#i have no idea how to write for organ but goddamn i guess we’re gonna try.

[grntaire]

recital planning is going great y’all the newest task on my to-do list is “arrange helena [by mcr] for voice + organ”

[captainelsaeverdeen]

I like me better when I’m with you.

Okay so! I never considered writing on this blog, but I just had the cutest idea e v e r and I decided to do something about it. I used to write a lot but I stopped to publish anything years ago. Maybe it’s time to come back. Who knows! For now I just wanted to see if someone would like it! English is not my first language so pretty, pretty please forgive me if you find any mistakes :( 

summary: based on ‘To All The Boys I Loved Before’. Y/N Henderson used to be in love a couple of times. This time she’s sure it’s something bigger, something serious. Her love for Jonathan Byers is unlimited, untamed and endless. At least she thought so. You can read Part 2 Here.

-

We knew that it was wrong. That he was betrothed to my best friend. But if this isn’t what he wanted then why did he come to the field of desire? It was faded,  that we should meet like this. So when his lips touch my neck to put a gentle kiss on it… 

“Mom asks you to wash the dishes” Dustin was standing in the doorway of your room, smiling silly. He presented his full teeth with pride, moving his eyebrows in a funny way. “It’s not my turn” you said and slowly turned over a page of book your brother interrupted you from reading. “Yours, if you’re planning on going out with Nancy and Jonathan today” he shrugged his shoulders innocently. “Excuse me?” you turned your head so fast that your neck hurt. “Says who?” 

“Says me. You forced me to vacuum last week when I wanted to go to the arcade, but it was your turn. So if you don’t want to be late, you better hurry”  “I hate you” you sighned putting the book down. You ran you fingers through the cover of it with two lovers, leaning towards each other just before the kiss. Dustin was still standing in the doorway. 

“Do they not mind when you are going to their dates?” He asked suddenly. “They don’t call it ‘dates’ when I’m with them. They have time for each other, but we’re still friends. Just because they’re together doesn’t mean… that I’ll stop being their friend” you said. “Whatever you say. I think that’s weird. Totally weird. I wouldn’t want to take Mike or Lucas or Will if I wanted to meet my girl”. “No one asked for your opinion, you abominable little shit!” you screamed going to the kitchen, aggressively putting plates in the sink. They didn’t deserve such terrible treatment, but Dustin was right. It was weird. Weird as fuck. 

After the infamous party at Tina’s last Halloween night, when Nancy broke up with Steve Harrington, and rumours about them didn’t go silent for a good month she and Jonathan became extremely close. You always spent time with them separately. When Nancy and her boyfriend wanted to be alone, you would watch movies on the couch at Joyce Byers’ house. When Jonathan promised Will to take him for a ride in the car listening to The Clash, Nancy combed your hair as Donna Summer filled her room with her songs. But after Halloween, everything changed. Nancy started sitting between you and Jonathan as you guys were watching ‘The Shining’ with a bowl of popcorn. And Jonathan knew ‘I Feel Love’ by heart, although he hated Donna Summer. Something was wrong. Something was diffrent. 

By Christmas, everyone was sure that Jonathan and Nancy started dating. They spent Christmas Eve together and then announced their relationship to you together. And that’s not when your heart started beating faster when you saw him. Not when they were holding hands, not when they kissed every time before the car started from the driveway when they came to your house. Not until Nancy Wheeler took your seat on the couch at Joyce’s house. It wasn’t until then that something unimaginable, something wrong happened, something that should never have happened. You started to have, a little, small, tiny crush on your best friend.

And it wasn’t that you were jealous of Nancy. She was a great girl, smart and deserving of a wise, loving boy, which Jonathan was. But the heart is a treacherous tool. You could leave it with a cat for a month, thinking everything would be all right, and when you get back, you’d find that it threw it out the window. Because it can never be trusted. Admitting your feelings was not an option. You could lose Nancy or Jonathan. Well, Robin and Dustin would still be staying by your side, of course, but losing someone close hurts too much. Too much to be dealt with by an organ that throws the cat out the window. So smiling is okay, pretending everything’s okay is okay. As long as no one guesses and stupid feelings go away.

Not for the first time, right?

“Y/N, honey, what are you still doing here? Jonathan’s here” Mom came to the kitchen. “Ask the youngest” you rolled my eyes and kissed her on the cheek, running out of the house. Nancy pressed the alarm button a couple of times, dropping the window on the passenger side. “I don’t think you’re so excited to see Jason Voorhees for the fourth time since you’re two minutes late” she said, putting her wrist with the watch on it out the window.

“Maybe if my brother weren’t such a troublesome goddamn gremlin, you guys wouldn’t have to wait for so long” you fastened your belt and smiled at Jonathan. “Tell me about it” Nancy rolled her eyes. Her hand was clenching on Jonathan’s hands, their intertwined fingers were on his thigh. He was probably just letting her go to change gear, to grab her hand back, wanting to touch her. You smiled slightly to yourself. “I’m a little offended” you hit the back of Nancy’s chair a little bit. “You questioned my love for Jason, knowing he’s the man of my dreams. I wouldn’t miss this movie now or ever”.

“Man, you have a strange taste in men” Jonathan twisted his head.

Oh boy, if you only knew.

“Who’s gonna pick them for you when I’m out of college?” Nancy said quietly. When you were a year younger than them, you had to reckon they would be gone soon, but the thought still was terrible. You opened the window and put my hand out, feeling the cold wind on your fingers. “Robin’s doing great” you smiled. “She likes Michael Myers”.

“I’m begging you. He’s not even half as terrible as Freddie” Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and my father is Stephen King” you snorted. Nancy smiled a little. “And Robin’s driving terribly” Jonathan got ripped off. “Whatever my life depends on it, I’d rather give my car to Carol Perkins, she can at least turn around.

“I gotta get off so you two can both stop making fun of her?” “Oh no. We don’t want Jason to get you here… on a dark road… near the woods…” Nancy wiped out and turned to you with her hands ready to attack. You hit her hands to turn around so she didn’t even think to touch or tickle you. “You can ride with me” Jonathan shrugged his arm. “I like Robin, but your life is in danger when she’s behind the wheel. I’m not going anywhere yet.”

There it was. The stomach’s fickles, the heat on your cheeks and the smile and the awful awareness of how wrong it was. How inappropriate and how unfair it was to Nancy, who sat so close to you, that she could count your moles if she turned around. But before she even thought about him, he was yours. Not exactly, of course. But when Will went missing, he didn’t turn to her for help first. He wasn’t at her door in the middle of the night, rambling about how his mom is getting crazy. He was always a lonely ship drifting in the dark sea, and you were his anchor, which drifted in time to hold him.

Well, once Jason had killed everyone he was supposed to kill, and for most of the movie, Jonathan and Nancy spent most of the time giggling and whispering to each other, after looking at their inseparably intertwined hands, it was time to go home.

It’s not that you wanted to steal your best friend’s boyfriend. You were super happy for Nancy. She deserves a great guy like Jonathan. So it was time for another letter. Fifth, if you believe your stupid heart. “How’s the movie?” Dustin asked when I walked by his room. He was only wearing one sock and reading a comic book. “Didn’t you faint from the excess corn syrup blood?”

“I’m not you” you showed him your tongue. “I didn’t forget about the dishes!” “Oh, you did! The pan is still dirty!” Dustin screamed, but I already locked the door to my room and sat at my desk, hiding my face in my hands. After a few awfully long seconds and listening to the bang of an owl outside the window, I pulled the card out of the drawer looking for a black pen. 

Dear Jonathan Byers… 

These letters are your biggest secret. You weren’t going to send the letter, it was just for you to understand how you were feeling. But really, you guess it was mainly about how sometimes you imagined what it would’ve been like if you’d realized how you felt about them sooner. To all of them. There are five of them: Chris from summer camp, Stanley from the homecoming, Ralph from the neighborhood who lived across the street for just three months, Steve Harrington from high school, and Jonathan. 

You’ve seen Chris once in you life, for two weeks in the riverside forest. Stanley was the only one who asked you to dance, seeing you sitting alone on a bench. Ralph moved into Hawkins a few years ago, but his parents decided to go back to Florida. Steve… well, he became quite a different person when you went to high school. And Jonathan… Jonathan is still an infinite chapter. A chapter in book that’s too beautiful to finish reading it early.

You write a letter when you have a crush so intense that you don’t know what else to do. Rereading your letters reminds you of how powerful your emotions can be, how all-consuming. You hide them between the vinyls on a shelf above the bed, where no one will ever find them. Robin would say you’re being dramatic, but drama can be fun… 

“What are you doing?” Dustin asked suddenly, entering the room without knocking. “Nothing” you smiled, covering the unfinished part of the letter with your elbow. “Your room is a mess” brother looked around. “And listen, about that pan-”

“Good night, Dustin. I hope you will be dreaming of something nice” you smiled sweetly, showing him the way out. It wasn’t until he left that you finished pouring your feelings onto the paper that you put the letter into the envelope, addressed it and put it between the vinyl, where there were four similar envelopes. Each one was for another boy, who would always be a part of you.

Yeah, drama can be fun. Just as long nobody else knows about it.

-

“So you’re telling me” Robin stopped halfway down the track. She didn’t care about getting a pass at the PE, anyway, you too. The coach sent you an indulgent look, and your friend just shrugged her shoulders. The other girls ran past you, rubbing your shoulders, but besides that, they didn’t pay much attention to you. “That they were on another date, taking you with them again? Why don’t you just say no to them?”

“I don’t know” Robin groaned and grabbed her side. “What’s going on?” “My body reacts badly to physical effort” she muttered and sat on the treadmill, pulling her legs out. “Some running won’t hurt you” Becky Miller snorted, running alongside us. “Running is humiliating” Robin didn’t even look at her. “Dude, you have to stop this. Every fucking time you come to me and tell me how badly you’re feeling, you’re the one who’s responsible for it. Tell him finally how you feel. Nothing’s gonna happen. There will be no earthquake. The aliens won’t find their way to Earth. And you will finally fall asleep and free yourself from that strange triangle”.

“I don’t want it to be weird between us” you shruged your shoulders.”If I push them off, I’ll start losing them. They’ll find that the two of us are actually better off and… forget how cool it used to be.”

“That’s why relationships sucks” Robin moaned and grabbed your hand. Coach had already started walking towards us, but he was still far away. “But hey… Nancy is your friend. Jonathan is your friend. They care about you. They love you. Maybe not as much as I do, but they do. You don’t have to worry. Everything’s gonna be okay, just… just don’t let it break you. Okay?”

“Okay” you smiled. Robin smiled too and turned her back, frowning her eyebrows. “What’s Harrington doing here? He’s all sweaty and, oh, my God, he looks gross, but shouldn’t he have basketball practice now?”

“Hey, Henderson!” Steve has spoken to you. You lifted your head and swallowed. Steve hasn’t talked to you since you guys were thirteen. Damn thirteen. “On a scale from one to ten, how bad this looks like?” you asked when your hands started shaking. “I’m hovering somewhere in the high thirties” Robin responded quietly, standing up. “Me?” you made sure and Steve nodded his head. His hair was in terrible disarray, but although it was wet and stuck to his forehead, it still looked impressive. He wasn’t angry or upset, which was good, but… but he didn’t look happy either.

“If you need me, I’ll be in the nurse’s office” Robink winked and walked away.  “Look, I just wanted to say that I really…” Steve licked his lips and wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. What the hell was going on here. “Goddamn, this is the first time I’ve been in situation like this… I appreciate it, but it’s never gonna happen”. 

“I’m sorry, what?” You asked. Why did Robin have to leave? Why did she have to leave you? “From what I remember that kiss was hot, you know, for being in seventh grade” Steve said slowly, leading the eye somewhere outside of you, just to avoid looking you in the eye. “And I think it’s really cool you think I have golden specks in my eyes. And that my hair is gorgeous. But this is a strange moment for me… I just broke up with Nancy, you know… Becky is… she’s fine, she seems fine. I may not be ready at all…”

You stopped listening to him and looked at his hands. You don’t know what you expected, maybe they will shake as much as yours, but no. He was holding the envelope. A white, slightly old envelope, with his name written with your writing. With your pen. And your hand.

“At first I thought it was just Dustin’s stupid joke, but that dipshit probably doesn’t even know how to write…” Steve kept on talking, but your mind was somewhere else. It went all the way from school to your house, tossing the whole room in it’s memory, wondering hhow did the letters get in sight. How did they even reach the people they were never supposed to reach?

“I don’t want to be an asshole, and I certainly don’t want you… I don’t know, to feel bad about it, but…” Steve’s voice was drilling into your brain, and your stomach started to shrink painfully. Maybe it’d have managed, if it wasn’t for the fact that Jonathan was just going to the pitch, and he also was holding the envelope.

Oh, no.

[itsybitsylemonsqueezy]

So I finished watching Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon. Spoilers under the cut. 

(Mainly positive take, some criticisms. C+/B I’d give it.)

So, first of all, I didn’t play it, I just watched people on youtube so my perspective of gameplay should be taken with a grain of salt. But I really liked the turn taking fighting style! Like a real JRPG, I thought it was fun, it seemed fun anyway, and the strategies to JRPG make more intuitive sense to me than fighting games, which I don’t know at all. I did end up missing the hand-to-hand combat like... aesthetically and it kinda breaks universe rules a little. But, like, Ichiban seeing combat as a sort of heightened fantasy reality actually helps with that and the plot still treats us like average combatants. Like, there’s still no murder, despite a lot more weapon use, including guns. So... it’s a little sad and weird universe-wise, but seems fun to play. 

Ichiban is a great protag! Definitely not Kiryu! He has two dads, like 8 spouses, a lot of hair... He’s only 7 years younger than Kiryu and that’s... that’s a choice ^^; But he’s got a lot of good things going for him and I like his build. Interesting rage-grief he has going and a thing about revenge that Kiryu never had. And I like that actually, I like that Ichiban gets hit with different things than Kiryu did, but he still has flaws. Kiryu was never blind with rage the way Ichi got, but then, Kiryu also didn’t save his brother. Like, they have VERY different shit going on, which is GOOD. So I’m kinda annoyed that in the end we took Ichi’s dad and brother, just like Kiryu’s? Like... damn :/ Lame. Lazy. 

I love Ichi’s team! I love Adachi, Nanba, Saeko, Joon-gi, Zhao. Top notch peeps! I like that they all just like him and are here for a fun adventure with him. They’re all here for something different, which is also really cool. Zhao is sort of redefining who he is in... retirement I guess? Trying out being a companion rather than a leader. Saeko is longing for family, connection, a place to belong. Adachi was here to accomplish a goal, to restore his honor and provide justice. And Ichi’s been a big help to that. Joon-gi is... a whore. I’m sorry! He’s just this beautiful, obedient man who’s just here on lend and he does whatever the fuck you say. Do not put him in charge of decisions, he’s terrible at them, but he knows a lot and has a vast network. But he appears just to be here to serve everyone’s needs, so to speak, and to moon after Ichiban like everyone else. And Nanba. Nanba hates adventures. He hates germs. He hates people and friends and danger and doing things. But he’s here. Because Ichi makes him hate things a little less. Nanba is a cynical, cowardly bastard, and Ichi’s a fucking sunshiney idiot always trying to fix shit that isn’t his problem. And he makes Nanba get up and fight. He makes Nanba believe in tomorrow. Nanba doesn’t trust people, Nanba doesn’t hope. He’s a pessimist and lives only to complain. But he is first in line to get shot for Ichiban every fucking time. He’s always the first to Ichiban’s side when he’s in trouble. Leaving and betraying Ichiban broke his fucking heart and my ship is probably showing A LOT here but I don’t care. I fucking love Nanba, I love his arc, I did NOT see it coming. And they are definitely my ship out of this. The fact that Nanba without fail is always the first to put himself in danger for Ichiban guts me. With how much he doesn’t believe in good things ever happening, it destroys me that he’ll dare it all for Ichiban. Fucking wild. 

I thought it was cool to bring up a political villain, but... we didn’t really carry through on Bleach Japan’s thematic importance. We revealed them to be cruel and hypocritical, but we didn’t end up actually saving the slums or proving why the slums needed to be saved and that’s... kinda lame :/ 

I was really hoping that we might make a stand on why grey spaces were needed, on why organizations like the yakuza are needed but instead we... disbanded? And I don’t even know why? 

Like, it was to fuck over Ryo Aoki. But... he was a TEMPORARY problem. All you had to do was move the organizations underground until he was unseated, which the Tojo already was??? 

But instead... we brought down Tojo and Omi and... WHY?! Like, SERIOUSLY, can ANYONE tell me WHY! Because I have a LOT OF FEELINGS about why that’s a BAD CALL.

What are all those guys going to do now? “Oh, we’ll just make a security company” YOU’LL WHAT?! THOUSANDS of guys used to shake downs will now be hired to patrol rich estates and cover banks and business buildings?! Fighting WHO, themselves?! A LOT of that job is just watching some fucking cameras, what... what the fuck are you talking about Watase?! 

But I guess that’s still better than Daigo’s “I have no fucking idea” plan

NO WONDER Majima’s depressed at that funeral you JUST TOLD HIM his new job is BABYSITTING SOME RICH FUCK’S BUILDING. Fuck you guys! 

And HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT POWER VACUUMS?! CRIME doesn’t disappear just because there’s no one there to manage it! That just means it gets worse! And rasher, crueler people grab power in the interim. Smaller but rougher groups will appear. More and worse crimes will happen now. You just disenfranchised thousands, not all of them are going to come with you to play security detail and not all of them WANT to. So why EXACTLY did we disband the yakuza? What problems did that solve??? 

What about all that shit about the yakuza being a home for people who didn’t fit in? What about people who fell through the cracks in the system, who don’t have anywhere else to go? 

If the yakuza, as an idea, was so fucking bad, WHAT WERE THE LAST SIX GAMES ABOUT?!

You can’t have an established series that accepts the idea that crime and violence are sometimes necessary or are even good things and have a compelling protag who does that, ONLY to turn around at the last second and pretend like it was always wrong!

If you were gonna act like the idea of organized crime is a Bad Thing, THEN THAT NEEDED TO BE A CONFLICT FROM THE BEGINNING

But you didn’t even do that!

We DIDN’T disband the yakuza because organized crime is inherently morally corrupt, no we disbanded because some prick thought he could use us! A PRICK WHO IS NOW DEAD! THE FUCK?! 

And DON’T GET ME STARTED on how this reframes Kiryu’s narrative. KIRYU WASN’T RIGHT FOR LEAVING YOU FUCKING BASTARDS. 

THE WHOLE POINT OF KIRYU’S ARC WAS THAT HE WAS FUCKING WRONG TO ABANDON HIS RELATIONSHIPS I- *screams into pillow*

AND why does Kiryu need to be dead now?! There is no more yakuza! Who does he need to hide from?! 

OH no wait, my mistake! We didn’t disband ALL the yakuza, just Omi and Tojo! You know, the two biggest cities in Japan. I’m sure THAT won’t have Fucking Consequences. But Kiryu still has to be dead for uh... Reasons.

