#i had a lot more to say than i thought lol

[artsninspo]

"MISSED CALLS 📱" RIO X READER

➨ rio's library - good girl nbc

「 ✦ full library & archive ✦ 」

Author's Note: This is not a drill, this is a real Rio upload LOL. Since the Rio girlies are awake here's an old Rio X Reader draft. Enjoy ❤️

Summary: Rio plays himself when he downplays your position in his life. Instead of lashing out, you get even. After acting out, you both make it up to each other 😉 . This one is 🌶️ Pissed off Rio has entered the chat.

Word-Count: 1.7K

It may be toxic but you love it when he’s mad. When his eyes darken and his patience thins. When he’s focused and ready to strike like a predator. When you’ve managed to fuck up his entire day and keep him on the hook thinking about you. He calls again and you watch the phone ring out as you tan poolside.

“You’re in a good mood” your cousin says, putting her shades on amused by the scene playing out in front of her.

“Mhm” you nod thinking back to the agitation he’s facing right now as he’s cursing your refusal to answer. He’d hurt your feelings a pinch, even though you know him downplaying your significance to him in the company of his associates is a lie. Rio’s feelings are in fact the contrary of the bogus story he told his colleague. Still, it was the principle he’d greatly downplayed your position, making himself out to be just in it for a good time and you, nothing more than someone easy  to pass his time with. The phone rings again and I smile sending an automatic reply. Easy, I’ve been anything but.

“What'd he do?” your cousin asks but you know better than to spill your man's misdeeds.

“Forget that I can be a real headache when I want to be” You smile in response.

“Atta girl” she smiles back.

 You’ve never begged him to be around and none of your antics have been enough to get rid of him. If Rio wants to act like you’re replaceable, well two can play at that game. You watch the kids splash in the pool and smile at the thought of last night's triple date. Your date was tall, Latin and tatted just like him. It’s a dirty game to play but so is pretending to have better things to do.

When you get home after a few days away you see his car parked down the street. You go to get in your house when he steps out glaring like he wants you to get in the car.

“Get in the car” he says exasperated and you turn, wiping the satisfied smile from your  expression. He stands tall glaring and displeased.

“Aren’t you gonna get my door?” You ask standing still before moving in the direction of his vehicle. His jaw clenches before he obliges and you do the same getting in. Climbing in halfway you turn to give him a quick kiss.

“Missed you”  you pout looking him over. It’s the truth and even more satisfying when he can’t decide whether or not to blow up.

“You wouldn’t have to miss me if you answered your phone” he snaps shutting the door. The engine roars and he’s off.

“I was gonna call but I had no time, there were too many people around” you lie and he glares at you. 

“How was your date?” He asks, telling you he’s been keeping tabs. You roll your eyes.

“It wasn’t a date, my cousins just wanted to meet this guy.” you shrug.

“Sitting across from someone and sharing a meal is a date” he snaps.

“Well then I’ve dated a lot” you sigh, earning another glare. 

“Just answer when I call and stop sending me texts. I want to hear your voice” he snaps. “Okay?!” He glares. 

“Ok” you let him have this one. He shakes his head taking a long exhale as he grips the wheel heading in the direction of his place.

“You fucking stress me out more than the job” he mutters as he hit a red light.e opens and closes his legs and you know the tension between us is foreplay for him too. You smile leaning over to give him a few quick kisses.

“I’m sorry” you apologize playing the part of oblivious bimbo with sincere eyes and he nods. His eyes lighten and you know you're back in his good book. It’s a quick turnover, he probably was really scared to lose you.

“You gonna make it up to me?” He asks.

“Of course, how about tickets to the boxing match you were talking about?” you suggest.

“That’s not the kind of thing I want from you,” he says.

“What do you want?” you ask.

“You, for a few days. any and every way” he says with nonchalance. It sparks your excitement but you hide it as best you can, smiling only a little. Maybe that’s what made his throwaway comments so hurtful. The chemistry is too good and anything goes - its not the routine sex of a married couple but of a raunchy affair most times. As long as he treats you well there’s no complaints. But he has fucked up.

“That sounds like a lot,” you mutter avoiding automatic compliance.

“You have a lot to make up for,” he smiles slightly.

“You promise you’re not mad anymore?” you ask with doe eyes.

“No baby, I’m not mad” he concedes and you melt a little looking up into his eyes. He’s putty in your hands.

“I trust you” you mutter as he kisses you hard. Just like that he’s gonna give you all he’s got. He lets himself go. Kissing your neck as he gets us both undressed. His touch is firm and dominant. you’re at his mercy but in very good hands. He’s one of one and our compatibility is special. He knows as well as you that we are all we have if we want this. It’s dangerous to be this vulnerable, for him to lose control when you’re on your knees taking care of him. Having that kind of power over him gets you off and he has the same effect on him. His actions make it known that there’s no replacing him. That you better never even think about it because there’s no one better for me than him as he fucks you into the mattress. He kisses you more than usual, kissing you everywhere and when we’re done he props himself up against the headboard letting you  rest your head on his chest listening to his heartbeat.

“Can you stay the night?” you ask hoping his  schedule isn’t demanding.

“Yeah mama, I can stay” he responds and you settle into pulling the blankets up over your body and his. He rests a hand over you to secure your body against his as he reaches for his phone. He spends a few minutes sending off a few messages before setting it down on the nightstand.

“Come on” He says, patting your hip.

“Hmm?” you raise a brow.

“I know you weren’t answering your phone cause you wanted attention, so come on” he says tapping it again. You look up to see a small grin on his lips. “Don’t play innocent baby, you’re too smart for that” he adds and you sit up, sitting beside him. Just like that his focus is on your breasts.

“If I wanted attention wouldn’t I answer?” you ask pulling up the sheet to cover yourself. His attention returns and he raises a brow.

“Not like playing with me would” he says and his intelligence is one of the many reasons I love him. You straddle him and then lower onto his manhood getting the upper hand in moments.

“Maybe I overheard you telling your friends I was nothing, maybe I was upset you were lying” You tell him, grinding with him inside, in  a motion that causes him to crane his head back in pleasure. Eyes closed he holds your hip as you move plain fully slow allowing you both to feel everything.  “You deserved the headache” you add and he takes a breath and holds his head level to look you over. He can’t be angry at you when you give it to him like this. He shakes his head too overcome with pleasure to be angry at your plot.

“Watch your mouth” he warms instead. You tighten your walls around his manhood and he curses.

“Watch yours or I could stop answering forever” you warn and he’s had enough. You pushed and now you’ll pay.

“Forever?” He asks, gripping you hard as he pulls out. It’s a bid for control. You moan at the loss of contact “You’re gonna quit me, forever for saying something we both know isn’t true?” He challenges upset all over again. You try to look away and he forces you to look at him.

“Maybe” you respond in defiance. He lets go pushing you away as he gets out the bed. Now you’ve really done it. Your stomach drops as he rounds to your side of the bed and gets on his knees. It’s a sight as he gets between your legs spreading them around him and french kissing your center. Men like him need power and aren’t afraid to be in submissive positions but not him. Not with you. He gives you everything and you writhe under his intimate kiss,  your body is completely his. It’s his turn to undo you and prove his worth. His turn to make up for his missteps, his turn to take care of you this way. When he’s done you hold him close.

“I’m sorry” he says with your essence all over him. “My people don’t need to know my weakness, you could become a target” he says and you look up to see sincerity.

“I’m not your weakness, I’m your strength and coming after me would be the stupidest fucking thing anyone could ever do.” you smile. “I’m a civilian.” you remind him. “It’d make a lot of noise” 

He takes you to the shower so you can both get cleaned off. He’s left love marks all over you. He suds you up and rinses you off with special care.

“I love you too much to risk anything happening to you” he says stunning you. Your body goes stiff as a board and you search his eyes. This is a first.

“You love me?” you ask.

“I love you” He affirms wrapping you in a towel. It's a fact which makes it all the better. It isn’t this magical revelation. It’s something he’s sat with, it’s something he knows and has known. There’s no hiding your smile and in turn his.

“I love You too” you smile.

“I know mama, now let me get some sleep damn” he says with an arm around you as he gets his towel. You fall asleep wearing a smile because…

You’re  in love.

____

Don’t forget to reblog, comment and like 💖💖💖

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[jj-one]

thinking about loser!skz sneaking into reader’s room while she isn’t there and stealing her panties 🥲

no bc i think about this a lot in such an unhealthy way </3 like imagine loser!skz as ur roommate (cliché trope ik but it fits too well w this dynamic LOL). they don’t rlly talk much and kinda keep to themselves but little do u know they’re actually super gross and the biggest fucking pervs u ever met (can imagine any member since i didn’t say any specific names or wtv :p)

you’d barely been gone a full ten minutes. that’s all it took, really. the second the front door shut and your footsteps faded down the hallway, he moved, quick and quiet, like he’d done it a hundred times before.

maybe, because he had.

your door creaked open, slow enough not to leave a trace. the familiar smell of you hitting him like a punch to the gut— clean linen, the faintest trace of your shampoo still clinging to your pillowcase. but he wasn’t here for that.

no, his hands were already trembling as he crouched beside your laundry hamper. just the thought of your skin, your heat, your cunt pressed against any of those fabrics was enough to make his mouth go dry.

and there, buried near the bottom, was his favorite pair.

pink. tiny. the lace along the waistband frayed just slightly from how often you wore them, and still warm.

he lets out a shaky breath, already hard in his sweats. he shouldn’t. he shouldn’t— but he did, like he always did.

brought them to his face and inhaled as deeply as he could.

“oh fuck,” he whispered, already sounding completely wrecked. “you’re disgusting for this, baby.” as if you were the one to blame.

back in his room, he didn’t even bother with prep, just collapsed onto the bed, cock already in hand, pressing your panties flat against his face like a mask while his other hands wrapped tightly around his shaft.

“bet you don’t even know,” he panted, “that your sweet little pussy’s the only thing that makes me cum now.”

he fucked his fist into oblivion, the panties soaking up the heat of his breath, his spit, the filth that poured from his mouth in broken gasps, his hips lifting off the mattress with every thrust. he wraps the fabric around his cock, milky streaks of precum leaking messily through his fingers, smearing onto the cotton that had once hugged your perfect cunt.

his thumb dragged over the damp patch in the center. the texture of the lace against his cock adding more friction to the sensation, he almost cums on the spot.

“fucking ruined me, y’know that?” he groaned. “can’t even look at you without getting hard. can’t sleep without jerking off to the thought of you spread out in these, rubbing your tight little clit while you moan into your pillow like i’m not listening through the wall—” his voice slightly cracks as he’s reaching his own high.

“slut. fucking tease. walking around in nothing but these and pretending you don’t notice me staring.” his rhythm only gets faster, more desperate, taking another deep breath as he slides the underwear down his length, wanting you more than anything.

when he finally came, it was violent. hot, thick ropes spilling out of him with a choked moan, shooting straight into his fist, all over his stomach, and your panties that were now used as a cum towel.

but he doesn’t stop right away. just lays there, cock twitching in his palm, lips parted, catching his breath, looking down at the soiled fabric in his hand. staring at the mess he’d made in the same place your body once had.

and like he always does, he gets up, tucks the panties into the back of his drawer behind an old hoodie, and calmly washed his hands in the sink.

you’d never know.

but he did.

then tomorrow? when you came into the kitchen wearing that other pair, the white ones with the bow?

those will fall victim next.

[prinzessinpluto]

Please give the fandom your take on Hongjoong!! Especially if you see him as not as fragile as I see him ( bc I don't want to worry over him lol). Please. I beg. If you would.

You gave me a free pass to ramble about Hongjoong and i fucking ran with it, so i hope you enjoy a whole lot of whatever the hell this turned out to be. Reading it back, I don't know if this answered your question at all, but I had a lot of thought writing it, so thanks again, for asking <3

once again, a warning: this is over 1,000 words long. No, I do not have very many friends and I don't know why you would even bring that up when you can barely even tell ahaha

The first thing i think of when I think of Hongjoong is his passion and compassion. He’s the reason I paid any attention to Ateez at all back when they debuted—I was starting to get into Stray Kids at the time and that took a lot of my brain capacity but as I remember, you really couldn’t take two steps on the kpop internet without someone talking about “the short one with the crazy eyes and manic giggle” (paraphrasing), so I watched an interview (or twenty) and he HIT me with this “even if you stop being an atiny, if you hear [his] name again you can remember you were happy and you were loved by [him]” (again, paraphrasing, this was a long time ago) and that has stuck with me since then. “If you hear my name, I hope you will remember you were loved by me” what a crazy fucking thing to say. Not just “remember all the good times” but “You were loved”. Just shoot me next time, it’ll hurt less.  

I know you’ve mentioned this as well, but he really is a very emotional person and that might be why he seems so fragile, but in my eyes vulnerability like this takes a lot of courage and he seems to have a good idea of how to handle himself. Music, for starters is a fantastic way to process emotions, that’s why he’s so good at it. Not just on a technical level but kind of instinctually. He would give the most specific but eerily on point song recommendations that make you wonder if he’s secretly living in your mind, I would stake my life on this. It’s in the way he talks about music and making music, that man knows what he’s talking about because knowing music is like knowing himself. 

In terms of his (potential) loneliness, honestly that might just be a “he just works like that” thing. Also, possibly Neurodivergency of some kind. All I can really say about this is that I work in the same way when it comes to friendships; I have a very small number of friends (honest to god can’t think of a time when I ever regularly talked to more than two people at a time, my family not included) but I’m very emotionally invested in these relationships, to the point that it’s bordering on codependence, and from what I heard that can be (can be, it’s not a Symptom, I’m not a doctor, do not quote me on this, Random Internet User!!) a ND Thing. Again, not a Symptom but a pattern. 

He also might straight up (lol) just be in love with Seonghwa, at this point it wouldn’t surprise me. This type of “incredibly, almost questionably close “friend” that you may or may not be in love with, who knows, the feelings are too big to describe in terms of romantic or platonic” is, dare I say, a common occurrence amongst queer people. Might be because in the Venn diagram of “people like me” (friends) and “people I'm attracted to” (romantic partners) there is a lot of overlap between those two circles. 

Having typed this all out, I’m realizing I’ve basically just confirmed what you said (“Hongjoong seems to generally be both extremely solitary and hypersensitive to me”, yes i am directly quoting you here, it’s a sign of respect where I'm from (yap-city)), but the key difference in perspective is that I don’t perceive this as a “weakness” because he is so good at using this sensitivity to his advantage. Being vulnerable isn’t too much of a problem if you’re surrounded by people who care about you and since he does have this kind of support and he works in a field where authenticity and passion pays off and is encouraged (talking about making art in general, not the kpop industry that works a little different, I fear), he can afford to share these thoughts with the world.  

He has the confidence to back it up and stand by everything he’s saying and that makes it hard for someone who tries to use his words against him. Also, generally, a person who’s trying to argue that “you should hide your feelings more” really isn’t anyone worth talking to, in my opinion. And I’d wager Hongjoong would agree with me on that. I don’t think he’s in any danger to get hurt by random people hating on him, simply because he doesn’t care about their opinions enough to pay much attention to them. 

If you think about how good he is at navigating social currents (little pirate captain pun, couldn’t resist hashtag sorry not sorry) and how quick-witted he is, he does have the means to defend himself, and fiercely, too. He might not feel the need to do this to atiny (because why would he, the guy is more parasocial than us, half the time) but if anyone ever tried to come for his loved ones, he will kill first, ask questions never. You try and think a bad word about Seonghwa in his presence and see how well he can fight.  

ALL THIS TO SAY, you might just not be used to seeing an Idol be so vulnerable but to me, the fact that he’s sharing this at all is a sign that he knows very well how to deal with his emotions. As a fellow Sensitive Person (fun fact, him and I have the same MBTI so if you subscribe to the idea that there are only 16 types of personalities in this world, we are basically the same person) I would rather die than cry in front of a stadium full of people because I do not have the self-assuredness not be ashamed of (the intensity of) my emotions, that’s what makes him so admirable to me. 

I would throw hands to defend my friends (and seonghwa), tho. And write songs about how much I love them and how I think they are my soulmates. Maybe that’s why this got so out of hand. 

[zepskies]

Ahhhh thank you, friend!! 🥹💕

not gonna lie, at first after reading the description, then seeing the nine months time pass, and reading this I thought a baby ??? ...until I remembered about his undercover prison mission lmfao 🤦🏽‍♀️🤣 all I have to say about blake is boo this man!, lmao. also she needs new friends, those girls are not a good support system at all :/

Hahaaaa nope, not quite there yet with a baby, but Blake is def a boooo.👎🏽 And honestly yeah, reader could definitely use a better support system. Sarah is the only somewhat real one in that group 💙

ay pobresitaaaaa 🥺 i feel so bad :( but part of me is a sucker for the person a looking after a vulnerable person b so I liked where this was headed...😅

Indeeeed 😭😭 But yeah exactly, same loll! 🤭

I swoon 💖 love me a protective man.

Ugh yes! I'm such a sucker for these moments loll

yeahh she deserves better friends for sure. friends she can be safely vulnerable with ...no matter how much i love the comfort opening this left for mark 🥲

Honestly a great and valid point. It takes a lot for this reader to crack, but she's at the end of her rope. At least Mark's able to catch her this time ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

oh this hit hard :( 🤍 such a heavy feeling

Literally the worst feeling, poor thing. That directly parallels with the song 💙

this sequence was so bittersweet to me. ❤️‍🩹 it felt like a reminder of their long and meaningful past, and just how much they really mean to each other despite all the angst surrounding them <3

Oh very much so! It was all of that, signaling the closeness and history between these two ❤️‍🩹

I don't trust Valwell at all...i'm worried for her 🥲

Me either! I'm setting this up for some fun conflict/angst in the future lol

...yeah she gotta get rocked, oh my. I have zero sympathy for her. like your sister looked out for you better than your own parents, you're mad at her for how your parents treated you (not her fault), so after trying and failing to seduce her drunk fiance...you send her deceiving pictures just to be evil.. you're a weirdo girly. me personally i would have put nair in her shampoo or something. no way she gets away with that scott free 🤠 I hope she does hate herself for this — what an awful thing to do to someone you're supposed to love.

Oh Rachel's the worst lol. Don't worry, her and reader will have their confrontation in the near future, but until then, she gets to stew in being a selfish, entitled, resentful, jealous, heinous bitch 🥲

clinging on to the sliver of hope this is giving me omg

Hehe we'll see what Derek Haas does with a potential save for Mark in the future, but depending on what happens, we may need to fanfic that shit and come up with one ourselves 😆😆

I love this for them 💕 he definitely needs some soft comfort, now more than ever 🥺 i love your mind. this is amazing !!🫶🏽

Right?? Mark thus far has been dealing with this completely alone. At least in this story, he has her to help support him and give him some of that comfort that he's probably craving, but not willing to admit it. ❤️‍🩹

Aww thank you so much, friend!! I literally had so much fun writing this one that I can't wait to continue it soon! 💕

CATASTROPHIC BLUES

Pairing: Mark Meachum x F. Reader

Summary: Nine months isn’t as long as it sounds. When you run into your ex-fiancé at a bar, he finds out what you've become. You find out the truth.

AN: Okay, so this was only supposed to be a 1K drabble sequel to DOWNGRADE for my lovely friend, @waynes-multiverse, but of course it snowballed on me lol. (And there’s a little more to come!) This is set during early season 1, let’s say between 1x02 and 1x03.

Song Inspo: “Hits Different” by Taylor Swift (YT)

Word Count: 6.3K

Tags/Warnings: 18+ only. Angst, drunkenness, skeevy men, Mark doing his best with an angry, hungover reader (bit of grumpy x sunshine), talk of cheating, what really happened, and other truths revealed…

Nine months. It should’ve meant something.

You should be able to go out with your friends to the club. You should be able to feel confident in one of your favorite dresses and the tallest pair of heels you could almost walk in.

You should be able to let loose on the dance floor, letting the closest attractive guy grind on your ass.

He later offered to get you a drink, his hot breath in your ear. An uncomfortable chill ran down your spine. But you know what? Fuck it.

You went back with him to the bar, taking the chance to rest your achy feet. He tried to make small talk with you, despite you being stiff and awkward now that you couldn’t distract yourself with the vibes of the music running through your body. Now the thump thump thump of the bass was too much, too distracting for a normal conversation.

Blake was an oxymoron—he dressed like a wealthy hipster and talked like a frat bro. He had the skinny jeans and a silky patterned shirt, a thin gold chain around his neck, an obnoxious gold pinky ring, and a trendy cropped haircut. You regretted letting him buy you a drink, but then again, you never wasted good vodka.

You also started to get suspicious when one of your friends “casually” came up on his other side.

“Ask her about her job,” Sarah whispered. You just barely caught it.

“Oh, yeah. So, uh, what do you do?” Blake asked you. You were pretty sure he was more interested in your cleavage than your job.

