steal stuff,” Parker giggles a little, the familiar flutter of Eliot’s sides under her deft fingers grounding her and soothing some of the unease. He’s right about this. How she knows what to do with him. How good she is at it. But that’s not anything special, it’s just-

“Exactly, Parker,” Eliot is trying to walk them back toward the bed, but it’s not really working out well. Between his having only the one boot on and Parker actively seeking out the ticklish bits of his belly that make his knees go all wobbly when she scrapes her nails down them, it’s comical enough to startle another giggle out of her. Or it’s a sob. Or it’s a hiccup. Or it’s some weird combination of all three, she isn’t really sure, but it doesn't seem to really matter either. The sound is whatever it was, just like she is whatever she is.

“It's just like that. Just like how you plan your next score. And that’s your Thing. Like me and food, Hardison and his nerdery... Do you realize how that makes me feel? Knowing you treat me like a heist? Like the thing that you let define you?”

“Yeah but that’s not a sex thing, it’s just a me thing.”

“It doesn’t matter that it’s not a sex thing, Parker, it’s your passion. Your Thing. Yours.” Eliot finally makes it back to the edge of the bed and drops, pulling Parker into his lap. He guides her wandering hands to his chest so she can feel the rumble in his voice as he growls.

“Darlin’, you treat me like damn masterpiece. Like I’m standing smack under a spotlight in the middle of the Louvre, and the only thing in the world that matters to you is how you’re gonna pick through my security piece by piece until all that’s left under your hands is a canvas stretched tight as it’ll go and a picture meant only for you and the people you choose to see it."

Parker’s nails scrape against the skin of Eliot’s collarbone as her fingers instinctively curl in, wanting to grip take steal hold climb, and he barely restrains himself from throwing his head back in a moan. He needs to make sure Parker’s in the right place first, before he gives himself over to his own wants.

“Wow,” she whispers, damn near reverent now as she looks down at him. There’s a dawning in her eyes that tells Eliot they’re alright. That they’re gonna be good. That it’s okay to pull her tighter and ask her to go ahead and steal him again tonight, since he knows her rigging is secure.

"I can't imagine anything more passionate than that."

“Uh-huh, ‘wow' is right,” he laughs breathlessly, and reaches up to take hold of her chin. It’s a light grip, barely any pressure where he between his thumb resting on the front and the rest of his fingers curling around under her jaw, but she lets Eliot guide her down until their lips touch. Not kissing, yet, just touching. His mouth moves against hers as he speaks, tongue briefly darting out to wet two pairs of parched lips. “-so tell me, why the fuck would I want to go to anyone else?”

“Maybe if you got some bad advice,” Parker murmurs, voice strong and confident again for the first time since they wrapped up the con. “From someone who didn’t realize she made you feel that way?”

“Hmmn, that could make sense,” Eliot hums back, resisting the urge to roll up against her in wet jeans that would only serve to chafe rather than provide any of the friction that having Parker in his lap always makes him crave. “If someone could help me get this damn boot off, maybe I could get to work making sure she’ll never forget it?”