This was just such a fucking dumb universe-building move. It’s not been thought through, it betrays the whole point of the franchise up until now, and I’m honestly just mad that they didn’t even feel the need to address it? Like, the yakuza’s just gone now, but it’s whatever. Who would even care about that. Like, that’s not going to be a plot point next game. It won’t matter, at all, I promise you. All of the in-universe implications this has, none of it matters. And I’m not even mad I’m just... tired. And annoyed a little. that you can’t be bothered to tie up your own rules. You won’t give your own writing decisions weight and that’s just... kinda sad. It’s just lazy and sad that they don’t care enough to connect the pieces. But I’ve had my heart broken enough by yakuza writing decisions. Of course they would do this, of course they haven’t thought enough about their own series to really consider what ending the yakuza would mean. Why would they? 

I’ll still watch the next game. Like, Ichiban is likeable enough and I’m interested in his arc enough that I’d play or watch next time. But... *sigh* We’re the Yakuza series with no yakuza. And y’all gonna act like that’s a good thing or pretend it doesn’t even matter. And I really don’t know what to do with that since you haven’t bothered to examine it either. 

On a nice Kiryu note, I did like that he was scaled appropriately, I like that Ichiban is Wiped Out after almost every fight. He’s a good fighter, but he has human endurance. Kiryu’s still god. He hits the hardest out of anyone you fight and you Don’t win and that’s As It Should Be. I’m REALLY glad they at least let me have that. I’m glad they let us fight Kiryu and we passed and it was a cool passing of the torch. I was so worried they were going to destroy Kiryu’s legacy and at least they didn’t do that. 

The coin locker baby thing... it was cliche and convenient, but in the way that Yakuza is cliche and convenient and melodramatic and over the top. It was sort of fitting and familiar that way. Shame we ended Swashiro like that, I think we could have done more and cooler shit with him but, eh. 

SPEAKING OF MORE AND COOLER SHIT

...all that effort, just to kill him? Alllllll that long time, that hard conversation, that break down with Ichiban... just to kill him. Just to make him Nishiki, all over again. 

I... fuck you. 

Why do you refuse to write a goddamn redemption arc

Fuck, you don’t even have to write it, have it happen off-screen if you’re so fucking afraid of it. Just have him recuperate in a goddamn hospital and, I don’t know, by next game just show that he’s doing better and is getting therapy and whatever.

Jesus fucking christ, he doesn’t have to MATTER in the next game just... don’t kill him. Jesus. Please.

All that fucking work and you’re STILL going to give Ichiban the trauma of losing someone he was trying to save. 

I just... it’s really gutting how much you don’t like your characters and you don’t like to write and you’re cowards. You won’t take risks. You’re too afraid of fucking up so you won’t do what the narrative calls for. 

Killing Masato was lazy-ass, punk-ass, coward shit and I wont’ stand for it. I did not expect to care about his ass by the end but you guys REALLY made an effort in making him a three dimensional character there at the end and explaining why Ichi would care about him and I was willing to come with you! I was willing for us to invest in this dumbass. We walk him all the way up to the edge and step him back. We let him let go. And then you just. fucking. gave up. You goddamn cowards.

I’m so tired of this shit

For all that, it was genuinely a really fun game and a really fun story with a lot of likeable characters. I think a solid C+, even a B. I really did enjoy most of it. It’s just... in usual Yakuza style, they only fucked up 2 things but they were a REALLY IMPORTANT 2 things. 

Oh and I did like the fact that Ichiban Still Doesn’t Know. No one tell him.

[lenle-g]

So! This is my @tagsecretsanta for the super super lovely @such-a-random-rambler​ whose prompt I was SO excited about and I have never spent so long drawing, 3D rendering (a new skill!) and animating something in my life, oh boy XDD

John's “filing system”, if it's even acceptable to call it such a thing, is nothing short of perfectly precise, absolutely fastidious, totally organized chaos.

Scott, bathed in the blue glow of the holograms all around him, has absolutely no idea how John ever finds anything in this cascading, endless quantity of folder after folder, all neatly labelled with, well, ???some kind of code or other??? he assumes??? probably??? Evidently their spaceman understands... whatever this is but Scott, scowling, has no idea how John could expect anyone else to ever have a chance at deciphering his stupid hieroglyphics.

It's almost a criminally annoying.

For a start, there's literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. There must be a file here for every mission they've ever been on, and more besides for who-even-knows-what that Scott's had no real reason to ever look at before. 

But John's currently out of commission and Scott, his teeth now gritted, really needs to find the mission files from the incident that did it. He knows John was, of course, recording everything from his stint to the X2 Zero Space Station in those annoying, succinct, shorthand notes of his. His brother is predictably pedantic and precise like that. He always has been. But as much as it irritates Scott it does mean that what went so very wrong up there last night is all here somewhere, tucked into one of these files, tantalisingly right under his finger tips and labelled in utter gibberish.

It takes Scott three hours just to work out that the little number at the end of each file name is the date done the English way.

A cry of: “Oh seriously!” escapes Scott before he can contain it, and he spends a good couple of minutes soundlessly cursing that semester John spent at Oxford with Penelope, back during his degree. The temptation to throw the holoprojector across the room is rapidly mounting, and he’s stopped only because both hands are needed to plunge deep into the whirling lines of blue code and wrestle out the folder labelled with the awful, heart-racing, anglicised version of yesterday’s date.

The folder finally in his grasp, Scott opens it with a mounting degree of trepidation and... and he rapidly discovers that everything inside it is encoded and that he has no idea what any of it means and the eldest Tracy is filled with, instead of the expected triumph, a sinking, twisting miasma of dread.

"Goddamn it John." Scott hisses to himself, bashing one of his fists down on the smooth wood composite of their Father's desk, "Is this written in alien? How the hell…?!?"

It’s Alan, alerted by all the muffled complaining, who eventually creeps in and takes pity on him, sliding his little fingers neatly through John’s mess and gradually decrypting it. Though he does so with an unwarranted amount of giggling, Scott feels.

John’s ‘alien writing’ is apparently NASA shorthand that’s been translated using a numbered sequence into no less than three of John's favourite languages and then run through some kind of scrambler. Scott wonders if his brother has written a program to do this for him or if it's just become deeply ingrained into that ridiculous computer brain of his that he does it without even thinking about it.

Surely stopping the Hood from getting into their files doesn’t have to be this extreme? Not for old data? The specs of the Thunderbirds maybe but... for missions logs, software patch notes and John’s (rarely followed) meal plans?

Not so much.

An hour of work on Alan’s part later, each painstakingly translated word stands out in brilliant, bold red, displayed high in the air above their living space:

"Scott,” Alan reads the sentence aloud, interrupting himself with his own mirth, “pffft, get out of my files and, hahaha, go to, oh my god, bed." He nearly topples himself over he's laughing so hard. “He didn’t.”

“Oh he did.” Scott scowls, furious. “For crying out loud…” Big brother's fingers bunch up into righteous fists of shaking anger as he shoves the words off the projected screen. "That oversized string bean set me up." Alan's howling cranks up a notch, fuelled by his reaction. “Alan, stop it!” He demands, though it has very little effect on his little brother. The young pilots eyes are watering and he’s curled over himself, pounding at his knees with his fists. “It’s not funny.” Scott snaps, “Just wait ‘till I get my hands on him, he’s going to tell me what happened up there whether he likes it or...”

“Scott, Scott!” Alan, wiping genuine tears of laughter from his eyes, steps in for damage control, laying a preventative hand on his sibling’s arm and shaking his head. He’s perfectly aware of how hot headed his oldest brother can be and Alan sure doesn’t want to be responsible for any impromptu landings of Thunderbird One direclty on top of his space-inclined brother’s bedroom. “Hey, look, Gordon just told me that John's finally fallen asleep. Virg'll murder you if you go and wake him now."

And Scott has to just seethe quietly at that because he knows Alan's absolutely right. And not just about potential Virgil-induced-killings. John would never readily admit it, but Virg had confided in them all that their astronaut has been having a lot of difficulty resting properly since they brought him home. A lot of the common pain medications they keep stocked tend to mess with the spaceman’s space-worn body more than it’s worth to give them to him. Scott doesn’t have a hard time recalling the pinched, pained expression that he hasn’t seen leave their spaceman’s pale face for the last fourteen hours.

“It’s not John I’m mad at.” Scott finally deflates into sulking, with a big sigh. “Not really. I just know there’s someone out there, someone we could be tracking down, whose responsible for this all happening. For John getting trapped up there and...”

“I know.” The little hand on his arm gives it a warm squeeze and Alan’s looking at him all big blue baby eyes and worry. “I know, but he'll tell us what happened when he's ready, yeah?" It's surprisingly considerate and wise sounding coming from their littlest brother. “You don’t need to be here trying to hack Thunderbird Five for all the answers. It’s,” He grins, “It’s clear John’s not just going to give them to you before he’s ready anyway, right?”

“I guess not.” Scott snorts, folding the swirling blue holograms of the file directory away with a tired sweep of his hand. “I just hate not knowing.”

“Join the club.” Alan digs a friendly elbow into his brothers side, jostling, “There’s five of us plus Grandma, and we’re all gonna get t-shirts that say ‘Caution; touching even a single orange hair on John Tracy’s head may result in grievous bodily harm’.”

Scott laughs again, sounding far more genuine now.

“Thanks Alan.” He tucks an arm around the kids shoulders, squidging him in close. “I needed that. You sure know how to cheer a guy up. Now how about we go wrestle together something that John’ll be able to eat ready for when he’s awake again. I’m not much of a psychic but I’m pretty sure he’s gonna be hungry when he wakes up and I don’t want Grandma getting any ‘good ideas’ about it before we do.”

“I’ll go raid his oatmeal stash!” Alan practically leaps across the room in his eagerness and Scott smiles, watching him careen off toward the kitchen to track down John’s go-to comfort food for when he’s just down from orbit and feeling space-sick.

Scott draws in a deep, worried breath to try to centre himself, not liking how rattled and stressed he’s been by this whole thing. John’ll be ok. He tells himself. And he’ll update us with whatever we need to know when he deems it necessary... likely in perfect, factual detail and completely missing out anything John might have been thinking or, damn it, feeling at the time.

John Tracy is, of course, just like that.

But it doesn’t half frighten his brothers.

[infinitestarsintheskye]

Agents of Shield Series Finale thoughts (finally)

Or alt title Skye finally sits down to write this after two days of being overtired, overwhelmed and as a result, anxious! Feeling a WHOLE lot better today after a few anxiety naps and watching Phineas and Ferb on Disney + (that show is just pure serotonin I swear) 

God what can I say that hasn’t already been said. I’m so beyond happy. I have no idea what my expectations were but by god were they exceeded. I cannot say enough how happy I am. They saved the world with empathy. How utterly beautiful. The endings everyone got were all just so utterly utterly deserved. I’m still in shock really. 

If you haven’t already guessed it, I did not make it to my alarm at half past 6 on Thursday morning. I woke up at quarter past 5 after barely three hours of sleep and just could not help myself. I finished, cried for two hours and collapsed for another hour and a half. And she wonders why she’s felt like utter shit the past two days...

ANYWAY

DEKE DEKE MY WONDERFUL MY MOST DEAREST DISASTER SON!!!!!!!!! I love him so much. I know he’s happy in alt. 1983 but losing him was honestly such sweet sorrow. I had a feeling that he would sacrifice himself but I could not have guessed that it would happen in honestly such a good way. He still gets to live, gets to be the director of Shield (god help them) and I’m equally happy and devastated for him. I love Deke so much, he is very dear to me, and the money I would pay for a miniseries of him just absolutely killing it as Shield director in the 80′s with his side business of being a popstar, like the amount doesn’t exist. Also his impersonation of Fitz was so incredibly hilarious, Jeff Ward actually does a not bad Scottish accent and the IMMEDIATE adoption of the pregnant lady pose just ABSOLUTELY SENT ME!!!!!!!!!!

Mack. I’m so happy he lived. His team up with Sousa will forever give me life. Them taping goddamn chronicoms to the missiles to blast a hole in the ship, like whoever came up with that idea, you are now my favourite human on this earth. It is so supremely dumb but I love it so much. As much as there was BIG concern going into this that he was going to die, ta Henry, I never once felt worried for him. Like he never even came close???????? Also a raise to whoever put him in that big long jacket at the end like oh my god are you serious, AMAZING

Yoyo. I had NOT A SINGULAR CLUE, NOT EVEN AN INCLINE of what was going to happen to Yoyo. Her little team up at the end with Piper and Davis (DAVIS ROBO!DAVIS YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS BICKERING WITH PIPER WE LOVE TO SEE IT) was beyond incredible. Yoyo had such a great arc this season, and I’m just so happy to see it concluded so well, plus that shot of her zooming out of the car at the end was beyond A+ it was beautiful.

May. May, wonderful May. Her appearing OUT OF GODDAMN NOWHERE TO JUST ABSOLUTELY END SIBYL IS JUST FOREVER GOING TO GIVE ME LIFE. THE CAVALRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so intrigued with where they were going with her arc this season, like I enjoyed empath May but I was so curious to see where it was going and oh what a pay off it was. I literally shouted AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH at my screen when she put her hands into that machine and Coulson explained it, BECAUSE IT ALL JUST MADE SENSE. Also it was 100000000000000000000% her idea to name it Coulson Academy, and no one disagreed with her. I loved her little call back to S1 with her just being the pilot. In general I thought all of the call backs were very well handled and placed, nothing felt too fan servicey it was all very natural and organic bc these writers really just know what they’re about and are just so incredibly good at their jobs. ANYWAY MAY. I’m happy that she’s getting a little bit of rest from the field, she absolutely deserves it. 

Coulson. I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t sure about Robo!Coulson when he was introduced at the end of last season, but my god am I so happy for him now. He is truly the heart of this show, the whole thing began because a stubborn group of fans refused to accept that he had died. And really isn’t that a theme that has carried us through this entire show haha? I was so terrifed for about 30 seconds that Sibyl was going to turn him against the rest of the team, so the RELIEF of May popping out of the ceiling to JUST END HER ENTIRE CAREER WAS INCREDIBLE.  The reappearance of Lola ABSOLUTELY SENT ME. I also love that after years of Coulson refusing to let Mack work on Lola, Mack just went “Fuck it” and built one from, I assume, scratch. He is going to be the best Grandpa to little Alya Fitzsimmons and you can tear that headcanon from my cold dead hands. Again, what a deserving ending. I could not be happier for him, that last shot was just perfect. 

Daisy. Oh boy, we’re getting into my heafty emotions now. I would just like to say that her entire arc throughout this entire show is one of the most incredible, most amazing and well crafted and well thought out characters arcs in television history. Watching her go from this lost little hacker with a bit of a smart mouth, to this strong and powerful LITERAL SUPERHERO has actually been a privilege and I cannot stress enough how much I have loved watching her grow and evolve over the past seven years. That being said, I am low key FURIOUS that they made me think that she was dead for even just a SECOND. I WAS SOBBING NO AT MY PHONE FOR THAT ENTIRE LITTLE INTERLUDE LIKE NO FUCKING WAY ARE YOU GOING TO KILL HER OFF AND LEAVE HER BODY IN SPACE I WILL NOT LET YOU, LET ME GO SHARPEN MY PITCHFORK I AM COMING FOR YOU. I will now invite you to imagine the look of absolute and utter joy and relief on my face when I saw she was alive. Skye/Daisy holds such a special place in my heart. Her whole thing with Sousa this season was SO UTTERLY OUT OF THE BLUE BUT SO INCREDIBLY DELIGHTFUL AND DESERVED!?!?!?!??!?!!?!? Like out of everything I think that little plot detail is what surprised me the most, and I surprised myself by really loving it as much as I did. I would have been happy if she had ended the series single but I’m so happy that she has this wonderful partner who loves her so much and has her back and just looks after her like it’s just like the most wonderful added bonus which she deserves. Sousa is also like a whole ass snack and as I have been saying in my tags for the past few weeks, DAISY GET IT!!!! I love that she ended the series with her own little family, her sister and Sousa. I just. I cannot even think about that without welling up. Daisy has a family, and she chose it and she loves them all so much. I know it was last weeks ep too but I will never get over her calling Simmons her sister. Never ever ever for as long as I live. I’m so happy for her. So beyond happy.

FitzSimmons. Here we, here we, here we fucking go. What to even say apart from big, long and loud sobbing noises, cause that’s all I have really been able to do in regards to them for the last two days. Happy isn’t a strong enough word. There is no word big enough, nor all encompassing enough to say how utterly UTTERLY happy I am that they got their most beautiful happy ending. Fitz guiding her through her memories, the second Jemma said Alya I started screaming, I just I knew that was her name, and him just being so gentle with her whilst she was remembering, like oh my heart. I excuse them everything, the lack of Fitz (WHICH WAS NO ONE’S FAULT I WILL NOT HAVE ANYTHING ABOUT THAT HERE) this season was honestly just paid back tenfold in the scenes that we got of him. His frustration IMMEDIATELY at everyone not understanding their plan was so amazingly hilarious. Simmons half remembering everything was both heartbreaking and hilarious, the scene of her asking for a supersuit like Daisy’s was incredible and both Deke and Daisy responding to her like she was a child they needed to trick into doing something for them, like yes if you come with us you’ll get a supersuit and a bit chocolate, incredible. The acting in both episodes from both IDC and Elizabeth was just truly something else. The fact that neither of them have been nominated EVER for their work on this show is nothing less than criminal. Her face when she remembered Alya. Dear god my heart. I have watched that scene of them reuniting with her at least 3000000000000000000000 times since Thursday morning. I won’t ever forget it. What a beautiful scene. What an incredible scene. “You were guarding our everything.” SHE’S THEIR EVERYTHING. THEIR UTTER EVERYTHING! I’M ACTUALLY LIKE SOBBING WRITING THIS I WILL NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE GET OVER THE FACT THAT THEY LET FITZSIMMONS LIVE IN PEACE FOR FOUR WHOLE ASS YEARS, LET THEM HAVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL, MOST PRECIOUS LITTLE BABY GIRL AND THEN LET THEM LIVE IN PEACE AGAIN I JUST!!! I HAVE WANTED THIS FOR THEM FOR SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO VERY LONG!!! (also @ marvel I’m not in a place where I want any kind of continuation or spin off at the moment but I would watch a FitzSimmons miniseries of them just being happy and domestic and working in space for 4 years. Just SOMETHING to consider) I cannot thank the writers enough for finally finally letting them have their happy ending. They have been through so much, and it was all worth it because it led them to their happily ever after and to their little girl and I just, that is everything. ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!! I have talked a lot in this post about people deserving their endings but honestly none more than FitzSimmons. Fitz playing with Alya in their little garden whilst Simmons watches with the biggest smile on her face. How perfect. I could not have dreamt a better ending for them I’m so so so so so SO beyond happy for them. And god that little girl is just the most precious. Her gleefully exclaiming “Mama!” at Simmons is the EXACT moment that I started sobbing and did not stop for the rest of the episode. Also I know they didn’t explicitly say it but they are 100000000000000% at their cottage in Perthshire, again you can pry that headcanon out of MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!! I’m just so so so so so so so so SO beyond happy that FitzSimmons got the ending that they deserved so much. They can be at peace now. I have loved them since LITERALLY day one, and I cannot imagine what would happen if I got to tell little 15 year old me how they ended up. I’m sending her good vibes to the past, I know she got them, because I never ever ever gave up on that hope for them. FitzSimmons, to me, represent so much goodness and hope and just everything I aspire to have in a relationship (without the constant separation and the death and all that fun shit), but just the utter love they have for each other. (thanks for the impossible standard to which I hold all men now JedMo). I have been on just a rollercoaster with these two characters, their relationship and each of them as individuals have taught me so much and brought me so much comfort, especially during some of the hardest times I have ever experienced. I’ll tell some of those stories one day. Not yet. I’m not ready. I’m still honestly just reeling. I have wanted A Happy FitzSimmons ending for SO LONG and I just cannot believe that we got it. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU. 