“I’m an assistant to the Head District Attorney of California,” you said blandly.

The guy blinked. “…Oh. Cool.”

“And what do you do, Blake?”

“Well, my dad owns an advertisement company, so I do some stuff for him every now and then. But mostly I’m a competitive gamer. Like, uh, League of Legends, Counter Strike, Mortal Kombat. What about you? You a gamer?”

Blinking slow, then sighing, you leaned over and locked eyes with Sarah, one of your best friends and a well-known esthetician in L.A.

“Where’d you find the trust fund baby?” you asked. “He one of your clients? Let me guess. He likes his asshole bleached the same shade as his hair.”

Sarah bit her lip in embarrassment. Blake coughed and spluttered into his scotch. You didn’t stick around for the predictable denial and slid off the bar stool. You gave him $15 for your drink, downed the rest of it in one long gulp, and savored the rush of it tingling through your head on your way out of the club.

“Wait!” Sarah called after you. Your other two friends just rolled their eyes and stayed behind to keep drinking and dancing. They were used to your antics by now, just like you were used to theirs. They'd been trying to set you up on dates for a couple of months now. This one was the sneakiest by far.

Sarah, for her part, never let you walk out alone.

“Next time you try to set me up with someone, can you please just tell me,” you said tiredly, “instead of pretending you want to hang out with me?”

Sarah deflated. “Look, we’re just trying to help.”

“I know,” you said, holding yourself against the chill in the air. “I know, okay? I know you guys want me to move on, because I’m a fucking bummer. I know I’m…I’m not handling all this as well as I should be. And I know they still talk to Rachel.”

Tears stung in your eyes, but you sucked in a subtle breath. Sarah’s blue eyes were sad and glassy with guilt, even if it was just by association.

“Go back inside,” you said eventually. “I’ll just take an Uber home.”

But you didn’t.

Instead, you ended up at a bar down the street. You barely ever went clubbing anymore, but you hadn’t stepped foot into a real bar in nine months.

“Come on, sweetheart. You really want to do this here?”

“You’re one to fucking talk! But you know what? Far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing left to say. I just…I don’t know how you could do this to me.”

“Please,” he said. The green of his eyes were desperate. It was the first time you ever heard him beg. “Just let me explain.”

You wouldn’t let him touch you, let alone try to hold you. The thought alone made you sick.

“I saw you, Mark. I saw the goddamn pictures. And my sister told me all about how your last night of ‘freedom’ went. But you know what? You’re fucking free.”

You put the ring in the palm of his hand. He stared down at it, jaw clenched. Meanwhile, hot tears streamed down your face.

You walked away first—out of the seaside bar in beautiful Venice, California, with every piece of your heart bleeding out into the street.

Another vodka cranberry at the end of the bar turned into shots you couldn’t name or count. You rebuffed men who tried to talk to you. You ignored the voice in your head that sounded a lot like your dad.

Sweet girl, what the hell’re you doin’?

You stopped trying to answer that question a long time ago. Just like your friends had stopped trying to get you out of the house after work. No more wine tastings or Sunday brunches. No more weekends at the beach. The coarse grains of sun-bleached sand would only remind you of Santa Cruz—a sweltering summer, a perfect day, now fractured and wrong in your mind’s eye.

A fucking lie.

Another empty glass hitting the bar counter drowned out the salty crash of ocean waves, but you finally had to stop when your stomach churned with alcoholic slosh. Your brain reeled when you tried to blink. Your eyes felt dry, irritated, and glassy at the same time.

You got up from your seat and used the wall like an anchor on your way to the bathroom. You checked yourself in the mirror there. Your black dress, your hair, and your makeup were still intact, so you supposed you still looked good, if absent in the eyes. Again, you blinked too hard. Fuck.

On your way back out, new noise was filling the bar. A whole group of four or five people came in and grabbed seats at the bar, laughing, ordering drinks, giving each other shit. They sounded like cops. You knew, because you’d grown up around them your entire life.

“All right, Oliveras. What’re you drinking?”

You stopped short at the voice, deep and rich like aged whiskey. In fact, you needed the back of an empty chair to hold you steady.

“What, you're buying?” she shot back.

Amber. You recognized her profile and the litheness of her frame. You two were old friends, since you roomed together back in college. You hadn’t heard from her in months though. She had called to give her condolences when your almost-marriage fell apart.

And now, your ex-fiancé had an arm draped casually behind her chair. His smile was effortless, charming, the crows’ feet around his eyes crinkled with amusement.

“Well, within reason,” he replied, inclining his head. “I think I’m in the mood for some good fuckin’ whiskey—”

You stumbled in your stupid heels. You nearly took a whole table with you, but two chairs broke your fall. Almost all the cops in the group looked your way, their heads swiveling with a trained response to sudden sounds. Your name fell from Amber’s lips, a small, shocked breath.

Mark’s mouth fell open, his eyes widening when you looked up at him on reflex. You were forced to take him in, his green eyes, the new haircut, the well-trimmed beard, the jeans and dark blue jacket. He had no fucking business looking that good.

But you were like two shocked deers not expecting to meet in a forest—neither one willing to move or speak, or even blink…

Until you stumbled again. Your weight on the unstable chair began to give way.

“Shit.”

He and Amber both jolted to help you. Mark’s hand reached for you first, but you firmly ignored it and somehow straightened onto your shaky feet. You smoothed down the dress and fixed the little straps the best you could, even though one was hanging down your shoulder.

Your arm got tangled in the thin chain of your purse, but you slung that over your other shoulder with all the grace of a toddler. Then you affected a “polite” smile that just came off looking like a grimace.

“Uh, hey. Of all the gin joints in the world and stuff, right?” You made sure to enunciate, hoping your hand wave was casual and not insane. “I’ve gotta go.”

You pointed toward the door before you made it your mission to actually get there. Your heart pounded loud in your ears. The rush of cool and quieter air was a balm to your frayed mind, but it wasn’t enough.

The way he looked at her…

The turning of your stomach became a violent roil. You closed your eyes against the movie reel torturing you in your mind. You imagined how their night would go, drinking, laughing, touching, stumbling back into his house at 2:00 a.m. Maybe he’d end up actually loving her, someone more like him. More than he claimed to have loved you.

The liquid contents of your stomach rebelled, and you threw up right on the edge of the street. You clung to a utility pole as you coughed and cried involuntary tears. You heaved and gasped for breath when you couldn’t stop.

“Hey, you okay, sweetheart?”

Alarm trilled in the back of your mind. You had enough awareness to look behind you. Finally, you noticed the guy. He’d approached you in the bar earlier, but you’d turned down his advances. You couldn’t remember what you said to him. He clearly remembered you, though. 

You waved him off, not even able to speak as you tried to stay upright against the utility pole.

He didn’t take the hint. He drew closer, wrapping the pretense of a helping hand around your arm. He fingered the edge of your leather jacket.

“You need a ride? I’ll get you an Uber or something,” he said, with the facsimile of concern. “Where do you live?”

“Hey,” a voice cut in, deep and with authority.

You tilted your head, and Mark’s stern face came into view along with the rest of him. Him and those damn bowed legs.

“Take a walk, pal. I’ve got her,” Mark said. He flashed his LAPD badge for good measure.

That made it even easier to knock away the foreign hands off your body and angle himself in between. His arm came around your shoulders, supportive and safe.

Half of you was grateful, the other half resentful, but all you could do was glare at him. He shot you a quirking smile.

The other man backed off, trying to hide his annoyance. He continued down the street with his hands in his pockets. Mark itched to do more than just scare him off. A familiar protective anger had burned in his blood, raising his hackles, but he had to focus on you.

He led you back to the front of the bar. He went slow enough for you in those red stilettos (ridiculous, he thought, no matter how sexy they were).

“Late night, huh?” he said.

“What d'you think you’re doing?” you said. Your tone would be more snippy, if you had any energy left. Your inner world was reeling, unfocused and barely conscious. You had no choice but to lean on him as you gripped his jacket, the dark blue denim rough between your fingers.

“Well, I’m thinking I could call one of your friends, have ‘em take you home. You came out alone?” he asked. He was trying to be civil, retaining his sense of humor, but there was no masking the concern in his eyes. Not completely.

“No,” you admitted, “but ‘m alone now. Obviously.” You snorted.

Mark’s lips twitched upward. He heaved a small sigh. “All right. Well, who do you want me to call? Sarah? Yesenia? Lauren?” 

After a moment, you shook your head, even though that just made it swim. Fuck.

“I can’t…don’t want them to see me like this,” you said. The confession provoked a sniffle, a tremble of your lips. This time, you couldn’t stop the sting of tears from flooding over. You covered your face, as if that could stop your embarrassment, your overwhelming emotions from clogging in your throat in a painful lump.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Mark said. His tone pitched deep and gentle. It was an easy reflex for him to give into as he soothed a hand over your hair to try and calm you down.

You didn’t know it, but there was a gaping ache in his chest that had never really faded away. Seeing you again, let alone like this, made it sharp and splintering.

He led you to his car, and he took you home.

For a moment, you saw it so clearly.

Tracing his brows, the line of his nose, and the cut of his chin while he slept. What his hair felt like between your fingers, loose and soft, or gripped tight with need.

The sound of his voice reaching deep into your bones. The way his arms allowed you to reclaim safety whenever he came back to you…

Worrying for your dad on his twenty-five-year beat in Homicide had transitioned into worrying for Mark. He was always quick to reassure you though, to downplay with his ridiculous sense of humor and good sex. The best, actually.

But it was the in between moments you missed the most.

The distant sound of a lock turning in the door had you waking, slowly, a silent struggle in your bed. Your eyes cracked open.

Were you okay now? Was that him? Was he home? Had the past year just been a cruel invention of your mind to torture you?

…No. Your throat momentarily closed up as you realized. This really was just your shitty reality.

You groaned as you picked your head off the pillow, pushing your body up until you were sitting on the edge of your bed. Your bare legs hung off the side. You still wore your wrinkled black dress from last night, but your heels were strewn forgotten on the floor. You didn’t remember taking them off. You didn’t remember getting back to your apartment, let alone to your bed.

However, it all started coming back to you when the door shut again. Fresh coffee wafted in from the living room, along with something sweeter.

Your bedroom door creaked open, and there he was. Mark fucking Meachum.

He held a tray with two hot coffees and a greasy brown bag from your favorite bakery. Your gaze crept up to meet his, though yours was decidedly grumpy.

“Well, good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he said with a smile. “It’s already almost noon, but I figured we can’t start the day without coffee.”

“Did you stay here all night?” you croaked in disbelief.

“Yeah, just, uh, took the couch out there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the living room. “Could use a couple of extra throw pillows though. Think I got another notch in my spine…”

At your persisting glare, his expression sobered.

“Just wanted to make sure you were okay, that’s all,” he said.

“Well, mission accomplished,” you snarked. “You can go now.”

Mark watched you try and fail to stand. You sunk back down to a seat on the edge of the bed, closing your eyes for a second while you attempted to stop your head from swimming.

He sighed and set down the coffee and pastries on your desk nearby.

“Have you been making this a habit?” he asked.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but last night was the first bar I’ve been to in exactly nine months and...fifteen days,” you replied. You swept your fingers over your cheeks, grimacing when you found remains of your mascara. You probably looked like a gremlin. This wasn’t exactly the way you wanted to look when you next saw your ex.

Except you’d never planned to see this man again.

“All right,” Mark said. He grabbed your purse off your desk, where he’d set it last night. He popped it open, your private goddamn property.

“Excuse me,” you protested angrily.

He retrieved a whole pack of cigarettes. “How about these?”

He tossed you the pack, and you barely caught it. Your irritation grew and grew, along with the sting of shame. The worst part was, he knew he didn’t have to say anything.

The unfiltered nicotine in your hand was the reason your father died. He’d been the Captain of Mark’s precinct for ten years—the exact number of years since your dad had quit smoking. It hadn’t mattered much in the end.

Still, you resented that raised brow of judgment on Mark’s face.

You leaned over and grabbed a lighter from your nightstand. You fished out a cigarette from the pack, and you took your time lighting it up. You were being an asshole, you realized, but you couldn’t stop yourself.

You made a show of holding the cancer stick between two fingers. You looked up at Mark, right in his eyes, and tried to channel Audrey Hepburn when you brought it to your lips for a long drag.

And you immediately coughed it up. Fuck.

Smoke polluted the air above your head while Mark nodded in vindication.

“Yeah. How’d that feel, Smokey?” he asked (all too high-and-mighty, in your opinion). He crossed the distance and took the cigarette from your hand while you kept coughing. He went into the bathroom to get rid of it.

Meanwhile, you held a hand to your chest and groaned. Damn him, he was right. Your stomach roiled at just the taste of that shit in your mouth, let alone first thing in the morning.

“Why don’t you get cleaned up?” he suggested, sweeping a hand toward your adjoining bathroom when he came back out. “A little coffee and sustenance will be waiting when you’re done.”

“Seriously, you can go. You don’t need to wait up for me,” you rasped, but the man still helped you to your feet with a supportive hand on your arm and your lower back.

“Yeah, and what if you lose your balance and crack your head on the bathroom tile? Nope, not on my watch.”

“Jesus Christ,” you muttered.

“He ain’t gonna help if you take his name in vain like that,” Mark couldn’t help but tease, fully expecting your glare. That was something your mom used to say.

You groaned, annoyed and still nauseous.

“Would you just shut up?”

“Nope, pretty sure I’m physically incapable.”

You snorted. “Clearly.”

He made sure you were steady on your feet before he left you in the bathroom. You avoided his gaze when he closed the door. His heart gave a painful pulse.

What the fuck am I doing? he thought.

Brushing your teeth and taking a hot shower had its innumerable benefits—making you feel alive and close to normal again, for example. But the one thing it didn’t do was get Mark out of your apartment.

You sat together on your couch while the TV played at a low volume. You saw the remnants of Mark’s night in your favorite throw blanket tossed over one of the armrests. The pillow he'd used for his head was caved in and smelling like his cologne, a rich, woody scent of sandalwood, spice, and musk.

You tried to ignore it while you finished eating a blueberry muffin. He polished off his third donut and washed it down with some more coffee.

“So,” you said. “Amber Oliveras.”

Mark blinked in confusion. “What?”

“Last night. You two were out together, seemed to be having a good time. Sorry I crashed your date,” you said, trying not to seem as bitter you sounded in your head.

Mark’s brows furrowed. “We’re, uh, not together. Not like that. We’re just working a case.”

“A case?” you said dubiously. “She’s DEA. You’re Homicide. What kind of case would you be working on together?”

He hesitated, brushing some pastry crumbs from his mouth. “Sorry, I can’t get into the specifics. You know the drill.”

Yes, you knew his cases were supposed to be confidential, but that hadn’t stopped him from telling you details before, especially because you were D.A. Valwell’s Executive Assistant. You had a higher clearance than the average civilian anyway.

But you let it go. It truly wasn’t your business, after all.

It was Mark’s turn to look your way. Morbid curiosity was eating him alive. Or maybe that was just the pull of being with you again, seeing your face, hearing your voice…even if you hated him.

He did think you were torturing him a bit too. You smelled nice, like floral soap and minty freshness. You were wearing an oversized shirt from your college days that was already threadbare from how many times you ran it through the wash. It slipped off one shoulder and barely went halfway down your thighs, brushing the edge of some little shorts. He had to stop his eyes from following the path of your bare legs.

“So, uh, how’ve you been?” he asked.

You paused. You even set down your muffin and chuckled, giving him a long look.

“How does it look like I’ve been?”

A grim silence fell between you two, thick and tense.

“All right," he said. "How long’ve you been smoking?”

You shook your head, lips pursing at his audacity. “You really don’t have any right to judge me. You know that, right?”

Mark rubbed a hand over his mouth and chin, an anxious, frustrated tick you knew well. “Look, what happened back then—”

You rose a hand to stop him. “Please, for the love of God. We don’t have to go through this shit again.”

You got up from the couch, intending to throw away the coffee cups and garbage if it meant gaining some space from this man.

But he followed you, stopped you with an imploring grip on your arm.

“It wasn’t what it looked like,” he said. He met your gaze, firm, earnest. “It didn’t go down the way she said.”

Your instinct was to jerk your arm out of his grasp, but he just held you in place, gently, but insistent. 

“Are you gonna let me explain this time? If you do, then just let me get it out. And afterward I’ll screw. I’ll walk the fuck outta here, and I promise you, you’ll never have to see me again.”

You stared up at him, close to seething, but there was something in his eyes that stilled you, gripped you more than his hands. A sliver of doubt began to creep in.

Your sister apparently hated you enough to fuck your fiancé. Had she been vindictive enough to lie about it?

You had realized, all too late, that you couldn’t put anything past her. Mark could be stubborn, but he wouldn’t dig his heels in on this without a reason.

So you relented, with a small nod.

Breathing a subtle exhale of relief, Mark guided you back down to the couch. You turned off the TV and sat facing him with your arms crossed. You gave him an expectant look.

Mark steeled himself. Where to fucking start?

A beat to think, and then he knew.

He had to give you everything.

Nine Months Ago...

One late night. One fifth of whiskey at the hotel bar turned into numbers Mark stopped counting—until the Captain reminded him. Your father reminded him beyond the grave, with words Mark never forgot.

You’ve got someone waiting for you. Don’t take that for granted.

He needed to find you.

Somehow, he made it to the elevator by himself. Third floor. Room 304, 305, 306. Fuck. Was it 309?

The door opened, and his addled fucking brain thought it was you at first. She almost had your eyes, if just half the sincerity of your smile.

Rachel welcomed him in and shut the door. He stumbled at the threshold, and she stopped him from falling completely onto the floral-patterned carpet.

“Oh my God, Mark. You okay?”

No. And he knew he wasn’t ever gonna be okay.

But her hands were warm, carving sensuous paths under his leather jacket without him realizing.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” she said, guiding him further into her hotel room. With slurring words, Mark asked her to go find you. He needed to talk to you.

“Shit, think I left my phone downstairs too. Needa get it,” he muttered.

“You’re a mess. I think you need to lay down first,” she said, huffing as she supported his weight over to her bed. She helped him lay down. A subtle smile tugged at her lips as she began to open up his jacket. He resisted at first, giving her a look of confusion.

“You should get comfortable. I doubt we’re gonna be able to move you from here.” She giggled.

He guessed he could see the sense in that. He let her help him shrug the black leather jacket off. You helped him pick it out a couple of weeks ago while you were planning for this trip.

Rachel tossed his jacket to the foot of the bed, and she sat close to him on the edge of it. Her bare thigh brushed against his arm as the skirt of her dress rode up. It looked like she’d been about to take a shower after a night out with you and your friends. He instinctively moved his arm, crossing it with the other over his chest.

“You know, I never got a chance to thank you,” she said.

Mark’s brows furrowed. It was taking all of his concentration just to keep her face in focus.

“For what?”

“You were really there for me when Dad passed. You were like our rock, coming by with food, checking in on me when you visited. It really meant a lot to me,” she said. Her words said one thing, but her eyes were beginning to lead him somewhere.

“Your dad was a good man,” he said tiredly. “You guys went through a lot. You, your mom, your sister. It uh, hit her pretty hard.”

Rachel’s lips pressed together. “Yeah… She was his favorite, you know.”

Mark blinked. “What, he said that?”

“He didn’t have to,” she said, glancing away. She began to drum her fingers against his arm. He noticed it, but he was also trying to concentrate on what she was saying. “He always talked to her more, trusted her more, even when he was harping on her. She got that government job, probably thanks to him. But he was proud of her.”

“’M sure he was proud of you too,” Mark said.

“No, I don’t think so. I just don’t know why,” she said, sniffling as tears welled up in her eyes.

Mark frowned in sympathy. “Aw, hey.”

He didn’t know how to make her feel better, but he didn’t like to see her cry either. He sat up the best he could in the bed. She met him halfway, burying her face in his chest and sliding her arms around his middle for a hug. He gave her that comfort, patting her on the back.

Only, she didn’t stop there. She shimmied a bit higher and buried her face in his neck, where she pressed a little kiss. An alarm bell rang in Mark’s mind, but his body was too slow to respond. She turned her head and laid another kiss on his cheek, and then his lips.

He finally jerked back, holding her at arm’s length.

“Hey. What the hell’re you doing?” he demanded. His tone was sharp without a filter.

Rachel’s tearful eyes met his as she bit her lip. Her hand tentatively drew down his chest, warm over his shirt.

“I just…I finally had to tell you how much you mean to me,” she said. “And I think she takes you for granted.”

His brows furrowing, Mark grabbed her wrist.

“Rach, I love you. I really do, but you’re like a lil' sister to me. I love your sister. I wanna marry her.”

The thought alone struck a sharp jolt of pain through his skull, and through his chest. He did want a life with you. But is that fucking fair?

Could he really shackle you to a dying man?

Sure, he didn’t know how long he had, but that could be a cruel waiting game, one you'd just gone through with your father for three months. Mark didn’t want to put you through that all over again.