Writing this felt very cathartic. It’s almost been good to just get ALL OF THE EMOTIONS OUT. I think I’m actually going to take a nap now. I forget how tiring it is to be so emotional. What can I say to end this except reiterate again just how happy I am with that finale. I’m so thrilled that they gave us such a beautiful ending, it really was just a love letter to the series as a whole and to it’s message. I think it was quote from Jeff Bell that I saw and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, because of how true it is, and really that’s why I hold this show so dear and why I have done for the past 7 years, and that is that this show is ultimately about hope. What a beautiful thing. 

[sleepingfancies]

We Need to Talk About SJM

I was recently anonymously asked what exactly my issue with Sarah Jane Maas is, and ended up writing what was essentially a thesis paper about it. Unfortunately, Tumblr pulled a Shitty Website move and deleted everything I wrote under the ‘read more’ tab, so I’m compiling my reasons here on a masterpost, for your reading leisure.

EDIT: Read more tab continues to not work for me, so I apologize to all of you who have to suffer through this. I’ll tag is as a long post accordingly.

Let’s get started

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Reason 1: She preaches messages that no young girl needs to (or should) hear.

Granted, I know the a lot of the YA genre are adults who are no strangers to smut and aren’t phased by toxic behavior in characters. But on the same token, a lot of the YA genre is fueled by young girls age 12-20. Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend like girls in that age range aren’t reading/writing smutty fanfiction or dating. I know they do, I did, most of my friends did. But at that age, young girls are still trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be, including in terms of relationships. That’s where my problem with Maas comes in.

Maas writes, almost exclusively, toxic relationships - at best. Straight up abusive at worst. At one point in ACOTAR, I had to put the book down because I was so disgusted by what happened. Rhysand assaulted Feyre. I’m not kidding. He kissed and groped her against her will, telepathically asked whether she was wet about it, and wondered aloud what she looked like naked. The entire goal of doing this was to piss Feyre’s then-boyfriend off, and for Rhysand to assert his dominance as a Fae lord or whatever the fuck (y’know, like rapists do). Feyre was left shaking, nauseated, and scared for her life. But the worst part? It was written like this was something sexy and desirable. Literal penetration was all that stopped this from being a horrifying rape scene, and I couldn’t believe Maas wrote about it like some hot erotica. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t cute. It was disgusting, violating, and I was furious when I read it (especially given Feyre actually ends up with Rhysand eventually. What the fuck).

In Throne of Glass - and subsequent sequels - there are couples (namely Rowan and Aelin) who quite literally spit on each other, punch each other, and bite each other. No, not “love nip” bite, I mean “I’m trying to tear your skin off” bite. But we’re meant to believe they’re endgame, meant to be, and a totally healthy relationship. Let’s not even get into emotional abuse and manipulation, because holy fuck does every single character in these books act like a goddamn villain if we were to go over that in detail. All you need to know is that “if you don’t do xyz then I’ll leave and never come back” “what made you think I cared about you? You’re nothing to me. Just kidding, I love you” and similar sentiments are rampant in these series.

While we’re here, what is up with this “mates” nonsense? Every character pairing we see by the end of the ToG series has a “mate,” and swears off everyone they’ve had before, claiming them to be “false mates.” This whole “mates” business sounds a lot like somebody desperately trying to reassure their insanely jealous partner that they don’t still have feelings for their ex. That’s not healthy! That’s not okay! Your exes helped you narrow down your search. They helped you understand yourself more and what you want (or don’t want). And y’know what? It’s okay to have happy memories with an ex. It’s okay to not hate your ex. Telling young girls that all that matters is their future husband (which erases LGBT+ girls, as well as straight women who don’t want to get married) is harmful as hell, and contributes to the idea that a girl is only “complete” when she finds her “soulmate.”

Girls 12-20 really do not need to be given the message that it’s normal - nay, romantic - for their partners to hit them, humiliate them, or assault them. You may be saying, “Clara, come on, girls know fiction isn’t reality and no girl is actually going to stand for that kind of thing in real life.” But I can’t tell you how horribly my own view of relationships was corrupted for several years after all the books I read as a tween where the protagonist had to defend her flirty boyfriend from the advances of other girls. I didn’t trust boys not to cheat on me. I didn’t trust my girl friends not to try and steal a boyfriend. I thought girls who dressed up and wore makeup and dated a lot were sluts. It took me years of conscious effort to unlearn those ideas. Fiction can and does influence the reader. So again I say: teaching girls that it’s “hot and sexy” when men literally abuse you is not a message a 12-20 year old should be hearing. Ever.

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Reason 2: What exactly does Maas want her readers to be?

Y’know, Maas thinks Caelena/Aelin is a role model for young girls. But here’s a brief list of things Celery/Alien has done throughout the Throne of Glass series:

1. Tried to smash a flower pot over a girl’s head for showing interest in courting Prince Dorian. Despite said girl literally being present at the castle for that purpose and Caelena was not.

2. Very nearly murdered Dorian for absolutely fuckall reason, and then she got mad at Chaol for trying to stop her (keep in mind: Chaol and Dorian are supposed to be best friends. So like... yeah, he’s gonna come to Dorian’s defense).

3. Straight up said, “if I get bored being queen I’ll just go and conquer more lands for my kingdom.” Imperialist there much, Aelin?

This is Maas’ role model material? Half the shit she does from Heir of Fire onward could be described as “war crime” and the other half could be described as “selfish.” Maas seems to think that a shit ton of half-baked “witty” lines and a few “badass” fight scenes completely makes up for having an amoral character as the protagonist you want to flaunt around as an icon for young girls.

It would be one thing if Maas said, “I don’t want anyone to be like Celery/Alien. She’s not a good person and I want my readers to be able to identify how and why she isn’t a good person. The moral is what not to be like.” But she does the opposite and claims time and time again that Celery/Alien is some kind of feminist warrior, when in fact Celery/Alien is the very epitome of white feminism and false feminism. She’ll be all kinds of gung-ho for herself, but as soon as another woman mentions her own unique problems or lifestyles, Celery/Alien thinks she’s a “whiny bitch,” “dumb slut,” or something similar. Celery/Alien ends up looking down her nose at basically every other female character. The lack of female friendships in Maas’ books is frankly astounding.

No girl needs to be Celery/Alien. Celery/Alien is not a role model, she is not a feminist, she is not a figurehead of a well developed female character or even a compelling antihero. She’s sexist, she’s misogynistic, she has serious anger issues, she’s manipulative, she’s abusive. This is not who young girls should be looking up to.

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Reason 3: Maas has no place in the YA genre.

I’m not really sure I need to elaborate much on this. Let me give you a scenario:

Imagine you’re at a book signing for your fans. They’re mostly girls 15-20, so you kind of just sign their copies without thinking much about it. But then a smaller girl comes up to the table, you ask her age, and she says “I’m ten.” A 10 year old girl is standing in front of you, clutching her copy of your book where you wrote and published the scene, “he buried in to the hilt and roared. Over and over he spilled inside of her, the lightning outside flashing soft and lovely long after he stilled.”

Look me in the eye and tell me that shit is appropriate in the YA genre. At all. Ever.

You wanna write romance? Go for it. It can be cute! It can be healthy! It can be intriguing! But this? This? This is just... erotica. If you’re publishing stuff like this in the YA genre, in a book that isn’t even on the ‘tween/teen romance’ shelves, then you better be ready to take full responsibility for teaching 10 year olds what a blowjob is, what an orgasm is, what BDSM is, what a fucking foot fetish is.

I know JK Rowling isn’t the most popular right now, but even she did better than this. The first 3 Harry Potter books you can generally find on the children’s/middle grade shelves. They were cute, fun little adventures about wizards and magic and fantastic creatures. Books 4-7? Those are on the YA shelves. People are dying, magic is dangerous, fascist organizations are on the rise -- it isn’t fun for Harry anymore. It isn’t about the wonders of magic. It’s about life or death, war, and fear. So yeah, of course those book aren’t going to be on the children’s/middle grade shelves! They’re dark! They’re scary! That kind of material shouldn’t be advertised as appropriate for younger kids!

Maas never extended that courtesy. Maas took her books full of badly written erotica and plopped them down right where all the rest of the completely tame YA books went, because she wanted the sales. She didn’t care if she was exposing kids who were too young to explicit sex scenes. She never posted a disclaimer, she never posted any kind of warning on social media when the books came out. Nope. She just silently took advantage of the market knowing she’d get more sales in YA. But it has no place in YA. It’s not YA. And I don’t think I’m ever gonna be okay with that.

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Reason 4: Diversity? Never heard of it!

Maas’ books are so incredibly white and straight that it’s painful. Rowan and Aelin? White and straight. Feyre? Rhysand? Chaol? Dorian? Manon? Hey, you guessed it! They’re all white and straight (despite Chaol, Dorian, and Manon being heavily LGBT+ coded for like, the entire series till the last book)!

“He looked at his friend, perhaps for the last time, and said what he had always known, from the moment they met, ‘I love you.’” (Queen of Shadows)

Hello? Sarah Jane? I’m all for male friendships, but there’s male friendships and then there’s actual romance. Chaol and Dorian are about as gay-coded as they could fucking get. And this isn’t even the only time this happens! Check this out:

“Dorian surged from his chair and dropped to his knees beside the bed. He grabbed Chaol’s hand, squeezing it as he pressed his brow against his. ‘You were dead,’ the prince said, his voice breaking. ‘I thought you were dead.’” (Queen of Shadows)

But wait, there’s more!

“‘I’m not leaving you. Not again.’

Dorian’s mouth tightened. ‘You didn’t leave, Chaol.’ He shook his head once, sending tears slipping down his cheeks. ‘You never left me.’” (Queen of Shadows)

I mean come on, Sarah!

Also, Manon. My girl Manon hated men, pretty explicitly, for the entire series. In case you don’t believe me:

“There were few sounds Manon enjoyed more than the groans of dying men.” (Heir of Fire)

Oh, and other characters even imply Manon has never had a heterosexual relationship in her fucking life. See:

“���That golden-haired witch, Asterin...’ Aelin said. ‘She screamed Manon’s name the way I screamed yours. How can I take away somebody who means the world to someone else? Even if she is my enemy.’” (Queen of Shadows)

Tell me that’s not gay as fuck. I dare you.

Manon had a whole lot of love to give women! She was always affectionate towards other women. Particularly Elide. This is a woman who was about as lesbian as you could get. Had no interest in men, every interest in women, rejected typically expected roles for women (getting married and having kids, etc.) but guess what happened? Guess what fucking happened?

This warrior who was friends with and rode on a big fuckoff wyvern completely and totally submits to Dorian as her lover. I don’t mean that metaphorically. They literally do some BDSM shit where he’s her “master” and she “kneels to him” or whatever the fucking fuck. This entire thing pissed me off more than Chaol and Dorian being all “no homo bro,” because Maas used every possible symbol and subtext for Manon being gay, and then said “just kidding!” Her relationship with Dorian came out of nowhere. All of a sudden she was just as thirsty for mediocre dick as Aelin.

At this point I honestly have to wonder if Maas is really this ignorant or if she’s - dare I say it? - taunting her readers who have complained about the lack of LGBT+ representation. Maas has, historically, not reacted well to people criticizing her work. I would not put it beyond her at all to intentionally queer-code characters only to turn around and rip the rug out from under her readers by pairing them up in heterosexual relationships. And not only is that shitty writing, but it’s... really malicious and rude.

Of course then there’s the issues with racial representation. Again, Maas doesn’t even try. She includes 13 characters of color only to immediately kill off all of them in a suicide pact. So there’s that. Not sure I need to say more than that.

Maas knows what diversity is, but as per her famous quote, “I just don’t want to force diversity into my books.” So. Y’know. Writing a black or gay character (or!! God forbid, both black and gay!!) is asking a little too much of her, apparently. She doesn’t want to force anything as unbelievable as someone who isn’t white or straight, don’tcha know? In these books about fae people and dragons and gods fighting mortals and explicit erotica, an LGBT+ character or a character of color is high fantasy, not YA. *Sarcasm*

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Reason 5: The woman can’t write.

This is pretty straightforward. She cannot write. My proof? She plagiarizes the living fuck out of everything she can to avoid actually writing her own original work.

1. “You’re gonna rattle the stars.” - from Disney’s Treasure Planet

2. “The Queen Who Was Promised” - from GRRM’s ASOIAF, where Dany Targaryen is often toted as the exact same thing. Oh, and The Prince Who Was Promised prophecy in ASOIAF also mentions Azor Ahai being “the Heir of Fire” so, uh.... yeah.

3. Aelin basically being Aragorn. Lost royalty spends years as an outcast, denies their claim, teams up with elves (fae in Aelin’s case) to defeat a greater evil, becomes known as the people’s champion, falls in love with an elf (fae) and makes them their consort, crowned by the people, ends their coronation scene with a “you bow to no one” (I’m not kidding).

4. Nehemia dying for Aelin and it later being revealed that Nehemia was “grooming” Aelin to face great evil, and potentially give her life to stop it. How much you wanna bet Maas tried to give Aelin a name as close to “Harry Potter” as she could get?

5. Manon lighting a series of beacons across a mountain range to call for aid during war. I mean seriously? This is one of the most iconic scenes in Peter Jackson’s rendition of Lord of the Rings. It’s moving, it’s powerful, it’s awe-inspiring. And Maas knew it. So she just... took it. I don’t have a lot of respect for writers who can’t write their own moving scenes.

6. Kingsflame blossoms, which only bloom when the rightful monarch is on the throne. So... the White Tree of Gondor. Got it.

7. The Hand of the King being a royal court position. Like... jesus. GRRM, come get ya world-building, SJ stole it again.

8. A paralyzed Chaol has a specialized saddle made for him, because he wants more than anything to ride a horse again. GRRM! Please! She’s taking Bran Stark’s story now!

And besides all of these horribly plagiarized points, there’s nothing even slightly compelling about these books. There’s literally zero substance, and the last few books in both the ACOTAR and ToG series have been nothing but a smut-fest. Plot who? We don’t know her.

Trauma, both physical and mental, is erased at the drop of a dime (Aelin lost physical scars, Chaol’s paralysis was basically cured, series of events that should’ve left characters absolutely fucked just... didn’t phase them). The battles are rushed and sloppily written, and Maas has a particularly nasty habit of focusing on exactly the wrong people in the middle of what should be an action packed scene. Instead of showing alliances forging and plots being made behind people’s backs, instead of showing us people gearing up for battle by saying tearful goodbyes to their infants and spouses, Maas shows us Rowan and Aelin banging on a beach, or a tree, or a ship, or wherever the fuck they happen to be at that moment.

None of these characters lose jack shit. There is no sense of urgency or stakes, because we knew since Heir of Fire that Aelin and her precious uwu fae “mate” would be just fine. Why? Because nobody shipped Rowaelin as hard as Sarah Jane Maas did. Consistently the only people who suffer in these books are background characters (who, coincidentally, are almost always the characters of color and LGBT+ characters). By the end of Kingdom of Ash, literally everyone is fine. And paired off to be married, too! Because a happy ending isn’t a true happy ending if it doesn’t end with Babies Ever After and everyone in a heterosexual relationship, of course, right?

                                                        ***********

Reason 6: World-building doesn’t even go here! Sorry, she just wanted to be a part of something.

Maas’ world-building is... how do you say... shitty. New lore pops up in every book, having never been mentioned before, and is for some reason of utmost importance (but only for this book. It’ll be forgotten again as soon as it isn’t relevant). Religions who? Culture where? History what? None of these things exist in Maas’ world. None.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat with “but The World of Throne of Glass is coming out this year!!!1!1!!” let me gently establish something. Speaking as a fantasy author: if you do not have your most basic world-building - that being religion, culture, language, and history - already established, then you have no business making a “world of” book to cover all the bases your ass never bothered with in the original series.

I said what I said.

Tolkien and GRRM are masters of world-building because they spent decades working to forge their worlds before they ever put a pen to paper and wrote their stories. Not to toot my own horn, but my own fantasy series has been developing for almost 7 years now. What am I doing with it? I’m outlining governments in different societies, why people came to worship what they do, and I’m making a fucking world map on my bedroom floor (that now has cat paw prints on it, so it’s not exactly final product material anyway).

I give not a single hoot for Maas’ “The World of Throne of Glass.” She could be saying anything she wanted to and it would all just have to be canon, because she’s establishing what this world is after already finishing her series. Yes, it does piss me off, because it’s pretty obvious she didn’t have a clue what her world was, or who was who, or why things were the way they were. She made shit up as she went along, nothing more. There was no grand scheme. There was no planning, and it shows.

                                                       ***********

TL;DR: I have a lot of issues with Sarah J Maas’ writing, including her world-building and handling of diversity. But most of all I despise the potential impact she has on the YA genre and on the young girls reading her work. They deserve better than this. They deserve better than Sarah Jane Maas.

[nitewrighter]

Do you have any Mchanzo fluff? Love the way you write Nite,がんばり続ける❤💙

Thank you!!! I hardly ever get requests for them and I’ve been meaning to continue my “Hanzo on the Watchpoint” fics.

…I guess this is less “Fluff” and more of “Two Grown-ass dudes realize they have a lot in common in regards to their fucked up lifestyles and weird combinations of flightiness and devotion to their families.”

This fic takes place after Take 2 but before A Conversation.

—-

It was 2230 hours, and the Watchpoint was in the midst of shutting down for the night. The mess hall was cleaned up and locked up. The training grounds were dead silent. Bastion and Orisa were running their evening patrols, ever the vanguards with Omnics not needing sleep. Mercy was still hard at work in her lab, of course, with Genji hanging around and helping drain her coffee to make sure she made it to bed at a semi-human hour as he was wont to do. Sleep, however, was a precious resource on the watchpoint, and one the agents of the reformed Overwatch had to take advantage of when they had the chance, and they were more than happy to with the previous night’s interruption.

After a lengthy tour of the Watchpoint, Hanzo was relieved to see his sleeping arrangements weren’t in a cell like the night before, however his new arrangements he also found questionable. 

Hanzo folded his arms, staring at the bed. “Is this really necessary?” he said, looking up from the bed.

“Somethin’ wrong with it?” said McCree, leaning against the wall next to the stairwell, “I mean you could ask Genji and the doc if you could crash on their couch–I’d love to see the Doc’s reaction to that.”

Hanzo remembered the coldness in Mercy’s eyes and the tautness of her voice from earlier that day and suppressed a shudder. “No, no I am willing to sleep down here.”  He gave a skeptical glance to another bed in the opposite corner of the Watchpoint dormitories, the walls surrounding it plastered with newspaper clippings and a tattered ‘Six Gun Killer’ poster.

“’Fraid that bit’s non-negotiable,” said McCree, walking over to his own bed, “Me being your probationary agent all. Plus I’ve already been sleeping down here.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“Watchpoint apartments didn’t feel right. Felt like I’d just trash the place on my own, to be honest,” said McCree with a shrug.

“Also minimalist. Easy to leave if you have to,” said Hanzo, glancing over at the few possessions McCree kept near the bed.

“Well y’know, if the Watchpoint itself ever gets compromised..” said McCree.

“You also positioned it so that you have a clear vision of the exits,” said Hanzo.

“Well that’s just common sense,” said McCree.

“…You’ve been on the run as well,” said Hanzo, looking over at McCree.

“I did mention the bounty on my head earlier, didn’t I?” said McCree.

Hanzo blinked. “To be honest, I had forgotten. I was just… noticing the signs,” said Hanzo.

“There go the backhanded compliments again,” said McCree folding his arm.

“You picked a dormitory where you were able to act the quickest when there was an infiltrator,” said Hanzo.

“Well you were the infiltrator,” muttered McCree.

“First to defend it, but easiest to leave it,” Hanzo said a bit mindlessly.

“Did I ask you for a psychoanalysis based on my sleeping situation?” said McCree, folding his arms.

“Should we not get to know each other if you’re going to be my ‘probationary agent?’” Hanzo arched an eyebrow.

“Well you could ask, like a normal person. Not play Sherlock Ass-Holmes.” McCree muttered under his breath before walking over to his own bed and taking off his hat and serape.

“You’re going to sleep already?” said Hanzo.

“Well as you recall, last night someone got everyone on the watchpoint up at three in the goddamn morning so he could attack two of our agents and yell at the rest of us like a nutjob. Orisa’s fine, by the way, thanks for asking.”

“The security drone?” said Hanzo.

“Her name is—Ugh,” McCree rubbed his forehead. “We’re all just background noise to you, ain’t we? You’re just here so you can stop kicking your own ass over Genji, and then you’re going to dip, and us, the people who care about Genji, the people Genji cares about, mean jack shit–That’s the deal, ain’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Hanzo’s voice was low.

“Well, figure it out before you hurt him again,” said McCree, taking off his shirt.

“I will try,” said Hanzo. McCree’s back was to him as he undid his belt, set the belt aside, and unceremoniously shuffled out of his pants. Hanzo noted the point on his arm where the metal of the prosthetic ended and the remains of his organic arm began. An image flashed in his mind of the bloody stump of Genji’s arm, the red stain eking across the tatami, the sound of Genji struggling to breathe echoed in his ears. Panic clawed at the interior of Hanzo’s chest. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here. Run. He had to run.

“Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer,” said McCree. Hanzo was suddenly thrust back to reality, his breath catching in his throat. McCree was standing in front of him in just a tank top and a pair of briefs and Hanzo immediately cast his eyes downward from the sheer whiplash of his mental image and the physical one before him.

“Sorry, I was just… thinking,” said Hanzo. He gestured at McCree’s arm. “How did that happen?”

McCree looked at his own prosthetic arm. 

“It was during the disbandment,” he said with a shrug, “Pretty shortly after I ditched… I guess maybe a part of me was still assuming I’d have a team at my back when… I didn’t,” he brought his arm down, “But that was on me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hanzo.

“Eh. I’m pretty used to it at this point,” said McCree. 

McCree didn’t seem to want to go further into details than that, so Hanzo let the subject drop. 

“Welp, better settle in for the night. I guess Winston and Jack’ll have a better idea for what you can do here tomorrow.” McCree slouched down onto his own bed and picked up a pair of reading glasses and a well-worn paperback, lighting a small lamp clipped to the headboard of his own bed and reading. Hanzo wasn’t sure if he was making a big show of reading out of politeness to give him some space to disrobe for bed, or if this was just part of his own nightly rituals, then again, Hanzo was becoming increasingly aware of how much of a disruption his own presence was. Hanzo had folded his own clothes and set them on the footlocker at the foot of his own bed when he glanced over to see McCree still reading.

Probationary agent, Hanzo realized, He can’t let himself fall asleep before me.

McCree’s eyes flicked up from the page of his book at Hanzo, made eye contact, then calmly flicked down again. A still-spiteful part of Hanzo considered staying up as late as he possibly could, wearing the cowboy out physically and mentally. in retribution for the beatings sustained from the night before, but as Hanzo sat down on the mattress and felt it sink slightly with his weight, that desperate survivalist part of him said, They won’t kill you. Not yet. Sleep while you can in case they change their minds later.” He also knew sleep would put more distance between him and the residual nausea from being sleep-darted the night before. Hanzo’s eyes warily flicked back at McCree again. 

McCree licked a finger and turned a page and Hanzo laid down and pulled the sheets over himself. As soon as he was laying down, an exhaustion washed over him, his body leaping at the opportunity to make up for years and years of nights awake to the gray hours of dawn, kept going only by adrenaline, spite, and a desire for redemption. That same spite and stubbornness though, kept his eyes fixed on the cowboy, still reading his stupid little book, looking far older than he actually was with those reading glasses. He could stay up later than the cowboy. He knew he could. He could definitely, absolutely–

McCree glanced up from his book to see Hanzo had fallen asleep. McCree closed his book, took off his glasses, set both on the footlocker and turned off the lamp. 

Maybe it was a blessing that the night terrors only really kicked in at 5 AM.

McCree woke up to muttering in Japanese, the sound of Hanzo talking jerked him awake, and it took a few seconds for the haze of sleepiness to lift slightly for McCree to realize Hanzo was still in bed. McCree slid out of bed, his bare feet padding across the cold concrete floor of the watchpoint dormitories over to where Hanzo slept. McCree took a knee next to Hanzo’s bed as Hanzo continued muttering and thrashing in his sleep. That grayish-blue dawn light was lighting up the stairwell, and in its dimness McCree could make out beads of sweat glistening on Hanzo’s forehead, shoulder, and at the dip of his collarbone. Hanzo was on the edge of hyperventilating, his eyes squeezed shut, his knuckles white with his sheets in a death grip. He muttered something in Japanese again and his breath suddenly quickened and he flinched and tossed and turned.

McCree took a deep breath.

“Han–” he started and Hanzo suddenly flinched awake hard and moved to strike him on pure reflex. McCree managed to catch his wrist in his prosthetic and there was a half-beat where Hanzo was moving to counter, still on reflex, when McCree spoke and Hanzo barely managed to stop himself, “Easy!” he held Hanzo’s wrist, “Easy…”

Hanzo was still breathing rapidly, his eyes flicked around the dormitory, and then flicked to McCree, and then flicked to his wrist caught in McCree’s hand.

“Are you gonna hit me if I let go?” said McCree.

“No–” Hanzo seemed to be getting his breath under control, “No–I–I’m sorry.” 

McCree released his wrist. “Look, wherever the hell you were, you’re not there anymore,” he said, “You’re here now, you hear me? You’re here.”

Hanzo rolled his wrist, before looking back up at McCree.

“Do you need to talk about it?” asked McCree.

“I… not now,” said Hanzo. 

“All right,” said McCree, getting up to his feet.

A long pause passed between them.

“Nothing to say?” said Hanzo.

“What can I say? I’ve been through that shit and it sucks. Genji went through that shit and it sucks. It’s hard to see anyone go through that shit. No matter how much of an asshole they are.”

“It’s a torment well-deserved,” said Hanzo, wiping some of the sweat off of his forehead with a frown.

“Oh for fuck’s–There’s no ‘deserve’ about this shit, Hanzo. Genji wants the two of you to try and put what’s left of your family back together, try and heal from all that Yakuza shit. If you’re just gonna lie down and take the shit your brain hands you, how’s that going to help anyone?”

Hanzo was quiet.

McCree huffed. “Look, we don’t need to go opening up cans of worms right away at…” he glanced over his shoulder at the clock, “…5 in the morning…” he sighed, “But my point is I don’t think you’re here so you can keep doing the��� up-your-ass stoic thing you’ve been doing to stay alive the past…”

“Decade,” said Hanzo.

“Decade,” McCree repeated incredulously. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, half the watchpoint’s going to be up in an hour anyway, you want to sleep in more, or should I pick the lock on the mess hall and fix us some eggs?”

Hanzo’s stomach growled. Admittedly the aftereffects of the sleep dart had killed his appetite for most of the previous day, but the prospect of actual food was welcome at this time. And it might provide a bit of mental distance from the nightmares. 

“I can fix my own breakfast,” said Hanzo, grabbing his folded clothes off of his footlocker.

“Yeah, but I fix the best breakfast,” said McCree.

“Is that a challenge?” said Hanzo, pulling his pants on.

“Genji did say you were competitive…” said McCree with a wry smirk, “It’s me being nice, asshole.”

“Yes, I could tell by the ‘asshole.’” said Hanzo.

“Come on,” McCree pulled on his own pants and shirt. “Let’s get some food. Winning omelette cook doesn’t have to do dishes?”

“I hope you enjoy doing dishes, cowboy,” said Hanzo, ascending the stairs after him.

[thorne93]

Whirlwind Romance (Part 13)

Prompt: You’re getting married to Chris Evans… Everything in your life is perfect… Except when you break the news to your two best friends: Tom Hiddleston and Sebastian Stan

Word Count: 3125

Warnings: language, anger, angst, adult themes??

Notes: This is for @carryonmyswansong challenge (Double Season, Multifaceted, 500 Follower Celebration, Writing Challenge!): Prompt – You’re marrying the wrong person! Beta’d by @like-a-bag-of-potatoes bcuz shes amazing and @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo@carryonmyswansong for letting me brainstorm with them. Got this idea from @formyfandoms… Fic image made by the super bomb @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chris had finally gotten a week off from work. No promos, no interviews, no filming, no performing. Which meant all of your free time that you weren’t filming was spent with him planning. The two of you were doing well so far, solidifying the tiny details. You and Lizzy were going to go dress shopping as soon as Chris left for his next project.

But right now, the seating plan was being worked out, and seemed to be going well as the guest list being finalized, until you brought up Chris’s cousin.

“Why don’t we put your cousin over here?” you asked as you pointed to the template you’d made.

“That’s farther away from our table,” Chris noted, frowning. “Who would we put in her place?”

“My friend Tyler,” you said simply.

“From college?”

“Yeah.”

Chris closed his eyes and sighed.

“Let me get this straight… You would move my cousin that I practically grew up with, for your friend from college?”

“Well… yeah. What’s the big deal? He really helped me out.”

“My cousin is family! I love her. You had one class with this asshole!” Chris said, raising his voice.

“We lived together for a couple of months,” you reminded, getting annoyed. “He helped me pass multiple classes, he helped me out financially--”

“So? That doesn’t compare to family!”

“Fine! Then I’ll uninvite him! Would that make you happy?” you asked.

“Yeah! It would! I don’t want to waste money on people I don’t give a fuck about!”

You stood at the dining room table staring at him in awe. “Oh, and I’m supposed to care about your aunt that called me a gold digger? What about your ex-girlfriend from college that we’re inviting? I was okay with those choices, but we can’t move your cousin?”

“My aunt apologized. Why is this such a big deal to you that Tyler is closer, anyway?”

“Because I’ve been planning this whole fucking thing. You’ve literally done nothing but help pick a date, and this seating chart, and suddenly you want to call all the shots.”

“It is my wedding, or did you forget that?”

“I guess I did! With all the running around and calling I’ve been doing for this, I guess I forgot who the fucking groom was,” you retorted before clenching your teeth and throwing the papers in your hand at him.

“What the fuck do you want me to do? What? You want me to just quit working on films, on projects? Can’t do that if you want ice sculptures, and edible roses, and crystal chandeliers on every goddamn table in the room!”

“Fuck you! Sorry I’m trying to make our wedding nice and unforgettable! Maybe if you could pick up a phone or computer, you could weigh in on some of this, but since you never seem to have any time for me, then I don’t see how you get to decide where anyone sits!”

“Are you seriously saying because I’m busy working, that somehow it’s my fault and I shouldn’t have a say in my wedding?”

“I’m saying you don’t bother to help on this, and just expect me to do it all.”

He made a perplexed, angry face. “I do not expect you to do it all.”

“Oh, oh you don’t?” you challenged. “Okay, so if i just dropped all of the plans, you would take charge and take care of everything?”

“Yeah, if you needed me to,” he said with a confident nod of his head.

“Then why the fuck have I been doing everything?”

“Because I thought you wanted to! I thought you liked this!”

“I like organizing events, not planning my wedding solo!” you informed, exasperated.

“Fine, if this is such a fucking hassle for you then don’t worry about planning any of it. We’ll just call it quits here,” he snapped.

You slightly gasped. “Are you saying we should call off the wedding?” you asked in a voice that was volumes lower than before.

Chris sighed, looking down at his hands. “I’m saying we haven’t done anything but fight since I proposed. Maybe we should take a step back…” He walked over to the door, didn’t look back at you as he said, “I’m gonna go out for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t walk away from me any more? I thought you said we’d always sit down and talk like adults.”

“Well I don’t think I can do that right now. I think I’ll say something I regret so… I think it’s best we weren’t in the same room for a while.”

As soon as the door shut, it sounded like a gunshot. Did Chris really just suggest the two of you should break up? All over a fucking seating chart? This was getting ridiculous. Why was this wedding causing so many problems between you and Chris? Before this stupid engagement, you two virtually never fought. You would chastise him for drinking out of his juice carton at home, telling him to use a glass. You said he watched too much football… But other than that, Chris was a dream to be with. So why were invitations and wedding bands making you two absolutely mad to be around each other?

The pacing sat in, and quickly you didn’t know what to do or say. You weren’t exactly ready to apologize, because you did feel like all of this wedding was on you. But maybe moving his cousin was in poor taste. But it wasn’t just the seating arrangements that had you two on edge. It was missing the cake tasting, and not weighing in on invitations. It was how absent he was in everything. Apart from picking a date, and giving you the matching color for the wedding, he’d done nothing else.

You felt like you weren’t sure what to do, or where to go. Should you call Chris and have him come back? Should you call Tom? For a brief second you thought of calling Sebastian, but he and you hadn’t spoken since the day you left his apartment. Should you call your maid of honor? Maybe you should call your mom. She was married, she’d gone through all this wedding crap before, maybe her and your dad fought while they prepared their wedding.

You quickly found your phone back in your bedroom and called her.

“Hey, sweetie!” your mom greeted happily.

“Hey mom,” you said, trying to hide the sadness in your voice, and failing. You may have been a fantastic actress, but your mom was a haven, she was someone who wouldn’t judge you if you got emotional. You could tell her anything.

“Oh, no, what’s wrong?”

You laughed at her amazing mom senses.

“Chris and I had a fight.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Not really…. Mom, did you and dad fight a lot planning the wedding?”

“Oh, is that what this is about? The wedding?”

“Well…. Every time we get together to talk about it, it turns into a fight. We can talk about work, or Dodger, or anything, and we’re fine. But ten minutes into wedding planning and we’re at each other's throats. Is that normal?”

She delicately laughed. “What’s normal about a wedding?”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Your dad and I didn’t fight.”

“Really? Wow. That’s awesome.”

“We didn’t have time to fight because we were fighting our own families. My parents were going through their divorce, so there was a lot of ‘I’m not coming if so-and-so is going to be there’. With all of your dad’s siblings and mine, we had to find a spot for everyone to be part of the wedding. I swear, if I  had to do it all over again, I’d go to the courthouse.”

“Really?”

She let out a slight sigh. “I don’t know. Possibly. There were so many opinions on our special day. Hell, even on the wedding day, I barely saw your dad. Family and friends will rip you every which way to say hi, give you gifts, want to dance. I swear, you do all of this planning just to spend the day with your husband, but you never get to see them.”

“So you think… this animosity between us is just jitters?”

“Well… it could be. Maybe you’re putting too much pressure on yourselves. There are a lot of things going on when you’re getting married. You’re realizing you have to find a house together, make huge decisions together. You have to start getting to know each other’s families more. It can be a very hectic time, and you two have less than six months to throw this bash together.”

“Do you think we should push it out?”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know what I want. I think I want it to be the day after the wedding,” you mumbled.

“Well, what starts the fights?”

You let out a huff of air as you stood in your kitchen and toyed with the knives in your knife block.

“Well this time I asked to move his cousin so my friend Tyler could sit there, closer to us. I realize now friends shouldn’t come over family at the wedding. But that pissed him off. But i’m mad that he didn’t make the cake tasting, the invitation. He didn’t even pick a venue. Tom and I did.”

“Tom and you?” she asked, sounding confused.

“Yeah, well Chris was sort of indisposed, and I wanted to make sure we could book a date. So Chris just left it up to me. Tom and I narrowed it down to three places, and Chris picked it.”

“Sounds like he isn’t involved, much.”

“He isn’t,” you agreed. “That’s part of the problem. That’s why I’m so goddamn mad at him. He just expects me to do it all, then gets pissed when I do it the way I want.”

“Is he really? That doesn’t sound like Chris.”

“Well…” you started. “I’m not sure what it is. I don’t know why he’s so… distant lately.”

“Maybe you should ask. You know, dear, your father and I haven’t stayed married for thirty years because we don’t communicate. Just calmly ask him why he isn’t involved, and calmly tell him what’s on your mind. You’ll see, I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end.”

“You think so? You don’t think it’s cold feet or anything?”

“No, I can tell he adores you. I’m sure it’s just wedding nerves and the pressures of getting married. Just talk to him. I’m sure you two will work it out.”

“Thanks, Mama… I miss you.”

“I miss you too, baby,” she said fondly. “But you and Chris just need to sit down and have a little chat. Everything will be okay.”

“I appreciate it. I love you. Tell Daddy I said I love him too.”

“Will do, sweetie.”

After that, the two of you hung up.

--------------------------

Once you nearly burned a rut in your rug after twenty minutes, you realized you were going stir crazy and needed to get out of your place. You got in your car and started to drive out of your neighborhood, looking for what you weren’t sure. All you knew was you needed to get the hell out of that house and away from anything wedding related.

Part of you wondered if it was because, after Chris stormed out, Sebastian’s words were echoing in your head, and you actually started to entertain the idea that Sebastian would be better for you. Sebastian wouldn’t overreact this way. But you shook your head, chasing those dangerous thoughts away.

No, you’ve already been through this, and walked through it, Sebastian is not for you. You are not in love with him, you scolded yourself.

Quickly, you realized you just wanted to go to a bar. You weren’t a heavy drinker by any means, typically you were just a social drinker, but right now, even just sipping on a martini sounded nice.

You made the first right towards the heart of the city and within minutes, you found a bar. You parked in the lot in the back and came around front. You got inside, the loud music hit your ears, and you were suddenly relieved that something could start drowning out your thoughts.

You scanned the place to find a nice corner or lonely part of the bar to sit at, and just as your eyes raked over towards the left where the bar was, you saw him.

Chris was sitting there with a glass of amber liquid, his shoulders hunched forward as he swirled the glass. The sight of him sitting there alone, upset, it made you feel sad and guilty, but in another odd way, it made a smile spring to your face to see him, to be back in his presence.

Walking up to the bar, you weren’t sure if you should sit next to him, or give him his space. Hell, you weren’t sure if you just needed to turn around and not say a word. But then you remembered the words your mom just instilled in you -- communication is key. This made you take a deep breath and march up to sit next to him.