“Look, just...go tell her 'm here. Please,” he said. The fight was draining out of him. His energy was waning, his eyes blinking slow.

Rachel nodded, wiping at her tears. She left him in a huff, but she went to lock herself up in the bathroom first. The sink faucet turned on.

Mark sighed. Fine, let her clean up and pull herself together, but she’d better go get you. He doubted he could make it, even if he crawled. But if he had to, he would…

Slowly, the ticking seconds turned longer. His eyes grew heavier, until he was unable to pry them open again. He fell asleep.

He woke to a streaming sun in his eyes, and a pounding ache between them.

Shit. He groaned, covering his eyes. Maybe getting drunk wasn’t good for an already fucked head after all.

“Hmm, good morning, sleepyhead.”

Mark frowned. He looked over and found Rachel leaning on his arm. She was lying naked under the thinnest sheet. He knew, not only because of her bare shoulders, but her nipples poking through the fabric.

“Jesus Christ,” he grunted, immediately turning over to climb out of the bed. He was very fucking relieved to see he still had his jeans and underwear on, but his shirt was missing. He found it strewn on the floor.

“You actually did that yourself,” Rachel remarked. “Think you got a bit hot last night.”

There was a playful note in her voice. Mark grit his teeth. He was fucking pissed.

“You’re over the fucking line, you hear me?” he snapped.

“What, are you really gonna tell her?” she taunted. “It’s not like we did anything. I just prefer to sleep naked.”

He snorted. Sure. And what happened to the part where she was supposed to go find you and tell you where he was? No, the girl saw an opportunity, and she took it.

Mark hesitated though, because she raised a good point. Goddamn it, what was he going to tell you?

His jaw clenched, and he angrily finished getting dressed. He got up and stormed out of the hotel room, but not before Rachel got of out bed and let the sheet fall away from her slender form. She walked in confidence and feminine sway over to the bathroom, smiling in amusement when he quickly turned away before he saw anything.

The door slammed shut.

Her smile slowly fell. Tears of embarrassment stung in her eyes. Not really because he was mad at her, but because he’d rejected her too.

She knew it was wrong. Yeah, she was pretty sure it was the worst thing she’d ever done. Part of her even hated herself for it. You were her older sister, after all. You, who always looked out for her when you two were kids—better than Mom did. You, who got the most attention from Dad, and the quiet reliance of Mom.

Yeah, Rachel did love you...but she also kind of hated you too.

After she got dressed, she went back to find her phone. She cycled through the pictures she took, every angle that made it seem like your fiancé had spent the night in her arms after the hot and steamy bits.

It was a joke. A cruel prank. But maybe after this, you wouldn’t open your mouth to criticize her ever again. Maybe you’d think twice next time, because in the back of your mind, you’d remember that she could’ve had your man.

Now...

Mark finished telling you the story from his perspective. He gave you as many details as he could remember: what she said and did, and what he said and did.

Understandably, you were getting more upset by the moment. That pendulum swung between shock, and anger, and upset again. It all culminated in hot tears as you crossed your arms, holding a hand over your mouth.

“How do I know that’s true?” you asked, wiping vainly at your cheeks.

The problem was, you wanted to believe him. Of course, you also wanted to believe your sister wasn’t quite as screwed up and hateful as you thought she was, but even this was insane. You'd only ever tried to look out for her. Maybe along the way you had been a little critical, a little too judgmental. But had you really deserved this?

Could you even let yourself hope it was all a lie?

Mark met your gaze head on. “Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m lying.”

You sighed in frustration. “Mark, you’re a professional fucking liar. I’m not a human polygraph.”

“But you know me.”

“I thought I did,” you said, rubbing at your eyes with shaking hands. Eventually, you were able to look at him again. “If what you said is true, why the hell didn’t you just tell me that?”

“You wouldn’t let me! You made up your mind before I could get a word in edgewise.”

“I was angry!"

God, what an understatement. You'd been so furious and hurt, you'd seriously debated taking one of your dad's old golf clubs and knocking out every window, headlight, and tail light in Mark's precious car.

"So you're saying you didn’t even fight for me. You just let me think the worst of you all this time? For what?!” You sunk your hands into your hair and pulled hard on the strands. You shook your head. “And you know what, why did you get so drunk in the first place? Your friends told me you went back to the hotel early, by yourself. It had to be for a reason.”

Mark nodded slowly.

That was when he knew, he really did have to give you everything.

“You, uh…remember those headaches I’d been getting?” he said. “Started about a month after your dad passed.”

Your brows wrinkled with a hint of confusion, but you nodded as the memory resurfaced.

“Yeah, you were going through entire bottles of Advil. But what does that—”

“I went to the doctor.” Mark rubbed a clammy palm over his jeans. He could stare down murderers, drug lords, and terrorists with steel in his veins, but coming clean with you was going to be one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He knew it in his bones, just like he knew why he needed to do it.

“Turns out… I’m sick, baby.”

Your expression changed, almost instantly. Traces of anger and doubt fell away, but so did some of the color in your face.

Mark took the chance to get a little closer on the couch. He laid a hand over yours on your thigh, but your whole body was locked up, sitting very still.

“W-What do you mean?” you asked.

“I mean,” he sighed, “I’ve got a mass in my brain the size of Nevada. I don't know how much time I got exactly, but..."

Your eyes widened. Your hands clenched into the fabric of your shirt, until your nails bit into your palms. As you processed those words and began to understand the weight of them, it sunk inky claws into your mind, into every shady corner.

You shook your head in denial, lips trembling. Mark just held your gaze, a silent confirmation that he said nothing but the truth.

"I found out a few days before the trip to Venice. I was trying to figure out how to tell you, but obviously I didn’t handle that part very well," he said.

Anger, stubbornness, suspicion, pretending you didn't care what he had to say—all of that faded. It drained out of your muscles, out of your pores. You began to fall apart.

You turned your hand under his and squeezed, hard. It was a while before you could speak, but Mark was patient. He held your hand and stroked his thumb back and forth across your skin while you tried and failed to hold onto your tears. Then your soul-wracking sobs.

Finally, he couldn’t help himself. He brought you closer, soothing a hand over your hair and pressing a kiss to your temple. You rested your forehead against his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” you said, a coarse whisper. “God, Mark. Why the fuck would you let me think you cheated on me, with my sister?”

He gave a wry huff. “I guess I thought I was being noble. I thought I’d rather have you hate me, than try to stay with me. Watch me break down, bit by bit, for God knows how fucking long. Now I know I’m just selfish. I don’t want you to see me like that… Hell, I don’t wanna see me like that.”

You pulled back on him. Devastation filled your bleary eyes, but you caressed his cheek with a shaking hand.

“Have you gotten treatment?” you asked.

“Doc says it’s not worth it.”

The divot between your brows deepened. “What about a second opinion?”

He hesitated.

“Have you seen another oncologist?” you pressed.

“No. Guess I didn’t see the point. I saw the scans myself. I don’t know how you’d confuse a big fucking tumor for anything else.”

“Mark.” You shook your head and wordlessly guided him closer. You framed his face with both hands, while his own found purchase on the soft curve of your waist.

It was nice to feel your touch again…but at what cost? All that stubborn fire in your eyes, all that pain, it was everything he’d been trying to avoid. 

Still, you were gentle, sliding your fingers up into his hair. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

After all this time, you were still his peaceful spot. If you only knew the amount of death he’d seen in just the past couple of weeks on Blythe’s taskforce, the chaos, the stress of near-misses, being on the sweet razor edge of getting killed, saving his own body the trouble. That thrill took its toll.

Before that, those nine months undercover had been a divorce from his reality, pretending that he hadn’t left you broken along with whatever heart there was left in him.

He never imagined that he’d be here with you again. He never thought you’d forgive him, let alone touch him like you still loved him.

When he opened his eyes, you were still there. Tears clung wet to your lashes. You led him closer, where you tenderly rested your forehead against his.

He let you do it too. You were the only one he’d soften up for like this.

He smiled. “Hmmm. What now, sweetheart?”

You bit your lip, but you slowly pulled back and opened your eyes. You didn’t go far though.

You guided him into an even more familiar path to your lips. It was more bittersweet than he remembered, but worth it all the same.

He was home.

AN: So, you guys forgive me? 😘💙 I know it's not the happiest ending ever, but it felt like a good place to pause for these two. Rachel was more complex than she seemed, and so was Mark's side of the story!

I have at least one more actual drabble in mind for these two, coming soon! 😂 Please let me know what you thought of this one 💜

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Mark Meachum Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Mark Meachum Tag List (Part 1):

It seems like a lot of people on the Dean tag list like Mark! lol So if you prefer not to be on this list, just let me know. I'll take you off no problem (you won't hurt my feelings lol 💜).

@luci-in-trenchcoats @lamentationsofalonelypotato @winchestergirl2 @deans-spinster-witch @roseblue373

@chevroletdean @hobby27 @kazsrm67 @foxyjwls007 @mostlymarvelgirl

@midnightmadwoman @lyarr24 @ladysparkles78 @waywardxwords @twinkleinadiamondsky

@rizlowwritessortof @jackles010378 @nancymcl @spnaquakindgdom @bettystonewell

@this-is-me19 @spnwoman @illicithallways @pieandmonsters @deansbbyx

@stoneyggirl2 @cheynovak @jollyhunter @deanwinchestersgirl87 @rachiem4-blog

@leigh70 @aylacavebear @kmc1989 @siampie @masked-lost-girl

@spnbabe67 @deanbrainrotwritings @alwaystiredandconfused @supernotnatural2005 @globetrotter28

@cookiechipdough @winchesterwild78 @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @iprobablyshipit91 @bleuatlas

@mrsjenniferwinchester @fromcaintodean @kiddieclaws

[twopoppies]

Hi Gina

Hope you are well.. so question ..as a newer fan, back when you first became a Larry how was it when you would read or listen to the anti's reasoning for the proofs not being true?. Did you find yourself questioning as well? As a newer fan I of course am reading all of the anti comments and their "proofs" as to why we sound crazy and I must admit some things they say do sound legit. How do you handle all the opposing views considering the guys really aren't active much anymore? Or are you more on the side "who gives a shit"?? Lol.. much love to you and always your blog is the best!!

Hi sugar. I joined the fandom in 2013 when, not only was there was a lot more constant evidence of them being together, but larries worked really hard to vet theories and debunk rumors that couldn’t be backed up with fact. Even receipts were more believable. Antis in those days really didn’t have a leg to stand on.

These days, there are a lot of theories that are just ridiculous and not based on anything except someone’s desire to get noticed. Too many larries get excited about that stuff and it turns out to be wrong and antis latch on to it and say “see? Larries are crazy!”

So, for me, I look to years of documented patterns and behaviors that make it very hard to shake my belief that they were together in the band. After the band broke up, it’s required a lot more sifting through stuff and lots more skepticism. But there is still stuff that, IMO, can’t be fully explained by anything other than the two of them being together, or at the very least, still very much involved in each other’s lives. And I always go back to the question: why are they still working so hard to make us think they’re not even friends when we know that’s not true?

Antis’ arguments generally end up being a handful of things that turned out to not be correct and, because so many of them are newer fans, there’s an inability to look at a lot of “proof” in the context in which it happened. So much has been lost because so many blogs are gone. It’s impossible to combat that.

So, it’s not that I don’t give a shit, but more than I’ve realized that Harry and Louis’ lives are very different now and it’s much more difficult to have concrete evidence. That means I base my thoughts a lot on gut feelings and looking for changes in behaviors and patterns. If I had only been here for a handful of years, I don’t know if that would be enough for me to believe so strongly.

[demigod-shenanigans]

Your hand in my pocket to keep us both warm

Summary: Jason was sure he’d known how to kindle a fire, at one point. But any ability he may have once possessed in regards to starting fires had been at least partially wiped away along with his memories.

And if that hadn’t been bad enough, the skill was also suffering from severe disuse. His best friend’s powers were centered around fire. Why would Jason have to bother with starting one by hand when Leo was right there, more than happy to get the job down with a grin on his face and a lazy flick of the wrist?

Except right now, Leo was unconscious and cold as ice, and he was counting on Jason to know how to do this.

And Jason was failing him.

~~~

Between Festus crash landing in the Appalachians, his powers still not working and almost getting drowned and turned into siren lunch, it’s safe to say that Jason Grace is having a miserable day. He’d almost dared to say things couldn’t get much worse.

Then it turns out something is severely wrong with Leo.

Word Count: 7.1k

Rating: Teen and Up

Written for @valgraceweek day 2: Kindle Listen. Did I have the time to write this? Objectively no. Did I write it anyway? Apparently. Also, this ended up being 7k words for some reason. Anyway, Valgrace hurt/comfort be upon you. (Yeah, yeah, I have both a brand and a problem and we all know it, LOL)

Mild emetophobia warning for the beginning of the first scene (Jason spits up a bit of water, it’s not very graphic or anything but just to be safe).

Title is from Abstract (Psychopomp) by Hozier. There’s no specific deeper reason for this, the vibes just felt right.

——— The first thing Jason registered when he came to was the cold. He was soaking wet, and an icy wind bit into his skin. The second thing he noticed was that Leo was kissing him.

This would have been a whole lot more romantic if Jason hadn’t responded by rolling over and vomiting up a whole bunch of water.

He was trying to remember what had happened—something about Festus crash landing in the Appalachians and needing to forage for supplies, but that didn’t explain the water or Leo kissing him.

Even if he’d been feeling his absolute best, Jason didn’t think he could have made sense of the lingering sensation of Leo’s warm lips against his. Currently, he wasn’t feeling his best. His chest hurt, he couldn’t stop coughing and he had questions about how the amount of water that was coming up had even fit inside of his body.

His mind was fuzzy and Leo had kissed him and nothing made sense.

“Oh, thank the gods. I thought I’d lost you for a second there,” Leo said, gently rubbing his back. His voice still had its usual joking tinge to it, but there was something vulnerable and desperate in it, too. “Stupid sirens.”

Sirens. Right. A whole pack of them. He remembered now.

Festus was mostly intact, but the fixes he did need to get airborne again were severe enough that even a few of the parts had sent Leo’s tool belt into a several hour timeout. So: they were apparently stuck here for a while. They’d wandered off to find food and water, to hopefully save the tool belt exclusively for repair parts so they could get out of here as fast as possible.

Then they’d heard the music. 

Jason remembered Leo gripping his arm, and remembered breaking free of that grip, talking about the possibility of a spring or maybe even people they could ask for help. People who might know how they could get home. Other demigods.

What he’d said had grown more and more absurdly utopian, to the point where even Jason’s own mind had thrown up a sign and said “hey, something isn’t right”, but he’d been too far gone by then. Too lulled in by the siren’s sweet promises of parents who loved him enough not to treat him like an item in an apology gift basket and a sister who stuck around and friends who loved him even if all he ever achieved was being a kid. Of getting to be with everyone he loved and managing to make everyone happy and have none of them fight.

Stupid. Jason had been so incredibly stupid. The warning signs had all been there, flashing bright red, and he had happily walked past them all and tried to drown himself in the lake.

If it hadn’t been for Leo…

“Thanks,” he muttered weakly, coughing up another mouthful of water before he was finally able to stop. From the way breathing hurt, he was a little afraid his lungs had come up with it. 

But Leo was still pressed against his back, warm hand was still rubbing circles between his shoulder blades, so life wasn’t too bad. 

“Eh, de nada. A little siren whacking, a little rescue breathing… all in a day’s work. I wasn’t gonna let them drown you.” 

Rescue breathing. Right. That made a lot more sense than Leo just kissing him out of nowhere.

For some reason, Jason felt strangely bummed about it. He tried to hold onto the way Leo’s mouth had felt pressed to his.

“I’m sorry. I should have picked up on what they were. I should have-” Jason coughed again. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Yeah, you look like shit,” Leo confirmed, holding a bottle out towards him. “We’re almost out, but you should probably drink the last bit of nectar. I don’t know shit about drowning, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably not great on the body, even when it doesn’t kill you.”

Jason didn’t protest, but he did feel very guilty for using up the rest of their resources in a very avoidable event. The nectar made the ache in his lungs ease. It tasted like the cherry soda Piper and Leo had urged him to try on their last night on the Argo, before this whole nonsense had started. 

Jason and Leo had been on an actual Odyssey these past few months, trying to make their way back home and, for the most part, failing miserably. 

Their plan to defy the prophecy by dealing the final blow against Gaia together had worked in keeping them both alive, but it had also caused Leo and Jason to wake up on a strange deserted island in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, the universe hadn’t appreciated their loose interpretation of destiny and had decided they needed to be taught a lesson.

Between the Mare Nostrum absolutely crawling with monsters, Jason’s powers going haywire and them barely managing to get one measly Iris message out to Piper before demigod communications decided to completely nope out on them, it hadn’t been a great time.

Even the small mercy of someone—maybe Leo’s dad?—making sure they also had Festus, actually getting anywhere was proving difficult. Being a son of Jupiter basically made Jason a blinking neon sign that spelled “Free lunch!”, which was bad enough when his powers were working, but was much worse now that they weren’t. 

Jason would have died approximately five hundred times on this trip if it hadn’t been for Leo. 

He hated feeling so vulnerable and useless. He hated thinking Leo might have been home by now if it hadn’t been for him.

But Leo hadn’t so much as complained so far—at least not about Jason. He’d complained plenty about the gods and the Fates and whoever else might have thought doing this to them was funny. 

He just made his usual jokes to try and keep their mood up, cooked with whatever Jason was able to forage and built incredible shelters out of whatever measly materials they could gather. When it became necessary, he killed the shit out of anything that tried to eat them. At night, he slept with his whole body wrapped around Jason like an—admittedly very wiggly—heated blanket.

The stressful circumstances might have strained some people’s relationships, but they’d had the opposite effect on Jason. The more time he spent with Leo, the more fond of him he became. This should have been impossible, considering just how fond he’d already been of his best friend at the start of this, but evidently, it wasn’t. 

Leo was brave and brilliant and hilarious and, as it turned out, Jason was completely and hopelessly in love with him.

“You feeling any better?” Leo asked, pressing a warm hand to Jason’s face. “You look a lot better. You’re still cold, but you’re also soaked, so it might be that.”

“I’m okay,” Jason confirmed. He still felt a little off, but nowhere near as bad as he had been. He pushed himself up into a seated position and turned to face Leo. “Thank-” The rest of the sentence died in his throat. “You’re bleeding.”

“Officially the weirdest thanks I‘ve ever gotten, but you’re welcome,” Leo joked. He seemed perfectly cheerful, despite the fact that his arm was covered in cuts. “It looks worse than it is. One of the sirens raked her claws down my arm. I set her on fire in return, so she got the worse end of the deal, honestly.” His expression turned sour. “That’s what she gets for wearing my mom’s face.”

Jason did not say “I’m sorry,” mostly because he knew Leo wouldn’t want to talk about it. Instead he held out his hand. “Let me patch you up?”

“You’re such a worry-wart, but fine,” Leo said with a sigh, obediently moving closer and letting Jason take a look at his arm.

Leo’s tool belt was thankfully pretty decent about medical supplies, so when Jason asked for them, he got a bottle of clean water, disinfectant wipes and bandages no problem.

Leo made no sound when Jason poured the water over his arm to clean it—he’d thankfully been right, the cuts weren’t deep—but he hissed with pain when Jason disinfected the area.

“Is that really necessary?”

“Better safe than sorry. We don’t need this getting infected, especially not now that we’re out of nectar as well as ambrosia.” Now that you wasted the rest of it on me, he didn’t say. Jason hated that he couldn’t do this without hurting Leo. Hated that it was his fault for being stupid and blindly walking into this very obvious trap. 

“You’re the worst,” Leo muttered, but he let Jason wrap up his arm with no further complaints. He just quietly tucked himself against Jason’s side and placed his head down on Jason’s shoulder. 

If it hadn’t been for the circumstances, it could have been a really nice moment.

~~~~

“We should probably try to get back to Festus soon. We left him ages ago, and it’s starting to get dark,” Leo pointed out after Jason was finished. “How are you feeling? Do you think you can walk?”

 ”Yeah. I think the nectar’s fully kicked in now. I’ll be fine,” Jason confirmed. He pushed himself to his feet. He still felt a little woozy, but nowhere near as bad as he had when he’d woken up. The only thing that seriously sucked was the cold. The snowboarding jacket that had originally done a great job at keeping him warm was soaked so thoroughly that he wasn’t sure it would ever properly dry again. He took it off, trying to wring some of the water out of it, but it was hopeless. He wasn’t sure if he was worse off with it on or off. 

“I’m not dealing with you catching hypothermia. I’ve patched you up more than enough for one quest—even one as stupidly long as this,” Leo commented, wrapping himself around Jason and radiating warmth until both of their clothes had gone from sopping wet to dry and a little bit warm, like they’d been taken right out of the dryer. “There. That’s better.”

“You’re amazing,” Jason said, smiling softly at him. 