It amazed you how you got next to him, sat on the stool, cleared your throat, and Chris still didn’t even look up until the bartender asked you for your order. To which you gave him a apple martini.

This made Chris’s head snap up before he turned to look at you.

“Y/N? What are you doing here? Did you follow me?” he asked, slightly confused.

You laughed lightly. “Uh, no. No not exactly. I sat at home, called my mom, then I left the house. Decided to crash the first bar I could find and... here you are.”

“Sounds like you and I had the same plans,” he muttered before taking a sip.

“Mind if I keep you company?” you asked, nudging his shoulder with yours.

“Never,” he said matter-of-factly.

And so the two of you sat like that for several minutes, in fact, probably an hour passed before either of you said anything. All you did was nurse your drinks, stare forward at the bar, and not say a word to each other or anyone else.

However, there was very little tension, at least, angry tension. There was a static in the air that you two knew needed to be addressed.

Finally, Chris turned to you. You weren’t sure if you would be the first or him, but you knew you were close to breaking when he did it.

He let out a long breath before he said, “Y/N… I’m sorry--”

“No, no,” you said, waving him off. “No. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have moved your cousin. That’s your family and it was wrong of me to put some kid from college there.”

Chris raised one eyebrow and nodded his head to the side slightly.

“Eh, be that as it may, I’m still a fuckwad for not helping with any of this wedding shit,” he said, sighing.

Now it was your turn to nod and silently agree.

“So what are we gonna do?” you chanced, nervous.

“You mean about the wedding?” he asked.

You nodded, unable to speak. Maybe Chris really was just too good to be true, and he was finally realizing he didn’t want to marry you. If this was the case, you didn’t want to chance opening your mouth.

He sighed again. ”Shit… I don’t know.”

“Well…. Do you still wanna get married?” you tried, twisting your fingers around, toying with your engagement ring.

Chris’s face changed immediately from tense and agitated to soft and apologetic.

“Oh, honey… Baby. Of course, yes. I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have even said that stupid shit,” he said before pulling you into a hug and kissing your forehead before kissing your lips quickly. “That was just my dumbass spouting off shit. That didn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, good… good… Okay so if that’s the case… what are we going to do about all this fighting?”

Chris shook his head and leaned forward, his head resting against your forehead.

“I don’t know. I don’t know why we’re even fighting.” He leaned away from you. “I mean, I care about how our wedding looks, I care about who comes, and where they are…”

“It’s not cold feet, right?” you asked, trying to get reassurance on his confidence in the two of you.

“What? No. God no. I think it’s just… all the pressure from all my projects and trying to plan this. I want you to have your perfect wedding that you’ve always imagined, and the wedding I’ve always imagined, and making our families happy… But I don’t want shit like that to get in the way of us.”

“I don’t either,” you said, feeling relieved.

“Well, what do you suggest we do?”

“Well… we still have quite a bit. We’re both busy. So what if we divide the list? Unless it’s strictly bride or groom related, we divide and conquer? If we need flowers, you ask me what kind I want, and you call a flower place? We need music? You tell me what kind you want played, and I call a band. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect. I don’t want to fight any more over this shit. You know why?”

“Why?” you asked, leaning forward, giving him a warm smile.

“Because in forty, fifty years, we aren’t going to remember how we chose calligraphy on our invites, or how we chose teal over aquamarine… We’re going to remember standing at our ceremony, our hands linked, as we stared into each others eyes, and tried so hard to make each other cry.”

This made you throw your head back and laugh.

“There we go, that’s my girl,” Chris softly admired as he touched your locks with his hands, feeling the softness of your hair. “That’s what I like to see and hear. That beautiful sound.”

“You’re a sap.”

“And you love it,” he said with a wide grin.

“We won’t remember where we got silverware, or that the flowers showed up late, or that the cake was buttercream and not cream cheese. We’re going to remember holding each other for our first dance…”

“Our vows.”

“Walking down the aisle as husband and wife.”

“Putting our wedding bands on each other.”

Chris grinned and nodded, taking your hands in his. “Exactly. I love you so much, Y/N. I’m so sorry I’ve been a shitty fiance. But from now on, it’s all 50-50.”

“Apology accepted. I love you, Chris.”

“You wanna get out of here?” he asked with a coy smile.

“I’d like nothing more.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Forever Tags:

@essie1876

@magpiegirl80

@letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked

@iamwarrenspeace

@marvel-imagines-yes-please

@superwholocked527

@missinstantgratification

@thejemersoninferno

@rda1989

@munlis

@thefridgeismybestie

@bubblyanarocks3

@igiveupicantthinkofausername

@kaliforniacoastalteens

@feelmyroarrrr

@kaeling

@friendlyneighbourhoodweirdo

@damalseer

@heyitscam99

@yknott81

@sorryimacrapwriter

@glitterquadricorn

@xxqueenofisolationxx

@little-dis-kaalista-pythonissama

@bittersweetunicorm

@alyssaj23

@sea040561

@princess76179

@thisismysecrethappyplace

@sarahp879

Tom Hiddleston:

@camigt1999

@lenawiinchester

@esoltis280

Sebastian Stan:

@nedthegay

@lostinspace33

@alwayshave-faith

@elleatrixlestrange

@buenostardissherlock

@lenawiinchester

@the-red-world-of-jess-chibi

@memory-of-a-goldfish

@shamptain-shmerica

@crazybutconfidentaf

@esoltis280

@alwayshave-faith

Chris Evans:

@nedthegay

@camigt1999

@lostinspace33

@alwayshave-faith

@elleatrixlestrange

@lenawiinchester

@mellsstark

@esoltis280

@patzammit

WR Tag:

@gaylemonshark @tacohead13

@seabasstiantrash

@nerdy-bookworm-1998

@berruneko09

[bronzeflower]

Who The Fuck Writes A Ten-Page Rant?????

Chapter 21: The Rappest Conversation

Also on ao3

It was your self-imposed day off, so you started the day by sleeping until afternoon. After making yourself breakfast and eating it, you played Slime Rancher for about two hours because it was a nice relaxing game that Roxy bought you for Gristmas last year.

Everything was peaceful. Nothing could possibly ruin this.

Oh look. John was pestering you. You hadn't talked to him in while, even though he was your best bro. You guessed both of you have been pretty busy lately.

-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

EB: hey, dave! EB: we haven’t spoken in ages!

TG: yeah man its been entirely too long TG: ive turned to dust while you were gone TG: ive become one with the desert and sand TG: im the sand on the beach that gets stuck inside an oyster TG: and the oyster is like what the hell are you doing here you dumbass motherfucking sand TG: im here to ruin your life oyster TG: thats basically my job TG: why are you doing this you tiny bit of sand TG: i already answered that question TG: okay fine be that way says the oyster TG: ill just turn you into a pearl so that youre no longer stabbing me everywhere TG: and then i was transformed into a dope ass pearl TG: the prettiest goddamn pearl in all the land TG: im turned into one of a pair of earrings that are sold for more that your life is worth TG: im bought by a rich woman looking for jewelry to show off TG: its passed down through the generations until the wealth they had dwindles and runs out TG: so now the earrings are sold for a dollar just to get the money for food that night TG: its a tragic tale TG: anyway TG: how are you doing

EB: dave, did you copy and paste an entire act of a play into this chat?

TG: what no TG: it is all natural and organic typing from scratch going on here TG: absolutely no foul play involved and to even imply such is an insult to my craft

EB: alright, fine! EB: i will not insult your “masterpiece” anymore. EB: if you can even call it that.

TG: oh wow sick burn TG: but like seriously speaking how is your stuff going TG: like the comedy stuff TG: have you yet to release an hour long special containing your hilarious jokes TG: and like half of the time is taken up by people laughing at them so its not even a true hour long special its more like a half hour long special and you didnt even manage to make it through all the material you had prepared TG: you know like you did in school where you accidentally prepared too much for a presentation and then get cut off because your time is up TG: and you still have like an hour and half left of material that youve collected that ended up just being a pile of wasted effort

EB: maybe not to that extreme. EB: :P EB: i haven't gotten my show up on netflix yet, but i am certainly planning on it! EB: watch out for it!

TG: do you still have that one person booing you at a bunch of your shows

EB: yeah, it is getting pretty annoying at this point, but i don't really want to do something like call security to remove someone for booing at my show. EB: that just seems as little bit over kill.

TG: i thought you were going to do a comedy sketch about them

EB: oh yeah! EB: i forgot about that.

TG: who are you jade harley

EB: what! EB: jade is great at remembering things!

TG: shes really not she just has a really fucking good system for making certain she remembers things TG: she has to build a physical barrier to her door so that she doesnt forget her keys TG: and she has so many keys to her house they are literally everywhere

EB: huh. EB: i guess i havent really visited jade in a while, have i?

TG: i would highly recommend going to her place at some point TG: and just hanging out with her in general TG: although youd probably have to plan a whole trip for it TG: just like TG: drop by or whatever next time youre where shes currently living

EB: messaging her might be a little bit more practical.

TG: yeah probably TG: anyway you really should get on writing that sketch about the lady I booing you

EB: yeah probably.

TG: yeah man how else are you going to get back at her TG: also when you finally do perform it please tell me what happened TG: or send me a recording of it TG: jk ill buy the recording TG: i always buy the recordings of your shows TG: but youll have to tell me which recording its in so that i can prepare myself

EB: maybe i won’t tell you which recording it’s in just so you're surprised by it. EB: like a schrodinger’s recording.

TG: does that mean you might be dead in one of them

EB: i hate to tell you this now dave, but i’m actually a ghost.

TG: shit ive been friends with a ghost this whole time thats actually pretty fucking dope TG: how do you do comedy sketches as a ghost TG: with the whole intangible thing TG: also with the people not being able to see you thing TG: wait TG: i wouldnt be able to message you if you were completely intangible TG: you must be a poltergeist or something TG: is there anything i can do to help you pass on

EB: yeah, you have to burn my body. EB: that’s what they do in all of the supernatural movies and shows where there’s a ghost.

TG: alright i am fully prepared to do that TG: i however have absolutely no idea where your grave is

EB: i know where your grave is.

TG: well thats not ominous at all TG: i dont even have a grave

EB: as far as you know.

TG: are you telling me that im dead TG: am i also a ghost

EB: i’m sorry i didn’t tell you sooner! EB: but yes we’re both ghosts. EB: i was supposed to wait for you to figure it out yourself, but it’s taking so long, so i guess i got a little impatient. EB: :B

TG: yeah but i still dont remember anything about dying or anything like that

EB: maybe you'll remember someday. EB: i’ve got to go right about now though. EB: i compromised my mission, and now i have to go through remedial training.

TG: ill wish you luck

EB: who needs luck when you have skill?

TG: okay then no good luck from me TG: i take it back TG: youve got this handled due to the sheer amount of awesomeness you have

-- ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

TG: oh no they got you TG: i know i said i didnt wish you good luck but i actually did TG: you cant give back a good luck TG: you can never give back a good luck TG: the blessing is yours now forever and ever TG: or however long you live i guess TG: thats going to take a butt load of time TG: anyway TG: i should probably get going too TG: instead of just having a conversation by myself after you left TG: and like go and have a conversation with someone else TG: maybe with jade TG: i havent talked to jade in a while TG: wonder how her pumpkins are doing TG: i wonder if shes harvested them yet TG: or if its even time for that TG: i swear i do actually listen when she talks about gardening TG: but i dont remember what half the harvest times for a bunch of the vegetables she grows TG: dont tell her that TG: or do TG: she probably already knows TG: shes always had a tendency to know things that other people would have absolutely no clue of knowing about TG: anyway TG: ill pester you again at some point eventually TG: ill go pester jade instead now TG: see ya

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] --

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] --

TG: yo jade how are your pumpkins doing TG: is it about time to harvest them or anything TG: or has that already happened TG: when do people harvest pumpkins again

GG: ive harvested them!

TG: awesome were they tasty

GG: of course they were!!! GG: i made pumpkin pie and roasted pumpkin seeds GG: and then i sold all the leftover pumpkins

TG: yeah what kind of profit did that turn

GG: quite a bit, actually! GG: especially with the fact that pumpkins are basically weeds GG: because they grow back no matter what you do GG: no GG: matter GG: what GG: but people fucking love pumpkins during the fall seasons

TG: yeah everyone goes batshit for that kind of stuff TG: got that pumpkin spice everywhere TG: and colorful trees and sweater weather TG: unless you live in the south TG: then there are just two seasons TG: summer and cooler summer

GG: those were basically the seasons on the island i grew up on too GG: im so glad i get to see snow where i live now!!! GG: i always wanted to play in it growing up!!!

TG: tbh we should coordinate and try to play in the snow together at some point

GG: yes!!! GG: but, no GG: :( GG: itd be way too difficult to coordinate that kind of thing

TG: yeah probably TG: but maybe one day if we happened to be in the same area and it happened to snow TG: we could get together and play in the snow and build snowpeople and snow angles

GG: dont you mean snow angels?

TG: i meant what i said TG: were gonna be drawing angles in the snow TG: forty five degrees sixty degrees one hundred and eighty degrees TG: well have all the angles right there written in the snow because no one can tell us what to do

GG: i still think id rather make snow angels though

TG: fair enough TG: you stick with your boring old snow angels TG: and ill have a fantastic time making all my fucking snow angles

GG: :/ GG: you do that, i guess GG: i still think making snow angels will be more fun!

TG: suit yourself TG: anyway im being messaged by someone else so ive gotta bounce

GG: alrighty, see ya!

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] --

-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

GC: D4V3

TG: terezi

GC: H4V3 YOU S33N TH1S?? GC: F1L3.COM

TG: well it would seem that im being framed for murder and no one told me

GC: NO GC: 1N C4S3 TH4T H4PP3N3D 1 WOULD S3RV3 4S YOUR PROS3CUT3R

TG: wouldnt you be unable to participate in the trial because you have a bias because were friends

GC: Y3S BUT TH4T 1S B3S1D3 TH3 PO1NT GC: W41T GC: 1S 1T B3S1D3 THE PO1NT OR B3S1D3S TH3 PO1NT??

TG: no idea TG: does it matter

GC: 1 GU3SS NOT GC: JUST LOOK 4T TH3 GODD4MN M3M3

TG: nice

GC: H3H3H3H3H3H3

-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

CG: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

TG: so what stuck itself up your ass

CG: DID TEREZI SEND YOU THAT MEME?

TG: what meme i have no idea what meme your talking about

TG: i dont even know what a meme is TG: you could hear me say that but i pronounced meme as me me TG: because thats how little i know about memes TG: ive never even seen one in my life TG: you dont have any proof that tz showed me the meme that you are talking about like less than five minutes ago about the ten page rant that you sent to complain about my channel

CG: THAT’S REALLY SPECIFIC, AND IT MAKES ME SUSPICIOUS AND PRIVY TO THE IDEA THAT YOU ACTUALLY DO KNOW WHAT A MEME IS.

TG: please spare me i have a family

CG: I WASN’T AWARE THAT YOU HAD KIDS.

TG: youre right i dont have kids TG: not in reality TG: imaginary kids TG: all running around and being great and fantastic and not fucked up at all TG: thats the fucking dream

CG: DAVE, WE’RE NOT HERE TO DISCUSS YOUR INSECURITIES DEALING WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF HAVING KIDS OR WORKING WITH KIDS. CG: WE’RE HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE MEME TEREZI SENT YOU.

TG: why do you even care so much about a meme TG: its a meme and its harmless fun TG: even if it does include a picture of you topless

CG: EXACTLY. CG: I’M GOING TO NEED YOU TO DELETE ANY EVIDENCE OF THAT PICTURE, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO KEEP IT.

TG: why would i want to keep it TG: maybe i already deleted it TG: maybe i didnt even save it TG: also why do you want me to delete so bad TG: its not much in the way of blackmail TG: who could possibly use it against you

CG: PEOPLE.

TG: thats specific

CG: I’M NOT REALLY IN THE MOOD FOR GOING INTO TOO MUCH DETAIL ABOUT THIS, SO COULD YOU PLEASE JUST TAKE MY WORD FOR IT AND DELETE THAT PHOTO?

TG: k

CG: REALLY? CG: JUST LIKE THAT?

TG: sure if it really matters to you that much ill make sure to get rid of it TG: you can tell me why at another time TG: i get if its too personal to talk about or whatever TG: sometimes that kind of thing happens TG: there we go TG: deleted photo

CG: THANKS

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

-- arsenicCatnip [AC] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

AC: :33< *ac prowls up to the unsuspecting crow* AC: :33< *she asks meow the crow is doing!*

TG: *the crow says hes doing well and asks the same of the cat*

AC: :33< im fine! AC: :33< im meowstly just double checking the date and time we agr33d on for tea

TG: yeah im still on that day TG: just cant believe it in like a month and a half TG: seems like an almost unnecessary time to plan in advance

AC: :33< but it is a really meowfurlous tea place! AC: :33< its just a little exclawsive, so youve got to make reservations a bit in advance

TG: yeah i get that but the main question here is the dress code TG: can i show up in my jeans and hoodie or do ive got to pull out the singular suit i have TG: its bright red so i cant exactly wear it to black tie events

AC: :33< it s33ms more like mew should wear brunch attire

TG: khakis and a polo shirt got it

AC: ://< i guess thats brunch attire AC: :33< i would wear something a little nicer though

TG: so more like colorful khakis with a button down shirt that can hold cufflinks

AC: :33< yeah thats s33ms more appropriate AC: :33< mew could always ask kanya~a for advice on what to wear

TG: yeah im probably going to do that TG: also that cat pun in her name that you did was the best think ive heard all day ten out of ten would use again

AC: :33< thank mew! AC: :33< i like to give all meow furends cat pun names! AC: :33< its kind of hard to come up with them for some people though

TG: yeah im not sure how you can make a cat pun from dave TG: its pretty much impossible but if you do manage to do it i will be supremely impressed

AC: :33< meowbe a rhyming thing? AC: :33< like cavedave or something? AC: :33< but that makes you sound like some sort of caveman AC: :((< and thats not really cute

TG: maybe adding a hobby of mine of some sort to my name TG: like rapping TG: like rapnap dave or something TG: cause it sounds kind of like catnap

AC: :33< that certainly is a lot cuter! AC: :33< ill consider it! AC: :33< but ive got to go meow so we can talk later

TG: cool

-- arsenicCatnip [AC] ceased trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --

Since you were clearly talking to all your friends today, you might as well see if Aradia’s online as well. You’re pretty sure she was, and since you probably won’t get to contact her for a while, you might as well message her now.

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering apocalypseArisen [AA] --

TG: have you finally figured out how im going to die TG: or divined that kind of shit yet TG: saw it in the clouds or something TG: my hot as hell dead body floating in the water staining the fluid and polluting the river and making it muddy with red TG: taking a stabbing and falling and dying before i could ask if it was something i said TG: choking to death, clubbing to death TG: hit through the chest with some white magic TG: bleeding and crying as they take their last breath TG: its all just so horrible and tragic TG: having every single one of these dreams TG: but i think i know that theyre memories TG: had these nightmares since i was a kid TG: always wondered if it was something i did TG: cause they made me scared of clowns swords and puppets TG: made me too scared to watch even the muppets TG: but they’re not just mine cause it’s not always my body TG: lying on the ground looking super fucking shoddy TG: and all i can feel is the oppression and fear TG: of letting go of all we hold dear TG: stabbed with a sword we did abhor TG: all the death and the violence and blood TG: overwhelmed us like a flood TG: but try as we might we had no chance TG: we were always meant to lose this dance TG: alright im done that was a dope ass fucking rap thanks folks for listening to how awesome that was

AA: you will die on the twentieth day of april in the year of 2069 from drug overdose

TG: nice

AA: also your rap was both cool and concerning

TG: yeah im not sure if i actually thought at all about what i just said in that rap TG: so basically i forgot everything that i just wrote

AA: thats the beauty of a messaging platform AA: you can just scroll up and reread what you wrote

TG: im sorry im suddenly unable to read

AA: wow AA: youre really going to do this

TG: yes and i have no regrets TG: hi im jared im nineteen and i never fucking learned how to read

AA: your name is dave

TG: shit TG: caught in the lie TG: what time will i have to spend in jail officer

AA: well since im not a cop AA: none! AA: but im still curious about whatever the hell was going on with that rap

TG: maybe you should respond with the stuff thats bothering you in rap form TG: do a little rap battle TG: but like TG: with feelings and shit TG: you can talk about whats bothering you and then i can elaborate on the fuckery in my rap

AA: alright i dont see why not AA: it will probably help us both AA: my heart and my brains been pulled taught AA: stuck between work and the one that i love AA: cant help my job fits me like a glove AA: but i cant stop thinking about my matesprit AA: how hes gonna face it AA: cause he says he supports me AA: and he says that he agrees AA: with putting my job first and foremost AA: while he sits in one place and holds post AA: i didnt mind too much before AA: we had all i could adore AA: but since he proposed were going to be married AA: i just dont know if that life should be carried

TG: well that sounds like something you should talk about TG: because not doing so might leave you in a drought TG: in your relationship where miscommunications TG: might lead to decimation TG: or more likely just breaking up TG: but you dont want that to burn up TG: so just have a talk with him about your concern TG: and then your love will continue to burn

AA: did you just rhyme up with up

TG: dont judge me im trying to help

AA: your advice was good but i can still judge you for your lack of slam poetry skills

TG: hey ill have you know im the best in the business

AA: must be a very small business

TG: wow TG: i cant believe my own moirail would do this to me

AA: you know i had to do it to em

TG: i hate you and everything that you stand for

AA: likewise AA: aside from that AA: do you want to talk about those dreams you mentioned at the start of this conversation

TG: i will only answer that if you ask me in a rap

AA: what the fuck was up with those dreams AA: you seem to be tearing at the seems AA: with all the death and the dying AA: and it might seems like im lying AA: but ive had those too AA: hit in the face and bid me adieu AA: except im a ghost and dead AA: dont know how but i bled AA: then im a frog for some reason AA: it has something to do with treason AA: then a robot that i hated AA: someones kinks that were stated AA: then i blow up again and again AA: wake up in pajamas the color of cayenne AA: and thats when i know that im alive AA: and i know for a fact that i will thrive

TG: always thought that i was alone in this TG: but i guess im not so now ill remiss TG: on all these nightmares ive had TG: that were all really bad TG: i always thought it was because of my childhood TG: never thought that i would be old enough to get to my knighthood TG: thought i was going to die alone TG: thought they wouldnt even find a bone TG: thought no would care if i was gone TG: always felt like i didnt belong TG: i thought the dreams were a message, an order TG: to finally get rid of the disorder TG: that was me theyd promised id be free TG: but i still desperately wanted to be TG: alive and awake and active and happy TG: excuse me if this starts to get a bit sappy TG: but i wanted love TG: i wanted to be above TG: my bro who so obviously hated me TG: and everyone i know would agree TG: so no matter how much i wanted to die TG: there was always something just keeping me alive TG: a wish or a kiss or a day that gets better TG: a time when i get to open a letter TG: theres something to live for something to survive for TG: going and traveling and taking a tour TG: listening to music when i feel depressed TG: going outside when i feel repressed TG: reminding myself its gonna be alright TG: in order to tell myself not to go towards the light

AA: feeling alive is good

TG: yeah TG: it is TG: thanks for listening

AA: thank you for listening! AA: thats what being moirails is all about AA: listening to each other and doing our best to comfort each other AA: although i guess thats what friendship is about too AA: moirail is more of a formal title

TG: i get that TG: someones messaging me now though so i guess this is where we can end our convo

AA: dont be a stranger!

TG: not planning to be one TG: <>

`AA: <>

-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering apocalypseArisen [AA] --

-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

TT: Hello.

TG: yes just come up and start a chat using the most generic fucking greeting in the entire goddamn world TG: thats exactly how you start a conversation with someone youve known for years TG: start conversations by calling your friends a bitch like the rest of us

TT: I’m pretty sure I would like to have a little more class than that.

TG: ill bring you down to my level one day

TT: I will do my best to resist going down that low.

TG: listen TG: im pretty sure you dont have to go that far

TT: Wow. TT: Rude.

TG: thats a more appropriate way to talk to your brother

TT: I’ll be certain to use more crass language when greeting you next time I make the decision to start a conversation with you.

TG: anyway what did you want to talk to me about

TT: I would like to invite you to my party celebrating the release of my new book. TT: It takes place in a month at my house.

TG: you mean your big ass mansion

TT: Yes, I suppose that is an apt description of the location where I reside. TT: I suggest you dress formally for the occasion. TT: You can wear the suit that you had recently tailored for you.

TG: oh yeah the one kanaya made that feels like the softest goddamn plush toy in the childrens aisle

TT: Yes, please wear that one.

TG: alrighty sounds good to me

TT: Not going to argue about wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead?

TG: nah TG: not this time at least TG: im kind of excited to wear the one kanaya made anyway TG: especially since its the first suit that i actually kind of like

TT: Well, I look forward to seeing you at my party in a suit. TT: For now, I must go and give a few others personal invitations.

TG: k you do that

-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

You proceeded to play videos games for the rest of the day because it was, in fact, your day off. You had to spend some of it by yourself after all.

[flyswhumpcenter]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card!

Don’t ask me why. It’s like I did a 360° on my ideas about being that one local whump hipster asshole. It wasn’t even a request, but the art block was stronk and the tentation even stronker so... DBH whump! I can’t explain, just take it! Father-son Hank & Connor + “Blood from the Mouth” wasn’t in my inbox but fuck it. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Nothing Ever Goes Right Around Here

Summary: It was supposed to be a normal case of missing deviants, goddammit. Instead, it turned into a shower of blue blood.

Fandom: Detroit: Become Human

Wordcount: 3.5K words

Event organized by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

There was this thing about being in the police that all cops knew about: the danger of death. Unless you were stuck behind a terminal waiting for shit to happen or filling goddamn paperwork for the tenth time in two days, you were going to put your life in danger. Criminals were all over trying to get away with their crimes: if it meant killing an officer or two to evade it, then they’d probably do it.

Everyone was aware of these dangers when androids started to become a thing. Housekeeping and making stuff in huge hangars in what used to be the desert part of Detroit hadn’t been enough to contain the “epidemic”: in the end, that one corp named CyberLife had managed to slip some of policer/detective/whatever robots in the police forces to fight against other robots having gone deviant/defective/however they called it.

 In a way, Hank could say his career changed the day he had gotten a partner assigned to him in 2018 Anno Domini (and he only knew what “AD” stood for because he once had gotten through a torrential lecture about it, holy shit that had been boring as balls). A non-human partner. A plastic prick assigned to him because now he was investigating androids or something. Wished he had been warned about facing these assholes before Fowler had slammed them in his face. Would have been nice to get prepared, y’know.

The thing was awkward to look at. It looked goofy with puppy eyes, a haircut which seemed to have dated back from when he was born and with a weird-ass voice with a weird-ass accent. “CyberLife androids are conceived to work harmoniously with humans”, sure. It kept trying to do some fake small talk, including such classics as “I like dogs” and “Can I ask you a personal question, Lieutenant?”.

 It wasn’t like it wouldn’t follow him around all the goddamn time. The thing was tenacious as fuck: no matter how many times he’d tell it “don’t go there, you’re gonna get killed”, it’d still do so. Fucking prick. Drinking himself to death? It’d break his window. Eating lunch? It was there, commenting on his street friends taking part in illegal gambles. Getting shot in the fucking head? It’d come back the next day as if nothing had happened, “My predecessor was unfortunately destroyed, but I was sent as a replacement”.

After a while, though, Hank noticed himself warming up to the fucking robot. In fact, he started to refer to the latter as a “he” instead of just “it”. In a way, advanced androids showed: at times, Connor was more human than he would have liked his artificial partner to be. It was too real when he had had to slam his heart back into his chest as it bleed blue everywhere in a staff room.

Way too real.

 In the end, deviant androids weren’t in the wrong and lead a peaceful revolution. Bigotry was still there (when wasn’t it? Being an asshole was a part of being a human being), insults and slurs were still there, deviants hating humans and vice-versa were still there. The world would change, he figured. It always did, so why wouldn’t it change this time? Androids had claimed back the tower in which they had once been conceived, built and stocked: it was already changing.

It was easy to perceive: instead of just having some kind of plastic partner crossed with a poodle trying to sound human, he had a workmate with just a different colour of blood and way to express himself (“androids cannot die, we get shutdown”, “androids cannot get sick, Hank, they can get infected”, yada yada yada). In a way, Connor was the son he had never gotten the chance to see grow up, but he’d be damned if he ever spat that in front of the kid.

 It wasn’t about hunting down deviants for the sake of making them go back to being machines anymore, at the DPD. Now, it was about hunting down violent deviants, find missing androids scared by deviancy, or arresting even more assholes killing androids. Hank wished he didn’t know android sex trafficking was a thing, but it was a few cases too late. It was better than before: he didn’t feel like he was being an ass just for making his job. Connor still licked blood off the floor as if it wasn’t any big deal (God, that was still gross as fuck), but it was better.

So now, he was teamed with a sentient android investigating android-related cases and it wasn’t even swerving his hate nerve anymore. Getting over what had happened to Cole was finally going somewhere thanks to him not being a blind piece of shit about it anymore. How things had changed in such a short span of time.

 All this had brought him to this day. They had been assigned to the case of the disappearance of an SR300 which had apparently gone deviant and fled the place with a similar model, a JL900. Both were android models specialized in education and teaching, and had fled from the high school they were used in.

“I guess being a teach is only slightly better than findin’ corpses on the ground,” Hank grunted as he turned on the car. “These two must have fled because the brats weren’t worth the shitty-ass wage.”

“According to witness accounts, the two have taken shelter in a nearby abandoned school, of which the current school is a rebuilt one,” Connor stated, looking through window to a decrepit building barely standing.

 They both got out of the car, making their way to the old building. It was a disaster to look at: shattered windows, rotting walls with tags all over them, shards of glass and wood on the concrete, weeds starting to take over the entire place and a few animal corpses to sell the thing. It seemed like little shits liked to come here to get a quick laugh by being assholes to innocent animals.

“Look at this. Isn’t it a place where ya wanted to spend a nice afternoon, Connor?” he asked his partner who looked way more serious than he was.

“We usually visit unpleasant locations such as this one,” he replied with an unnatural seriousness. “I don’t see how this is any worse than our usual investigations.”

“Ain’t wrong.”

 They walked into the building through its busted doors, glass breaking even more under their footsteps. The walls weren’t just about to collapse under the weight of four abandoned floors: they were also covered in incoherent, compulsive writings.

“The words on the walls were both written by humans and androids. They used a standard font to write about rA9 again…” Connor seemed to mutter to himself as he scanned the walls.

“So both have been there, huh. That’s just fantastic. We’re trying to find androids and we’re faced with the possibility of humans having put their dirty noses in there.”

 The ground floor was at times inaccessible, huge chunks of wood and concrete having long since blocked most corridors to what seemed to have been administration-related rooms. Oh well, was for the best: the less places to access, the less to actually investigate. Moreover, it blocked most of the staircases, which meant there was no risky stair climbing today. Hey, if the place wasn’t so creepy and such a hazard, it wouldn’t be too bad of an investigation.

But there was a catch to it (there was always a catch to things anyway): there were two ways to go. They’d have to either split up and cover more field or remain together but lose time. He couldn’t tell all by himself what thing to do, even if he was more inclined to split and spend less time in this goddamn debris of a place.

 “Which way is the most likely to have these deviants, Connor?” he asked, thinking some fancy-shmancy scan ability could maybe make that easier.

“I can’t tell. The writings on the walls seem to be very similar on both ways.”

His LED cycled to yellow, a sure sign he was scanning something, perhaps simulating, if he wasn’t wrong about these specificities that was.

“I’d go as far as to say the two androids could have gone either way and could have split at some point.”

“Fuck. Let’s split too then. I’m going left, you’re going right, got it?”

“Got it.”

 Gun in a hand and a flashlight in the other, Hank made his way into the left corridor. It was everything an abandoned school would be in a clichéd horror movie: blood dried on the walls, broken wooden floor tainted in red (from what, he didn’t want to know), incoherent tags filled with penis crudely drown on former paint job… Truly the “work” of some shitheads.

Doors to classrooms were completely busted, revealing most of the furniture had either been moved to the new school or had been stolen. Because of the state of the building, these rooms were all identical: dark, smelling like wet red ice, rotting and just unpleasant to look at for more than three seconds.

 Eventually, his eyes stumbled upon two blue diodes shining in the dark. The deviants were in the last room of the corridor (of course). Making sure to have his gunned hand lowered (if seeing Connor act upon deviants had told him something, it was that being unarmed was better in these cases) and the flashlight more visible. Violent confrontation wasn’t really his cup of coffee these days.

He shined his light onto the two female androids, revealing them to have been sitting still on top of a desk. They didn’t look that scared or surprised to see him, as if they had expected him to come in at some point. He wasn’t the stealthiest cop around, to be fair.

 “Detroit Police,” he told them as he put his gun in its holder for the moment. “Stay put.”

They didn’t say anything back, just stayed there. They were still dressed in their factory uniforms, looking undisturbed enough to seem like they had never gone deviant in the first place.

“What? You’re not reacting or trying to kill me or something?”

The SR300, a brown-haired one with blue eyes, got up and walked closer to him.

“We don’t have to fear anything from you. We already know who you are and who you came with.”

“Guess info does spread amongst deviants. Look, I’m not good at negotiating, especially compared to my partner, but I still wanna know why you fled the place like that. Was it the brats?”

That was soft coming from him, but he didn’t feel threatened by two female androids smaller than him.

 The second android got up too, revealing herself to have brown eyes, darker than Connor’s he’d say, even if the shitty lighting of the place didn’t help.

“We didn’t know what they’d do with us once they knew we were deviants. It was starting to look too obvious.”

“Who, the brats? I don’t think they’d give two shits. Kids are usually nicer than adults about that kind of stuff.”

If he remembered one anecdote from Connor before the latter had deviated, it was the one about the little girl who was taken hostage by the family’s android she loved.

“No, the school staff,” SR900 interjected. “Discrimination against androids is still a thing for us deviants. These dicks wouldn’t want us to think too much. Ironic, considering that’s what school is supposed to teach the kids.”

An android who cursed freely. Felt like talking to a real human for a second over there.

“We escaped so we wouldn’t be chained to our original, programmed mindset,” JL900 added. “Being free is being able to think for ourselves and being able to teach how we want. For once, the students aren’t the issue.”

“So ya escaped because ya wanted free will, right? Seems like a cool motive. Ya killed people while ya were at it?”

“We’re supposed to be teacher androids, Lieutenant.” JL900 seemed offended at this. “We wouldn’t kill people. I don’t think we’ve even unlocked that.”

“Now, if you want a killer deviant, there’s one in the building,” SR300 said as she glanced towards the corridor. “We were about to leave the place anyway, it was just so they’d lose track of us. Now, if I was you, I’d leave too.”

 Wait, how did they know he was a lieutenant? Huh, no, wait again. There was something worse about this.

“There’s another deviant in there?!”

SR300 didn’t seem this disturbed.

“Yeah. A deviant with a knack against other androids and humans alike. He calls himself Brandon, if you ever come across him.”

JL900 didn’t seem this tranquil with it, though.

“Sarah,” she said as she looked at the other android, “isn’t Lieutenant Anderson always accompanied by an android?”

“Oh, yeah, he is,” she replied looking at the ceiling, before starting at him again. “You should go check on your partner, Brandon may have found him.”

That smelled like shit. The calmness of that swearing android was pissing him off beyond reason, to the point he wanted to scream at her for not telling him earlier, but Connor was a priority there.

 Not even saying something again, Hank hurried to the other end of the corridor he had gone in and into the one he hadn’t been in before. As he did so, he armed his other hand with his gun, determined to make it to where the deviant was and shoot him in the head if it meant having his partner alive and perhaps saving the two pacifist androids in the back over there.

As he did so, the stench of the place had changed. It smelled much, much more like plastic and machinery. It was probably his mind playing tricks on him, considering he was getting concerned and almost scared of finding Connor in pieces by that point.

 Getting breathless, he stopped running, trying to catch his breath as soon as possible. Heart beating against his ribcage, cursing himself for having tried to attract death glass after glass, his hand dropped down, lighting the floor. There was this weird ambient noise of someone dragging something on the floor,

His eyes went wild when he noticed there were drops of blue. Whatever Connor had to get his parts functional was spilled on the floor, his or not. Considering the short timespan during which it’d stay wet, it had to belong to one of the four androids in the building. Also considering the pristine condition of the two female androids he had just left, despite the place where they were, it had to belong to either Connor or the deviant. He needed to act fast.

 As he was about to continue delving into the corridors, something grabbed his ankle, almost making him fall.

“Goddammit! Don’t pull my legs, for fuck’s…”

His heart skipped a beat.

“Jesus Christ!!”

 The hand clutching his ankle belonged to Connor, whom he kneeled in front of. There was blue blood all over the android’s fingers and dripping from his mouth, ragged breathing also coming out from it.

“Goddammit, Connor, you’re okay?! What happened to ya?!”

“A deviant… shot me in one of the classrooms… He’s armed…”

“God fucking dammit…”

 Putting his partner’s head on his lap, Hank put the gun back in this pocket and shone the light on the android. It wasn’t too hard to spot the wound: there was a blue hole right in his chest from which liquid oozed, tainting everything it touched in cobaltic tones. The damage seemed to have been enough for Connor to cough up even more blood, all contributing to tainting even more of the place blue.

It was a storm inside Hank’s head. Should he try to stop the haemorrhage the same way he’d so with a human, with red blood? It didn’t cost anything to try. He put his hand on there, trying to use pressure to his advantage, when footsteps arrived next to him.

 There was no LED light around the footsteps’ noise. A “shit” escaped his mouth as he realized this wasn’t any of the two girls from before, but the last deviant in the building. The one with the homicidal tendencies and a lack of empathy to his fellow androids. He needed to get rid of it before it got rid of him.

Regretfully targeting his flashlight towards the deviant, other hand already moving from the wound to his pocket and to his gun, he noticed there was a barrel pointed right between his own two eyes. This was going to end in a bloodbath, wasn’t it.

“Sorry, son,” he whispered under his breath as if Connor could hear it, ready to shoot and get shot, until the barrel disappeared from his immediate vision.