“I know.” Leo smiled back. “Whew, that just really took it out of me.” He fanned his face in obvious exaggeration and chuckled.

“Yeah, I’m sure. It’s not like I’ve literally seen you do this in your sleep,” Jason joked. Leo had pulled similar tricks dozens upon dozens of times—regulating his body temperature in whatever way he wanted seemed like it was basically second nature to him. He did look a little tired, but Jason suspected that had nothing to do with his human heat lamp behaviors and everything to do with their earlier siren encounter. “Thank you, though. You seriously saved my ass back there, and this was… well, even if I know it wasn’t hard for you, I still want you to know how much I appreciate it.”

“You’re such a sap,” Leo said with a shake of his head, elbowing him gently.

“You love me.” That was one of the few things in life Jason was completely and utterly sure of. It didn’t matter in what way, exactly, Leo loved him. It meant the world to know with such certainty that he did. “Now come on, let’s get moving. We need to go if we’re gonna make it back to Festus before the sun goes down.”

~~~~

At first, they walked alongside each other. Leo kept a hand on Jason’s arm the whole time—which was a pretty good indicator for just how badly the earlier incident had scared him.

Jason supposed he could stand to be a bit more concerned about the fact that he’d almost died (again), but he wasn’t, really. The thought of his death had never scared him as much as it maybe should have. He was way more concerned with failing the people around him than he’d ever been with the concept of dying, so that aspect of it—that he’d put Leo in danger—bothered him way more than the near-death experience did. 

Leo was clearly rattled. He was rambling even more than usual, spouting random facts about physics and talking about all the projects he wanted to start when he got home. Jason wasn’t even sure he was pausing for breath half the time.

He wasn’t complaining, though. As much as he’d be lying if he said he understood even half of what Leo was saying, he just loved listening to him. Loved seeing the way his eyes sparkled when he got excited, and how his whole face lit up when he was asked follow-up questions—like he’d half expected Jason to just zone out on him and was exhilarated to discover that he was still listening and genuinely interested. Half of the questions Jason asked were probably really stupid, but Leo still answered them all, patient in a way that he wasn’t when it came to a lot of other things.

He wasn’t complaining about the hand on his arm, either. It was nice to have Leo so close to him.

Eventually, Leo quieted down a little. They’d been walking for a while, and he’d started having trouble keeping up to the point where Jason had had to slow his pace. The one he’d set before had been relatively swift, which in retrospect hadn’t been entirely fair to Leo.

“Sorry. Sometimes I forget you haven’t had legion training.”

“Forget legion training, you just have freakishly long legs and I do not,” Leo joked, still struggling to keep up despite the fact that Jason had slowed his step. “How much farther is it?”

He was panting a little. The hand that clung to the crook of Jason’s elbow felt a little less like Leo trying to reassure himself that Jason was still there and a little more like he was trying to get Jason to drag him the rest of the way. 

“At the pace we were going? Maybe another hour. At our current pace? Probably around two,” Jason guessed.

“Urgh, forget this,” Leo groaned, dramatically collapsing against him. “Save yourself. Just put me out of my misery.”

Jason shook his head. “Yeah, not happening. Especially not after you just saved me.” He nudged Leo gently. “I could carry you, if you want.”

“What am I, a toddler?” Leo snorted. “Yeah, not happening. Not unless you can fly us the rest of the way.”

“I wish.” Jason missed being able to control the winds—if he’d still been able to reliably do that, he could have gotten them back to Festus in moments. But the last time he’d tried it, he’d lost control so badly that he’d just dropped like a rock mid-flight, and the landing had been less than pleasant. He wouldn’t risk it. Not when his dad was clearly pissed enough at him that he was taking his powers away as a punishment. Not when trying meant risking Leo’s life as well as his own. “I’m not sure I even trust myself to try and calm the winds, never mind trying to get them to lift me.”

“Shame.” Leo rubbed at his exposed arms. “It’s pretty damn cold up here.”

“No kidding,” Jason snorted. Even looking at Leo in his thin shirt and cargo shorts was making him shiver. “We’re up on a mountain in winter, of course it’s-” He froze in his tracks, alarm bells going off in his head. “Hang on. You’re cold?”

Leo didn’t get cold. That was his whole thing.

“A little?” Leo shrugged. “It’s fine, I can deal.”

Jason was looking at him now— really looking at him—and his chest tightened. Leo had gone pale and he was shivering in his thin clothes. “You don’t look so good,” Jason said gently, reaching out for him, but Leo just shouldered past him and kept moving.

“I said I could deal. If you can walk off being drowned, I can deal with being a little cold,” he insisted stubbornly, but the next gust of cold mountain wind had him breathing in sharply. “Is that how you g-guys feel all the time? Gods, this s-sucks.”

His teeth were audibly chattering.

“Do you want my jacket?” Jason offered immediately, already moving to take it off without waiting for a reply.

“I’m not sure us b-both freezing to death is gonna help anything,” Leo commented, still rubbing at his arms.

“Well, I’m wearing a pullover underneath, and you’re in a shirt, so,” Jason pointed out, wrapping the jacket around his best friend’s shoulders before he could protest. He ignored how much more biting the cold became without the jacket. If Leo’s heat regulation wasn’t working, he couldn’t even begin to imagine how cold he’d been in his thin shirt and shorts. “Does that help at all?”

Leo sighed with relief as he slipped into the jacket. It went all the way down to his knees.

“Yeah. B-better,” he confirmed, but he was still shivering. 

“Maybe we should just try to find shelter for the night and get back to Festus tomorrow,” Jason suggested, looking from Leo’s trembling form to where the sun was starting to dip and back.

“I don’t wanna leave him alone all night. I don’t want him to think we ditched him like broken equipment,” Leo protested. He stubbornly kept on walking.

He made it three more steps before he suddenly collapsed, crashing into Jason like a puppet whose strings had been cut all at once.

“Leo!” Jason frantically looked him over, chest tight with panic. Leo’s eyes had glazed over, and he was obviously struggling to keep them open at all. With Leo pressed against his chest like this, it was impossible to ignore just how hard he was trembling.

“Jase?” His voice was slurring. “I d-don’t feel so good.”

“You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna find you a place to warm up, and you’re gonna be just fine. But I need you to stay awake. Can you do that for me?”

Leo’s gaze was distant. Jason wasn’t sure he’d heard him at all. 

“I t-think I’m gonna pass out for a bit. Don’t let anything eat me, ‘kay?”

Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he went completely limp in Jason’s arms.

Jason didn’t allow himself even a second to freak out or cry or think. He just picked Leo up, cradled his unconscious form to his chest, and started running as fast as his legs would carry him. ~~~~

Jason got lucky—as far as the concept of luck could be applied to a situation where one had crash landed on a mountain and their best friend had passed out from severe hypothermia, anyway. He must have taken a different path than they had on the way down, because not even fifteen minutes into him frantically trying to find some sort of shelter so he could try and get Leo warmed up, he came across a log cabin.

It was clearly abandoned, and had been for a while—there was a hole in the roof, one of the windows had broken and been poorly barred with wooden planks and the door was hanging onto to a single hinge for dear life—but it was the best thing that could have happened to them in the circumstances.

The inside wasn’t warm, exactly (see: hole in the roof, wrecked window, door he couldn’t close without risking it coming off completely), but it did provide some basic shelter from the wind.

There wasn’t much left in terms of furniture—whoever had left the cabin had clearly known they wouldn’t be back—but there was an old, slightly wrecked couch that they apparently hadn’t considered worth taking, covered in a slightly moth-eaten woolen blanket, and they obviously hadn’t been able to remove the fireplace that was built into the opposite wall.

Jason’s shoulders slumped with relief. Whoever had been nuts enough to consider building this cabin in the middle of nowhere a good idea, he seriously owed them.

He gently placed Leo down on the couch and pulled the old blanket over him. His skin was icy, his breaths shallow. Jason needed to get him properly warmed up. He begged the tool belt for anything he could think of that might work. Most of his prayers went unanswered, but he came away with a tarp and a thermal blanket, which was infinitely better than nothing.

Jason wrapped him up in them as best he could. Leo’s shivering eased a little, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

He needed to get a fire going.

The fireplace still looked fine, but unfortunately there was barley any wood left inside it. If he got lucky, they’d kept it elsewhere and there was still some left somewhere inside the house. If this went the way the rest of this trip had gone… 

Jason shook his head. He didn’t like the thought of leaving Leo here alone and unprotected while he went to collect firewood outside, so he’d just have to hope Fortuna could show him some bare minimum kindness after everything they’d been through.

He took Leo’s hand in his and gently squeezed his fingers.

“I’ll be right back, okay? Just hang on. You’re gonna be fine,” he said, more to himself than Leo.

Then he took a flashlight out of the tool belt and went to search the cabin for supplies.

It quickly became obvious to Jason that the person this place had once belonged to had left almost exclusively a bunch of garbage they no longer wanted behind.

There was a bedroom which still held a bed, but it looked so rickety that Jason was afraid to breathe in its general direction in fear of making it collapse. He was immediately proven right when he carefully removed the two slightly musty pillows, as one of the bed’s legs promptly gave out. He jumped back, very narrowly avoiding getting his foot crushed by the bed frame. 

The closet was empty except for a few sweaters that were too moth-eaten to be of any real use. There was a supply closet with an old vacuum, a cleaning rag and, for some reason, a full bottle of all purpose cleaner. Grand. At least if Jason got really bored amidst making sure his best friend didn’t die, he could deep-clean this place.

The bathroom which had no running water—though Jason wasn’t sure he’d have trusted any water that came out of the rusted-to-hell faucet even if he could have gotten it to turn on. He found a very tiny piece of hand soap, which he left, and a small stack of washcloths, which he took along based on the very optimistic idea that he may find a way to warm up water if he could get a fire going.

He did end up having to go back outside for firewood, but before he could indulge any ridiculous, half-panicked thoughts on whether there was anything around he could attempt to chop down a tree with, he spotted the small, tarp-covered woodshed.

He must have walked right past it on the way in, but he’d been so preoccupied with Leo’s unconscious form in his arms that he hadn’t even registered it.

Fortuna must have decided to take pity on Jason, because when he pulled back the tarp, he found the shed still filled with firewood.

~~~~

Jason tried to remember what he knew about fireplaces and starting fires in general. He removed some of the larger burned chunks that would no longer be of use and put the logs of wood he’d carried inside into the grate that was obviously intended for this purpose.

It was then that he discovered he had absolutely zero clue how to proceed.

Jason was sure he’d known how to kindle a fire, at one point. He had vague memories of being on a quest with Reyna, and her showing him how to use light and friction to get a fire going. But he could barely remember any of the time he’d spent with Reyna clearly. He definitely didn’t remember that specific moment vividly enough to use it in any sort of instructional manner. 

Any ability he may have once possessed in regards to starting fires had been at least partially wiped away along with his memories. 

And if that hadn’t been bad enough, the skill was also suffering from severe disuse. His best friend’s powers were centered around fire. Why would Jason have to bother with starting one by hand when Leo was right there, more than happy to get the job down with a grin on his face and a lazy flick of the wrist?

Except right now, Leo was unconscious and cold as ice, and he was counting on Jason to know how to do this.

And Jason was failing him.

Jason wasted fifteen minutes opening every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen in search of a lighter, and when that failed, he spent the next half an hour trying to make a fire with what little he remembered of Reyna’s instructions. He placed a stick in the middle of one of the logs and rolled it between this palms until they were raw and covered in splinters, but it was useless. For the longest time, nothing at all happened, and the two sparks he did manage to get weren’t large enough to catch anything on fire.

Behind him, Leo’s breaths grew more and more shallow.

They were running out of time.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said, chest heavy. “I don’t… I can’t remember how to do this,” he admitted to Leo’s unconscious form, feeling like the worst person in the entire world.

Jason hadn’t allowed himself to break down and cry a lot of times in his life, but now his vision blurred with unshed tears. Jason’s job was protecting people. A wolf protected his pack. A soldier protected his home. Even at the cost of his own life. He’d been doing the best he could at it for as long as he could remember. But now he was failing Leo in the worst way possible. 

This was all his fault. After everything they’d been through, because Jason had been selfish enough to allow himself to hope—selfish enough to let Leo talk him into this plan that defied their fates when Jason should have just gone and sacrificed himself like the good little soldier he was raised to be—Leo was going to die. Leo was going to die, and it was going to be Jason’s fault for being stupid and useless and unable to start a fucking fire.

If Jason had just died at the end of their last quest, Leo would have been safe at camp right now. He wouldn’t have had to go through any of the hardships they’d faced over the last few months. He wouldn’t be lying there, slowly freezing to death.

Jason needed to do something— anything —but he could barely remember how to breathe.

Thunder boomed overhead, and it felt like his father was telling him he saw how weak he’d grown and didn’t approve. Rain started dripping through the hole in the roof. The room grew even colder.

Jason wasn’t sure why he suddenly remembered it, but something about the noise startled him out of his panic.

In the very early days of humanity, before Prometheus had gifted them fire, the only way for humans to attain fire was through making use of the fires that occurred naturally—through heat or lightning strikes. Jason couldn’t do heat, but lightning, especially when it was already storming… maybe if his father was feeling merciful.

He ran a hand up and down Leo’s icy cheek, hoping it was comforting, but Leo shivered violently under his touch. “I’ll be right back, okay? I’ll figure this out, I promise.”

He forced himself to take a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm down and exited the cabin. The sky was dark except for the startling brightness of the occasional lightning strike. Rain fell in thick drops around him.

He looked around for the thickest branch he could find, then tried his best to pull on his powers to direct the angry sky right at the tip of the branch.

Nothing happened. Of course it didn’t. His ability to make lightning strike was basically an allowance he got from his dad. An allowance he only got rarely, when he was doing especially well. Why he’d even considered the possibility that his dad might grant it to him when the way his powers had been acting since this whole thing had started—like his dad hadn’t just cut his lightning allowance but also confiscated a bunch of things that Jason had always thought belonged to him as punishment—was beyond him. Sheer desperation, maybe.

But Jason wasn’t ready to give up yet. 

Jason had always sort of wondered if part of the reason Jupiter had punished Prometheus was beyond the mere defiance of his orders. Jupiter hadn’t liked that humans no longer had to pray to him for fire.

He wasn’t beyond praying. He would beg, if he had to. 

“Father,” he said, lowering his head in reverence, “I know I’ve angered you. I know I’m not the son you wished for. I’m not even half the demigod my sister is. But I have been doing whatever was asked of me for most of my life, and asked for very little in return. Allow me to do this,” Jason said, and then he was on his knees in the mud, “and I swear on the River Styx I will not ask anything of you ever again.”

The sky thundered as if in acknowledgement, making Jason flinch. He focused on the branch again.

Lightning struck it right in the middle, and then the branch was alight in Jason’s hands.

He hurried inside, careful not to accidentally burn the cabin down with his flaming branch, then stuck it into the fireplace. It took a moment, but then the flames licked across the logs, and before too long, they had a proper fire.

Jason nearly wept with relief.

“Thank you, father. I will not forget this.”

~~~~

Jason moved the couch as closely to the fireplace as he could without it seeming like a fire hazard. Then he haphazardly covered the hole in the roof and made a careful attempt to close the door. It had the decency to not come off its last remaining hinge in the process, but it didcreak loudly in protest.

He found an old but miraculously not rusty pot, pulled a few water bottles from Leo’s tool belt and got the water warmed up on the fireplace.

He was fairly certain this wasn’t how fireplaces were intended to be used, but he was well beyond giving a fuck. 

Dry compresses would have been better, but he didn’t have any, so he used the washcloths, dipping them into the warm water and wringing them out to the best of his abilities. He carefully draped one across Leo’s neck and stuffed two more inside of his shirt—no putting them on the arms or legs, that was a fever thing and would cause his core body temperature to go down rather than up. If everything else failed him, at least Jason’s basic first aid training did not.

Body heat was good, too. If Leo had done most of the heating part during all of their other nights, Jason supposed it was more than fair that it was his job now. He squeezed himself onto the couch next to Leo, then pulled his best friend to his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around him. It was a tight fit, but he made it work. 

Leo immediately moved even closer, wrapping his arms around Jason almost automatically. His face was starting to look a little less gray.

“You’re going to be okay,” Jason said again, and this time, he almost believed it.

~~~~

Leo woke up several hours later, with a cheerful, “well, that whole experience sucked massively. Solid 0/10.”

Jason hadn’t slept a wink. He’d spent most of the night reassuring himself that Leo was still breathing and that he wasn’t getting worse. Even after his skin had started to feel a semi-normal temperature again—that was a normal temperature for the average human, specifically, not a normal Leo temperature, it still didn’t have that—he hadn’t been able to relax. He’d kept swapping out the washcloths whenever they grew cold and making sure to put new logs into the fire when it started to burn low.

He hadn’t been able to feel even a fraction of relief right until the second he’d heard Leo’s voice just now.

“You’re awake.” He gently stroked Leo’s cheek. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, I think,” Leo said, cheeks suddenly vermillion. “Thanks for the assist, Superman.”

“You scared me,” Jason said quietly, hand still lingering on Leo’s cheek. “For a while, I thought-” He bit his lip, not quite able to get the words out. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to wake up again.”

“Yeah, well. That’s how you made me feel with your little drowning stunt, so I think me passing out from power overuse was pretty fair in terms of retaliation. Which is all that was, by the way.” Leo rolled his eyes. “My dad gave me a whole dream lecture about it.”

This should have been a relief, but it just made Jason feel worse. Leo wouldn’t have had to overuse his powers if Jason’s own hadn’t been all over the place. That he’d had to use them at allwas entirely due to the stupid trap Jason had walked into.

Leo nudged him.

“Jase, don’t look at me like that. I’m fine now, seriously.”

“You almost weren’t,” Jason said shakily. “I messed up, and you almost weren’t okay.”

“I am, though.” 

“I can’t lose you, Leo. You’re too important to me. You’re-” 

Jason broke off. He was too rattled by that brief thought of having to wake up in a world where Leo wasn’t there to properly put into words everything he’d been feeling. He needed Leo to understand, but words weren’t enough, so he gave up on words altogether.

He still had his hands on Leo’s jaw, one thumb gently stroking his cheek, and so on a purely technical part, the next part was easy, almost natural. He just titled Leo’s head slightly upwards and pressed his lips to Leo’s.

On a less technical part, Jason was an anxious mess, though. His skin prickled, his heart was hammering and he had a distinct feeling that if his powers had been working, he would have shocked them both into cardiac arrest—especially once Leo’s wide, startled eyes fluttered closed and he started softly kissing him back.

His lips weren’t warm, the way they had been when Jason had woken up with Leo’s mouth pressed to his the day before, but they still fit against his perfectly.

“Uh. So. Holy shit, Jase,” Leo said when they broke apart, brain apparently just as fried as Jason’s was. He was smiling that huge, perfect smile that Jason had only ever seen on him when he’d completed a project he was really excited about—except it was possibly even wider now. “So apparently I need to have way more near-death experiences if that’s what it takes for you to kiss me.”

“Please don’t,” Jason said immediately. He was relatively sure his best friend had been joking but he wouldn’t chance it. He was almost delirious from joy. He wouldn’t risk this moment—or any future moments like it—for anything. “I’ll kiss you whenever you want me to. No previous dying required. No previous dying is preferred, actually.”

“Oh.” Leo beamed at him. “Even better.”

And then Leo was kissing him, and for a brief moment Jason wondered if he’d died and ended up in Elysium, because that was how surreal this whole thing felt.

“I love you,” he muttered into the kiss, which maybe made it a kind of shitty kiss and was maybe way too soon, but Jason didn’t care. “I need you to know that, in case I ever lose you. In case something happens to me. I don’t know what I’d do with myself if-”

“Jase,” Leo interrupted him, in a tone that was almost admonishing. “I love you, too, but gods, I’m gonna need you to can it. I’ve been wanting to kiss you for who knows how long, and your whole funeral planning is kind of ruining the mood,” he teased, flicking him in the head. 

“Sorry. I wasn’t trying-”

“What did I just say about shutting up?” Leo warned, and before Jason could do something moronic like try to apologize a second time, Leo’s warm mouth pressed against Jason’s again, hands slowly moving to wrap around his neck. They were warm, too. Not just normal human warm. They were proper Leo temperatures again. 

It was the best feeling in the world.

Jason stood by that statement even after Leo had had to frantically put out his burning pullover.

“I guess your fire powers are working again,” Jason said with a chuckle. He was relieved and delighted, despite the fact that Leo looked absolutely mortified. “If I’d known mouth to mouth would work, I’d have tried that way sooner.”

“Shut up,” Leo muttered, flushing an even deeper shade of vermillion. He gently swatted at Jason, but the shame had melted off his face in favor of a slightly annoyed laugh, so that was a win in Jason’s book. “Not like you seemed to need my fire powers, though. You got a pretty decent fire going without me. Guess I’m redundant now,” he joked. 