 Two lights had appeared in his field of vision.

“Sir!” SR300’s voice rose from the darkness. “Get away from here as fast as possible! We’re gonna keep him in there long enough, don’t worry for us!”

He wished he didn’t have to resort to that, but seeing Connor cough up some more blue blood was giving him the urge to leave as soon as possible.

“We… we can’t leave them here…” Connor said with echo in his voice and liquid pouring out as Hank was putting him over his shoulder.

“We can’t wait around here, or you’re gonna die! No officer dies on my watch!”

 It was a chore to get moving with someone barely able to walk weighing down on his shoulder, but it had to be done. His partner was attempting to speak despite the leak continuing. Hand on his phone, phone to his ear, ear twitching, he was barking into it to request backup and some kind of medical assistance for androids, whatever that was called.

“Hang on there, we’ll get you to safety and repaired in no time. Just… don’t die on me.”

Connor attempted to speak, only for more blue to come out from it, spilling on the ground.

“And don’t speak, Jesus Christ! You’re gonna make yourself even worse if you do that!”

 Sirens filled the air, lights blinded the eyes, backup deafening sounds and visuals alike. That had been tougher than expected… Of course it’d be. Why did he have expectations of anything going right, again? At least, question solved, right?

  If there was a thing Hank hated deep down, it was waiting for something to happen whenever things turned to shit. He was covered in blue, staring at the wall in a fucking waiting room because he couldn’t focus on anything else. Order from Fowler himself, he didn’t need to add another page to the goddamn bible that was his behaviour history.

The kid had been shot in the chest and he couldn’t have done much about it. He knew he couldn’t have guessed, couldn’t have known, but it still felt like his fault nonetheless. He didn’t care if Connor was supposed to just be robotics with a humanoid face, he was still alive and he had almost died right in his arm for the second time. Fuck this deviant, he deserved the bullet in the head he got from the backup.

 He had seen the two female androids from earlier pass by him, apologizing for not telling him earlier. One of them, the SR300 if he wasn’t mistaken, had almost been shot too, but it only grazed her instead. They had seemed to be adamant to join society as functional members, albeit deviant androids by default. They weren’t bad persons, he supposed, so it was only fair that they had survived the ordeal and had left that decrepit school straight out of Satan’s asshole.

That still didn’t make that shitty situation okay. He hadn’t been here for long and he knew that: at best half an hour, at worst a couple minutes, the time to want to punch something and throw coffee at Gavin for the tenth time in the week. It was pissing him off to dick around like that waiting for something to happen.

 “Lt. Anderson?” a voice called for him, unfamiliar and neutral all the same. Some random technician, he figured.

“Yeah?” he simply replied, before realizing it could be important. “Did the kid make it?” he proceeded to ask, a bit more concerned about the entire ordeal.

The small smile on the guy’s face betrayed the answer.

“He did indeed make it. You may visit his room now.”

 The lieutenant obviously followed. In all silence, yet sighing internally in relief because never again, he made his way in the room. Closing the door behind him and leaning against the wall, he looked at the unconscious (or so he assumed) man in the bed in front of him. A smirk crept up on his face.

“Never do that again, kid, got it?”

[inspiredink]

Waiting

By Ahn

The parking lot is quiet except for the sound of crickets filling up the air. In the distance, the overpass rising above the palm trees is crowded with car tires grinding against the gravel street. I want to say I can hear the ocean but it might just be my imagination.

You’re asleep inside the motel. I should be in there, curled up with your spine pressed against me and your hair tickling my nose. It’s three in the morning and I’m standing out in the cold itching to write you love letters, itching to write you so much love, you might get better. I take a shaky breath and remind myself you can’t love someone out of anything. I want to say I believe myself, but we both know I’m still trying to love the sadness out of you.

There’s too much energy pounding inside me, pressing against the cracks of my ribs and begging to tumble out. I’ve never been loud or violent, but still, I find myself fighting the impulse to scream or break something. The more I fight the urge, the more it feels like I’m just breaking myself. 

My fingers are trembling as I send a message to her. It’s all jumbled letters and misspelled words autocorrect doesn’t feel like changing. I can’t be bothered to capitalize or punctuate. Maybe that’s why she calls me within moments; I’m always precise when I type.

The phone rings in my hand. Over and over and over. All I can do is stare down at my fingers and trace how the flickering light above casts deep shadows on my knuckles. Distantly, I realize that these are my hands holding my phone. I have to remind myself that I am here, that I am breathing.

The line falls dead. She leaves a voicemail but it’s only two seconds of silence before she starts calling again. I don’t remember opening the voicemail but the sound of her breath pulls me out of my stupor. I pick up on the third ring, wiping the tears off my phone screen before holding it up to my ear.

“Hey,” I whisper.

My voice is hoarse. Quiet. Falling apart, really.

“You asked me to call.”

And yeah. I think I remember texting that.

White noise fills my head, blending in with the sound of her breathing and the crackling noise of her silent room. My name interrupts my daze.

“Olivia?” 

I don’t respond. I can’t. It occurs to me that I am sobbing too much to answer. I can’t breathe. Ican’tbreathe. 

“Olivia, breathe with me. Come on. Listen.”

She breathes in slowly and I try to copy, hiccuping over my own sobs. We breathe in and out together, and I am reminded of how much I love my best friend. A pained smile cracks my face as I shut my eyes and rub the tears.

“Fuck,” I whisper under my breath, trusting her to hear me, “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, hun.”

I just focus on breathing for a while, focus on fitting myself back into my body because, at this moment, I don’t feel like myself. She waits for me to finish organizing my thoughts. When I speak, I choke out the words I had meant to say.

“I found her.”

Silence. And then, “How was she?”

“Alive.”

And part of me is angry that I have to worry about this. Part of me crumbles at the reminder that I was so worried I’d stumble onto your dead fucking body.

After a moment, I think to say more.

“She wasn’t great.”

“I can imagine. She never is.”

“I found her at the ocean. She was just… waiting, I guess. For a sign? For her to feel ready? F-for me to find her?” 

My voice gets louder as I remember finding you at the ocean’s edge after hours of driving to all of your favorite and my least favorite places (a lot of tall buildings and empty rooms.)

It hurt to find you at my favorite place; I wonder if you knew it would ruin it for me. If you knew the ocean was one of the last few places I had that reminded me of peace. Then, I shake that thought from my head because you could never be that selfish. With a long and slow sigh, I run a hand through my cropped hair. I cut it after you told me I looked prettier with short hair. I wish pretty was enough for you to stay.

“I feel like she’s always waiting for me to find her.”

I’m so tired.

I’m so so tired.

And you’re in there and I’m out here being selfish and calling my best friend because, for once (for the fifth time this month), I need someone else to take in all of the sharp, crumpled up emotions I have balled up in my belly. It tastes like ash and dust when anger surges up my throat and curls on my tongue. This world must be worthless if it makes you feel this way. I want to burn it all down. I want to let myself fall apart. I want to cry. I want to- God, I just want to rest.

“I can’t do this anymore.” It’s a quiet admission.

“You’re not responsible for her.”

I think of you curled up alone in a crappy motel room with the A.C. on blast even though I hate the cold.

“Yeah, I am” I murmur. 

And it’s hard to admit it out loud, how responsible I feel for your breakdowns and your pain. 

“You’re not alone, Olivia.”

I scoff, taking in the parking lot full of empty cars of guests at the motel. Most of them probably snugly in bed. For once, I let myself feel angry. It’s not fair that I’m out here at 3 a.m. pushing all of this weight onto her. It’s not fair but I’m still doing it because I can never seem to hold myself together long enough to do anything right.

When I answer, my voice is sharp and brittle, cruel and cutting. It’s nothing like when I talk to you. With you, I soften the edges of my tone, even though I want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and ask Why?

“Aren’t I?”

“Isn’t she there? Aren’t you there for her? That means you’re also with her, Olivia.”

I close my eyes and lean my head back until it’s resting on the cool metal of the bench beneath me. I wish I could see her right now. I wish Gracie were here for me to lean on. But you don’t trust her and you don’t want to talk to her. It feels like I’m a traitor for calling her, but who else can I call at three in the morning?

“You know it’s not the same,” I respond with a sigh.

She’s silent and doesn’t have an answer for a painful truth. I’ve grown distant from everyone, pulled myself away as I worried myself sick about you and wondered where you’d gone and what you were doing and if you were even alive. I can’t help it. I feel like doing anything else but look for you is wasting time. After all, your life is on the line. I could never live with myself if I just let you slip through my fingers.

She speaks again and my sobs grow louder.

“I’m here.”

And she’s right. She is. She reminds me to eat when you disappear, comes by to help clean my room, chides me for refusing to shower or sleep. I hate it. I hate that I’m you to her. I don’t know what that says about us, but it has me staying up late researching therapists and psychiatrists. Not for you to go to, for once. I know what it is to worry about someone else, and I wish she never had to worry about me.

I’m trying so hard to fix myself for Gracie. I guess part of me wishes you’d do the same. I wonder if it’s stupid to think you don’t love me that much if you’re willing to keep dragging me through this every month. It’s not true, and I know it, but I can’t help being cruel after years of struggling with the idea of empathy. It was never you that taught me compassion. That was all her. Some loves are greater than others even if they aren’t all romantic. I wonder which of my loves has a bigger hold on me.

Of course, I’m here with you. Even when I’m with others, my mind is with you.

“I love you,” I say.

“I know,” she responds. And then, “We should watch Star Wars again.”

A snort bursts out before I can stop it. “You’re such a nerd.”

“Not denying that.”

“Gracie…,” I sigh. “What am I doing here…?”

“She needs you.” 

It hurts to hear it. It makes me want to leave this city, leave this state, leave this entire goddamn country. I’ve never been needed like this before. I’ve always walked out before I could be wanted, let alone needed.

Tears prick my eyes again. 

“I’m not strong enough.”

We both know it’s true. I focus on her breaths over the phone to calm myself down and deal with the panic washing over me. I wish I could go to the ocean, but I can’t. I want to go to the ocean I knew before I saw you there. I want to go to the ocean that helped me breathe, instead of one that makes guilt rise up within me like bile.

After a moment, she responds and her voice is enough to make me feel better. 

“You don’t have to be. We’re all here for you. All of your friends and all of your loved ones are still here for you.”

I’m nodding even though she can’t see me, swallowing uneasily on the knot in my throat.

“I’m here for you, Olivia. Take all the strength you need from me. Lord knows you’ve given me strength when I need it.”

“Nobody ever talks about this part, Grace,” I whisper, “None of the articles online talk about how hard it is. They tell you what not to say and what not to do. They say get help and that it should get better but it hasn’t. They never talk about what to do when it’s killing you too.”

“I know,” she says, a lifeline floating in the emptiness. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m still sorry.”

I take a deep breath and open my eyes to pull out the keys to my truck. I curl my fingers around the edges, finding myself anchored by the hard teeth of the car key pressed into my palm, a reminder that I’m here and I’m alive.

“What if she had died tonight? What would I even do?”

It’s terrible and it’s selfish but this conversation was never about you. It was always about me, falling apart. Me, unable to pull you out of whatever was eating you from the inside out. I hate myself. Grace, my best friend, my platonic soulmate, the person who hasn’t budged from my side for years, somehow finds an answer to the impossible questions I’ve asked.

“You’d live, Olivia. And you’d mourn and you’d cry and maybe you’d want to die. But you’d live. And sometime, definitely not right away but definitely someday, you’d be happy again and it’d be… okay.”

“Okay.” I take a breath and then I take another. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna be- I’m gonna be okay.”

“I know you’ll be.”

You find me there in the freezing dawn three hours later, bleary-eyed and dazed as I watch the sun creep over the horizon. We get into my car, no real destination in mind, and I turn on the radio to listen to the morning news. You change the station but I don’t really care enough to switch it back. Without realizing it, I drive us to the ocean.

When we swing out of the car, I look over at you and remember how beautiful you are. The ocean breeze pushes your tangled hair out of your eyes and the color is returning to your cheeks after a long night of sleep. You reach out and link your fingers with mine and I feel like I can breathe more easily, I feel like maybe, I can be okay again.

The beach is void of life for miles around. We walk to the water’s edge, let the waves lap at our feet and the seafoam settle around our ankles. I feel the panic rise up in me as I remember seeing you stand here in exactly the same position. For a moment, I can’t feel your hand in mine. It’s as though I cannot see your chest rise and fall in time with the waves or your eyes sparkling with tears as you look out at the water and let the sound of the ocean and the seagulls wash over us.

I’m alone again and I’m far, far away from Earth.

The memory of Gracie’s voice draws me back and I am reminded of how she taught me to breathe when I had forgotten. I am reminded of my friends arriving late at night to cook dinner for me and replace the dying flowers in my kitchen. I am reminded of the many voicemails you left unheard on your phone of people asking how you are and where you’ve been.

As your hold on my hand tightens slightly, as though I anchor you here on this beach, I wonder if you realize that more than one person is saving us.

Ahn writes science fiction and fantasy stories and publishes poetry on her blog. In her free time, she enjoys convincing herself that there are monsters in her garage and misinterpreting MBTI types, classpects, and other personality identifiers. Avoiding social gatherings is her forte and binge-reading fantasy series is her fatal flaw. Read more from her at versesfortomorrow.

[assholemurphy]

it’s 4:30a, i stayed up waiting for rafiki to be free so we could go to walmart (bc my gay ass still doesn’t have a car or a license) but at 3 i said fuck it and walked to the 24 hour gas station (which is a 30 min walk away cause i move like a goddamn sloth for the most part) to get cigarettes (tho, i do have a whole list of stuff from walmart, i was just also going to get those while there) i got back at 4 but since i can’t go to bed past 4 and wake up for class, guess who gets to stay up all day??? and guess who won’t be able to take a nap tomorrow until after 5p??? yep, this sad fuck. so i’m going to be existing on caffeine and spite (and also panic bc we’ve got like, just tomorrow to get everything ready for the show and well, it’s not ready. i dunno how close to done it is, but apparently it’s p far from being done bc pb legit looked stressed af when i asked if i was needed in the shop. the answer was yes. also pb is apparently v bad at planning things bc he’s the one in charge of the set design and well, yeah. but the dumbass has been overworking himself, too, so it’s hard to be like ‘you’re an idiot for not having it done’ when it seems more important to say ‘you’re an idiot bc you aren’t sleeping properly and look like you’ve taken up high stakes gambling but have no poker face’ i’m legit worried abt him). so that’s what’s happening tomorrow.

i was sick for a few days, but it turns out i was just exhausted/stressed to the point of physical symptoms bc i wasn’t sleeping/eating/practicing basic self care bc of how much hw and shit i had. but i got all of it done. i now only have a playwriting assignment (which is due mon) and my therapy hw (due thur) to do. the playwriting assignment is to write a full 10 min play. which isn’t easy. but i’ve got a decent idea of what i want to do and a good grasp on my characters, so, that’s gonna be alright, i think. i’ll work on it sat/sun and get some meal prepping and organizing done then, too. it’s not as stressful. esp bc i don’t have class all week except for mon bc of the show (it’s a children’s show, so we’re doing daytime performances, multiple ones per day) and i’m working the spotlight. which hasn’t been used in years. but it’s fucking great, i love that damn thing. i just wish that the lights on stage didn’t wash out some of the colors i’ve chosen for the characters. there’s like 2/3 times that it kinda fucks them up, but like, that’s life. there’s no fixing that bc there’s only so many colors i can create with that thing and more characters than colors. but, it’ll be fine. i’m trying to get rafiki to come see it on fri or sat (when we do the regular audience shows) bc it’s fucking hilarious and i think he’ll actually like it. even if he hates theatre. what kind of fucking asshole hates theatre? i blame capitalism for the lack of culture in this generation. and every generation, tbh. but, not the point.

however, while waiting, i did finish the next chap of tal, so i’m going to proofread that right quick, post it, probably shower, and then wait patiently for validation. might eat something, too, maybe. i need to. maybe some goldfish crackers or something, idk.

but i’m so fucking tired. i’m gonna get a monster and take an adderall so i’m not passing out and i should be good to go. if not, i’ll down some sudafed, too, but i’d like to not take that until 8 like usual. but, if i do take it now, i can take more at noon. ah, decisions. i’m not good at making them. i’m too bi for that.

but, yeah, unless i spontaneously fall asleep (which i shouldn’t) the next chap of tal should be up before 8a. fucking finally.

[vintagemiserie]

@ineedtorundry i decided to start writing the lil thing i described and i somehow wrote 1.2k words in one sitting lmao

Joe was madly in love. He wasn't gay, he swore he wasn't, but Patrick was just so… God, his heart melted just thinking about him. He was so cute, the way he was so enthusiastic about music and his favorite artists, the way his hair tufted up where the bill of his hat started, how it seemed like he was always smiling around Joe. Sure, his singing was rough occasionally, but that didn't matter when he was so fucking hot holy shit.

So, he organized a time to hang out as a practice, of some sort. Patrick told Joe that his bleached hair was cute, so he might as well hang out more, right? Patrick wouldn't just, like, say that if he didn't feel similarly. It wasn't for anything like that, though, it was a practice, he swore, and even though they both knew that they'd stop practicing and play video games after, like, ten minutes, but it was worth a try. God, and Patrick just responded to the text, and he put a smiley face at the end of his response, that is so fucking adorable.

He wasn't gay, Patrick was just… Pete was gonna make fun of him so much when Patrick would leave and Joe'd rant to him about how great it was to be around Patrick. Fuck, okay, Patrick was at the door, okay, he could manage this. He was good at acting normal. “Hey, dude,” Joe called, opening the door for him when he was only just starting to step up to the door.

“Something tells me we're not gonna get, like, any practice in,” Patrick said, grinning at him as he stepped up. “I know you're tricks, Trohman.”

Joe laughed lightly. “Yeah, well, I'm trying my best,” He replied jokingly, patting Patrick’s back as he stepped in. “I'm just, like, we don't hang out alone enough.”

“Yeah, we don't. I do have some stuff that I'd, like, really like to show you, but I feel like it'd be better to show Pete at the same time. He's, like, so fucking weird about lyrics, I swear.”

“Yeah. Do you know if he's getting us a drummer, yet?”

“I have no idea, man. I think he has someone, but apparently the guy’s up in Milwaukee, and I, like, highly fucking doubt that he'll actually join our shitty band.”

“Hey, that's better than nothing, god damn,” Joe said. They stepped down into his basement, and Patrick sat on the couch a reliable distance from the center. They were just friends, after all, why would Patrick sit down like he would expect to sit right against Joe? He was just being stupid. Speaking of stupid, he turned on his GameCube and looked at the opening animation confusedly before realizing there was still an actual disc in the console.

It was Mario Kart, luckily, so he grabbed a couple controllers off the ground and handed one to Patrick. “You good with this?” He asked, and Patrick nodded, looking like a goddamn puppy.

The hours, the various games went by oh-so quickly, and it must have been six or seven by the time Joe snapped back into reality and realized they were sitting against each other, shoulders and hips touching. He tried to not let it bother him, but, jeez, it was hard to not think about how nice it would be if he could muster up the courage to actually, like, make a move. Joe got up to change the game, Goldeneye having gotten a bit boring after a while. “Hey, Patrick, you can leave anytime, it's getting kinda late,” He mentioned, just on the offhand chance that Patrick was disinterested. Or the onhand chance, like, Joe couldn't be too serious about thinking like that.

“I was actually thinking about, like, calling my mom and asking if I could stay the night.”

Oh, okay, that was a very nice comment.

It must have been around, like, two until Joe started to seriously think about admitting his.. it wasn't a crush, on Patrick, it was just a really strong friendship. He wasn't, like—

“Hey, Joe, I've been, like, thinking about some stuff, recently,” Patrick murmured, not even looking over at Joe. That was great. Sure, like, yeah, he was staying until the morning, but there was no way this could be anything but negative. You don't just say something phrased like that, and then say something really positive.

“Yeah, man?” Joe asked, already lamenting any future, like, anything with them.

“I.. god, this is so stupid, maybe I shouldn't…” He set his controller on his lap, and sighed. “I've had a crush on you since, god, since I first saw you. Like, like, before we ever talked, when I saw you, like, playing at an Arma show, I'm just…” He looked away. “Feel free to kick me out, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking stupid.”

Joe felt his hands go clammy. That… wasn't a negative comment at all, holy shit. He paused the game, Star Fox was a little too intense for him to focus on at that moment, and forced his brain to figure out a reply of some sorts. Which was difficult. “I… I think I feel the same,” He said slowly.

“You do?” Patrick turned back towards him, and Joe nodded, lacking the brain power to speak. He was pulled into a big hug, and Joe hugged back, feeling so, so wonderful. “I'm, Joe, I'm not gay, but, but, I've never felt like this about, god, about anyone before,” Patrick said, pulling away.

“Can we kiss?”

“Wh—Yeah, yes, let's please kiss.”

They held each other's arms for a few moments, just trying to figure out how the hell they got here from an invitation to hang out (or, at least, Joe guessed Patrick was thinking the same), and after a few more moments of staring at each other, Patrick closed his eyes and leaned forward.

It felt like it was just going to be a quick chaste kiss, but suddenly Joe felt Patrick put his arms around him, and Joe pulled him even closer, opening his mouth slightly.

And then they were, like, actually making out. Joe felt like he was on top of the world, with Patrick being so fucking awesome. Like, holy shit, he couldn't believe he was making out with his crush, and that their feelings were, like, mutual.

They were breathing hard when they separated, Patrick's hands still on Joe's cheeks. “Wow,” Joe said. Patrick echoed him, starting to laugh. They both laughed, Patrick putting his head on Joe's shoulder as they steadied their breathing.

“Can this not be a one-off thing?” Joe asked, threading his fingers into Patrick's hair lazily.

“I'd be really happy if we can do that again. Holy fucking shit, that was… that was so good.”

“I can't fucking believe we just did that.”

“Yeah, that was so crazy.”

Joe opened his mouth, to say something risky, then decided against it.

“I'm gonna sleep on you, now, Joe,” Patrick said, making a cute little noise and putting a hand on the back of Joe's neck. Joe nodded.

“G’night, dude.”

“Yeah, g'night.”

Joe woke up with Patrick still in his arms. Once they fully woke up, they discussed when to meet up with Pete for an actual band meeting, kissed a little more, and then Patrick left and they didn't talk about that night at all for the next week.

Joe supposed that it really was too good to be true, but, like, at least Patrick knew about how he actually felt. He really wanted to bring it back up, but, like… god, he really had no idea.

[uberniftacular]

ODDS

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?

About equal? I think it probably works out to being more cereal than milk volume-wise, but it’s not like I measure it?

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?

I mostly don’t use random things as bookmarks, actually. I’m very rarely reading more than one book at a time, and I’ve got a leather bookmark I’ve had for probably 20 years by now that’s what I always use. If I’m reading something else and that bookmark is in use already, then generally whatever envelope or receipt is closest.

5: are you self-conscious of your smile?

Not particularly, unless I’ve been eating spinach recently.

7: do you name your plants?

I don’t have plants (but I don’t think I’d name them if I did have them).

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?

All the damn time.

11: what's an inner joke you have with your friends?

“Neurons in party hats!”

13: what's something that made you smile today?

My cat dozing off next to me.

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!

Honestly I got bored before I found one weird enough to be worth telling, so instead I present to you: DUDE, NO EDGE.

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?

Purple! And conveniently, I’m a grown-ass adult, so I have actually been doing exactly that for well over a year now.

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it?

Nope. I’ve tried on and off over the years, but mostly I get a few days/pages in and then get either super bored or super distracted, so I give up.

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that's been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces.

I don’t honestly think I have a favorite bag. *shrugs*

23: what's your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?

INTERNET. FOREVER.

25: what's the weirdest place you've ever broken into?

That’s making the assumption that I’ve ever broken into a place, which as a matter of fact, I have not.

27: what's your favorite bubblegum flavor?

I don’t actually chew gum.

29: what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?

A couple of my friends have basically their own accent that they speak in, but mostly only to each other, and it’s really super cute.

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.

TALL SOCK LIFE IS BEST LIFE. Y’all, I recently acquired a pair of rainbow thigh-high socks and they’re fucking awesome. I love patterns on socks in general, though I confine myself to white-cotton-sock hell when I’m working out.

33: what's your fave pastry?

ALL OF THEM. OMG, pastry is the goddamn best.

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?

I love pretty pens and office supplies in general, but I very rarely actually use them.

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?

Clean, mostly so that I can actually find things and also not trip over anything (well, besides the cats) when I have to get up in the middle of the night to pee.

39: what color do you wear the most?

Purple or red, probably. I also wear a ton of black, but just because it goes with everything.

41: what's the last book you remember really, really loving?

Basically everything Tamora Pierce has ever written, really.

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with?

Hmm. Probably my bestie, E, if I had to guess. I don’t spend a lot of time stargazing.

45: do you trust your instincts a lot?

Sure.

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?

Jalapenos. I JUST WANT TO EAT GUACAMOLE WITHOUT BURNING MY FACE OFF GODFUCKINGDAMNIT.

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought?

I haven’t bought a physical CD in YEARS. The most recent one was...probably one of Hank Green’s albums, and that would’ve been like 4 years ago. (Well, that’s the most recent on purpose one anyway. My ticket to Kesha’s tour this fall came with a copy of the album, so that’s the most recent CD I’ve *acquired*.)

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?

Within Temptation’s “Aquarius” for my husband.

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them?

I think Heathers is the only one of those I haven’t seen, but I’ve only seen each of the others once, and I don’t think I was particularly impressed by any of them.

55: what's the most dramatic thing you've ever done to prove a point?

I have absolutely no idea, tbh.

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics?

I genuinely don’t have the energy for Bohemian Rhapsody right now. Because it *requires* a full sing-along, and I’m just not capable of that today.

59: what's your favorite myth?

Hades and Persephone, probably.

61: what's the stupidest gift you've ever given? the stupidest one you've ever received?

I honestly can’t remember the stupidest gift I’ve given (unless you count the cringe-worthy ones I gave to crushes in high school, but we’re not talking about those). And as for stupidest I’ve received, it wasn’t *intended* to be a stupid gift, but a year or two ago I was given a Loki dress for Christmas or something and LIKE SERIOUSLY, YOU HAVE MERCH FOR LITERALLY ALL THE AVENGERS AND YOU GIVE ME FUCKING LOKI?

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?

I’m pretty organized about them.

65: is there anyone you haven't seen in a long time who you'd love to hang out with?

@the-wordbutler!

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?

Tired

69: what are your favorite board games?

Mysterium, Dixit, Castle Panic, Discworld: Ankh-Morpork. And, while not technically a board game, CodeNames.

71: what's your favorite kind of tea?

I don’t drink tea

73: what are some of your worst habits?

Avoiding shit that makes me sad or uncomfortable even if I need to deal with it

75: tell us about your pets!

I have 2 cats! Girlcat is a calico who’s a little over 8 years old; we basically got her as a wedding present (a bridesmaid’s cat had kittens the day before our wedding, and she was like “hey you want one?” and we were like YES KITTY). She’s mostly antisocial except when I’m sitting at my desk and she’ll tap me on the arm to ask me for pettings. Boycat is an orange tabby who was a rescue, so we don’t know exactly old he is, but we’ve had him for 3 years and at the time they estimated he was about 10. He has exactly 0 teeth and is the most talkative cat I’ve ever met.

77: pink or yellow lemonade?

Both!

79: what's one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?

Back when we were dating, in high school, hubby gave me a rose at school. There was another one on my car’s windshield at the end of the day, and he was waiting with the rest of the dozen on my porch when I got home. I think that was Valentine’s Day? But it may have been asking-me-to-prom, I don’t actually remember.

81: describe one of your friend's eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of.

Hey, here’s a thing I really don’t have the brainpower for right now.

83: what's some of your favorite album art?

I honestly can’t think of any off the top of my head. Album art isn’t something I pay a lot of attention to most of the time.

85: do you read comics? what are your faves?

I wish I did, but I have a lot of trouble parsing them a lot of the time.

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?

Wonder Woman! The first Harry Potter film. Um. I honestly don’t know.

89: are you close to your parents?

Reasonably, though less so now than I used to be.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year?

Gonna go visit my little sister in Ireland!

93: what's the hairstyle you wear the most?

It’s in a bob so honestly I don’t do anything with it ever, just try to make sure it’s clean and combed.

95: what are your plans for this weekend?

This weekend is almost over already, so let’s talk about the upcoming weekend! I’m finally going to see Last Jedi on Saturday with a group of friends, and then Sunday and Monday, @snarkasaurus and @vagabondsandconventgirls are coming over and we’re going to spend like 48 hours watching movies and eating gallons of spaghetti.

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house?

IDGAF, Pisces, and Hufflepuff!

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them.

I answered this one already!

[ihaveavengersbedsheets]

Traitors: Chapter 2

Hey guys! Alright, finally got around to posting chapter 2 and I’m almost done writing the entire thing! So I hope y’all enjoy and if you would like to be tagged just shoot me a message! Thanks and happy reading!

Chapter 1

Tags: @misshyen @marriedtotheking @sinfully-lustful-darling @always-an-evans-addict @hallotom @tomhiddlesgrouptherapy @toc1985 @jeelicious78 @faye22

Chapter 2

“Evie, are you ready to go to work?” Steve asked from the kitchen, stealing a pop tart from her pantry. She sighed, still trying to pin back her hair.

“Almost, Rogers.” She answered. Ever since her attack, Alexander and Nick made sure someone was with her pretty much 24/7. It was something she feared would happen and hadn’t gotten any further in her search for the man who saved her. She almost felt like it would have to be left up to fate that she would ever meet him again.

A knock on her bathroom doorway pulled her away from her thoughts as she finally secured her bun. Steve leaned against the doorway while almost looking uncomfortable.

“Uh-oh, what’s this about?” She asked playfully. “Sharon giving you some trouble?” He just rolled his eyes and crossed his massive arms over his chest.

“Look, I’ve heard from Sam and Nat that you’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately.” He admitted. She sighed and smoothed out her shirt.  “Odinson says he can hear your nightmares when he’s standing guard.” “Well, trauma does that to you.”

“Evie don’t joke with me right now. When’s the last time you got a full night’s sleep?” He replied, walking over to her and pulling a shorter strand of hair out of her face. “We’re worried about you.” “Steve I’m not gonna be able to get a full night’s rest for a long ass time, maybe never again. Does it bother me? Hell yes but I’ve reached a point where I accept it.” She explained. “It’s been almost four months since Dad was killed, you can’t expect me to bounce-“ “I’m not, we’re not.” He interrupted. The friends were silent for a while before Evie spoke up again. “You don’t feel responsible, right?” She asked and he straightened up. “Sam and Nat talk about you too. This wasn’t your fault, sweetie.” She grabbed his hand with both of hers and squeezed.

“Evie, I brought him into Shield. We grew up together, we were in Afghanistan together when he lost his goddamn arm for me. I never thought he would-“ “That’s right, he. Not you, not we. It was him who did this. He made the conscious decision to betray you, to betray Shield.” She lectured. He shook his head and his eyes became glossy, something that she didn’t see often in Steve Rogers.  

“I thought he was my brother.” He replied softly. “But he never was the same after we got back.” She nodded sympathetically and wrapped her arms around his narrow waist. While she didn’t know Bucky personally, Steve talked about him a lot. Before he joined Shield, Steve didn’t have a whole lot of photos for fear of one of his many enemies trying to find some blackmail or leverage so Evie never saw what he looked like. She didn’t even know what Steve’s parents looked like in their years of friendship. He never liked to talk about his past, something Evie understood and accepted.  “Look, you need anything to help you sleep I’ll get it. Even if it’s just me lying next to you, okay? Just call me and I’ll be right over.”

“You got it. And you know I’ll do the same for you.” He kissed her forehead quickly before pulling away and grabbing her purse.

“C’mon, let’s get you to your office. The Kid will be with you at lunch instead of Sam, we’ve got some other business to attend to.” He explained, giving a silver thermos of coffee.

“Parker? You sure Uncle Nick is cool with that?” Steve just shrugged and she laughed. “He’s sweet but I don’t know if he can take Hydra brutes yet.”

XXXXXX                                                              

“Alright, you two, we have a lead on who might’ve sent those goons on Evie.” Nick began, pacing back and forth in his dark office. “Hydra hasn’t had a new head since the last one died-“

“Do we know what happened to him?” Sam interrupted and Nick glared daggers at him, putting him back in his place. “Sorry, sir.”

“We don’t. But we have a few signs pointing towards Baron Zemo as the new acting head, though it’s not very solid. We checked those brutes’ cellphones and saw that the orders to attack Evie came from him. That’s where you two come in. V’s been able to hack some of the street cameras and he’s been walking by Evie’s apartment often, but he hasn’t tried to break in. We think he’s trying to figure out her schedule and find someone else in the process.”

“Why would he do this himself? Why not get someone else to do it?” Steve asked and Nick nodded.

“That’s something that doesn’t add up. That points to a possibility that he isn’t the new head but higher up than most. As I was saying earlier, we think he’s also trying to track down the Winter Soldier.” Steve tensed and Sam automatically took notice. “James Barnes has been on the run for four months and we don’t have a lead on him but we’re afraid Hydra does. They need him because he never completed his mission but we need to get to him first and deal with him the way we deal with traitors at Shield. Rogers, when it comes down to it will you have any problem bringing him in?” Steve looked down at his feet before gaining composure.

“He made the conscious decision to betray you, to betray Shield.” Evie’s words rung in his head as he gave Fury a confident answer.

“Not a problem, sir.”

XXXXXX

Evie couldn’t really concentrate at work. She couldn’t come up with any new ideas or even write any words to start a new book. She knew people were wondering when “Lacey Bigelow” would come out with her next suspenseful drama. While all of her novels weren’t based entirely on her life and the gang, a majority of it was and knew that readers liked that sense of grit and rawness to it all.

“Long brown hair, strong jaw, blue-ish eyes, muscular, tall.” She knew she wouldn’t get anywhere with a broad description like that even if other people were helping her. She knew her only hope would be to see him again but she knew that chances of that might be slim.

However, he did come to her rescue the other night but why? He knew her damn name! He must’ve been close to her somehow. But why was he following her?

Her mind raced as she held her head in her hands, staring down at her glass desk. She needed to find that man and get some answers once and for all. One thought crossed her mind and her eyes widened.

“What if he knows who killed Dad?” She whispered.

“Um, Miss Swinton?” A timid voice called. Her head shot up and she saw Parker in her doorway. “Are you alright? I heard you mumbling.”

“Oh, I’m fine! Just thinking of dialogue!” She smiled probably a little too broadly but Parker seemed to be satisfied with the answer. “Is there any place in particular you’d like to go to lunch?” His eyes widened and he shook his head, making her smirk. “Peter, you don’t have to be so formal with me. C’mon, you’re new to the city you must have a place you wanna try?” He relaxed a little in her presence and nodded greedily.

“Well, there is a market around the corner that has a lot of stuff!” She laughed as she grabbed her purse and keys.

“Then let’s go!”

XXXXXX

“So, Peter, why did you move to the big city? You don’t seem very old.” Evie commented before she bit into an apple.

“Well, I guess I just wanted a change of pace. I couldn’t go to college because I didn’t have the money and someone from one of the charters talked me into coming here and becoming a part of…the organization.”

“How do you like it? The city, I mean.” He just shrugged but then stopped in his tracks. Evie furrowed her brows before looking up and realized he was staring at a young lady with cherry red hair. “You know her, Parker?” “Oh, yeah, she works at a diner I go to a lot. We talk every now and then and I really like her. Did you know she wants to be an actress?” He rambled, making her cover her mouth to stifle her giggles.

“No I didn’t know that.” She replied sweetly. “What’s her name?” She tugged her pea coat closer to her body.

“Mary-jane.” He sighed dreamily.

“Well, why don’t you go say hello and maybe get her number?” She urged and he shuffled on his feet.

“But I’d have to-“ “I won’t tell Uncle Nick now go and say hello!” She chuckled and he almost stumbled over to the waitress. Evie shook her head lovingly at the young man, hoping his time with Shield didn’t completely take over his life. She sighed and looked around at the market before tossing away her apple.

Her heart stopped when she saw someone looming over the plum stand. Her mouth opened slightly as she messed with a button on her coat.

“Was it him?” She looked over at Peter and saw he was chatting away with Mary-Jane. Deciding it was safe enough, she started walking over to the plum stand. “Long brown hair, tan skin, muscular build, about 6’0.” She wouldn’t make a scene, but she’d try to get as close as possible.

The man smiled and passed over some cash for the plums and turned around. Evie stopped in her tracks as she saw the same man from the other night. His jaw clenched as he looked at her, before putting his head down so the brim of his hat shielded him and hurriedly pushed through the crowd. With a quick glance back at Peter, still chatting away, Evie followed quickly. He never glanced back but he was getting away s she started to jog after him but the sound of her heels made him bolt.

“Wait!” She yelled out, making people stop in their tracks as she pushed through them.  “Please!” He finally broke free of the market, making her huff and charge at him more. He turned a sharp corner into an alleyway and she wasn’t far behind him.

“Why an alleyway?” She internally groaned. She skidded to a halt, nearly breaking one of her heels, to look around. She looked above her but she didn’t know how he would’ve escaped this time. Then again, this guy seemed to have more skill than any of the people at Shield.  She leaned against the brick wall and closed her eyes. She had lost him again and knew it might’ve been her only chance. “Look, man, I just wanted to thank you and ask some questions! You know who I am, you know what I’m gonna ask! Please just-“ A balled up receipt floated down in front of her, the front accounting for plums that had been bought.

“Meet me at Stark Gardens tonight at 3am. I’ll explain what I can.”

She looked back up at the rooftops of the apartment buildings again before walking away and pocketing the note.

“Miss Swinton!” Peter yelped as he finally caught up to her. “Are you alright?” She nodded and patted his shoulder.

“Yeah, I…I just needed to get away from the crowd. How did it go with Mary-Jane?” She asked and Peter showed her the goofiest smile he’d ever seen.

“She told me to call her MJ and gave me her number.”

“Atta boy! C’mon,” She wrapped her arm around his slender shoulders. “Let’s celebrate and lemme buy you something.”

Her mind was consumed with the thoughts of that night.

She would finally get answers.