“Uh. About that.” Jason looked away. 

“What did you do?” 

It was Jason’s turn to be mortified now.

“I kind of spent half an hour trying to start a fire, and I failed miserably. There isn’t a single lighter in this entire cabin, I couldn’t remember how to do it by hand, and I panicked. I sort of ended up begging my dad for a lightning strike.”

“Sorry, I- you did what?” Leo sounded half-baffled, half-horrified. “Please tell me you didn’t sign away your soul or something.”

“Nothing quite that bad, but I did swear a Styx oath,” Jason said quietly. “That was the last help I’m ever getting from my dad’s side. I don’t know if that means my powers are gone for good now. I also don’t care.” He pulled Leo back into his arms, pressing their foreheads together. “You were dying, Leo. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Jase,” Leo said, his voice somewhere between exasperation and, for some reason, unbridled amusement, “you know you could have just pulled a lighter out of the tool belt instead of going full Little Mermaid on me, right? I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, but you didn’t have to be this dramatic about it.”

Leo drew back slightly, then unceremoniously pulled three separate lighters and a blowtorch out of the toolbelt.

Jason, who at the time had been on the verge of losing it and hadn’t even considered the option despite how obvious it was in retrospect, kind of wanted the ground to swallow him whole.

“…I am the dumbest person on the planet.”

“You’ve got a bit of a thick skull sometimes,” Leo agreed teasingly, gently knocking a first against the side of Jason’s head for emphasis, “but considering the amount of concussions you get, that’s probably for the better. I’m still going to give you tons of shit about this, because it was reckless as well as stupid, but…” Leo pressed their foreheads back together, his voice fond, “even when you’re being stupid about it, it means a lot, knowing that you care so much.”

“Of course I care,” Jason said softly. “You’re amazing. I like myself so much more when I’m with you. I don’t know how I could do anything other than care.”

Jason couldn’t help himself. He just had to lean forward and kiss him again. At first, Leo reciprocated, but then he abruptly shoved him back, which was the only reason Jason didn’t end up burning himself when Leo’s nose lit on fire.

“Dude, you can’t just say shit like that and not expect me to burst into flames,” Leo chided him, covering his nose with one hand. “No more making out for now. As much as I’d like to keep kissing you, I don’t want you ending up with third degree burns, especially not when we’re out of nectar and ambrosia.” Jason wasn’t sure what facial expression he was making, but he must have looked disappointed, because Leo snorted and reached out to squeeze his hand. “Kissing will proceed once I’ve calmed the fuck down a little, don’t worry.”

It would have come across as surprisingly casual and nonchalant if he hadn’t been blushing so hard and if there hadn’t been flames dancing in his curls. 

Great. So neither of them were able to be normal about this. That was a relief.

“Cool. That’s…” Jason’s face burned. “That’s cool.”

“Extremely,” Leo agreed. “But don’t go ahead and start, like, doodling joint tombstones or anything. I meant what I said about it ruining the mood.”

Jason shook his head. “It’s not like I want either of us to die. I’ve just kind of known death was an option from a pretty young age. And with the way these past few months have gone…” He squeezed Leo’s hand. “It’s hard to let myself have good things without a dread looming over them like a cloud. I always feel like something is going to go wrong.”

“I get that. I do. But for that exact reason, I’m gonna say fuck that.��We’ve been through enough nonsense. We deserve better than that.” He smiled at Jason. “I’m gonna get Festus fixed, and then we’re getting back to camp, and once we do, I’ll take you on a proper date. Man, Piper will tease the shit out of me because I didn’t believe her when she said you were into me. It’s going to be perfect.”

Briefly, Jason allowed himself to imagine it, and he couldn’t help but smile back.

“I don’t know. I actually think it’s pretty perfect already,” Jason told him, pressing a kiss to the top of Leo’s head despite the explicit ‘no more kissing’-safety instructions he’d been given. That was Leo’s fault, anyway. Before he’d met him, the thought of outright defying orders never would have occurred to Jason. He’d been a different person before Leo. Jason couldn’t say he missed that person very much. “Crashed dragons and Odyssey and near-death experiences notwithstanding.”

———

Author’s Note:

Full disclosure: I am not sure if this fic is any good. I wrote it in the middle of studying for an exam which I may have failed and am currently as I write this A/N in the middle of studying for another exam that I may also fail and I’m just out of fucks to give at this point. I didn’t even edit it because I don’t have the time or the patience right now. (Shoutout to my friend Mal who looked it over and gave me some feedback, though. ILY 💜)

Anyway, in summary: started making it. Had a mental breakdown. Bon appetit.

There’s not a ton of context regarding this AU, I basically just came up with it because I needed a backdrop for this fic and the concept of Jason and Leo being stuck on the Odyssey Leo was canonically on with Calypso together. (Re: Calypso, please just assume the gods kept their promise and freed her in this scenario.)

What’s going on with Jason’s powers is very specifically Zeus punishing him for talking back to him in BoO. I figured if he can do it to actual gods like he does with Apollo, he could probably do it to his kids, right?

Leo on the other hand is just suffering from severe power overuse because as much as he won’t admit it since Jason already feels terrible about the whole thing, having to take care of a bunch of monster situations basically on his own while he’s traveling with a walking monster beacon did wear him out quite a lot.

Anyway, that is enough yapping from me, I think. If you enjoyed this fic, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I have a couple more Valgrace fics up on my account, including an ongoing Orpheus Eurydice retelling that I’m very proud of, so, you know. Just casually putting that out there ;)

Welp, I have to get back to my Spanish vocab now. Wish me luck on Tuesday, because I’m gonna need it.

[melonteee]

Forgive me if this is redundant to other asks/videos etc, but I thought this and wanted to shoot it by you. Also, I haven't seen film red and don't know anything regarding what's Canon and not in it.

So:

At least back when he was talking to Gaban, Shanks refers to his dream as wanting to peacefully be with Buggy, etc etc. But what about his crew? Do you think he would drop them for Buggy if the trade was necessary? Or has he made new, better bonds after an ugly break up? It almost feels like a married woman waiting for her former lover to ask for her again, when she's already got kids and stuff with another man, too past the point of return.

(This was an issue / question I had with Ace too, Ace's self worth and will to live was all tied up in white-beard and Luffy (and Sabo) despite the Spade pirates being a huge part of his life.... Like did they mean nothing to you? Lol. I find that crews lack character/agency/identity but that's what happens when you have 1 billion characters to write)

Also, do you think being "born of fate" could mean Shanks is a D? And what would that mean for the story? Thank u scary pink lady ✨

I always found it interesting that, when Shanks talked to Gaban and Rayleigh, he was alone. Maybe Shanks' crew was running around Elbaf and Sabaody, I don't know, but they don't seem to intrude on Shanks' moments with people from his past.

And I remember having this same thought about Ace and his crew, but I do believe this is just a showing of what the grand line does to you and how it changes a person. I don't believe Ace really ever wanted to become pirate king, because not only did Ace not truly have that as his desire, but he believed in Luffy a lot more than himself for that dream. I'm sure, more than anything, Ace cared about his crew, but what Ace really wanted was...well, a family and a dad who loved him. While his crew could've given him that, I think he realised - through Whitebeard - that he just isn't cut out to be a captain. But we know Whitebeard liked Ace because of how Ace protected his crew, he saw how deeply this boy loved, and he knew this boy needed to be loved back! Ace's crew definitely meant a lot to him, over time Ace just changed and figured out he wasn't fit to lead these people - even if he loved them.

And then we get...to Shanks. Because, anon, I don't know what Shanks' relationship is with his crew, and it's something I've been trying to figure out ever since this 1152 confession. Shanks seems similar to Ace in the sense that...he doesn't want to do any of this - even more so on Shanks' behalf due to him being the 'chosen one' or something. I'm sure Shanks' crew means a lot to him, I'm sure he loves them, but it's quite clear this is not the life he had in mind for himself. It's also not the life he really, actually desired. To be a big pirate, to be a big emperor, to have a powerful crew, did Shanks want this? It's pretty safe to say, with Shanks saying he just wanted a carefree life, and with Gaban roundabout telling him that unfortunately couldn't ever happen, he didn't want this.

So...I don't know what Shanks would do if Buggy were open to sailing with him. I think, best case scenario, Buggy just becomes part of his current crew. But considering Shanks is currently in a position he didn't want to be in, and considering Shanks feels as if he's just going through the motions with his current crew, maybe he'd find it unfair on them to keep them under him just so he can live his carefree dreams with a clown LOL

And I don't think Shanks is a D, I think Shanks is a child of fate due to his connections with the Celestial Dragons and being a Figarland. Who knows though, scratching my chin.

[whoreiorcats]

hello ella. would like to start a discussion from one of your tags saying that imark is not a bad listener unlike omark... because i think he kind of is hear me out. okay so i feel like throughout s1 instead of listening to helly's concerns he is more focused on getting her to conform to the realities of the severed floor. he doesn't even realise how she's doing mentally in 1x04, and obviously after that he becomes way better at listening. and then in s2 he doesn't realise that she's not helly even though he arguably should know her the best out of everyone? and yeah we can make 293029 theories on why that is but i feel like him not paying attention has got to be some part of it right?

on the other hand, let's say imark is a good listener and omark is a terrible listener, do you think we will get an explanation as to why and what do you think it is (something to do with his upbringing is myyy guess but i'd love to hear your thoughts) okay much love byeee xx

HOO BOY YESSS. Ok ok ok very fun question! Gonna answer this step by step:

When I say bad/good listener I don’t really mean considerate or not, I mean literally attentive to another person’s words and actions. Mark Scout is consistently shown to be poor at remembering things that the people he cares about tell him (forgets Devon’s dinnerless dinner party is happening, calls Ricken “Rick” even tho he expresses that’s not what he likes to be called, keeps on calling Alexa a doula when she’s told him more than once she is a midwife, “I said I like plants”)

Mark S is constantly invalidating Helly’s feelings and trying to get her to conform but he is not checked out of what she is telling him. He is almost immediately adjusting his behavior to try to connect with her (admitting to breaking protocol at her ice breaker in front of Milchick, including her in Eagan Bingo even tho he knows Irving will get mad at them because he knows that’s the only way he could make this excursion enjoyable for her, him being RIGHT about that, intervening when Ms Casey is making her uncomfortable and knowing how to subtly tell her he’s trying to sneak her out for a walk)

In s1e4 I see it as that Helly was either actively hiding her mental state from everyone else (the juxtaposed shots of her preparing to hang herself vs extreme closeups of her smiling up at Mark in this really calm and beautiful way and telling him she’s “good”) OR that she was having that suicidal intention boost where she felt like she saw the the light at the end of the tunnel and was just genuinely excited to execute her plan. DARK I know but, that’s Helly’s state of mind for ya. So I can’t really blame him for not seeing what was about to happen.

Going off of @gemmafuckingscout ‘s timeline Helena was probably only on the severed floor for a grand total of TWO days followed by a day of ORTBO before she was exposed, so I also can’t really be that surprised Mark didn’t pick up what was off. He had a lot on his plate in trying to find Ms Casey and feeling really big huge feelings he’d never felt before and Helena playing into what he wanted to hear did not help in keeping his critical eye open! Irving, to be fair, had some psychic dreams that helped him figure that one out.

The text of the show also wants us to think that Helena and Helly were super duper similar in behavior “you’re like her, or she’s like you” (it seems that is debatable, lol). WHATEVER

I DO find it interesting to compare that with Scoutie who, on the other hand, identified Ms Casey as not really Gemma after like two seconds of reintegration flashbacks, same with Cold Harbor innie who he was able to communicate with very effectively. Like, it’s not black and white, clearly!

The other direct comparison is Gemma telling Mark that she was nervous to start the fertility treatments and him telling her to “turn around and bend over” (very funny and charming until they’re arguing and he’s saying shit like “I have no idea how you’re feeling”) and meanwhile when helly tells mark she’s nervous he validates her and says “me too”.

I was just talking to @spareham about this but I really have no strong opinions on what made oMark “like that”. All we really know is that he and his father are both alcoholics. Could be as little as a very bad example being set for him at a young age on how to deal with your emotions.

His sister and wife are willing to meet him where he is, so why would he change? Alexa tries to meet him where he is, he tries to change for her, fails, and then when she comes to get her phone he is! Idk! He’s drunk again, he’s pushy, he’s intense as hell and surprised that she does not respond well to him ripping up that picture of Gemma.

He’s forced to leave his teaching position and he knows he won’t be able to pull himself together enough to get a regular job elsewhere, so he severs, which is just an extension of his usual instinct to numb himself to any pain he’s feeling (and the pain others are feeling around him!!!) He’s just as devastated to have lost a child as he is to see Gemma so distraught, he’s probably nearly as pained by his own struggles as he is to see Devon fearing the worst every day for him. In both cases he just tries to drown it out in whatever methods available to him.

He is very resistant to change and growth, while Mark S is very much willing to and capable of improving himself for Helly. He changes his perception of himself, of her, of the way the way the world is and becomes a braver, more selfless person because she inspires him to be so.

Devon tells Mark S that Gemma “was wonderful, made [him] wonderful.” But what do we really see of that? He is clearly happier when Gemma is in his life, rough patch in marriage aside. Now I’m speaking from the pov of someone who has like, lived with an addict for a while (tmi, whatever) but IDK. I think the relationship didn’t seem to actually influence him to self improve; I think it alleviated some of his stressors and then it added to them later, terrible coping mechanism intact the whole way through.

Gemma could never fix Mark because no one can fix anyone. Helly didn’t fix Mark S, she just inspired him and he did the work to change his mindset. Mark S didn’t fix Helena Eagan, he just inspired her to see herself and others differently and seems to be doing something behind the scenes to benefit people other than herself/Lumon (see recent Helena posts). Gemma did not fix Mark Scout and her death did not break him, he just continues to deal with his problems the same way, no matter what, even if it’s fatal! And it will be if he does not finally self improve and face his grief and loss head on. If he doesn’t respect himself (both literally his own self and Mark S) he will lose himself.

I say all ALL of this as a big humongous softie for Mark Scout. I genuinely love his character, all of this fucked up baggage included. Based on Mark S’s behavior (and his second date with Alexa), he’s obviously capable of being a better partner. Based on his behavior (and s2e5) Mark S is capable of being a worse partner. I suspect as Mark and Helly end up with more free time as a couple things will crop up. But we will see! I hope this was interesting to you!

[dhruvkumaar]

Your story is an argument.

I’ve been thinking a lot about theme these days. I’ve recently completed the first draft of my novel Myth, and when I look back, it always felt like I was missing something. And that was this: even though I sorta-kinda knew about my theme, I… really didn’t.

That was such a confusing sentence, lol. Anyway, what I mean is: I’ve simply had an illusion about the theme of Myth. I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but in reality, I didn't. When I began thinking about what message this story gives, what everything represents, my mind went blank. I understood that there’s the protagonist, and then there’s this antagonist: what does it signify that this protagonist beats this antagonist? What message am I trying to give here with this?

I asked such questions to myself, and that’s when the clouds cleared up. I now understand what theme is. A theme—or a story, for that matter—is, broken down to its bare bones, an argument.

Alright, now I think I lost you. I’m yapping about random stuff way too much, without telling you how I connected all these ideas. Gimme some time.

***

#01. Story and Plotline

I think that the first thing I gotta clear up before I head forward is this: a plotline is not a story. Now, you might know this a little bit, somewhere in your head. You’d have a little idea that they’re different. But, do you know how exactly they are different?

Head back to the basics, students. What are the foundational elements of storytelling? Plotline, characters, theme, setting, and style.

Now, look at this formation. Plotline is a part of story. They don’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the hierarchy.

But see: plotline and theme do stand on the same level. What does this mean?

A happens, then B happens, and then as a result, C happens—that’s plotline. Add characters in, and plotline becomes: X does A, Y does B, and as a result, Z does C. This is character and story together.

The background of this mix of plotline and character is called setting—where A, B, C are happening. In short, setting is the context in which the plotline takes place.

This is your WIP right now: it has plotline, character, and setting. And style obviously refers to your writing style. But there’s still something missing: theme.

Thus, your story isn’t a story until it has a theme. By definition itself, a story needs to have something to say. Because theme forms an important aspect of a story. So, if there’s no theme, it’s not a story—it’s simply a mix of plotline and characters, probably with setting and style.

This is the difference between a plot and a story: a theme. A plot is what happens; a story is a plot that wanna tell you something.

***

#02. Theme and Argument

So, we now understand why your story isn’t a story yet without a theme. But what is a theme?

Well, to say it as simply as possible: a theme is a message. And yeah, it can be a moral value, but your message can be a lot more than just that. Your message can be anything.

Now, there are two sides to any message: a side that’s correct—the side that you, the author, takes—and an opposite side. And that’s how a message becomes an argument.

There are two sides to an argument, like I mentioned before. Your hero—not the protagonist—represents the side that you wanna show is correct. Because your hero always defeats your villain. The hero always wins—that's why you represent the side you wanna show win with the character that’s gonna win in the end. And so, your villain is the side that loses—the side of the argument that you stand against.

Let me take the example of Drowning Deep Down the Ocean. It’s still in its outlining stage, by the way, and it might take a couple of years before I begin writing it. But I do have an idea about the story.

Pro tip: think about your own story right now, if you’re struggling with its theme. This little exercise is gonna help you a lot.

The main theme is DDDTO is simple: that loneliness can be overcome. Or, that depressing days are always followed by sunshine. Something like that.

In the story, my protagonist has changed cities, and he’s having some struggles settling in his new school. He’s being shunned and bullied. The story tackles the topics of loneliness, a little failed romance, bullying, and all that.

In my story, my hero is my protagonist itself. And the villain? Well, it’s the situation with his crush, his bully, but most of all: setting. The whole environment where the story takes place.

In the end, obviously the hero wins. How? He doesn’t just punch the bully off—even though that’s the climax of the story. In the end of DDDTO, the hero has some friends and a life. And good mental health. He’s comfortable with his situation. He’s better than he was in the beginning—he knows how to confront his loneliness and his problems now. He knows how to act in this new environment. Thus, he’s defeated this new environment—his story’s main villain—metaphorically. So, my hero won.

That symbolizes my theme that depressed days are always followed by sunshine. My hero wins against those days, and now sees the sunshine.

Everything comes full circle. That’s how you turn a plotline into a story. When you argue your points with your story. When things tell something to your audience. When everything means something.

***

#03. How?

Now, you do have a plotline, but how do you turn it into a story? How do you figure out a theme for your story?

For that matter, I’d like to tell you something: it took me around eight months and a whole draft to understand the theme of Myth. I’ve been brainstorming about this story for more than four years on top of that, by the way. It took me this much time to figure out what I wanna say to my audience through this story.

So stop thinking about the themes of your story. Figure out your story first—know your start, your end, and everything in between. And then start making connections: what does this plot mean? What is it trying to say? What does the start and the end signify, symbolize?

 At least, that’s what worked for me. DDDTO is a story I’d written around an year ago, and it’s only now that I understand its theme. Myth took me a whole first draft, like I mentioned before.

But, you can start your story with a theme. A lot of authors do that. And that’s the magic of storytelling—the process of writing a story changes from one person to the other. So, take a deep breath. And have fun writing. You’re gonna figure your way out. It’s gonna be fine if, in the end, you have all of your foundations figured out. Doesn’t matter how you do that, y’know.

Subscribe to my Substack and follow me on Tumblr. And check out my blog Heroes and Villains if you wanna know more about the topic of theme and how you represent that in your story. I’ll see you in the next one. Sayonara!

[cy-cyborg]

Toph Beifong doesn’t hold up as disability representation - Disability in the Media

[ID: A screenshot of Toph, a twelve-year-old girl with black hair in a loose, green and tan short-sleeve shirt and shorts, cheering in an arena. Next to text written in a rough, blocky font: "Disability in Media - Toph Beifong Doesn't hold up as disability representation" /End ID]

Avatar the Last Airbender is one of my all-time favourite TV-shows, and Toph is still easily one of my favourite members of Team Avatar. I was a few years younger than Toph when the show first started airing, and being a disabled kid who was into martial arts, constantly being dismissed by my able-bodied opponents and teachers, meant that I connected very strongly with her right from the get-go.

But upon my last couple of rewatches of the series, I began to come to the realisation that my opinions on Toph as a shining example of good disability representation were... well, pretty heavily influenced by my nostalgia for the show and that many aspects of Toph's character just don't hold up today. Which, honestly is fair, the show is nearly 19 years old (if it were a person in my country, it would be old enough to drink) and I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect every part of every character from an 19 year old show to age well. So today I wanted to talk about the things I think Avatar the original Last Airbender did right with Toph, where I think they missed the mark, and what changes I think would need to be made to Toph to make her work for a modern audience.

So let's start with why I think Toph doesn't really hold up as "good disability representation" today, and the elements of her character that just haven't aged as well.

For me, one of the biggest issues I noticed upon rewatching the show, is how often we are told (often by Toph herself) that she is blind, but how infrequently we are actually shown it's impact on her life beyond her bending or outside of jokey contexts. Outside of her bending, we only ever see her blindness impacting her ability to do things like read or write, otherwise, she functionally has full vision -so far as the audience is informed - with the only exceptions being when she's in the air or water (e.g. on Appa or in the submarines) or in loose soil (e.g. the desert). Having places and circumstances where she doesn't have access to her power that allows her to "see" was a step in the right direction, but I do think it would have been better if her seismic sense wasn't quite as accurate, even in the most ideal of circumstances.

But why? Well, I think Suki explains it really well, long before Toph is even introduced. when Sokka says "I should have seen you as a warrior instead of a girl" Suki stops him and says "I am a warrior, but I'm also a girl". Being a warrior and a woman are both important parts of Suki's character, and only recognising her as one or the other means ignoring a big part of who she is, and the same is true for Toph. Being blind is a big part of toph's character that has informed a lot of her life, but so is being a warrior and bending master. Many people see Toph as a warrior or fighter, but ignore her disability, but both are important. She's disabled, and a warrior, and those things don't cancel each other out, the same way being a warrior doesn't diminish Suki's status as a woman.

When the show was still airing though (and even still today) it was very common to see non-disabled fans of the show exclaiming that they honestly forget that Toph is even blind sometimes, with many people going so far as to say that she's not even disabled (and that this was a good thing). While I do think some of that comes from the fact they weren't used to seeing a disabled character as both disabled and an active participant in these kinds of stories, I do think this mostly happened because of the show's lack of, well, showing the impact of her blindness on her daily life and allowing her earthbending and seismic sense to erase the effects of her disability to some extent. It's much harder to forget a character is blind when it impacts their daily life in ways that are shown to the audience. This doesn't have to be in big, showy ways mind you, showing things subtly but consistently works way better than one "very special episode" type setup.

In the show as it is though, the seismic sense functionally gives Toph a perfect image of her surroundings until it's just not available anymore for *plot reasons*.

[ID: A black and white shot of Toph and how she sees the oponent she's fighting, with shockwaves radiating from him towards her to indicate how she's interpreting the scene. Her foe has jumped into the air and now has his hand dug into the ground of an arena, about to launch rocks towards her. /End ID]

In many ways, her picture of the world is better and clearer than what the non-disabled characters can see, leading to this feeling of her disability being erased. It may have been better though if the seismic sense could give her a general idea of big things in her immediate vicinity but she still missed the finer details, functioning at least a little bit more like a tactile/earthy-vibration version of the limited sight some legally-blind people have in real life. Things like a person's position, movement and overall pose would still be "visible" to her in a general sense, as well as big things in the environment (including things underground, since there are a few plot-points that require that), but smaller things like details about objects and creatures, people's facial expressions or what they're doing with parts of their body that have no direct contact with the ground (like their hands) is less clear. On top of this, she may struggle to detect smaller, lighter objects or creatures that realistically wouldn't cause much of a vibration at all. creatures as small and as light as Momo and Hawky for example might be detectable, but "fuzzy" to her, and anything smaller might make enough of a vibration to tell her it's there when it moves, but not enough for her to be able to tell what specifically it is without some other cue (such as sound). There are a few moments in the show that seem to imply this is what they were initially going for, but it's not really consistent, and is directly contradicted in her debut episode, "the blind bandit" when she explains that she can even "see" something as small as the ants off in the distance.

[ID: A shot of Aang, a twelve-year-old bald boy with an arrow tattoo on his head, dressed in a yellow and orange outfit, standing with Toph at night. In the foreground is an anthill will a trail of ants, which Aang is looking for. /End ID]

With an adjustment like what I'm suggesting though, she still serves her narrative purpose of teaching Aang the importance of being able to wait and listen - possibly even more so, as her needing to wait and collect more information in order to get a clearer image before striking, would back-up what Bumi tells Aang that he needs in an earth bending master. It would also still help to illustrate the connectedness of the world, a theme Toph continues to embody heavily in The Legend of Korra, while still showing the ways her disability impacts her more frequently.

When I talked about the "super-crip" trope a while back, I mentioned that one way to avoid the more harmful elements of the trope (where the character's disability is erased by their powers) is to use the ability in question more like a mobility or disability aid than a straight-up cure. The power should help them, but shouldn't make their disability redundant. People are creative and we would find ways to use a superpower or magic to help with our disabilities if it were available in real life, but what's the point of including a disabled character if you're just going to functionally erase their disability? For a character like Toph, I think this is the kind of approach that should be taken with her. Her seismic sense still helps her, but it's not a perfect replacement. (Ironically, I did use Toph as a "good" example of that trope, but I do think after this last rewatch, for the reasons I'm discussing here, I might have to backtrack that a bit).

I considered giving an alternative approach here, to keep the sensitivity of toph's seismic sense as it is in the show as is, but giving it draw-backs such as making her susceptible to sensory overload similar to what autistic people experience. However, while replacing one disability with another can work for some characters and stories, I don't think it's the best adjustment to make for Toph or any blind character, largely thanks to this also being a trope. The "blind (or d/Deaf) person who's other senses become super-human to make up for it" trope is very common in fantasy, sci-fi as well as older martial arts films, and while I'm not really the best person to cover it, I do know that members of both the blind and deaf communities have expressed a lot of frustration with it. Toph already falls into this trope quite a bit, and any suggestions I could make would have just dialled that element up to 11, and fixing one problem with another is never a good idea.

Another thing that actually did bug me for a while, even before my most recent rewatch of the show, is how Toph is treated on the rare occasions she does point out something won't working for her. There are a number of times where Toph advocates for herself and points out that something The Gaang is doing isn't accessible to her or sets a boundary to do with her disability, and she's either left behind, her concerns are brushed off or she's ignored entirely. The three most noticeable examples of this are in the Episodes "The Ember Island Players," "The Library," and Toph and Katara's segment of "Tales of Ba Sing Se."

In the Ember Island Players, Toph complains that the seats they have for the play are too high up and too far away, and she's unable to "see" what's happening on stage. Her friends don't really take any notice of her though except for Katara who tells her not to worry, "I'll tell your feet what's happening."

[ID: A shot of Katara, a fourteen-year-old girl with long brown hair and blue eyes, sitting with Toph, who is sitting with her arms crossed, annoying in a theatre seat. Both Toph and Katara are wearing red and gold, fire-themed outfits. Katara is looking at something off-screen. /End ID]

My problem here is that this particular kind of situation is something that is familiar to a lot of disabled people. Even the least independent disabled people I know get annoyed when their access needs or requests for accommodations, even among friends, are ignored and their pushback is brushed off with "don't worry, I'll just help you!" It's one of the first things that many disabled people tell non-disabled folks wishing to be better allies to us: you offering help instead of actually accommodating us isn't a good thing. We don't want to rely on others if we can avoid it, because honestly, non-disabled people often aren't very good at actually helping or in this case, relaying information to us without training and more often than not, it just results in us being left out. I find it very hard to believe a character as independent as Toph would accept that without any protest, especially considering that is pretty much exactly what ends up happening (even if the show didn't really acknowledge it). Katara never actually conveys anything about the play to Toph, except when she's attempting to throw Toph's words back in her face when she asks for clarification about the actor playing her - which ends up backfiring on her.

[ID: A shot from the same location as before, this time Toph has a huge smile on her face and is leaning on the balcony excitedly while Katara is leaning towards her, annoyed by her reaction. /End ID]

While it would have been better if Toph was actually listened to, it would have been…fine? if a justification was given for why they had to sit there (e.g. to avoid being recognised), if Katara had actually described the play for her. This wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have been better at least. In real life, many movies, TV shows (including this show's sequel series, The Legend of Korra) and other forms of visual media have an Audio Description track that does exactly that. If they weren't going to move for Toph to be able to see better, having Katara describe the play could have introduced kids to the fact this is an option. but instead it's brushed off, and I'll admit, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, even back in 2006.

The Library is a bit more forgivable in my opinion, since Toph is still new to the group, but in this episode, she states that she doesn't want to go inside the spirit library because she isn't able to read and therefor there wouldn't be anything for her to do. However, it still would have been nice to see her friends consider this at all before they actually arrived. They could have (and should have) still gone, but some acknowledgement that they at least thought about the inclusion of their disabled friend would have been nice.

[ID: A shot of Aang, Katara, Sokka and another man are talking while looking down at a map on the table. Meanwhile, Toph is sitting on the other side of the table, completely disinterested as she sips from a large ice cup with her feet up on another chair. /End ID]

Alternatively, I do feel like Wan Shi Tong, a self-proclaimed all-knowing-spirit or his assistants would have been able to point her in the direction of something to interest her, since he does imply books aren't the only form of knowledge he collects.

The reason I mention this though is two-fold. In real life, disabled people are very often left out of "fun" group activities, whether that be in formal settings or in casual ones, like hanging out with friends. If the episode had been framed as "the Gaang learns about the library and decides to track it down," I might have been less critical, but it's specifically framed as something that at least starts out as a kind of break for the team where they all take turns picking out fun things to do so they can rest, and Toph's access needs not being considered at all until they're already there hits a bit close to home, especially since they just end up leaving her outside. Secondly, there's also a stereotype that disabled people (and especially blind people) don't belong in academia and places of learning, such as in this case, libraries. This stereotype is about as old as the concept of organised institutions of learning, and definitely isn't unique to AtLA, but the assumption is often that disabled people wouldn't be interested in more formal methods of learning, so it's not worth accommodating us. With blind people in particular, when I've seen this in media, the premise is often "well I can't read anyway so why bother?" which Toph definitely falls into here with no push-back against the trope.

[ID: A close up of Toph and the rest of the group, Katara, Sokka and Aang standing in a desert. Toph shrugs, looking bored, while the others looks confused and surprised with the exception of Katara, who looks mildly annoyed, standing with her hands on her hips. /End ID]

It does make sense that she would have been resistant to going in, and I'm not saying this episode should have turned Toph into a bookwork akin to Wings of Fire's Starflight (another blind character) or anything. But there was a chance in this episode to push back against some of these assumptions, and I think it's a shame they missed it. How cool would it have been if Toph had mentioned not feeling welcomed in more formal learning spaces because of her disability, which was just reinforced by the way her old earthbending instructor and her parents treated her. She decides to go inside the library anyway as "backup" in case something goes wrong, grumbling about it the whole way down. Wan She Tong starts his introduction mostly the same way, saying humans aren't welcome and Toph makes a snarky comment about it. Wan She Tong, equally offended that this human thinks he, the all-knowing-spirit, wouldn't have considered something, shoots back with an annoyed comment about humans being so self-centred. He explains that spirits come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them have eyes, but they can still access his library. She's not the first sightless being in his study, and he-who-knows-ten-thousand-things knows this too. Once everyone is permitted entry, one of the knowledge seekers shows her to a series of slates about a lost earthbending form that she can actually read (or at least, "see" the pictures on) because it's carved. Or instead of a slate, it's a series of statues outlining the form, similar to what Aang and Zuko find in the episode "The Firebending Masters". Perhaps this form is something that helps her develop metal bending later on, and lays the groundwork for Toph becoming interested in teaching in the comics.

And finally, Toph and Katara's segment of Tales of Ba Sing Se. Katara convinces Toph to go get a makeover with her as part of a girl's day. Overall, this segment of the episode is pretty nice, and I liked that they showed that a person's gender expression (in this case, being a tom-boy) doesn't mean they can't like things outside of what we usually associate with that. Tom-boys can like girly things on occasion, and vice-versa, and I think this is an example of an episode that would seem a bit ham-fisted today, but honestly, was needed in 2006. However, there's a throw away joke where Toph says "as long as they don't touch my feet," and it immediately cuts to show spa workers filing down the calluses on her feet in a way so painful several staff are required to hold her down.

[ID: An image of Toph in a bath robe being held down in a chair by two spa workers while a third scrubs at her feet so hard that she is sweating. Meanwhile Toph is fighting against the two holding her down and has a facial expression like she is in a great deal of pain. /End ID]

this might be a minor thing in the grand scheme of the show, but it's still another example of Toph's boundaries about her disability and her access needs being disrespected by her friends, which the show just doesn't acknowledge it at all. People ignoring Toph's wishes about a part of her body she depends on in a much more direct way that others do is played off like a joke in a montage of otherwise enjoyable and goofy activities and this is a very, very common experience in disability circles.

There are a number of other, much more minor issues that show up with Toph as well, such as the fact she's the only one of the main cast who never has an on-screen (or on-page) relationship. not in the original show, not in any of the comics and not in The Legend of Korra. Again, it's not a big issue on it's own, especially because in AtLA, she's young enough where it's possible that she was just not interested yet, and she does have kids in The Legend of Korra where she mentions a relationship with a man named Kanto (Lin's father). So it is implied she does have some form of relationship eventually, but the issue is that it's never shown on screen or on the page. This feeds into a wider pattern in media of disabled characters being the only ones in their respective cast not given on-screen romantic relationships in stories, and so I still think it's worth pointing out, especially since the creators have had a lot of opportunities to correct that by now.

Toph is also portrayed, pretty much undeniably, as the best earthbener in a way that, at times, comes across almost like the creators felt like they need to compensate for her being on the team "despite" her being blind. This trope is one that I think Toph, at least partially, helped to popularise with the current generation of story tellers: The Disabled Savant. In this trope, disabled characters aren't really given the same room for growth as other characters; they aren't permitted to be average or still learning, they start good and get better. If they do progress, they often become the best, which is the case for Toph. To be fair, everyone in the The Gaang is the best at their respective skill by the end of the first series, which is why I say this is a minor point. She dose, however, have the least amount of on-screen growth in skill out of the whole team. Katara starts out barely able to lift any water at all, let alone actually bend it. Sokka is skilled with weapons from the start but does get his butt handed to him a number of times by others with more experience than him whom he learns from throughout his story arc. Zuko spends most of the early-to-middle of the show having things "blow up in his face" (to use his own words) and being belittled by his family of prodigies. While Aang is an airbending and, to a lesser extent, waterbending prodigy, he fails at pretty much everything else for a while before he starts to find his confidence - especially earth and firebending, not to mention the entire situation with locking himself out of the Avatar state. Toph is the only one who doesn't seem to fail or struggle all that much from a combat perspective. She does grow and improve in her bending (she invents metal bending after all) but she never has any moments where she really messes up or even struggles in combat all that much compared to the others.

All of these points and criticisms I've mentioned are not necessarily big in and of themselves, but when looked at together, they build up to create some issues with how Toph is depicted and how the people around her treat her disability

So that's it then? Toph is bad disability rep and Avatar should be "cancelled"?

God no. Like I said at the start, I still adore Toph and Avatar as a whole, but the show is a year away from being two decades old, it's bound to have some elements that don't hold up and I think it's worthwhile discussing them, specifically because I love the show and it's characters. Despite all the negativity I've brought up, I do think there are a lot of things AtLA did well with Toph too.

I've mentioned a few times that we rarely see how Toph's blindness impacts her life outside of her bending and combat abilities, and there's a reason I made that specification. Unsurprisingly, if you know much about the show's development, the ways in which Toph’s blindness and seismic sense impacts her bending and fighting style is one area where the show really does shine, and I still think that is worth a mention. The various types of bending are based on different styles of martial arts, specifically, different types of Kung Fu. Most earthbending in the show takes heavy inspiration specifically from Hung Ga, but Toph is different. Her bending heavily references Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, something unique to her within this world.

The reason for this (outside of simply wanting her to be visually distinct) was because the show’s creators made sure to consider what limitations Toph might have and what parts of the more common earthbending styles wouldn't work for her. Since her connection to the earth was critical in order for her seismic sense to work, they decided on a style that would keep her feet on the ground more, prioritised strong stances with minimal jumping and put more focus on attacking with her upper body. While not an intentional choice, the style they went with for Toph, according to the show's head martial arts consultant, Sifu Kisu, was supposedly developed by a blind woman in real life, at least according to legend. The creators also made further adjustments to the style with the help of martial arts consultants and just watching Toph fight is evident that a lot of love and care was put into the decisions made on that front.

I also appreciate that Toph's disability wasn't off-limits to joke about.

[ID: A picture of Toph waving her hand in front of her face with an exaggerated smile to remind the others she's blind. /End ID]

As I already mentioned, they didn't land 100% of the time, but lot of shows are afraid to use disability as a source of jokes, which would have felt weird and out of place in a show like Avatar. I see this hesitance in real-life too; people get extremely uncomfortable when I joke about my own disabilities and I've heard several people and even disabled comedians talk about the same observation. My last video on Tik Tok that got outside my usual audience was a joke about my prosthetic leg, and every single stictch and duet I received was people saying some variation of "I'm such a bad person for laughing!" "I'm going to hell!" or just straight up asking if they're aloud to laugh. If I didn't want you to laugh, I wouldn't have posted the joke! But joking about disability does make it more approachable. Despite how often Toph and the others made blind jokes though, outside of the one instance I mentioned earlier, they never felt mean-spirited or like they were punching down. Even when a very sleep-deprived Katara was intentionally trying to be.

I think it's also worth keeping in mind the context of the media landscape when Avatar The Last Airbender was airing. Today, characters like Toph are very common, so much so there's a whole trope about them (super-crips) but at the time, having a character with a major disability be a main character in an action-orientated kids show like Avatar was really rare. She wasn't the first of course, but a lot of the time, if they were included, they were almost certainly sad and depressed, wishing for a cure or they were designated to the roles of "Guy in the chair" (which is a character, usually a tech person, who helps from the background), inspiration, scary villain fake-out (or other variations of "creepy" character) or the actual villain. Having a character that was not only comfortable in her skin as a disabled person, who didn't want or need to be "fixed" or "cured" to be directly involved in the story, and who's main obstacle (at least in season 2) were how the people around her treated her, was pretty ground-breaking at the time (pun not intended) and went against the most prevalent stereotypes of it's day.

And I really want to emphasise that. For many Millennials and older Gen Zers, myself included, Toph was the first character that didn't tell us we were broken and needed to be fixed in order to be part of the group (even if they slipped up with that messaging occasionally). Prior to seeing Avatar, I honestly thought there was something deeply wrong with me for being happy with my life (a reminder, I was 10 years old when this show first started airing), because every other disabled person in the media only ever talked about how much worse their life was because of their disability, how much they hated it and how much they hated themselves. Many outright said that they wished they had died rather than become like me. Toph wasn't the first to go against those tropes, but she was the first example of a disabled character who wasn't like that many people my age saw. Did she do it perfectly? Hell no, but personally, back then, I was happy to have a character who maybe over-corrected and took things a bit too far than another sad character talking about how lives like mine weren't worth living.

I also deeply appreciated that Toph did struggle with her independence, at least initially, and where to draw the line with accepting help. Because of how much she'd been coddled and overprotected as a little kid, she saw any attempt at people being helpful and working as a team as them trying to baby her. It was very on the nose, but I liked that the show gave her an episode just dedicated to realising that it's ok to accept help. Again, this is a bit of a story telling trope today, but having the disabled character realise that it's ok to accept help, and to do it without talking down to them or saying that them wanting independence was bad, was a refreshing change compared to what was around at the time.

[ID: a zoomed out image of Toph, standing before her parents with Aang, Katara and Sokka standing behind her. /End ID]

While I think the show's creators could have benefited from consulting with disabled people and specifically blind people the same way they brought in consultants for the martial arts featured in the show, it's very clear to me that the intention behind Toph's character was good, and that actual effort was put in to make sure they depicted her well, even if some of it was a bit misplaced. It's also worth noting that the groundwork for a lot of my suggestions is already in place, they just didn't follow it all the way through. Overall, I'd say Toph was good for her time, and she's what was needed in the 2000's, even if she doesn't hold up as well today. I also think it speaks to how far we've come in terms of disability representation. When I first started engaging with the online fandom directly, almost no one, even other disabled people, argued that Toph wasn't good representation, because honestly, the bar was on the floor and we were just happy to have something different. But now there are options, and the standards are higher, and that's so, so good. It means that people, even in the media, are starting to listen and be more thoughtful about their depictions of disability than we were in 2006.

And finally, I want to really quickly mention The Netflix adaptation of Avatar. A few people have asked me now what I think they should do with Toph when they get to her, and what my predictions about the show are. I'm not going to talk about my predictions here, because this post is already way too long and that's not what this is about, but I don't think the suggestions I made today would necessarily work in this particular remake, primarily because of the tonal differences. Some adjustments definitely could, such the other characters doing a better job at listening to Toph when she points out inaccessibility and them actually considering her in the first place, but others might be harder to balance. The original show could get quite dark and serious at times, but it was primarily a light-hearted adventure story for kids. From what I've seen of the live action remake though, they're more heavily leaning into those serious elements - for better or for worse, and as such, trying to tone Toph down in the specific ways I mentioned might not balance out as well as it would in the original show. At the very least, the specifics would need to be different. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what approach they should take, that's not really the point of this post, but I did want to quickly address it to avoid confusion. My suggestions today were specifically on how to approach the cartoon version of Toph for a modern audience, and were not meant to be read as suggestions on how her live-action counterpart should be depicted.

[storytellering]

Torn apart. Inspired by Romeo and Juliet by Sergio Cupido

[kiwisandpearls]

so I saw this post being critical about the whole “traumatized character starts to heal from their trauma but ends up dying for shock value” trope and while I agree with it I saw someone tag that post in the notes with mami tomoe and tbh it’s kind of like…well yes, but actually no. I’d argue Mami Tomoe is an example of that trope executed well, and Madoka Magica’s story just wouldn’t work the way it does without Mami’s death occurring the way it did. And I’m not saying that because it was shocking.

the thing about Mami’s death is that while it’s shocking at first when you sit and think about it is deeply tragic. Mami deserved a much better ending than this but she would’ve never got it. She doesn’t make a contract with Kyubey and dies in the car crash or she makes a contract and gets to live but ends up living alone with no one to turn to. And even if/when she is able to survive charlotte she ends up dying either way, either—for example—by Madoka’s hand or by Walpurgisnacht.

the other thing about Mami’s death is that saying its shock value is implying that it had no reason to be in the story when it truly did. Firstly, it showed a good example that being a magical girl in Madoka Magica is not all fun and games. That isn’t to say it wasn’t made out that way. Mami herself warns Madoka and Sayaka that if they choose to become magical girls they’re going to have to risk their lives to fight witches, but we never see an actual examples of witches posing any serious harm against Mami or the other magical girls. Mami’s death was a good example that her words that actual weight to them, that being a magical girl could get you killed.

not only that but her death had a deep effect on both sayaka and madoka. Before Mami’s death Madoka was sure about making a contract, which gets thrown out of the window the moment she sees mami die. And it’s clear her death sticks with her long after it happens, she constantly worried about sayaka after she makes her contract, and even snaps at homura, telling her to not talk about her that way, after she makes passing comment about mami when madoka asks her to try working with sayaka.

And while Sayaka doesn’t seem to be as traumatized by Mami’s death as Madoka was, her death still had an effect on Sayaka, especially in how she views Mami. If Mami had survived Charlotte’s attack she probably would’ve explained to Sayaka the same things she explained to Madoka, that she felt alone and had no one to turn to. But she never got the chance to, and while I’m not criticizing Madoka for this, Madoka probably didn’t tell Sayaka what Mami told her. So along with turning Mami into a sort of martyr, she also continues to put Mami on this pedestal. Saying that Mami wasn’t like other magical girls like Kyoko and Homura, that Mami was one of the “good ones”, one of the “good” magical girls who were selfless and cared more about being defending justice and saving lives than collecting grief seeds. Causing her to spiral a bit about homura and kyoko, seeing them as being actively malicious, just as evil as witches (which…to be fair to her, kyoko was acting a little malicious in her picking fights with a new magical girl…twice. While for Homura Sayaka doesn’t have the context to understand why Homura is All That). While I do think Sayaka probably would’ve still idolized Mami (which also makes sense as she’s a senior magical girl, she would look up to her), I don’t think she would’ve idolized her as much if she didn’t die.

TL;DR: Mami’s death is actually a well written take on the “traumatized character dies in the end” trope because it wasn’t purely for shock value and had an actual purpose in the narrative.

[arolesbianism]

May I offer some Siffrins on this fine day

[spotaus]

New Age AU Drabble (Lonely)

Hello everyone!! Welcome to the next drabble I swore I was going to write! This one I'm very fond of, because it involves the two who kickstarted this whole thing, the King and his Royal Mage (in-training)-

This happens some time after Nightmare's reversal to his new age, so it's basically the next one in chronological order for the main story drabbles!

@ancha-aus @mutzelputz @papiliovolens Hi guys!! Welcome back :)

Ping

Error glanced up from his project when the little tingle of his magic blinked into his awareness. Someone’s outside? He looked over at the heavy door that separated the cool space of his study from the stairs which led down to the main floors of the castle. On his end, it was absolutely tangled in blue wires, like his own little spider web. Though, to be fair, the rest of the room wasn’t faring much better. He’d certainly taken the chance to make the space his. The king had told him to, after all! Much better than the tidy room his brothers always made him help clean…

Blue strings lashed out from the ceiling and wrapped around his current project, wrapping securely around it before tugging it, his knitting needles, and the notes he had scattered all up into the loft space shrouded in shadow above him. It was just a lot safer to keep all his projects up there, out of his way until he needed them. Out of sight of his rare visitors. He couldn’t show them something that wasn’t ready! That would be embarrassing! Not Royal Wizard behavior at all. 

As his project rose, Error rolled onto his back, popping his spine before making an effor to stand up himself. How long had he been laying there? Normally he’d have been up in one of his hammocks, but this project required he keep it level until a later step, so he’d decided that the soft rug on the floor and a few blankets would have to suffice. Had it been an hour or two? Knowing him, probably much longer. He didn’t like pulling back the curtains, his strings didn’t glow in the darkness if he did. Infusing magic worked a lot easier for him in the dark.

He glanced to the door again. Thirty seconds and there hadn’t been any more pings? It had to be someone he actually halfway wanted to see, then. Darn. 

Error crossed the space, stepping over a few loose supplies, and around a few of his hanging strings, until he came to the door. As much as he wished he could ignore this person, he knew better. So, he gripped the solid iron handle and swung the door inwards towards him. 

Stood outside on the landing of the stairs was Sir Dust. 

He wasn’t an unwelcome sight, but he definitely wasn’t an expected one either. Lately, it’d been that Ccino guy showing up to his door unannounced, bringing him meals or just checking in on him. Sir Dust had been there the day he was hired, the knight doing his best to encourage Error to not make stupid, rash choices. Fortunately, given that chance to think, Error had been able to return with a smart and rash choice instead! Which, might he add, landed him this sweet gig for royalty. That was why, when Dust came around, Error didn’t turn him away. His magic was powerful, and despite being small, he was really cool. 

“Error.” Sir Dust greeted. “Brought dinner. Ccino’s been busy.” 

Sir Dust was always blunt. Even that first day they met, when he’d spoken more than a few words he’d seemed strained. Uncomfortable. He was comfortable here in his home territory. 

And, he wasn’t lying! Error hadn’t even noticed it, but when he looked down, his eyelights honed in on the plate held easily in one of Dust’s hands, and a jug held in the other to his side. 

Error was quick to lean out the doorway with a grin and snatch up the plate, careful not to make contact with Dust’s hands. He’d abandoned his glasses somewhere behind him in the room, so he had to raise the plate closer to his face before he recognized the contents. 

“Noodles, sweet!” He half-whispered to himself. 

His hand moved, gesturing out towards Dust. More of his strings shot past, from somewhere in the room, and clutched the jug before tugging it back inside with a flick of Error’s free hand. 

“Ccino told me to tell you: Drink that water. You’ll get dehydrated.” Dust voiced, watching unbothered as the jug was tugged back and out of his view. 

Error glanced up at him, and scoffed. Ccino had been doing his best to get Error to drink more tea with him because tea had water. Error was fine! He didn’t need as much water or food as an average monster, it was normal! Besides, he’d forget about it anyways. 

“Okay. Thanks!” he said anyways. Though, it was mostly thanks for the food. Error loved when Ccino made noodles. They were always buttery, and Error wasn’t sure how he always made something that looked so bland taste so good. …Now his mouth was watering. Maybe he was a little hungry after all. 

Error waited for Dust to start making his decent back down the stairs, but when he saw the monster was still stood still and quiet, he raised a brow. Was there something else? Had to be. He hoped Dust didn’t want inside. Error had all the plans to devour this food and then dive headfirst back into his project. He didn’t want to be distracted. 

“One more message.” Dust said, watching Error. His white eyelights were clear under his hood. Error didn’t think he was wearing his mask, but even with the soft glow from his web of strings he couldn’t tell in the shadows. Didn’t matter to him either way. 

“King Nightmare’s rescheduling your next… report.” Dust said plainly.

At that, Error felt his soul stop a bit in his chest. “Why?” He asked without thinking. The King had been listening and seemed interested during his last report! He’d made a lot of progress since then too, finished one of them enough that they could test it! The King had said he was excited to see it! Surely he hadn’t been tossed aside so quickly?

Dust seemed unphased by his demand of an answer. 

“The King is just taking time to rest. Last project wore him out.” Dust explained, before he added, “Ccino’s orders. Like drinking your water.” 

Error couldn’t tell, not really, but he was pretty sure the knight was grinning at that last part. Ha ha, very funny. Though, he wasn’t wrong. Error was pretty sure the entire castle knew that Ccino guy was in charge of keeping the King in check. Heck, when he’d first been brought in, the King looked worried about introducing him to that Ccino. Error never knew why, they’d gotten along great! 

But, if it was Ccino telling the King to take a break? He figured that the King was probably listening. Fair enough. His soul calmed down a little at the rationalization. 

“Oh, alright.” Error said finally, “Do you… know when he’ll want the next report by, then?” 

He could still plan, right? Maybe it was only a few days. 

“Mm, pretty sure Ccino said next month? Gotta catch up on some things. You live here.” Dust replied. 

Oh. Okay. Hmm. That was… a lot longer than he’d been hoping for. He could probably manage, though. Keep chugging away at his current project, maybe have time to draft a new one. Bigger? But, wait, the King wanted him to propose any bigger ones to him first. Supposedly he’d be allowed unlimited creative liberties, it was more so if something exploded he’d know what happened, but still. He didn’t want to break the few rules he had. Old projects then! Make them the best ever! 

He blinked in surprise when the little ping tingled in his skull. 

Dust had turned around without him noticing, a hand extended to just barely nudge one of his hanging strings. He didn’t look back as he spoke. 

“Gotta get back to rounds. G’night Error.” He said.

Error watched, disoriented for a second, before he nodded to himself. 

“Good night, Sir Dust!” He returned hurriedly.

He watched as the knight started moving, and entirely silently he descended the steps. Only when he had turned the curve out of sight and his shadow disappeared from the wall where torches below cast it, did he pull the door shut and return inside his room. 

His steps echoed against the stone floor until he returned to the cushioned rug, and then moved even further past that to one of his low-hanging hammocks. 

It was tucked beside a bookshelf that the King had let him stock with whatever books he liked from the library during his first week. The room had been cold and bare, obviously unlived in for a while, and Error didn’t exactly have a lot to move in. Just his spare clothes, the (now empty) pouch he’d been using to store his coin, and the dolls. He’d refused to remove those from his bag until he was alone, though, so he’d really had nothing to call his own. The King had given him the opportunity to collect items like books from the library, had let him choose some items from an incoming shipment of trading goods, and had sent someone to buy any equipment Error might need to advance his magic and creations. 

And, for the most part, Error was very self-sufficient. He’d had time to knit himself new clothes, and blankets, and decorate the room entirely with his magic. He spent a lot of time up in the high ceiling too, it was where he kept his dolls, and the projects, and all his important belongings. Everyone once in a while, though, he liked the bookshelf wall. Especially when he was eating. It was just easier to remember not to just hang up the plate among his projects. 

Ccino’s cooking was always delicious, Error would never not look forward to a meal made by him, even if it was the lamest sounding food ever. He’d managed to make brussel sprouts tolerable. A feat, honestly. The tastiness and warmth that spread through him couldn’t distract him from his worries, though. 

Error knew he’d have to work hard to make sure the King was impressed. But also not too bothered by it. He knows his explosive spells used to make his professors and tutors angry, and while the King had been nice about it so far, if he was tired? Error wouldn’t want to push the limits. But if he was too simply about it or lackluster, the King might be upset he was wasting his time? Ohhh. At least he had a month to work and try things out before then. Hopefully he could have an idea at that point. Hopefully. 

…

Ten days. 

Error had given it about 5 days after the time that the report was originally meant to happen, five days after Dust told him it’d been rescheduled, before he felt like he might go stir-crazy. Not because he was worried, but because of the exact opposite. He had his few other ongoing projects, mostly if not entirely completed, up to the King’s review. But he’d also developed another, newer, concept that he just knew would brighten the King’s mood. 

Dust had been the one periodically bringing him food still, he hadn’t seen Ccino, and Error didn’t dare pry too far. All he’d been told was that the King was still swamped with duties and was locking himself in his study to complete his duties. 

Now, Error was not one to talk about unhealthy work ethic, not in the slightest, but he figured it couldn’t be fun. The things the King was doing weren’t exciting or engaging like Error’s projects were, they were all papers and about talking to people. Error dreaded the idea of sitting alone in a room, trying to figure out something stupid like which roads a guy should walk or what people thought of him. Sounded stressful. 

So, Error had made something to make the King feel less bad! Less cooped up! 

Originally he had wanted to wait until his report, but he’d been so invested in making this that it’d only taken him a day, and his miniature prototypes had worked perfectly, so the larger one was ready in just a day or two! He’d really really tried to convince himself to be patient but… The King had liked him because he was bold! And did things he didn’t expect! And Error didn’t want to lose that reputation. If the King wouldn’t come to him, he’d just go to the King! 

That was the thought process, of course, which had led him to the entryway to the King’s royal wing. Then past it and the guards standing watch. Then to standing right infront of the door to the King’s study. 

He knew it was the study because he’d been inside once before. The King usually met with him up in the tower, but they had met down in his study once, to talk about the revised contract. It had been a long, boring conversation which involved the King asking Error to repeat his words back to him at certain points (the King had caught him spacing out several times, but never scolded him) to make sure he was actually listening. Something about making sure Error was safe and had other options? The King seemed super serious about making sure Error was okay, just because he was a kid, but he wasn’t a kid anymore! He was 13 by the time he signed, basically a whole adult! 

But, point is, Error had spent at least an hour or two in there listening to the King talk. He knew where this room was. 

Staring at the door was… a little imposing. What was his plan again? Burst inside? 

Yeah. If he knocked, someone would send him away. Just like at the try-outs. He had to just commit and walk in. The King had said in the contract that Error was always welcome to come to him if he needed something. And right now? Error needed his attention. 

He reached out, grabbing the big handle in one hand as he clutched his satchel with the other. He twisted it, and the moment it processed that it wasn’t locked, he pushed it inwards and slipped inside. He blindly shut it in his wake, just in-case someone tried to push him outside. 

Leaning against the door, his eyelights shot around to take in the room. 

No one was charging at him, and no one was rushing to yell at him. Good. Good. He-

“Error?” 

Well that wasn’t a voice he recognized! 

Error abandoned his skim of the room to search for the origin of the voice, and found himself staring wide-eyed at a monster across the room. This monster was a skeleton, their bones white, they seemed short, and skinny, and their one socket was wide in surprise with a single cyan eyelight, the other empty and seemingly gone dark. They stared at each-other. 

This odd skeleton, Error noticed, wore the King’s clothes. To a tee, the cloak, the shirt, the pants. The shoes looked different, but the pants covered them enough that Error couldn’t quite tell on a quick glance. That, and this skeleton had the King’s circlet resting on their skull, crescent moon plastered right in the center of their forehead. 

Error would’ve doubted the conclusion his mind came to, if it weren’t for the fact that he noticed this skeleton was not the only other one in the room. A quick glance revealed that Ccino was sat nearby to the skeleton, resting on one of the chairs around the coffee table. Error had been able to pick up that Ccino didn’t relax much at all. Especially not around strangers. 

“King Nightmare?” He asked back, staring at the monster across the room still. 

The way the monster seemed to flinch at the title told Error he was right. This was the King! 

A lot of questions flooded his mind, but they were beat-out by a sudden flood of curiosity. He hurried across the room, rapidly approaching the King, until they were stood just a few feet apart. He didn’t even notice Ccino’s worried ‘ah, ah wait-’ or the way the King had to refrain from stepping away. He just saw his suspicions were correct. 

“You’re… shorter.” He voiced, stupidly. 

He wasn’t wrong! The King was now shorter than him by at least half a head! Before the mass of dark magic that was the King had been taller than him by a lot, and he was tall for his age, but now! Now he was tiny! He wasn’t sure what to do with this information besides be delighted. He was used to being taller than people, but taller than a king? Now that was more his speed!

It took a few seconds for it to finally hit Error that the King did… not look happy. He didn’t look mad, but Error knew that was not an expression people would give when they were happy. His brows were furrowed a bit, his mouth tugged down ever so slightly at the corners, his shoulders were tense. 

“I- Yes, I am a bit… shorter. Than usual.” The King replied, “May I ask why you’re, ah, here, Mage Error?” 

Error blinked at him for a second. Right! He was here for a reason! 

“Oh! I just finished a lot of my projects, and I know that the report was rescheduled, but I made something I thought you would really like, and I…” He trailed off a moment as he realized Nightmare was staring at him. Had he done something wrong? 

Nightmare was still watching him, but seemed more alarmed that Error had stopped talking. He wasn’t sure he liked being able to read the King’s expressions like this. Usually, the king had a poker-face worthy of a family game night, only breaking when he was pleased and smiled. Now his expressions were so obvious even Error could read them. It was strange. 

“...Please, continue. A project?” The King seemed to catch himself and prompted. His expression schooled again, though it looked like he had to put in some effort. Eyelight flickering away from Error before shooting back to him. 

Error hesitated for a second, but ultimately continued. 

“I just… Thought that if I came to find you it wouldn’t take too long to show you, and then you wouldn’t be stuck doing just all your paperwork all day.” He was a bit more reserved than he’d meant to be when he presented the idea, both his hands now clutching the strap on his satchel. “I mean. If you’re that busy I can always. I can come back.” He paused again, “Or I- I- I can wait until my report day. Like I… probably should have.” 

He didn’t like the way his voice had stuttered and lagged at the end as he became more uncertain. He glanced over at Ccino. 

The older skeleton was watching between them wordlessly, looking a lot more tense than when Error had first seen him. Like he was waiting for something to happen. His eyelights were plastered on the King. Who was staring at Error intently. 

“Is this project something which you could share inside the study? I… wasn’t intending on leaving my hall today.” the King asked him in an oddly gentle tone. His voice slowed the same way as usual, but it was strange to hear it in such a high voice. 

Error’s hands wrung the strap of his satchel as he thought. “It’s. Ah. Explosive. It���d have to be outside.” He admitted in defeat. He hadn’t thought about the possibility that the King might not want to abandon his work to go look at Error’s spells. Thinking back, they did probably all look pretty silly to the King. He was really good at magic. Just like Dust was. “It can wait.” he added briefly. 

The silence that followed only lasted a second or two, enough for Error to furrow his brow and feel that little hint of indignation that used to plague him, the one that made him so mad at everyone. What was he thinking? He was good at magic too! Maybe not as good as the King, but certainly he was powerful, his magic wasn’t bad or a waste. Those instructors back at the academy were wrong, he knew so, he had to stop thinking about what they’d thought of him.

Error found himself glaring at the floor when a sound snapped his attention upwards. A fizzling sound and a little groan from the King. The King had gripped his skull, covering the socket with the cyan eyelight and turning away from Error’s view in a snap. 

That fizzling noise had sounded… unhealthy, to put it plainly. It didn’t help that Ccino finally spoke up, a little ‘My King?’ worriedly ringing out from the chair where Ccino had planted himself. The King had hunched himself forwards a bit to clutch at his socket, like he was trying to hold in pain. 

Was… was the king sick? Was that why he looked like this? Initially he’d assumed the dark energy had been a glamor. Some kind of magical enhancement to shield him, to make him more fearsome, even to cover up stunted growth. This must’ve been what he looked like normally, right? But. If that were true, the King would’ve just called it back onto his person or had Ccino usher him out. If he was sick, though? He might not be able to control that magic. Might be limited in its output, or even barred from access…

Error would’ve asked him, but his eyes moved curiously to the mirror instead. The reflection gave Error a perfect view of the King’s other side. The way the magic in his palm was flickering and sparking. Between- Between colors. The cyan Error was familiar with, and a soft purple that he’d never seen. 

He must’ve been right, on some level, because he realized it. He couldn’t sense the King’s magic. 

Or, at least, he couldn’t sense any magic that was active. The King’s magic worked like an aura, at least as far as Error had seen of it. Wide-spread, curling around anyone and anything it liked like a vine, and strangling what it didn’t like a noose. He wasn’t as good at seeing magic or feeling it as his brother, but he knew when a magical signature was missing, and he could feel familiar ones. The magic that the King was using to make his eyelight flicker? It was familiar, if only faintly, but it wasn’t his normal magic. Not by a longshot. There was very little intent, and what there was felt. Strange. Desperate, almost. 

“It’s alright. I’m fine, just a hiccup.” The King said, clearly responding to Ccino. 

It took a few deep breaths before the King righted himself, and Error watched as he peeked at the mirror first. He saw that the King’s eyelight was cyan again, but only partly. The bottom portion was still that lavender, and he hissed under his breath before covering his socket with his hand again. 

That same fizzling noise again, but muffled. Error watched, clearly, as the King’s face momentarily contorted with pain, before going still again. 

That couldn’t be healthy, whatever he was doing. His brother had told him all sorts of horror stories about things going wrong with magic at his academy. People who would change their appearance, and they would do it poorly, with adverse effects on their body. He got a chill.

“I- I- can wait. The project can wait.” Error muttered over the sound of that magic fizzling and popping over the King’s socket. 

He didn’t waste any time, even as he was pretty sure the King turned to call him back. He was already to the door, and then out of the door, and then hurrying down the hall. 

No one in the castle actually cared what he was up to, so he wasn’t exactly careful as he hurried down the halls and back to the tall tower which was his. When he passed the entryway, hsi strings caught his arms and tugged him up and over the dozens of spiraling stairs, straight to his doorway. He practically spun inside and retreated to the rafters among his projects to disperse the ones he’d placed into his satchel. 

…

It was childish, but Error felt faint about what he’d seen. He wasn’t sure why, but his head hurt just thinking about it. Altering appearance wasn’t something unheard of, or even really frowned about in his circles. But the magic the King had been doing was unfamiliar and strange. Not just something to alter the appearance of his magic, but something else. Something that was unnatural.

He tugged a string directly from his socket as he hung alone in the rafters, and saw the way that it hung from his fingertips. Blue, a deep one. Monster souls shouldn’t have traits, most didn’t, at least not the way human souls do. Magic, however, tends to manifest in a way that reflects its owner. Error had seen the way a white soul produced bright red magic. His own manifested as a dark blue. Integrity, he’d been told. It was reflecting on how he saw himself as well, he never gave up, he always walked his own path. Those who’d met him could certainly vouch for that. 

As far as he’d known, the King’s magic was cyan. Somewhere between Patience and Kindness, which made sense to him. The King had certainly been kind, offering him this job despite the rules, and he was patient too. Letting Error go on and on and on about his creations. He’d never doubted that those were accurate traits. Now, though? Now the King seemed to be sporting Purple. Purple was not a color which Error had ever seen from him. And it seemed the King must’ve thought the same thing of himself.

Error took a breath as he moved the string so it sat hovering between his index finger and his thumb, the ends clinging with residual, pliable, magic. With his other hand, he pinched the end nearest to his thumb and closed his eyes. 

He didn’t think about it often, but his strings were just that, made up of plenty of little threads, all woven together in just the right way which pleased Error. Texture and thickness which he liked and relied on to hold his weight, keep his projects secure, it was unlike any threads seen in the rest of the world. All his own. It’d taken him time to perfect it, though. Each new string, a new pattern and new density, until a few years ago when he’d figured it out. If he was right, though, he could mimic other styles. Other existing patterns. Other existing colors of magic.

He let his grip slide an inch or so down the string, concentrating as the fibers snapped and rearranged themselves. He furrowed his brow as he recalled the method to make a rope, the braids and twists and tension involved. Each strand felt like he was mentally moving a ten pound weight, and his concentration wavered when he realized his fingers were growing warm. Then, a few more seconds, another inch, and it felt like his fingertips would burst into flame. He hissed and opened his eyes, retracting his hand to see what sort of abomination he’d made. 

Half the string was still that familiar deep blue, but the portion near his thumb was a bright yellow. Thick, three times as thick as the blue, and with the appearance of a rope. It trembled and shook with tension, the portion where Error had given up being a strange and ugly, frayed mass of blue and yellow strands, some portions a muddled green at the exact mid-point. 

The sight made Error wince, and he pulled his fingers apart, the frayed portion snapping easily. The blue strand fell limp into his palm, while the yellow strand began to unravel. Quickly. LIttle chunks of burnt-out thread exploded like confetti, turning white or back to that blue color. It spun and spun until Error was left with little chunks of blue magic thread stuck to the fabric of his shirt and floating to the floor below him. The yellow magic he’d imbued, all the intent pushed behind it, wasn’t nearly enough to keep it steady or in place. Even if he’d finished the entire strand and burnt his fingers to do it, it wouldn’t have held up a small rock, let alone anything important. It was useless.

His little test, he realized, didn’t even cover the severity of the situation. He’d used strings, something he’d removed from his person. The King was doing that… to his own socket. 

How long had he been doing that? If Cyan wasn’t his natural magic, how much strain had he been under? For how long? 

It was none of his business, he reminded himself. The King was an adult, with a lot of advisors and strong magic users and people like Ccino. He had people who would tell him to stop. Error didn’t have the whole picture, surely. It wasn’t his place to worry about it. It just… rubbed him the wrong way. It bothered him. 

…And now he had two things to sulk about. Great. 

…

Ping

There it was again. 

Honestly, Error hadn’t expected anyone to come to see him again so soon. It’d hardly been a few hours since he attempted to visit the King, and it must’ve been dark by now. Who was coming up past dinner time? 

He eased himself down from where he’d placed himself in the rafters, and stood in front of his large door for a second, before opening it up to peek out. 

And. Outside, in the dimly lit corridor, was… The King. 

Or, at least, it looked like the King? Same clothes, same height as he’d seen earlier in the day, and his eyelight was cyan once again. Only, this time he couldn’t see the King’s expressions. He was wearing a mask. Error had to blink to process it. An owl, round and dark, with big eye holes right at the right level for the King’s sockets. It reminded Error a little bit of the fluffy owls he used to see outside his window, the ones just barely out the nest still losing their fluffy baby feathers. Was… Was it heresy to think the King was small and cute? Probably. Very absurd thought, compared to the haunting dark mass he usually was. Maybe that was why he disguised?

“Mage Error,” The King greeted, voice calm as it usually was, “I am aware that this is an impromptu visit, but may I come in? I realize I did not attend to you as I should have earlier, and I wish to rectify this mistake.” His cyan eyelight watched upwards, and Error stared down at him for a moment through the crack in the door. 

He glanced past him, too. But it seemed like the King was entirely alone. Just like he tended to be. 

Error swung open the door, pulling himself out of the way along with it. It wasn’t like he was going to say no to the King, but he wasn’t nearly as excited as usual. What should he do? Say? Obviously something was up with the King, but was Error supposed to say anything? Or was the King just here to make sure Error stayed out of trouble? Adults did that a lot back in the day when he got on their nerves. 

His thoughts persisted as the King entered the space. Error shut the door behind him and watched idly for a breath. The King was moving oddly. Like he was faint. His steps were just ever so slightly uneven and he seemed to wobble ever so slightly as he moved to sit at the unoccupied chair before Error’s desk. What was wrong with him? 

Error started moving, shifting away the items he’d once again strewn out on the floor back to the shadows of the rafters, and instead lowering a set of strings which held his hammock and a wooden board he much preferred to a table. The King watched as the items lowered, just like he always did, but the table was empty as Error hoisted himself to sit on the edge of the hammock across from the ruler. 

“You… have questions, right?” Nightmare voiced.

The King was looking at the empty surface suspended before the both of them, and Error realized he hadn’t even moved to gather his projects. For some reason he was hesitant to bring them up again. 

“Can I? Ask you stuff?” Error questioned uncertainly. “Adults usually don’t like when I start asking questions.” He admitted. 

The King looked up to him, before he sighed and nodded. “Ask anything you like.”

That was… an odd allowance. Error wasn’t used to that either. Usually the King was the one letting him talk, and talk, and talk, and his questions had never been about. Well. The King himself. Just about the knights, or the tapestries, or the food. Never about the King. 

“Why are you small?” The burning question was the one he had to get out of his head. He had theories, but the King was the only one who could confirm or deny them. 

The King was quiet for a brief second, before he brought a hand to his mask. It hovered there as he chuckled, though to Error it sounded a lot more like a giggle.

“It is a… complicated story. I’m still not quite sure myself, but I will share with you what I know as to how I came to be this way.” The King moved a hand behind his skull, tucking it beneath his hood, and tugged at a pretty silk ribbon. A purple one, Error noted. “It’s the least i can do.” 

The mask fell forward into the King’s awaiting hand, and once again Error was met by the image of that clean and soft white bone. The rounded face he didn’t recognize. His expression was neutral, schooled, careful.

“I know you are not from Orchard, nor are you familiar with the traditions of our kingdom. However, you recall the story of my upbringing, and my twin, correct?” He asked, and Error nodded. He recalled decently that there had been twin princes, the King, Nightmare, and his brother, Dream or something? He’d been asking about the tapestries and the King had told him how the two of them had grown up really close, and how he ended up with the throne in the end, banishing his twin so he wouldn’t steal the crown or something. 

“Good. Well. My coronation was not actually mine. It was that of my twin. Dream. He was the crown prince, but I had found word of a great cost to completing the ritual, and I was sure he would be hurt by the process.” The King explained. “The power of the kingdom is passed from generation to generation through the soul. Each King’s soul warps and changes, taking the shape of an apple, golden and shining with a seemingly divine magic. When my mother gave up her soul for Dream to eat, to inherit her title, I…” 

The king trailed off for a breath, and Error felt his insides twist a bit. Eating a soul? That was… a concept. Fascinating, but also he couldn’t imagine a scenario in which someone would actually follow through with it. Of course eating an entire other monster’s soul would provide a magic boost, just like when monsters absorbed human souls, or humans overloaded on magic.

“I stole it from him and completed the ritual myself.” So, maybe that was why he was sick? “The ritual, as it was meant to do, provided me with power beyond myself, yes, but it also altered my mind and physical form. I aged significantly, something I had always assumed was due to the overwhelming force of the gifted magic. In a matter of moments I was old, my mind more clear and sharp. The way you knew me before was the shape I was meant to hold. That I expected to stay.” The King rubbed a hand against his good socket, the other gently resting over the mask sat on his lap. “Several weeks ago, I collapsed. And when I awoke, I had taken on this form again, and it seems my mind is reverted as well. Both have returned, aside from my memories, back to the exact condition that they were on the day of my coronation. So, I find myself back in my youth, and small as a result.”

He seemed to pause for a second, before puffing a sigh, “Or, almost the exact condition. It seems a wound I suffered the same day didn’t ever quite heal.” He ghosted over his empty socket and the cracks running up and out of sight beneath his hood.

Error stared at him a second, and he blinked in confusion. That was a lot of wacky magic shenanigans, and that was coming from him of all monsters, but he was processing something that had been glossed over.

“Wait, so how old are you?” Error questioned, confused.

The King blinked at his question, before Error caught sight of something he didn’t quite expect to see today. A slight lavender blush dusted the King’s cheekbones. Error’s not even sure the King noticed he’d done it. 

“That’s a… tricky question I’ve been trying to decipher. However, as far as my development and mental state are concerned, I regrettably appear to be 13.” 

The King seemed ashamed to admit it, but Error found his mind working a bit faster than he’d meant it to be. The weak aura, the weird magic, the short height, the baby face, the higher voice, all of it! He’d heard of cases like this. Not usually between monsters, but often when monsters would overtake too much magic, or too many supplements, or strain their bodies, they could take on a higher form before reverting. Usually it only affected the amount of magic they could harness, and no one had ever sustained one long enough to actually age before releasing it, but it wasn’t an impossible idea. If the King had been operating on borrowed magic? It was entirely possible that there was a sort of stasis provided to him. Especially since Error was pretty sure he never ever got hurt. 

Part of him wished he’d paid more attention to the books on the shelves back home. His brother would eat this up. Soul-based research with an abnormally long-lasting period? Oh boy…

“That’s cool!” Error blurted without really thinking about it. 

The King seemed to actually flinch about it, cyan eyelight looking wide at Error form across the makeshift table. 

“I- What do you mean?” The King questioned, obviously confused and shocked. 

Error frowned a bit. Did the King really not realize how much skill that takes to pull something like that amount of magic transfer off? Error’s not even sure he could do something like that, and all without losing himself to this other invasive magic?

“King Nightmare, it sounds like you were a torch holding a really really hot fire and you didn’t even get burnt. I’ve never heard of someone using magic like that.” And he blinked as he suddenly perked up, “You’re young too! We’re like each other! Doing cool new magic things that no one wanted us to do! Well, I mean, you want me to do it, but- That’s not the point!” 

Error actually leaned forward a bit so his elbows planted on his knees, and he squinted at the King. “I bet I’m older now too, that’d be really cool. What season is your birthday?” He’d not seen the King celebrate his birthday since he’d been there, but then again, the King was always busy, and Error didn’t pay attention much. 

The King seemed taken aback, but still spoke, “My birthday is in the spring, but-”

Error lit up at that, “Yes! I am older!” he exclaimed excitedly to himself. He’d never had anyone younger than him to hang around before! Granted, he’d met other kids at the academy, but they hadn’t liked him much. 

His grinning was cut a bit short when the King stammered from the seat across from him again. 

“Mage Error, I- I’m glad to see this news isn’t distressing you, but I please ask you to consider my next few words.” The King was watching him, and Error tried to tone down the smile gracing his face. “News of my… state is not being circulated just yet. Orchard is still recovering from centuries of mistreatment under my bloodline’s rule, and I am nowhere near to being able to restore the kingdom as I had planned. My goals will likely only bring more turmoil and frustration to the people, and while assassinations and other sabotage have rarely graced these halls, if word gets out of my newfound weakened form? This castle, this entire kingdom, could be thrown to chaos.” The King’s tone was very serious, and it sounded tired. “You, Error, are not officially my mage, but to prying eyes your studies here fill that same purpose. I was willing to take you in when I was sure I had the power to protect you, but I can’t provide that security any more.”

“Before I came here, I reviewed our contract. At the loss of my protection, you are welcome to request an indefinite leave of absence from the position, and I will have one of my knights accompany you anywhere you wish to go and ensure you arrive safely. I do not want to put you in danger due to my search for reform. You have no obligations to stay in this place nor risk your life for it.” The King’s voice was steady as he said it. “You do not have to give me an answer this moment, but I needed to inform you so that you have a full understanding of your options.” 

Error’s grin had faded about halfway through the King’s speech, and he could already feel the fuzzy numbness creeping up one of his legs as he tried to keep himself from lashing out. Dust had talked to him about that. His reactiveness. 

“King Nightmare, I’m not going anywhere.” he declared, crossing his arms with a huff. “That dumb contract you made me read also said I can stay as long as I want the position. And I want the position.” And the food, and the tower, and the courtyard, and the knights, and the King who listened to him talk about his explosives. “I don’t care if you’re short or have purple magic or whatever,” the King flinched at that, “ You’re still really smart and you have a bunch of really strong people you’re in charge of. Including me, by the way.” 

He was almost offended. He was strong! He was dangerous! The King had always praised him for ingenuity and sheer force of will placed behind each of his projects, and Error took pride in that. He was strong, and powerful, and he wanted to do fun experiments and help the King. Almost more now that he knew that the King was some twig of a monster. Now he didn’t have to worry about lame old people bossing him around. 

The King seemed to lean forward ever so slightly in the chair he was sat in, and Error didn’t shy away. If this was a battle of the wills, he wouldn’t be-

A sniffle. 

Error jolted when the King pulled his hands up to his skull and hastily dragged his sleeves against his sockets. Was he crying??

“Ah- Forgive me!” The King said in a small voice, “Emotional regulation, another damning loss from my sudden form alteration. I’ve been lucky I hadn’t embarrassed myself sooner.” He practically teased himself. 

Error let his body stop tensing, and he noticed the uncomfortable fuzzy feeling had fled in the aftermath of his bold declaration. If he’d had any doubts before that this King was actually as he said, this was the final sign. The King had never showed so much emotion before. 

“I think it’s fine. I get mad all the time and you never mind.” Error voiced, though he wasn’t sure how welcome it would be. 

At that the king laughed, and Error grinned to himself, looking away from the scene. He didn’t like it when people saw him cry. He understood that one all too well. 

A silence fell between them. Error wasn’t going anywhere, he’d made that abundantly clear. The King wouldn’t be sending him away, either. It went unsaid, but it was there in the agreement they’d made just hardly a year prior. The King never went back on his deals.

“Mage Error, I believe you wanted to show me something earlier. Now that it is dark, I believe I would be willing to have Horror accompany us out to the courtyard so I may observe.” 

Error glanced back to the King, and saw that he was looking up at the darkened ceiling. As though trying to predict when a string would lower down his newest creations. 

“Oh, actually I bet we can do it here. From the balcony, I mean. It goes up into the sky, so it shouldn’t hurt anything.” he said, his excitement gaining momentum once again. “I actually made test ones this time too, just to make sure!” 

Error swung backwards out of his hammock, and let the strings above him loosen to drop the item into his awaiting hands. 

The King rose from his seat, walking a bit strangely still, but nothing which bothered Error much. He was more interested in the curious face of his ruler as he approached Error near the balcony exit. Error wasn’t one to use his balcony often, he didn’t even have strings set up to pull the curtains aside, so he lifted one back so that the King could pass by, and he followed himself shortly after. 

The balcony was a thick one, reinforced underneath by large wooden and stone beams, the railing thick enough that one could sit along it like a high-stakes bench. Error did just that, pulling himself up so his feet dangled over the edge. The King remained back, hood pulled tight to his skull as the night winds attempted to tug it away from him. It took a few moments before he joined Error near to the edge, leaning on the balcony which was just ever so slightly too tall for him. His arms rested at chin-height and he seemed to be debating whether to rest his chin on them like an arm rest. 

Error watched from over his shoulder, and grinned to himself as he secured the little invention with his strings before holding it out for the King to see in the moonlight that illuminated the darkness. Them, the castle grounds below, the mountainside and the sprawling hills and valleys beyond. 

“I’ve seen people make these before with gun-powder, they always glowed red, though. So I infused some magic into the canister and the projectiles, and they should do something fun.” Error explained excitedly, pointing out different locations on the thing held in his strings. Long, slender, a mix between a crossbow and a cannon, but tiny. Only the length of his forearm. “Best thing, it should be quiet!” He’d noticed that some of the knights didn’t like when his explosions made loud noises, and a lot of guards came rushing the first few times he’d set off his creations. 

The King examined it for a few moments longer, before he nodded silently. 

Error snickered before he pulled it back into his grip and aimed it up and out. Away from the tower, where it should’ve been just over the large, round, open space in the center of the castle. High in the sky. 

He shifted, dragging his fingers along the surface, the long portion lighting up and flinging something from the end of the device. A little ball of pure white. Up, up, up.

It exploded. 

Error laughed in triumph as the night sky above the palace was set ablaze with a collection of little shimmering lights, like falling stars in all shades of blue and green and purple and white flying everywhere before going dark. His eyelights shot back to the King as he loaded the next round, and he was delighted to see that the single cyan eyelight was plastered on the smoky after-effect left by the burning magic. He desperately wanted to start telling the King all about how he’d done such a genius thing, but he found himself simply hefting the little device up once again and firing into the open darkness instead.

[whatawonderart]

did anyone else like. watch the gnome run finale and go "hey that was great" and then forget about it for a few months and then suddenly you remembered it and realized that this was one of the most impressive creative projects you've ever witnessed or was it just me

[quarkfancam]

If you haven't gotten to the episode 'gravity' yet ignore this but I am curious on your thoughts on the stuff with tuvok. I like the episode but hate how they want to push the narrative of "it's so sad tuvok can't love that woman back because he's a vulcan" when really it's just because HE'S MARRIED WITH KIDS ALREADY! I thought Tom was acting so weird in that ep

had to rewatch parts of the episode to remember anything but really i think halfway agree halfway disagree. i think it's less of a writer issue in this one and more of a Tom being Tom thing. like i think tom is projecting here. "3 months away from your wife? oh yeah, i mean, i'd cheat on her too haha!! hey tuvok. cheat on your wife." <- guy who should not be in a closed marriage with anyone

however while i do think the vulcan = emotionally unavailable thing is very prevalent in star trek a lot of the time i think this. again. is mostly said explicitly by tom and younger tuvok.

there's a lot of anger going on with younger tuvok about how much he hates "being vulcan" when he really means how his society treats crushes and emotion as a whole, but he's saying it like someone saying they hate humans when they mean 'societal expectations'. he's generalizing because he's angry and kind of immature

for tom i feel it's a bit more complicated — the explicit quote is something among the lines of "i see the way you look at her, you look at her like someone who wishes he wasn't vulcan". which like Ok tom. but he's doing the same generalizing thing probably because he's never really meshed with the stereotypical vulcan (hothead playboy hates 'boring' people) and has some bias against how vulcans view love (presumably also out of experience)

as a whole, i think this is one of the more nuanced episodes on vulcan culture (it doesn't outright frame tuvok not getting with noss as a bad thing, the ending leaves some ambiguity with what tuvok told noss in the end). genuinely most of the criticism against tuvok not getting with her comes from tom. who is tom. who has biases. and even if it was written as a 'tuvok can't be with this person because he's vulcan.... so sad' episode, i think there's enough ambiguity to read it as tuvok remembering his time as a lovesick teenager when faced with someone who's kinda lovesick about him (though unrequited)